Jazz Music

Basher plays highly improvisational dance music with the energy of a punk band and a free jazz spirit — two drum sets, analog synthesizers, and two saxophones. Led by saxophonist and composer Byron Asher, the band has built a devoted following in the New Orleans creative music scene through a combination of danceable grooves, anthemic melodies, and a wild collision of avant-garde acoustic and electronic textures. Celebrated for their ability to bring intense experimental improvisation out of traditional jazz rooms and onto dance floors, they have performed everywhere from the Saturn Bar and Broadside NOLA to halftime shows for the New Orleans Pelicans at the Smoothie King Center. Their 2022 LP Doubles on Sinking City Records earned four stars from DownBeat and was called "unbearably beautiful" by Pitchfork. Their 2024 follow-up, May Day, was described by WeJazz Magazine as a "euphoric release."

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Vibe with Ayanna & Zahria brings together sound curator and DJ Ayanna Cooper Vasquez and saxophonist and bandleader Zahria Sims for a live collaboration that sits at the intersection of house music and jazz. Ayanna's sets draw from house, disco, Afro-Latin rhythms, and globally inspired sounds, built around deep grooves and soulful, unhurried programming. Zahria Sims is a Baton Rouge native now rooted in New Orleans, founder of the Zahria Sims Collective, and a Loyola University jazz graduate whose credits include opening slots for Kenny Garrett and Arturo Sandoval, a recording with Nicholas Payton, and a 2025 debut EP. Together they layer live saxophone melodies and looped textures over Ayanna's DJ sets, a format the two have developed through regular performances at 3oneone6, a creative collective and art space on St. Claude Avenue. 

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Julian "Juice" Gosin is a 7th Ward-born artist, producer, trumpeter, MC, and educator best known as a longtime member of the globally renowned Soul Rebels. Through that platform he has performed and recorded alongside Metallica, Nas, Lenny Kravitz, Wu-Tang Clan, Katy Perry, Maroon 5, and Maceo Parker, and has appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Late Night with Conan O'Brien, and GZA's NPR Tiny Desk performance. His debut solo album, Be Intentional, self-produced and self-written with features from Trombone Shorty, Nicholas Payton, and Nigel Hall, spans hip-hop, pop, R&B, and dance music. Off the stage, Gosin taught music for five years at Warren Easton Charter School and serves as Musical Director for Trombone Shorty Foundation's Trombone Shorty Academy. 

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Pocket Chocolate is a seven-piece funk, blues, and soul collective of born-and-raised New Orleans musicians who have spent the years since their 2019 formation playing their way across the Gulf Coast and back. Their debut EP Live From New Orleans was recorded at multiple venues across the city, and their debut LP, produced with Jake Eckert of the New Orleans Suspects, arrived in October 2025. The band builds on original songwriting and a deep familiarity with the styles of music that founded New Orleans' musical culture, updated for a contemporary audience without losing the feel of the original.

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Charlie & the Tropicales bring the sound and spirit of a 1950s Caribbean hotel band to life with torrid horns, tropical rhythms, and infectious grooves. Drawing on New Orleans' deep connections as the northernmost port of the Caribbean, the group explores musical traditions from Trinidad, Venezuela, Martinique, Guadeloupe, and beyond.

As jazz pioneer Jelly Roll Morton famously said, New Orleans music carries a “Spanish tinge,” an essential seasoning in the city’s musical DNA. The Tropicales embrace this spirit, blending  traditional New Orleans jazz with 1950s R&B, beguine from the French Antilles, and Trinidadian calypso, the Tropicales create a sound that feels both timeless and transportive — equally suited for listening and for the dance floor.

Led by trombonist Charlie Halloran — a fixture of the city's traditional jazz scene — the band reflects a broader exploration of Caribbean and New Orleans musical exchange. Halloran has been twice named a "Rising Star" in DownBeat Magazine and is a multi-time honoree in OffBeat Magazine's "Best of the Beat" awards, with credits including Jon Cleary, Allen Toussaint, Rickie Lee Jones, and U2.

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Smoker's World is the most personal and experimental project of Derrick "Smoker" Freeman, the New Orleans drummer, songwriter, and DJ who also leads the Soul Brass Band. Where that group operates within the brass band tradition, Smoker's World is Freeman's creative laboratory: hip-hop grooves, funk, pop, and the deep New Orleans jazz foundation, filtered through social commentary, cheeky lyricism, and the energy of a full horn line that can shift gears without warning. Freeman describes it as the anchor of all his musical pursuits, built around a rotating cast of the city's most versatile jazz musicians. Their 2022 album WhiteSplain, which transforms pandemic-era political chaos into danceable tracks, earned wide attention for its balance of consciousness and fun.

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