Christmas comes but once a year
Which is a good thing, and if you can attend a Christmas concert by the Preservation Hall Jazz Band that is more jazz than Christmas, that's even better.
I came into the Preservation Hall Jazz Band "Creole Christmas" show at the Englert Theatre on Tuesday night carrying a bit of baggage. An email sent the day before said the 7:30 p.m. show was expected to last until 10 p.m. I'm not a big fan of Christmas music, to say the least, so I wondered if the brassy energy of New Orleans jazz could counterbalance the manufactured cheer of Christmas and the general old-timey schtick of Preservation Hall for two-and-a-half hours.
Yes, I’m a Scrooge. But the show was shorter by an hour, Christmas music seemed fairly incidental to the entire affair, and the musicality of the proceedings did indeed counter any elements that usually annoy more than endear. I was able to shed that baggage as the lights went down and simply enjoy the show.
In fact, had the show not been billed as a Christmas show, one would have been hard-pressed until well into the set to identify it as such. The six-piece band came out with two traditional songs, each featuring long solos that set a sprightly tone, before a hint of Christmas crept into the set. This, to these ears, was a good thing. It seemed we were being treated to the band's usual show, with a few songs swapped out with just enough yuletide fare to satisfy the promise on the posters.
Trumpeter Branden Lewis set aside his horn for a bit of Louis Armstrong-inspired vocal growl on Charles Brown's "Christmas Comes But Once a Year," while sax player Clint Maedgen wrung everything out of a version of Brown's "Please Come Home for Christmas" that was more R'n'B than N'awlins jazz. As those who know me can attest, I find vocals to be an unpleasant distraction in jazz, but I'll make an exception for Christmas music, particularly when it's performed with this much energy and good humor.
The band swung back into its typical set, coaxing audience participation out of "Little Liza Jane" and songs by Armstrong and Professor Longhair that allowed the band members to stretch out on solos that were designed to delight as much as offer a chance at personal expression. Some of the band members, like Maedgen, have been on the road for years, while others are new to the combo. That make up didn't affect the chemistry, as the players found a mix of tight and loose that belied the fact that they have played roughly the same set in the same order for most of this current swing.
Christmas seeped back into the set as trombonist Revon Andrews (part of the expansive Andrews clan that also claims Trombone Shorty in the family tree) charmed with a rendition of "O Christmas Tree" that forewent every lyric save the title phrase, punctuated by his loping long noted-solo. Lewis, with the other horns taking a breather, then played a wonderfully expressive "The Christmas Song" that was the most satisfying holiday tune in the set.
Pianist Kyle Roussel offered a highlight with a solo rendition of the Beatles' "Eleanor Rigby."1 It wasn't of a piece with the rest of the set, but it captivated all the more for the incongruity. His solos elsewhere were a pleasing counterpoint to the horn-heavy sound (that's no slight; it's what you want and expect from this band, but the occasional respite was welcome).
After closing the main set an hour earlier than expected, the band returned for a short encore of "When the Saints Go Marching In." It's the least-surprising thing they could do, and given the reaction from the audience, it would have been an unforgivable slight to omit it. Walking away from the show, I couldn't help but marvel at how the musicians could still imbue the song with such spirit, knowing they had performed it hundreds, if not thousands of times. Preservation Hall once had a sign by the stage letting people know that traditional requests were $2, other requests were $5, and "The Saints" was $10. Designed to rescue the players from night-long sets of nothing but that standard, it instead led to filled coffers and people begged to hear it. On this night, despite the lightly delivered Christmas theme (again, this was a plus), it would have been odd to go without it.
Reading up a bit about Preservation Hall, one finds it's an institution that is both revered and reviled, one with promise and problems. An interesting New York Times Magazine piece from 2022 details some of that dilemma, focusing on Ben Jaffee, the white owner and musician who drives this hallowed hall of African-American culture. Jaffe, a bassist and tuba player, stopped going on the road with the touring group, and so wasn't in Iowa City this week. None of the push-pull detailed in that story was necessarily evident Tuesday night, of course, but as this group travels the country, preserving a musical style while nudging it — as nearly all modern jazz musicians do — in new and interesting directions, it leaves as much food for thought as good cheer in its wake. That's a good thing for Preservation Hall, and a good thing for jazz. And if such thoughts eluded the Christmas-sweater-clad among us on Tuesday, well, that's OK, too.
Just looking for an excuse to share what, when I think about it, was probably the first jazz album I heard, Stanley Jordan’s 1986 Blue Note debut, Magic Touch. I checked out this LP (!) from the Des Moines Public Library so much when I was in high school that it felt like I owned it. A highlight was Jordan’s rendition of “Eleanor Rigby.”