“The past and promise of American music …” – Rolling Stone Magazine.

At a moment when musical streams are crossing with unprecedented frequency, it’s crucial to remember that throughout its history, New Orleans has been the point at which sounds and cultures from around the world converge. Influences mingle and resurface, transformed by the Crescent City’s inimitable spirit and joie de vivre. Nowhere is that idea more vividly embodied than in the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, which has held the torch of New Orleans music aloft for more than 50 years. Today the band carries this torch enthusiastically forward as a reminder that the history they were founded to preserve is a vibrantly living history.

So It Is, the septet’s second release featuring all-new original music, redefines what New Orleans music means today. The album taps into a sonic continuum that stretches back to the city’s Afro-Cuban roots, through its common ancestry with the Afrobeat of Fela Kuti and the Fire Music of Pharoah Sanders and John Coltrane, and forward to cutting-edge artists. PHJB has shared festival stages from Coachella to Newport with legends like Stevie Wonder, Elvis Costello, and the Grateful Dead along with modern giants like My Morning Jacket, Arcade Fire, and the Black Keys.