Preservation Hall
The Preservation Hall is a New Orleans jazz venue in the French Quarter of the city on the Mississippi .
building
The building at 726 St. Peter Street has served as a stage for classic, traditional jazz in New Orleans since 1961 . Accordingly, the atmosphere of the early 20th century has been preserved: the facade and the interior walls are artificially run down and painted inconspicuously, old wooden shutters close the windows. The jazz musicians play on a flat board stage in dim light. The back of the room is in the dark. Instead of the usual air conditioning, there are only a few ceiling fans above the musicians. There are only a few wooden benches for the public and only cushions for the front row. Most of the audience is standing anyway. There are no drinks, no food, no smoking, and entry is $ 15. Long queues often form for admission, and the hall is also a magnet for New Orleans tourists.
There is a permanent line-up of jazz musicians, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, who play most of the regular sessions, but which also toured around the world about 150 days a year. Other well-known jazz musicians appear again and again. If there is no fixed show, requests from the audience are fulfilled for a fee. Most of the time, the game is played from 8:30 p.m. to midnight.
In 2006 the Preservation Hall Jazz Band received the National Medal of Arts .
history
The house in the oldest part of New Orleans was built as a private house as early as 1750, in the 19th century it was used as a pub and later also as a photo studio. After the Second World War , the Preservation Hall was only an art gallery, in which the owner Larry Borenstein (1919–1981) occasionally held jam sessions for his friends . Since he had to keep his gallery open even at night, he had no time to listen to jazz and came up with the idea of holding concerts in his home (to which he invited Kid Thomas Valentine's band ), initially declaring them as practice sessions to Bypass union and entertainment tax. Finally arriving supporters like Barbara Reed on the idea of a non-profit Society for the Preservation of Traditional New Orleans (1961) to launch, so to preserve (Engl. Preservation ) of traditional jazz, which performances were made possible without tax levies. One of the performing musicians, Allan Jaffe , and his wife Sandra took over the Preservation Hall during 1961. Jaffe organized the events and also started the touring band. After his death in 1987, his wife took over the hall; she is still the owner today. Her son Ben is a member of the house band.
The higher-lying neighborhood in the French Quarter was less affected by the devastating Hurricane Katrina , which devastated New Orleans in 2005, in particular from the weeks of flooding, so that the hall was reopened in April 2006 to celebrate its 45th anniversary.
Numerous albums have also been recorded in the traditional venue, such as the second album by New Orleans-based band leader Luke Winslow-King , Old / New Baby (2009).
literature
- William Carter Preservation Hall. Music from the heart , W. W. Norton 1991
swell
- ↑ http://www.preservationhall.com/2.0/about_the_band.php
- ↑ Biographical profile for Luke Winslow-King ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Earthwork Music, accessed November 6, 2016
Web links
- Website (English)
- Preservation Hall Jazz by Paul Thompson (English)
Coordinates: 29 ° 57 '29.4 " N , 90 ° 3' 54" W.