The Panorama Jazz Band took shape in November 1995, when clarinetist Ben Schenck — a Washington, D.C. native who had moved to New Orleans in the mid-1980s after being inspired by Dr. Michael White’s Young Tuxedo Jazz Band — was asked to organize a combo for a friend’s wedding. What began as a one-off trio grew into a full seven-piece ensemble with regular gigs at the Spotted Cat and other Frenchmen Street clubs. Schenck, a founding member of the New Orleans Klezmer All-Stars, steered the repertoire outward: traditional jazz set lists interspersed with music from the Balkans, Colombia, Martinique, and Mexico — always with New Orleans party stylings.
The lineup reads like a who’s who of the city’s eclectic trad scene: Aurora Nealand on alto saxophone, Charlie Halloran on trombone, Michael Ward-Bergeman on accordion, Matt Perrine on tuba, and a deep bench of alumni and irregulars. In 1997 the band began playing Mardi Gras parades, a project that grew into a separate marching outfit, the Panorama Brass Band — official brass band of the Krewe du Jieux and the St. Anthony Ramblers, and a fixture in the Krewe of Muses, Tucks, and Morpheus.
Beginning in 2003, Panorama began releasing albums to sell at gigs, and since 2014 they have issued dozens of digital-only singles through their Bandcamp subscription club, Good Music For You. Their catalog runs from Another Hot Night in February (2003) through the live Dance of the Hot Earth (2013) and a string of ‘Good Music’ compilations — acoustic party music from a band that never stopped widening the repertoire’s wings.
