On Thursday, March 2nd @ 1:30PM, Madame X hosts bass player, creative director, and son of the founders of Preservation Hall, Ben Jaffe, for an in-studio interview ahead of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band’s show later the same night for Cal Performances at Zellerbach Hall on the UC Berkeley campus.
In its far-ranging and always grooving repertoire, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band celebrates New Orleans as a place where sounds and cultures from around the world converge, mingle, and resurface, transformed by the Crescent City’s irrepressible joie de vivre.
The septet is named for the renowned venue and cultural organization in the French Quarter, and since its founding by tuba player Allan Jaffe in 1961 has boasted an ever-evolving cast of A-list NOLA musicians committed to keeping the spirit and sounds of New Orleans alive and thriving.
Now led by by Jaffe’s son, the band celebrates its 60-year anniversary with a concert of “shoulder-shaking, hip-swaying tunes that will fill the dance floor” (Downbeat)— traditional jazz mixing with gutbucket funk, Afro-Cuban rhythms, folk, and pop.
As son of co-founders Allan and Sandra Jaffe, Ben Jaffe has lived his whole life with the rhythm of the French Quarter pulsing through his veins. Raised in the company of New Orleans’ greatest musicians, Ben returned from his collegiate education at Oberlin College in Ohio to play with the group and assume his father’s duties as Director of Preservation Hall. Today he serves as Creative Director for both PHJB and the Hall itself, where he has spearheaded such programs as the New Orleans Musicians Hurricane Relief Fund.
