Preservation Hall Jazz Band

The GRAMMY Museum is thrilled to welcome New Orleans septet Preservation Hall Jazz Band to the Clive Davis Theater for an intimate conversation on their most recent album, So It Is, and prolific career as the torchbearers for New Orleans music for more than 50 years. The conversation will be moderated by GRAMMY Museum Executive Director Scott Goldman, and will be followed by a special performance. Released in April on Legacy Recordings, So It Is finds the classic Preservation Hall Jazz Band sound invigorated by several fresh influences, not least among them the band’s 2015 life-changing trip to Cuba. Producer David Sitek, a founder of art rock innovators TV on the Radio who has helmed projects by Kelis, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Santigold among others, offered both a keen modern perspective and a profound respect for the band’s storied history. The music on the album, penned largely by bandleader/composer/bassist Ben Jaffe and 84-year-old saxophonist Charlie Gabriel in collaboration with the entire band, stirs together a variety of influences like classic New Orleans cuisine. Reinvigorated by the post-Katrina rebuilding of their beloved home city, PHJB are redefining what New Orleans music means in 2017 by tapping into a sonic continuum that stretches back the city’s Afro-Cuban roots, through its common ancestry with the Afrobeat of Fela Kuti and the Fire Music of Pharoah Sanders and John Coltrane, and forward to cutting-edge artists with whom the PHJB have shared festival stages, including Stevie Wonder, Elvis Costello, the Grateful Dead, My Morning Jacket, Arcade Fire, and the Black Keys. Preservation Hall Jazz Band features longtime members Jaffe, Charlie Gabriel (saxophone, clarinet), Clint Maedgen (saxophone, percussion), and Ronell Johnson (trombone), along with newer members Walter Harris (drums, percussion), Branden Lewis (trumpet), and Kyle Roussel (piano, Wurlitzer, organ).