Preservation Hall Jazz Band

The septet, comprised of a multi-generation-spanning cast of the city’s finest players, returns to Rockport in the midst of a nationwide 60th Anniversary tour that finds the group honoring its history while blazing forward into the future. They’re not going anywhere.

Preservation Hall is a humble, much-loved room dedicated to keeping the past and future of jazz alive. It’s a well-worn, well-loved space that’s physically small but spiritually huge. People from around the globe make pilgrimages to it, and this fall, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band is embarking on a pilgrimage of its own: a nationwide tour to celebrate the Hall’s 60th anniversary. The band’s mission remains focused on initiating audiences into the ineffable, almost religious experience of channeling their ancestors through the music and culture they’ve inherited from them.

“Touring is a part of our ritual,” Ben Jaffe, creative director of Preservation Hall, adds. “It’s our tradition. When my parents began touring with the band in the early 60s, they were bringing something that most people didn’t even know existed to stages all over the world. It was this magnificent revelation to people that something so beautiful could even exist. People come to Preservation Hall and have transformative experiences, and that’s part of our mission: to go out in the world and make that experience available to people.”

As New Orleans’ most beloved musical ambassadors, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band (PHJB) has a lot on its shoulders. But listening to the absolute joy in their performances, it doesn’t feel like the burden is too heavy. That joy is also reflected in their critically acclaimed recordings, the most recent being 2019’s A Tuba to Cuba.

The band started out in the 1960s when tuba player Allen Jaffe (father of current leader Ben Jaffe) founded the band as a way to keep the traditional jazz of the city alive as the country was inundated with rock n roll and other popular music. They played in a tiny French Quarter space they dubbed Preservation Hall. In the ensuing decades the band went through dozens of lineup changes, harboring some of the most storied musicians the city has ever seen. The PHJB continues in that tradition today, employing some of the hottest rising stars in the city while holding on to its elder statesmen. In fact, 90 year old saxophonist Charlie Gabriel just released an acclaimed solo record this past year and still sounds as spirited as ever.

They do it the right way, with one foot in the glorious past and one always stepping forward.