Preservation Hall Jazz Band

Preservation Hall Jazz Band is a New Orleans institution that started in the '60s as the house band for Preservation Hall, a music venue located in the French Quarter. Successive decades saw numerous changes in the roster, drawing from the city's local talent through generations. For the longest time, their mission was to preserve the jazz heritage of the city by performing traditional pieces in the traditional New Orleans style. That changed slightly in the last couple of decades, especially under tuba player and current bandleader Ben Jaffe, as they broadened their horizons in terns of expanding into other styles of jazz, writing original compositions, and collaborating with artists across genre boundaries, including Cuban musicians (A Tuba to Cuba, 2019) and bluegrass legends The Del McCoury Band (American Legacies, 2011). At the end of the day, this is an exceptional band in every respect, who faithfully tends to one of America's finest musical traditions.