Bill Cosby joins Preservation Hall Jazz Band onstage at Playboy festival

-By McClatchyNews 

JOHN MCCUSKER / THE TIMES-PICAYUNE

As the 34th annual Playboy Jazz Festival wrapped up on Sunday, Bill Cosby danced across the stage to play his final solo beneath the iconic bunny.

“It’s my last time here,” he announced to the applauding crowd, which filled the Hollywood Bowl to the last bleacher. “And I’m gonna give you something you’ve never heard before. Take it back to the bridge!”


Cosby grabbed a trombone from the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, who followed his order with upbeat, New Orleans-style jazz.

The comedian tapped his foot, held the instrument to his mouth, threw his head back — and abruptly pulled it into two pieces.

“Thank you!” he yelled, walking away.

Read the FULL NOLA.com Article HERE

Trey McIntyre Project & PHJB on NOLA.com!

Check out this great article by Chris Waddington about the upcoming debut of "The Sweeter End" at The Mahalia Jackson Theater for the Performing Arts this weekend!

Trey McIntyre Project meets the Preservation Hall Jazz Band in a dance extravaganza
Published: Wednesday, February 02, 2011, 5:00 AM
by Chris Waddington

What happens when a world-renowned choreographer encounters the street styles of the New Orleans second line?

Trey McIntyre answered that question with “Ma Maison,” the electrifying 2008 collaboration between his company of nine dancers and the musicians of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. That death-haunted, 30-minute piece featured dancing skeletons, dressed in Carnival colors, who jigged, shimmied, knocked their knees in a Charleston step and spun in slow motion pirouettes while the band unleashed drum rolls and wails.

 Commissioned by the New Orleans Ballet Association, “Ma Maison” got a stomping, cheering crowd out of its seats at Tulane University’s Dixon Hall and has gone on to be reprised more than 30 times nationally.  Most recently, a crowd of 7,000 packed the Hollywood Bowl to see the piece.

photo by Eliot Kamenitz

 On Friday, Feb. 4, the same creative team will premier “The Sweeter End” — and reprise “Ma Maison” — in an evening-length New Orleans extravaganza that includes live music by the Preservation Hall players. The new dance is another NOBA commission.

“Working on ‘Ma Maison’ was an education for me,” McIntyre said. “I came to see how New Orleanians embrace an awareness of death in the course of celebrating daily life. The city is a richer place because of those contradictions — and very inspiring to me...”

READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE!
TICKETS FOR THE PERFORMANCE HERE!

Performance Review: The LAist Reviews PHJB at The Hollywood Bowl, 08/18/10

Neville Brothers, Preservation Hall Jazz Band, Dirty Dozen Brass Band @ Hollywood Bowl 8/18/10
Preservation Hall Jazz Band are one of the city’s oldest institutions, formed in the early sixties with the express purpose of keeping old jazz alive, right at the time when such a notion couldn’t have been more unhip. But they’ve remained active, as both a band and a building, ever since, preaching the tradition of the Armstrong era. I’ve seen them a handful of times, including in their current Bourbon Street home, and figured we were in for a predictable, toe-tapping half hour or so of good old Dixieland music, and the first four or five songs seemed to bear that notion out. No matter how often those old songs get repeated, they’re still a treat to hear when played by masters of the craft.

But the second half of the program, a collaboration with modern dance troupe the Trey McIntyre Project, was shockingly powerful. The first few pieces were fun and upbeat, and worked surprisingly well - skeletons dancing around to “Heebie Jeebies” and that sort of thing. But the fourth piece was a funeral dirge, played at an unearthly slow tempo, and it became evident that the skeletal figures were re-enacting Hurricane Katrina - I saw a flash of a man perched on the roof of his house as another went floating past, after which every image resonated with footage of the disaster. This was followed by dances to a series of old spirituals, some performed with just a voice and a tambourine (which I believe to be by Sister Gertrude Morgan, whose record was released on Preservation Hall Records and has recently has been rediscovered thanks to an update from hip-hop producer King Britt, leading to the use of her "New World In My View" on HBO’s True Blood.)

It was unexpected, audacious and while I can hardly claim to be a modern dance expert, on an emotional level I have to rate that performance as one of the most stunning I’ve seen all year. It’s impressive that current leader Ben Jaffe, son of original founders Allan and Sandra Jaffe, has found a way to do something genuinely modern, so successfully, while continuing to honor the music they were founded on.

FULL ARTICLE HERE