Is there any greater joy than to hear something fresh?
Steve Lehman (saxophonist, composer, bandleader), talking and playing, 2009
Want more? Here (click on the “listen” tab).
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lagniappe
. . . the most important thing, and the most important element of the music, and the most important compositional step is deciding who it is that you’re going to work with—even more so than what notes they’re going to play, or what context you’re going to put them in.—Steve Lehman
The French Quarter: the spirit of some places is so strong you can go there, in mind if not in body, just by saying their name.
Rebirth Brass Band, live, New Orleans’ French Quarter, 2008
Here’s more from the city where concert halls are made of asphalt.
Rebirth Brass Band, live, New Orleans, 2008
With a name like this, who could resist?
Slavic Soul Party, live, Johnstown, Pennsylvania, 2007
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who could argue?
“New York’s Official #1 Brass Band For BalkanSoulGypsyFunk.”
New Orleans Music Festival/day 3 of 3
Only in New Orleans do the dead dance.
New Orleans Jazz Funeral for tuba player Kerwin James (2007)
New Orleans Music Festival/day 2 of 3
If spirit could be sold, New Orleans would be rich.
Rebirth Brass Band, live, New Orleans, 2009
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lagniappe
“Brass band musicians are a wild bunch. They’re hard to control. The street funk that the Rebirth [Brass Band] plays definitely isn’t traditional—it might be in thirty years time.”—Lajoie “Butch” Gomez (in Mick Burns, Keeping the Beat on the Street: The New Orleans Brass Band Renaissance [2006])
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