“We believe that tradition is not just a static body of knowledge. It’s the personal bond between generations of practitioners that allows culture to be transmitted and made meaningful in the present.” — Preservation Hall

The Northshore Traditional Music Society will gather five New Orleans area jazz standard-bearers on a spring afternoon in Covington this month to perform what the society sees as “Music of the people, for the people, by the people.”

It will be a celebratory two hours, rich with the sounds and beats that developed and still cooks in the city’s gumbo of African, Caribbean and European musical traditions. In fact, three of the concert performers are members and-or lifetime honorees of the iconic Preservation Hall, which showcases and guards New Orleans jazz. 

Musicians performing the “Swingtime in Springtime” concert at 2 p.m. on April 21 in the Fuhrmann Auditorium are also expected to share bits of backstory about the music’s origins and its originators.

It will be the second annual Swingtime concert organized by clarinetist-composer-arranger Ben Redwine, who coordinates the Northshore Traditional Music Society’s jazz unit. (Other units are Celtic and bluegrass.) He hopes to make it a yearly affair that serves the nonprofit’s mission of promoting traditional music, in this case, with an inspiring concert that also teaches some of the culture and setting that can deepen the music’s impact.

.

“My concept for the Swingtime concert was to gather some of the best players around and have each of them bring their favorite music or their own compositions or pieces they think are most important to jazz,” said Redwine, who performs at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, the Dew Drop Jazz Hall and other respected venues at home and abroad. 

Usually identified in performance circles as “Dr. Ben Redwine,” a nod to his extensive music education and his broad experience teaching it, he leads the Redwine Jazz Band and recently concluded a tenure as leader of the Dukes of Dixieland. A jazz and classical clarinetist, he is widely recorded and travels to perform and give master classes internationally. He spent 27 years in the U.S. military band system, most of that as a clarinet soloist with the U.S. Naval Academy Band. He and wife, artist Leslie Redwine, relocated to Covington in 2016 to live, create and perform near the birthplace of jazz.

In Swingtime, Redwine will play compositions written by or popularized by imminent jazz clarinetists. Two of them are “Egyptian Fantasy,” by Sidney Bechet, and Artie Shaw’s solo recording from Hoagy Carmichael’s  “Stardust,” a solo one noted jazz historian has described as “the most well constructed solo in jazz history.”

Trumpeter Leroy Jones, known in the music community as “keeper of the flame” for traditional New Orleans jazz, is a Preservation Hall Foundation Legacy member who still plays gigs there when not touring and is married to Hall trombonist Katja Toivola. Jones was a teen when his music caught the ear of pioneer jazz great Danny Barker, who recruited Jones for a well-respected church marching band that Jones later reorganized and led for decades as the iconic Hurricane Marching Brass Band. Jones also traveled and recorded with the orchestra of New Orleans artist Harry Connick, who says of Jones, “He was a legend to us … I was shocked when he agreed to play (main trumpet) in my band. It was like getting LeBron James. He brought so much credibility to me.”

Jones has selected for the Covington concert music popularized by Louis Armstrong, including “West End Blues,” “Dippermouth Blues,” “When It’s Sleepytime Down South” and “When the Saints Go Marching In.”

Upright bass player Richard Moten, also a legacy member and part of the Preservation Hall Collective that provides music there year-round, was performing professionally before he was old enough to legally drive. But he left R&B and top 40 music behind and transitioned into jazz under the guidance of pianist Carl Franklin and found his niche when he joined the Johnny Bachemin Trio. That transitioned, as well, in 1998 into the Richard Moten Trio, and they continued to perform for years at the Royal Sonesta Hotel. Moten, who has performed since the earliest days of Jazz Fest, still regularly performs at home and away. In presenting his Legacy Award — which honors living jazz legend practitioners — Preservation Hall Artistic Director Ben Jaffee called Moten “a musical institution” in New Orleans.

Don Vappie is steeped in tenor banjo and devoted to the conservation of New Orleans Creole culture through both music and film. He performs the world over, taking his unique and original banjo style and sound onto all stages, whether playing with a jazz band or a symphony orchestra. This Preservation Hall Jazz Band member is also a recipient of the Steven Martin Banjo Prize; a member of the Banjo Hall of Fame; and is known for protecting and teaching Creole cultural traditions wherever he goes. Vappie, who also plays mandolin, guitar, string bass and sings, has transcribed many early jazz recordings of Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Armstrong, King Oliver and others, and he performed for more than a decade as a regular guest with Wynton Marsalis and Jazz At Lincoln Center.

A Creole-styled CD by Don Vappie and Jazz Creole (a band formed for European tours), “The Bluebook of Storyville,” was produced in London and written in Vappie’s choice of African griot tradition, with his banjo leading the way; it was selected Best Jazz CD of 2020 by the Sunday Times of London. He continues to compose and arrange music true to his heritage, and his choice of music for the Swingtime concert will include one of his original pieces, “Coleur de Creole,” from the Bluebook CD.

David Mahoney is another New Orleanian who cut his teeth on music as part of a big musical family that includes his dad, performer John Mahoney, the longtime jazz studies coordinator at Loyola University. David is a consummate New Orleans “second-line” drummer in the lineage of his early teachers, Johnny Vidacovich, Stanton Moore and Brian Blade. He continues to drum with the Dukes Of Dixieland, where he plays aboard the steamboat Natchez most nights during the high season, then travels to play elsewhere when the Natchez is in dry dock. One reviewer detailed a Mahoney performance this way: “ Mahoney performed an amazing drum solo that brought the audience to its feet. He played every surface of every drum in his set, plus the microphone stands, and even the floor, as, on his hands and knees, he drummed his way over to (Alan) Broome on the bass. He even drummed the strings and the bridge of Broome’s big bass fiddle before backing up and returning to his set of drums without ever losing the beat.”

He has chosen for the Swingtime concert the well-known drum solo, “Cute”; the Mahoney-arranged “Jive Hoot,” written by Bob Brookmeyer; and “Trinity,” an original Mahoney composition.

Get tickets online at www.bontempstix.com.