High Society New Orleans Jazz Band: Live at Birdland

Long before Bird (Charlie Parker), Diz (Dizzy Gillespie), Prez (Lester Young), the Count (Count Basie) or the Duke (Duke Ellington) raised their voices, jazz was being performed, for audiences large and small, in New Orleans and other cities and towns along the Mississippi River and elsewhere, lending those yet to come the bedrock from which to explore fresh ideas and chart new musical pathways.

Even though the world of jazz has been remodeled and amplified many times since then, that seminal music lives on, anchored by the spirit that gave it birth and animated the groups of dedicated musicians who are determined to keep it alive and meaningful. One of those steadfast groups is the High Society New Orleans Jazz Band, seven members strong, which was recorded in concert at New York City's famed Birdland, its weekly Thursday night residence, in August 2024.

This is trad jazz played the way it should be, with enthusiasm and assurance, by talented and experienced artists, two of whom— trumpeter Simon Wettenhall and pianist Conal Fowkes—spent nearly three decades in comedian Woody Allen's New Orleans Funeral and Ragtime Orchestra, in which Allen played clarinet. This pair of players are not novices, nor are their bandmates: trombonist Harvey Tibbs, clarinetist Tom Abbott, banjoist and guitarist Josh Dunn, bassist Brian Nalepka and drummer Kevin Dorn. Wettenhall, Fowkes and Nalepka double as lead vocalists.

The bill of fare is close to what one might expect to hear in a performance of musical favorites predating the bop and swing eras, including such well-known themes as "Dallas Blues," "Ace in the Hole," "Here Comes the Tamale Man" and Jelly Roll Morton's "Shreveport Stomp." Fowkes sings (partly) in Spanish on the Cuban-based "Say 'Si Si.'" The concert opens with the traditional funeral songs "Flee as a Bird" and "Didn't He Ramble" and closes with Nalepka's heartfelt vocal on Irving Berlin's "When I Leave the World Behind." Completing the playlist is the band's brisk rendition of Porter Steele's "High Society."

For fans of trad jazz—and considering the audience reaction, there are more than a few of them left—this is a sharp and well-designed concert, one that should reinforce their belief that vintage-era jazz still has much to offer those whose hearts, minds and ears are attuned to its singular wavelength.

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