Continuum at the House of Blues and Jazz

Sunday night we headed down to the House of Blues and Jazz to check out the new band from New Orleans, “Continuum”. They started a couple weeks ago but already have their groove on, with an easy stage presence that shows they are comfortable playing together and a group sound that is starting to come together nicely. Front man Thaddeus Ford, who plays the trumpet and acts as MC, is a 6th generation New Orleans jazz musician, and has about four different names for each of the musicians onstage as he announces them. He and the vocalist Evelyn are actually the only ones originally from New Orleans, as their band was originally scheduled to come play later in the year but was recently contacted by the club and asked if they could come earlier. Because of the short notice they were not able to use their regular band members, but were still able to bring some solid players to fill in on piano and drums. In fact they were never able to line up a bass player before arriving in town, so they picked up Michael Brownell, a bass player who has been based in town for the last half-year or so now. In any case they are creating a good atmosphere already, mixing some jazz standards in with the funk, soul and R&B where Evelyn really shines.

Continuum features Quinn Lawrence on piano, Jamil Byron on drums, Mike Brownell on bass, Evelyn Champagne on vocals, and Thaddeus Ford on trumpet. The band will be performing at the House of Blues and Jazz, at 158 Maoming Nan Lu (near Fuxing Lu), until the end of April.

Cross-posted at shanghaijazzscene.com