FROG & HENRY

Vintage-flavored “string and brass band”: the sound people danced to in New Orleans 120 years ago

They are now so much at home in Ascona that today it is almost impossible to imagine the festival without their presence, without their enthusiasm, good humor and music. Winners of the 2022 AET My Choice Audience Award, Frog & Henry formed in New Orleans as a collective of young musicians from various street groups. They offer dance and Jazz music from the early 1900s.

They play on brass and string instruments, with nearly every instrumentalist contributing to vocals. Most of our repertoire is dug up from forgotten songs dating to the dawn of recorded music, in the form of early dance tunes, or from even earlier 19thc sheet music.

“We’ve borrowed the phrase ‘string and brass band’ from the descriptions of the earliest New Orleans dance and jazz bands; and in that tradition we feature violin and mandolin-banjo as melody instruments alongside clarinet, alto and baritone saxophone.”  The band  also designed and built a foot-operated tuba that allows one person to play tuba and six-string banjo simultaneously.