Saturday November 26, 2011 

Hailed by critics around the country as “one of the great vocalists of our time” and “an irresistible brand of entertainment”, cabaret jazz queen Banu Gibson will front her New Orleans Hot Jazz band for a two-hour Christmas concert on Dec. 9 at the Dew Drop Jazz Hall in Historic Old Mandeville.
The 6:30-9 pm performance at the historic jazz hall in the 400 block of Lamarque Street will end the fall season for the Friends of the Dew Drop, a non-profit group of volunteers who manage the building and grounds for owner the City of Mandeville. The Dew Drop, built in 1895, is on the National Register of Historic Places and considered the oldest, still standing, virtually unaltered, rural traditional jazz dance hall in the world.
Admission is $10 and tickets will be sold only at the door. Beverages will be available for a donation and food will be provided for nominal fees by the women of the First Free Mission Baptist Church next door and Dew Drop merchandise, popular as Christmas gifts, will be available for purchase along with a variety of Banu Gibson CDs. A highlight of this annual Christmas show will be the drawing during an intermission of the winner of a unique New Orleans Jazz Fest tee shirt quilt made by Mandeville milliner Betty Esquiance who donated it to the Dew Drop as a fund raiser. Since September volunteers Richard Boyd and Dennis Schaibly have been selling tickets at locations in Mandeville and Covington and at Dew Drop performances.
Gibson is expected to include selections from her popular seasonal record, Zat You Santa Claus during her two-hour concert. She is also featured on a popular Putamayo Records CD called Christmas In New Orleans.
Although a popular musical fixture for many years in New Orleans and headliner at a former French Quarter club that bore her name, Gibson has also taken her highly acclaimed brand of swinging jazz vocals around the world and across the United States over the years.
Heaped with critical accolades by critics and fans wherever she performs, it was Bob Epstein in Long Beach, Calif. who branded her one of this age’s great vocalists and noted film critic Leonard Maltin who said her show is irresistible entertainment.
Staking her claim among the swinging female jazz vocal standards of the 1920s, 30s and 40s, Gibson is noted for her personal accents on the classic tunes of those jazz vocal decades, thus avoiding carbon copy versions of the originals.
Generous with her talent and energy, Gibson recently worked with talented arts students at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, directing and choreographing a musical production at the school.
Accompanying her on the Dew Drop stage will be her New Orleans Hot Jazz band consisting of Duke Heitger on trumpet; David Boeddinghaus on keyboards; James Singleton on bass; Ray Moore on clarinet and tenor sax and Gerald French on drums.
Among many appearances around the world, Gibson and her band have performed live on National Public Radio’s A Prairie Home Companion, with the Boston Pops Orchestra, Entertainment Tonight, the PBS Jazz From New Orleans series and the Playboy Jazz Festival.
Gibson has toured Europe with legendary cornet player Wild Bill Davison and she has toured with her band extensively around the U.S. and in Germany, England, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Australia. She and her pianist have performed in Vienna Austria and in Japan. Over the years she and members of her band have been featured guest artists with more than 60 symphony and other orchestra’s around the U.S.
One of the most active of the city’s musicians to headline benefits around the country raising money for Hurricane Katrina relief rebuilding of New Orleans, she has performed at benefits with the Sacramento Symphony in California, at Symphony Space on Broadway, at the Museum of New York, with Woody Allen at Cafe Carlyle in New York among others.
More recently she has been involved in her New Orleans Trad Jazz Camp for adults which, in its third year, will be held in the city from June 10-15, 2012.
The annual Dew Drop Christmas show ends a fall season at the venue that began on Sept. 23 with Deacon John and included performances in October with jazz singer Chrissy Miller of Slidell and The Rambling Letters of New Orleans; the Bayou Liberty Jazz Band and Chris Burke and His New Orleans Music band and in November, Aurora Nealand and The Royal Roses in a musical tribute to New Orleans jazz legend Sidney Bechet.
Plans are underway for the spring 2012 season and when confirmed, those shows and dates will be posted on the www.dewdropjazzhall.com website.