The Jazz

Pre-new job preparations have been taking up all my time, but I have to tell you about last Wednesday night. Some of my (previous) coworkers and I joined reps from Pandora at the City Winery for a show of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band from New Orleans. Top night.

The venue itself was a beautiful restaurant, with an interesting menu (I ordered the Lamb Crostini, after asking everyone at the table if they knew what in the world a "crostini" was) and wine to die for. Seriously. I am not a wine gal, but this stuff was delic and more than did the job. Also, the presentation was unique; our house Chardonnay for the table came in science beakers.

Adorable.

The band itself was great. I couldn't stop dancing in my seat the whole time. It was made up, obviously, of amazing old-school Southern jazz dudes who you just want to sit around and talk with because you know they'd have the best stories.

Although I argued that the (in my mind, as a previous sax player) harder-to-play brass instruments such as the trombone were more sexy, my friend insisted that the tenor saxophone in the band was the sexiest addition by far. I don't know how I feel about that, but I do know that the slick-haired, moustachioed sax player making love to the microphone when he sang was definitely a highlight of the night.

Picture by our fellow patron, Feast of Music, on flickr

We both did agree that the pianist seemed pretty BAMF-like.

Toward the end of the show, the band actually began to come down off the stage to walk while still playing. We were sitting right by the stage exit, so as they came down they motioned to us to join them. By this point we'd been there for a few hours and gone through quite a few beakers, and had no qualms forming a jazz-congo line and parading around the restaurant, dancing like crazy behind these jazz-playing men. We ended up joining them back up on stage and dancing around as they played, while the crowd of (much classier) table-sitters took pictures of our, ahem, enthusiasm. Right as I was ready to exit stage right after a song, my friend forcibly grabbed me and began swing dancing on stage. Mind you, I have no idea how to dance. But the music (and the beakers of goodness) inspired me. I've got to say, it was a pretty damn good show.