Ben Jaffe is the creative director of Preservation Hall and the tuba and double-bass player in the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. He is the son of the Hall's founders, Allan and Sandra Jaffe, and grew up in the French Quarter two blocks from the Hall, carried on tour with the band from the time he was born.
His earliest musical memories are marching in Mardi Gras parades and jazz funeral processions alongside his father, who played tuba in the band as well as managing it. He marched in his first Carnival parade at nine, studied upright bass under Walter Payton at NOCCA, and earned a degree in bass performance from Oberlin College in 1992. The day after graduating, he flew to France to play upright bass with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band — and began overseeing operations at the Hall.
As creative director he has pushed the institution outward without letting go of its roots: he co-produced the band's first album of original compositions, That's It (2013), with My Morning Jacket frontman Jim James; remastered and released archival recordings of the early band; and commissioned collaborations with artists from the Blind Boys of Alabama, Pete Seeger, and Tom Waits to Trombone Shorty, Mos Def, Lenny Kravitz, and the Del McCoury Band. He also chairs the Preservation Hall Foundation. The New York Times has called him the steward of "nearly every other aspect of (Preservation Hall's) present and future."
