Hot Jazz Breaks/Trading Fours

Every jazz fan should visit the venerable Preservation Hall in the French Quarter of New Orleans at last once. It was 1961 that the late Allan Jaffe took over what had been an art gallery in a 200-year-old building at 726 St. Peter Street and provided a place for some of the legendary New Orleans musicians to play on a regular basis. Band alumni over the years included George Lewis, Kid Thomas Valentine, Percy and Willie Humphrey, Kid Shiek Colar, “Slow Drag” Pavageau, Sweet Emma Barrett, and Billie and DeDe Pierce. The Hall remains the same as it was the first time it opened to the public, and 21 performances (plus occasional after-hours sessions) are held on a weekly basis. Tickets are $15-20 at the door, which contrasts to the $95 for a front-row seat at the band's Carnegie Hall 50th anniversary concert held in New York City. ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ The Ellis Marsalis Center for Music, a multi-million dollar performance hall and community center opened in 2011, is the centerpiece of the Musicians Village located in New Orleans’ Upper 9th Ward that came into being after Hurricane Katrina. ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ The Institute of Jazz Studies, located on the campus of Rutgers University-Newark in New Jersey, is considered the largest and among the most important jazz libraries and archives in the world. Its stated mission is “to collect, preserve and make accessible the heritage of ja