Event Reviews

Not many good things came out of Hurricane Katrina but last night was one of them. The big wind that hit the Big Easy flattened half the city - it also dislodged two chunks of the city's magnificent musical architecture.

Allen Toussaint and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band rarely stray very far from New Orleans but with the city's musical scene currently disrupted they've hit the road. Louisiana's loss is our gain.

The acts are linked by that fabulous heritage but in some ways this was an odd coupling. Toussaint is the legendary songwriter and producer whose material has been covered by everyone from Lee Dorsey and Irma Thomas to the Stones. He's just recorded a CD with our very own Elvis Costello. 

A man for the musos and the soul fans then, while the Preservation Hall Band brought in the trad jazz fraternity. Two audiences perhaps, but neither would have felt-short changed on a fascinating evening.

He's not got the greatest voice but that was more than made up for by his superb piano playing. He knocked out some of his hits Ernie K-Doe's "Mother-in-Law", Lee Dorsey's "Working in a Coal Mine" but then broadened his canvas.

Instead of telling us about his story he played it …a clever piece that took us through first piano lessons, stumbling chords, forties pop songs, classical snippets, stride piano, all swirling around in the mix until, finally, his own distinctive New Orleans musical voice emerges triumphant.

Nothing as experimental from the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. It does what it says on the label - preserves classic early New Orleans jazz. It's a sound that’s barely changed since a teenage Louis Armstrong was doing gigs in a Rampart Street whorehouse.

There's a couple of young lads in the band these days but the collective age must be still somewhere around the Jurassic. It is music that's still vibrant though and there was something moving about seeing this page torn out of the musical history books. The highlight for me was the (literally) funereal "Just a Closer Walk with Thee." You were sitting in the Phil but you could have been walking behind a coffin on Bourbon Street.

The night ended with - of course - "When the Saints Go Marching In" with the horn players striding out into the audience to lead a joyous procession around the stalls. 
New Orleans might just about be getting up off its knees but its music, as ever, is up and dancing.