[Dixielandjazz] St Gabriel's Celestial Brass Band

[Robert Ringwald]

This from Tom Wiggins:


Folks,  St. Gabriel's  started out 20 years ago with a handful of Transplanted New Orleans Jazz musicians, that left New Orleans for much the same reasons that Legendary players like Louis Armstrong did. Greener Pastures financially, and playing with often higher caliber progressive thinking musicians.    Jazz has grown over the years by the contributions made by many great players stepping outside the Box they grew up in and by getting exposure and experience playing other styles of music.   They have then been able to take those new experiences and feelings and interject them back into the original New Orleans style.

The players in St. Gabriel's are well schooled and even more so well experienced players who grew up playing Rock & Roll, Blues, R&B / Soul Music and some Country & Western Afro Cuban, Latin, and Brazilian music, along with stints in Big Bands and Swing and Be Bop Bands.   This enables them to play their New Orleans Jazz in various configurations and improvise other styles into the Second Line Street Band Routines and repertoire.  We believe this sets us apart from many of the  great Traditionalist players, in that we are going out and taking this music to younger audiences that embrace it immediately because it sounds closer to what they have grown up listening to.   St. Gabriel's can of course sit down and do Preservation Hall style renditions of the Traditional Tunes as well, but there are so many Traditional OKOM Jazz bands doing that already all around the world, that only the absolute Best Handful of them keep getting hired on the Trad Jazz Circuit.

That is also in our opinion one of the major factors holding back younger players from playing Traditional Jazz  because they cannot earn a living playing Traditional jazz in these times, primarily because of the Preservation Mentality of keeping it all sounding like what today's players believe it actually sounded like back then.   We honestly do not believe that it sounded like that, especially in the form of a Brass Band.   Although repetoire probably has a lot to do with as well as our freestyle of not being constrained to a formula of three minutes songs for radio airplay standards set decades ago.   We try to lock into a groove and let the soloist breathe and shine no matter which instrument it is.

We think that the Brass Bands of those days actually sounded more like St. Gabriel's if they were playing with French Quarter Black American musicians with deep soulfully honed improvisational skills.    I don't think there were any music courses in the colleges in the early 1920's teaching Second line and or Afro Rhythms and beat patterns.

There are also some younger cats in New Orleans like Matt Perrine, and Craig Klien, and Mark Mullins, that launched yet another successful approach to Brass Band music, when they formed Bonerama, running a front line of only Trombones, a Tuba and drummer, then they added an electric guitar.   Precludes them from marching however, but they have created at least tour ears some great new New Orleans music.  It will also be appreciated more by the high skilled technical academic style players on OKOM.

St, Gabriel's likes to keep our sound loose and always improvisational and we achieve that mainly by allowing and encouraging our players to feel what they play, and really try and communicate with the audience in each song rather than to each other.   By doing that they find themselves communicating with each other on the set even more and tend to inspire each other to play with more enthusiasm even on old tired war horse tunes that the audiences still love and embrace.    We are equally comfortable playing a Louis Armstrong song, or a Sly & The Family Stone Song, Then an Old Gospel Hymn backed by a Tower of Power Funk tune.

When our audience is having FUN we are having Fun and that audience band repoire is key to our success so far with kids from 3 to 103.

This may sound crazy to some band leaders, but it has worked very well for us as we are celebrating our 20th year and we feel getting better every year even though we have had to change a few players over the years depending upon the direction the music or their lives have  taken us in any given year.   Some leave for a year or two and then come back.   Others have had to retire for physical and medical reasons.

Sincerely and Entertainingly yours,
I am grateful for the many musicians I have been fortunate enough to meet on the DJML List, and especially  some that I have gotten to play music with, and share ideas and opinions with, even if the discussions sometimes got heated :))   Good Music will Never Die, but it may be reinterpreted by newer generations that will hopefully make it Traditional for Generations to follow them, and eventually it may well go back to the sound of the 1900's that so many still relate to.

Personally I do not like what the ReBirth Brass Band in New Orleans does to some of their music by playing it in Hip Hop style, but they too have found a large audience that has embraced the Brass Band again.   It is working for them, so it is fine with me.

Tom Wiggins
St. Gabriel's Celestial Brass Band