Today, Feb 25th, 89, the debut record from Charlie Gabriel, the senior member of the legendary New Orleans Jazz ensemble, The Preservation Hall Jazz Band is available on DSPs. The album will be released physically on CD/LP/CS July 1st, 2022 worldwide from Sub Pop.
Charlie’s first professional gig dates to 1943, sitting in for his father in New Orleans’ Eureka Brass Band. As a teenager living in Detroit, Charlie played with Lionel Hampton, whose band just then also included a young Charles Mingus, later spending nine years with a group led by Cab Calloway drummer, J.C. Heard. While he’s also fronted a bebop quintet, played and/or toured with Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennet, Aretha Franklin and many more, this is the first time his name appears on the front of a record, as a bandleader.
Since 2006, he’s been a member of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, and has developed a tight musical relationship with the group’s bassist and tuba player, Ben Jaffe. The two men, along with guitarist Joshua Starkman, recorded Charlie’s new album 89 throughout 2020 and 2021.
As previously announced on Sunday, January 30th legendary New Orleans Jazz venue, Preservation Hall was the subject of a CBS Sunday Morning segment, which was taped in December 2021 with Ted Koppel and features interviews with the Hall’s creative director and sousaphonist, Ben Jaffe and Charlie Gabriel. You can watch this segment by clicking here.
Tracklisting: 1. Memories of You 2. Chelsea Bridge 3. I’m Confessin’ 4. The Darker It Gets 5. Stardust 6. Three Little Word 7. Yellow Moon 8. I Get Jealous
Charlie Gabriel has signed to Sub Pop to release his debut album 89.The album, which features the highlights “I’m Confessin’” and ”The Darker It Gets,” will be available on DSPs February 25th, 2022, and released on CD/LP/CS July 1st, 2022 worldwide from Sub Pop.
Charlie is the most senior member of the legendary New Orleans Jazz ensemble, Preservation Hall Jazz Band. Charlie’s first professional gig dates to 1943, sitting in for his father in New Orleans’ Eureka Brass Band. As a teenager living in Detroit, Charlie played with Lionel Hampton, whose band just then also included a young Charles Mingus, later spending nine years with a group led by Cab Calloway drummer, J.C. Heard. While he’s also fronted a bebop quintet, played and/or toured with Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennet, Aretha Franklin and many more, this is the first time his name appears on the front of a record, as a bandleader.
Since 2006, he’s been a member of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band and has developed a tight musical relationship with the group’s bassist and tuba player, Ben Jaffe. The two men, along with guitarist Joshua Starkman, recorded Charlie’s new album 89 throughout 2020 and 2021.
89 includes six jazz standards and two new pieces, “The Darker It Gets” and “Yellow Moon”.” Charlie describes the repertoire, which includes “Stardust,” “I’m Confessin’” and “Three Little Words,” as “standard material that every musician if they’re an older musician like myself, will have played throughout their career. Every time I play one of these tunes the interpretation is a little bit different.”
He plays tenor sax and clarinet throughout, Starkman plays guitar, and Jaffe plays bass, drums, and keyboards. You can listen to the debut offerings, “I’m Confessin’” and “The Darker It Get” by clicking here. There is also an official video for “I’m Confessin’,” which was directed by Alex Hennen Payne. You can watch the video by clicking here.
“I’ve been playing since I was 11 years old,” says Charlie Gabriel, the most senior member of the legendary Preservation Hall Band, “I never did anything in my life but play music. I’ve been blessed with that gift that God gave me, and I’ve tried to nurse it the best way I knew how.”
While he’s faced plenty of challenges nursing that gift for more than 78 years, none likely rank with last winter’s passing of his brother and last living sibling, Leonard, lost to COVID-19. For the first time ever, Gabriel put down his horn, filling his days and weeks instead with dark reflection, a stubborn despondency broken now and then by regular chess matches in the studio kitchen of Hall leader Ben Jaffe, working overtime to bring his friend some light.
One such afternoon also included Joshua Starkman, sitting off in a corner playing his guitar and half-watching the chess from a distance. When Charlie returned the next day, he brought his saxophone. “I was just inspired to try it, to play again. It had been a long time, and a guitar makes me feel free. I do love the sound of a piano, but it takes up a lot of a space, keeps me kind of boxed in.”
That day was to be the first session for 89, almost entirely the work of Gabriel, Jaffe and Starkman, recorded mostly right there, in the kitchen, by Matt Aguiluz.
Charlie Gabriel’s first professional gig dates to 1943, sitting in for his father in New Orleans’ Eureka Brass Band. As a teenager living in Detroit, Charlie played with Lionel Hampton, whose band just then also included a young Charles Mingus, later spending nine years with a group led by Cab Calloway drummer, J.C. Heard. While he’s also fronted a bebop quintet, played and/or toured with Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennet, Aretha Franklin and many more, this is the first time his name appears on the front of a record, as a bandleader.
Since 2006, Gabriel has been a member of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, featuring prominently on That’s It, So It Is, and Tuba to Cuba. 89 was different, and not simply due to a smaller ensemble. “We had no particular plan, or any particular insight on what we were gonna do. But we were enjoying what we were doing, jamming, having a musical conversation,” Charlie says, further musing, “Musical conversations cancel out complications.”
89 includes six standards and two newer pieces on which Gabriel is a writer: “Yellow Moon,” and “The Darker It Gets”.” The record also marks Charlie’s return to his first instrument, clarinet, on many of the tracks. “The clarinet is the mother of the saxophone,” he says. “I started playing clarinet early in life, and this [taught me] the saxophone.”
Finally, 89 includes three tracks of Charlie singing…
“I always sung, but it wasn’t my forte to become a singer,” he says. “The truth is, people often develop a real relationship with a song once they hear the words. Sometimes I enjoy singing them.”
Charlie Gabriel 89
Tracklisting: 1. Memories of You 2. Chelsea Bridge 3. I’m Confessin’ 4. The Darker It Gets 5. Stardust 6. Three Little Word 7. Yellow Moon 8. I Get Jealous
Gerald Clayton’s “Theme From MLK/FBI” is from the award-winning film MLK/FBI and is now available on all DSPs and on a 7” single along with Preservation Hall’s Jazz Band’s “Lift Every Voice & Sing,” worldwide from Sub Pop.
Clayton’s “Theme…” is a gorgeous, affecting, and chilling arrangement that acts as the perfect accompaniment to the film’s tragic and searing storytelling. A two-time Grammy nominee for 2021, Clayton is “a pianist of great touch and soulful exposition,” according to the New York Times. He is also the Musical Director of the Monterey Jazz Festival’s Next Generation Jazz Orchestra, and has released five acclaimed albums including Two-Shade, Life Forum, Tributary Tales and, most recently, his debut on Blue Note Records, Happening: Live at the Village Vanguard.
Preservation Hall Jazz Band’s “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” the group’s uplifting version of the black national anthem, was recorded specifically for MLK/FBI. The song was released in December with an official video that features footage from the film, and was co-directed by Preservation Hall Jazz Band’s Ben Jaffe and Kenneth Alexander Campbell.
“Theme From MLK/FBI” is the B-side on the aforementioned 7” on single with Preservation Hall Jazz Band’s “Lift Every Voice & Sing” on the A-side, and is available to order now through Sub Pop.
MLK/FBI recently won the Critics’ Choice award for “Best Archival Documentary” and IDA awards for “Best Feature” and “Best Director” for director Sam Pollard. The film is earning raves from the likes of The Atlantic, Entertainment Weekly, New York Times and has been covered in interviews with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, The New Yorker Radio Hour’s Jelani Cobb along with today’s segments from Good Morning America and NPR’s Fresh Air.
MLK/FBI is the first film to uncover the extent of the FBI’s surveillance and harassment of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Based on newly discovered and declassified files, utilizing a trove of documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act and unsealed by the National Archives, as well as revelatory restored footage, the documentary explores the government’s history of targeting Black activists, and the contested meaning behind some of our most cherished ideals. The film is produced by Benjamin Hedin, and written by Hedin and Laura Tomaselli.
MLK/FBI is now in theatres and available from video-on-demand services and is distributed by IFC Films.
What the critics are saying about MLK/FBI: “One of the most urgent films of the year…” - Vanity Fair
“Powerhouse doc. Rewarding. Meticulously damning.” - Los Angeles Times
“Sam Pollard has assembled an engrossing, unsettling documentary…Rigorously focused on the facts of the past, the movie is also as timely as an alarm clock.” [“10 Great Movies at the New York Film Festival”] - New York Times
“Artfully assembled. It may be the best of this year’s very impressive slate. Illuminates the darkest, most insidious corners of American power and racism—past and present.” - Entertainment Weekly
“The film is a sobering watch and a timely reminder that King’s struggle for racial justice wasn’t straightforward, nor is it close to complete.” [“4 Films You Need to Watch This Fall”] - The Atlantic
Preservation Hall Jazz Band’s “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” is the legendary group’s rendition of the black national anthem, recorded for MLK/FBI, the forthcoming Critics’ Choice award winner for “Best Archival Documentary” and multiple IDA-award nominee. The official video for the song features footage from the film, and is co-directed by Preservation Hall Jazz Band’s Ben Jaffe and Kenneth Alexander Campbell. “Lift Every Voice and Sing” is available now worldwide at all DSPs through Sub Pop.
[Photo credit: Dru Bui]
The Preservation Hall musicians who perform on “Lift Every Voice and Sing” include Charlie Gabriel (Tenor Saxophone), Wendell Brunious (Flugelhorn), Ronell Johnson (Piano, Organ, Trombone), Kyle Roussel (Piano), Ben Jaffe (Upright Bass), and Walter Harris (Drum Set) and are joined friends by Louis Ford (Tenor Saxophone), Walter Harris (Drum Set), Kerry “Fatman” Hunter (Snare Drum), Calvin Johnson (Soprano Saxophone), Kevin Louis (Trumpet), and Stephen Lands (Trumpet).
Sam Pollard, the director of MLK/FBI, is an Emmy Award-winning and Oscar-nominated filmmaker. Pollard says of the song, ”MLK/FBI is a movie experience I am proud to have been a part of. Preservation Hall Jazz Band’s performance of ‘Lift Every Voice and Sing’ is an astounding version of the iconic anthem, and a perfect ending for our film. We are thrilled it will now be given a wider release.”
Preservation Hall Jazz Band’s Jaffe offers this, “It’s always an Honor and Privilege that comes with huge responsibility to perform ‘Lift Every Voice and Sing.’ All of us were touched when Ben and Sam reached out to us. To perform such an important composition, at this moment in time, for MLK/FBI and with this ensemble, makes it all the more personal and relevant.”
MLK/FBI is the first film to uncover the extent of the FBI’s surveillance and harassment of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Based on newly discovered and declassified files, utilizing a trove of documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act and unsealed by the National Archives, as well as revelatory restored footage, the documentary explores the government’s history of targeting Black activists, and the contested meaning behind some of our most cherished ideals. Featuring interviews with key cultural figures, including former FBI Director James Comey, MLK/FBI tells this astonishing and tragic story with searing relevance to our current moment. The film is produced by Benjamin Hedin, and written by Hedin and Laura Tomaselli.
MLK/FBI will be released in theatres and video-on-demand services on Friday, January 15th, 2021 through IFC Films.
What the critics are saying about MLK/FBI: “One of the most urgent films of the year…” - Vanity Fair
“Powerhouse doc. Rewarding. Meticulously damning.” - Los Angeles Times
“Sam Pollard has assembled an engrossing, unsettling documentary…Rigorously focused on the facts of the past, the movie is also as timely as an alarm clock.” [“10 Great Movies at the New York Film Festival”] - New York Times
“Artfully assembled. It may be the best of this year’s very impressive slate. Illuminates the darkest, most insidious corners of American power and racism—past and present.” - Entertainment Weekly
“The film is a sobering watch and a timely reminder that King’s struggle for racial justice wasn’t straightforward, nor is it close to complete.” [“4 Films You Need to Watch This Fall”] - The Atlantic
Preservation Hall Jazz Band’s “Keep Your Head Up,” is a spirited tune and a standout from their acclaimed A Tuba To Cuba documentary and soundtrack. The song was released in the spring of last year, with Cuban singer Eme Alfonso on the album version and in the official video. Later that summer, an update with rapper Pell was released for Penguin’s Original Tracks series and was performed on the streets of the artists’ hometown of New Orleans.
Last month as a Stay At Home order was declared in Louisiana, Preservation Hall Jazz Band’s Ben Jaffe began performing ‘Keep Your Head Up” every evening from his New Orleans home (and filming it on Instagram Live) encouraging his fellow citizens to participate by opening windows, hanging on their porches, in their backyards, and decks to make musical sounds and rhythms with pots, pans, instruments, and their voices. A daily, uplifting, 5-minute break from everything, bringing people together by connecting families with their neighbors, community through sound, and through music.
Jaffe says of Pell’s contribution to “Keep Your Head Up,” “We couldn’t be more grateful to have a dear friend as talented and kind as Pell lend his spirit and voice to our song.”
Pell offers this, “This song is more important than ever in reminding us to enjoy every day, despite how much uncertainty and adversity this global tragedy has brought upon us. Stay safe, inside, and keep your head up high. Love.”
[Photo credit: Chris Swainston]
Late last week, the Preservation Hall Foundation launched the Legacy Emergency Relief Fund. The fund provides grants to the Hall’s Musical Collective to help with vital living expenses resulting from loss of work due to the Coronavirus.
Jaffe, who is also Preservation Hall Foundation’s creative director, had this to say, “The doors at Preservation Hall are closed for the foreseeable future and our 60-member Musical Collective is facing great uncertainty. We’re focusing all of our attention towards caring for our musicians in helping them weather the crisis.”
The Musical Collective performs over 1,500 concerts at Preservation Hall, serves over 30,000 students through numerous education and community engagement activities and performs globally at major music festivals, theatres and performing arts centers throughout the year.
Preservation Hall Jazz Band has released the video for their song “Keep Your Head Up” today, premiered via Billboard. The track, which features
Cuban singer Eme Alfonso, appears on
their new album A Tuba To Cuba, the
soundtrack to the critically acclaimed documentary directed by T.G. Herrington and Danny Clinch, out now via Sub Pop. Watch and share “Keep Your
Head Up” here. Stream
and order A Tuba to Cubahere.
“Keep Your Head Up” is simple message with a big meaning,” says Ben Jaffe. “Walk with your head
high, walk with pride, and live your life with grace and honor and an
appreciation for all humanity. Don’t let things break you down and don’t
allow anyone or anything to diminish your spirit.”
“We met the wonderful Eme Alfonso at a performance at an amazing old factory that’s
been converted into a multi-disciplinary art space called Fabrica Del
Arte. That same evening we met she came up and improvised lyrics in
Spanish on the spot. Eme later told me the words she sang have a deep meaning
in Cuba, the translation is something like “walk with your head out
front, don’t be so down, walk with joy.”
“To say Preservation Hall
Jazz Band is to refer to the purest essence of our traditions and to discover
NOLA, through the band and Ben its director, was for me one of the most beautiful
experiences of my life,” says singer Eme
Alfonso. “Because in New Orleans… Jazz and art flow from the streets
of this city and it’s clear that it has a direct connection to Cuba, Havana,
and all of those who came before us. Our grandparents are connected
through these rhythms, dances, melodies, and customs and this shared history of
our ancestors unites us all.
“New Orleans and Cuba are deeply connected,” Alfonso continues. “This
collaboration is a conduit, a lesson to show our people, and others in the
world that we are all family and that art and music has the power to unites us.”
“We went to Cuba in prayer position,” says Preservation Hall band
leader and bass player Ben Jaffe when he speaks of the pilgrimage he and the
group took to Cuba in December 2015. “We went to receive and offer at the same
time. We had never experienced a moment like this, it felt as though all roads
were intersecting at once.” The critically acclaimed 2019 documentary ATuba
to Cuba documented the band’s journey as they explored the links that
connect New Orleans and Cuba so indelibly – their shared, tragic history as
destinations where enslaved Africans struggled to simply survive, and their
current status as places where the cultural inheritance from those ancestors is
kept alive in both song and deed – but that was only half the story. This
collection of songs, a musical account of a
generations-in-the-making reunion of musical
families separated by time, politics, and distance, tells the other
half.
When
asked to describe the collection of songs assembled on Tuba to Cuba, Jaffe sums it up by saying,
“It’s like listening to the radio.” And yes, ATuba to Cuba actually feels less like
an ordinary soundtrack and more like a living document, a recording of a
broadcast that’s been waiting to exist, a modern version of the static-y radio
signals that were broadcast between America to the Caribbean in the early and
mid-20th century, sending the sounds of jazz and mambo and R&B and more back
and forth across the vast divides of water and culture and politics. It’s a
story, this album, and the tale being told mirrors the band’s experience.
The resulting
collection of songs is what Jaffe describes
as “a beautiful conversation.” The music of ATuba to Cuba is an ecstatic expression of that ongoing conversation, a
restless and lush trip up and down strange FM wavelengths bridging thousands of
miles and hundreds of years, where all involved are
talking with each other and over each other in excitement, charged with the
thrill of recognition of the evidence of their shared familial roots, an
undeniable kinship rooted in bloodlines, rhythm, and melody.
[Photo credit: Josh Goleman]
Preservation Hall Jazz Band Tour Dates + Ticket Links:
Jul. 28 - Newport, RI - Newport Folk Festival
Aug. 02 - Happy Valley, OR - Pickathon
Aug. 03 - Happy Valley, OR - Pickathon
Aug. 05 - Folsom, CA - Harris Center For The
Arts
Aug. 06 - Folsom, CA - Harris Center For The
Arts
Aug. 08 - San Francisco, CA - SFJAZZ
Aug. 09 - San Francisco, CA - SFJAZZ
Aug. 10 - San Francisco, CA - SFJAZZ (7:00PM)
Aug. 10 - San Francisco, CA - SFJAZZ (9:30PM)
Aug. 11 - San Francisco, CA - SF Jazz Center -
Miner Auditorium
Aug. 15 - Philadelphia, PA - Old Pool Farm
Aug. 16 - Philadelphia, PA - Old Pool Farm
Aug. 17 - Philadelphia, PA - Old Pool Farm
Aug. 18 - Philadelphia, PA - Old Pool Farm
Aug. 24 - Arrington, VA - Lockn’ Music
Festival
Sep. 20 - Louisville, KY - Bourbon & Beyond
Festival
Sep. 21 - Franklin, TN - Pilgrimage Music
Festival
Sep. 22 - Franklin, TN - Pilgrimage Music
Festival
Oct 22 - Ridgefield, CT - The Ridgefield
Playhouse
Oct 23 - Red Bank, NJ - Count Basie Theatre
Oct 24 - New York, NY - Town Hall Theatre
Oct 25 - Boston, MA - Berklee Performance Center
Oct 26 - Portsmouth, NH - The Music Hall
Oct 28 - Montreal, QC - Place des Arts - Theatre
Oct 29 - Toronto, ON - Roy Thomson Hall
Oct 30 - Pittsburgh, PA - Byham Theatre
Nov 01 - Kent, OH - The Kent Stage
Nov 02 - Goshen, IN - Goshen College Music
Center
Nov 04 - Chicago, IL - Thalia Hall
Nov 05 - Saint Paul, MN - Fitzgerald Theatre
Nov 07 - Denver, CO - Paramount Theatre
Nov 09 - Phoenix, AZ - Music Theater at the
Musical Instrument Museum
Nov 11 - Livermore, CA - Livermore Valley
Performing Arts Center
Nov 13 - Chico, CA - California State University
Chico - Laxson Auditorium
Nov 15 - Santa Rosa, CA - Luther Burbank Center
for the Arts
Nov 16 - Arcata, CA - John Van Duzer Theatre
Nov 17 - Portland, OR - Revolution Hall
Nov 18 - Seattle, WA - Benaroya Hall – Taper
Auditorium
Nov 20 - Santa Cruz, CA - Rio Theatre
Nov 21 - Santa Barbara, CA - UCSB Campbell Hall
Nov 22 - San Diego, CA - Wonderfront Music
Festival
Nov 23 - Cerritos, CA - Cerritos Center for the
Performing Arts
Nov. 29 - Baltimore, MD - Joseph Meyerhoff
Symphony Hall
Nov. 30 - Baltimore, MD - Joseph Meyerhoff
Symphony Hall
Dec. 01 - Baltimore, MD - Joseph Meyerhoff
Symphony Hall
