ARIANNA NEVAREZ
Staff Writer
At 8 p.m. tonight in the Amphitheater, Preservation Hall Jazz Band will bring its vibrant New Orleans sound and full array of instruments — trumpets, tubas, trombones and more — to center stage.
Their stop at Chautauqua Institution is the first on their summer tour. Creative Director of Preservation Hall Jazz Band Ben Jaffe said in an interview with PBS and NPR affiliate station AZPM that no matter how old the audience is, he hopes they can connect with the music.
Jaffe said he hopes the band can capture the spirit of “forgetting about burdens and worries” and take audiences on a “little trip” when they see a performance, according to the AZPM interview.
“What I’m most proud of is helping people overcome their fear of the word ‘jazz,’ and I think Preservation Hall does that better than anyone,” Jaffe said in an interview with Jeff Giles. “When people come to hear us, the experience they have so often catches them by surprise — they don’t know what to expect. And it’s not the kind of show where you’re expected to sit on your hands and be polite. Ours are shows where people have gotten up and danced in the aisles.”
Former Preservation Hall Jazz Band drummer Walter Harris said in an interview with the New York Times Magazine that the group’s performances can lead to emotional experiences for audience members.
“Sometimes you see people and their tears just start flowing,” Harris said. “They come over and ask you: ‘I’m feeling something. What am I feeling?’”
The Preservation Hall has hosted artists since the 1950s, but from 1963 on, a smaller group emerged that tours and brings jazz across America. Allan and Sandra Jaffe helped the hall provide a venue for elderly New Orleans jazz musicians to play and gather after Larry Borenstein, “Father of Preservation Hall,” passed the nightly operations to them.
In the interview with AZPM, Allan and Sandra Jaffe’s son, aforementioned Ben Jaffe, said careers are handed down — a tradition New Orleans embraces. In the interview, he also said there are no “credentials” needed to be in the band; instead, it’s a “birthright.”
“There are very few traditions or even careers that are handed down from generation to generation, but New Orleans still embraces that tradition, particularly in the cultural arts,” Jaffe said in the interview with AZPN. “That’s really what Preservation Hall is focused on, is supporting this ecosystem that exists in New Orleans. Because the musicians happen when that community is nourished and protected.”
The band’s most recent album, For Fat Man, is traditional-style brass band music dedicated to the memory of the group’s longtime percussionist Kerry “Fat Man” Hunter, according to the band’s website. It includes songs with a medley of Carnival time classics and rare brass band ballads. The album also includes Black Masking Indian-style percussion and chants to highlight the connections in Black-rooted New Orleans traditions, according to trumpeter and cornetist Kevin Louis in an interview with Gambit.
“Fat Man was the heartbeat of all of this,” Jaffe said on the group’s website. “He brought a sense of freedom whenever he played. He understood the ability and power of music to make people feel joy, happiness and be therapeutic. It was important to him. This record’s an incredible tribute to him and who he was. He was an entirely singular, unique human being. There’s not many that embodied second line culture in New Orleans like him. It’s a way of life, and such a beautiful thing to be part of.”
