Mobile Symphony Orchestra Welcomes Preservation Hall Jazz Band for Two Performances at the Saenger

The Mobile Symphony Orchestra is set to welcome one of the most celebrated ensembles in American music when the Preservation Hall Jazz Band takes the stage at the Saenger Theatre for two performances on Saturday, May 11, at 8 p.m. and Sunday, May 12, at 2:30 p.m. The pairing of a full symphony orchestra with the keepers of traditional New Orleans jazz promises to be one of the standout engagements of the orchestra’s season, bringing together two musical worlds that share deep roots and a century of intertwined history.

The Preservation Hall Jazz Band takes its name from Preservation Hall, the iconic music venue nestled in the heart of New Orleans’ French Quarter. Founded in 1961 by Allan and Sandra Jaffe, the ensemble has spent decades traveling the world as ambassadors of traditional New Orleans jazz, carrying forward the musical legacy of pioneers like Buddy Bolden, Kid Ory, and Sidney Bechet. What began as a small venue dedicated to keeping the city’s earliest jazz traditions alive grew into an institution whose recordings and tours introduced audiences on every continent to the sound that started it all.

Under the current leadership of director Ben Jaffe, the band continues to balance reverence for tradition with creative ambition. Their upcoming album “That’s It!” is a collaboration with Jim James of My Morning Jacket and was set for release in July 2013. That willingness to work with artists from the indie rock world reflects the band’s broader approach, honoring the past without being confined by it, and it has introduced traditional New Orleans jazz to generations of listeners who first encountered the music through a collaboration rather than a museum.

A living link to jazz history

The band’s connection to the origins of jazz is not symbolic; it is direct. Buddy Bolden, widely credited as the first bandleader to play the improvisational music that became known as jazz, never recorded, but his sound echoed through the brass bands and dance halls of early twentieth-century New Orleans. Kid Ory and Sidney Bechet carried that tradition onto record and onto international stages, and the lineage they built, from parades and funerals to riverboats and concert halls, flows straight into the repertoire the Preservation Hall musicians perform today.

Preservation Hall itself became famous for its austerity, a bare-bones room where the music was the entire show and the benches sat close enough to touch the players. The venue’s decision to book the city’s veteran jazzmen at fair pay helped sustain a generation of musicians whose craft had few commercial outlets, and touring under the Preservation Hall name gave those players income and recognition far beyond the Gulf Coast. The band that now tours in the hall’s name carries that mission forward, treating each performance as both a concert and an act of preservation.

For Mobile, the connection is more than geographical convenience. New Orleans jazz and Mobile share a Gulf Coast musical bloodstream, from Mardi Gras traditions that began here before they did in Louisiana to the brass band sounds that still fill both cities each carnival season. An evening with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band in Mobile is in a real sense a homecoming for music whose culture crossed the Gulf long ago.

Guest conductor William Grimes leads the way

Leading the orchestra for this special engagement is guest conductor William Grimes, a nationally recognized pops orchestra arranger and conductor. Grimes serves as a regular conductor with the Huntsville Symphony and has led the Minnesota Orchestra, Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, and Baton Rouge Symphony on numerous occasions. He is also a respected virtuoso jazz bassist who has performed alongside legends including Joe Pass, Bobby Shew, Terence Blanchard, and Bill Dobbins.

That dual fluency, in symphonic pops programming and in jazz performance at the highest level, makes Grimes an ideal bridge for this concert. Pops arrangements that marry a jazz band with a full orchestra require careful craftsmanship, balancing the improvisational spirit of the small group against the written architecture of the orchestra, and Grimes has built his career on exactly that balance. His bass-chair experience with jazz greats means he understands the idiom from inside the rhythm section, not just from the podium.

“The roots and origins of the jazz idiom are found in the Preservation Hall musicians,” Grimes said ahead of the concert. “I don’t know who will have more fun with this concert — the audience or the orchestra musicians.” The enthusiasm is telling. Symphony players spend their seasons in literature that rarely brushes against the early jazz tradition, and the chance to play alongside musicians whose style descends directly from that tradition is a rare professional treat as well as an audience pleasure.

Tickets and information

Individual tickets range from $15 to $55 for adults and are $8 for students and children. Tickets are available online at mobilesymphony.org, by phone at 251-432-2010, or at the symphony box office at 257 Dauphin Street in downtown Mobile. The price range keeps the concert within reach of families and students, a priority for the orchestra as it works to build the next generation of concertgoers in addition to serving its established subscriber base.

The Saenger Theatre, the historic Joachim Saenger beginning…

The venue adds its own history to the evening. The Saenger Theatre, on Joachim Street in downtown Mobile, opened in the late 1920s as one of the grand movie palaces of its era and has since served as the city’s premier performance hall, hosting everything from Broadway tours to rock concerts to the Mobile Symphony’s own season. Its ornate interior and excellent acoustics make it a fitting frame for a program that spans both symphonic arrangement and traditional jazz, and longtime Gulf Coast audiences associate the theater with the biggest nights on the local cultural calendar.

For the Mobile Symphony Orchestra, the engagement represents the kind of programming that has defined its modern identity: full orchestral seasons anchored by special events that reach beyond the core classical audience. Pops collaborations with nationally known artists serve an important role for regional orchestras, drawing first-time concertgoers who then discover the orchestra’s classical offerings, and giving subscribers a change of pace. The combination of a beloved New Orleans institution with the home orchestra is the type of event that fills the Saenger’s seats and generates the word of mouth that sustains a symphony season.

The musical logic of the pairing is strong as well. Early New Orleans jazz grew up alongside the brass band and parlor traditions of its era, and its melodies harmonize naturally with orchestral color when arranged with care. Strings can swell beneath a clarinet lead in ways the traditional Preservation Hall instrumentation cannot achieve on its own, while the band supplies the rhythmic authenticity and improvisational fire that a written orchestral arrangement cannot fake. Concerts of this kind succeed when both sides get to be themselves, and the personnel involved, from Ben Jaffe’s band to a guest conductor who has spent his life on both sides of the divide, suggest that is the plan.

Mardi Gras ties between two cities

The cultural thread between Mobile and New Orleans runs deep, and it runs through jazz. Mobile predates New Orleans as a colonial settlement, and the carnival tradition that both cities celebrate each winter took root on the Gulf Coast generations before it became the spectacle it is today. Brass bands, parades and the music that accompanies them traveled back and forth across the coast for more than a century, and the sounds of a New Orleans funeral procession or second line would be entirely at home to anyone raised on Mobile’s Mardi Gras streets.

That shared heritage is part of what makes this visit feel natural rather than novelty. The Preservation Hall Jazz Band has spent decades demonstrating that traditional jazz is not a relic but a living, breathing practice, and Mobile audiences come to the music with genuine familiarity rather than curiosity. When the band strikes up the standard repertoire that descended from Bolden through Ory and Bechet, much of the room will be hearing the musical language of their own carnival seasons, rendered by its foremost practitioners.

The collaboration also fits into a broader era of the band’s history. With “That’s It!” bringing the group together with Jim James of My Morning Jacket, the ensemble has been actively building bridges to new audiences, and appearances with orchestras serve the same goal from another direction. Classicists meet traditionalists, rock fans discover early jazz, and pops audiences get the rare experience of hearing the roots of American music arranged for a full orchestra, all in a single evening’s program.

Planning an evening at the symphony

Attendees planning to attend either performance have the usual range of options. The Saturday night concert suits the traditional date-night crowd, while the Sunday afternoon matinee works well for families, visiting relatives and anyone who prefers their jazz before an early dinner. Downtown Mobile’s restaurant scene around the Saenger makes an evening of it easy, with dinner before or after the show within a short walk of the theater’s doors on Joachim Street.

The $8 student and children’s ticket deserves particular attention from families across the region. Exposure to live orchestral performance is formative for young musicians, and the sight of a full orchestra sharing a stage with a working jazz band is the kind of memory that turns a school music student into a lifelong concertgoer. Symphony organizations across the country have invested heavily in youth access for exactly that reason, and the Mobile Symphony’s pricing for this engagement continues that commitment.

As the dates approach, the concert stands out on Mobile’s cultural calendar as the kind of event that requires no apologies for its ambition. A hometown orchestra, a guest conductor with jazz credentials of the highest order, and the most storied name in New Orleans jazz, all under the chandeliers of the Saenger: it is an evening built for the Gulf Coast’s taste, and the two performances on May 11 and May 12 promise to deliver it.