The band recently recorded a CD live at the State of the Union for Union Records. We were fortunate to have Shaun Murphy of Little Feat join us, as well as Priest da Nomad, freestylin' MC extraordinaire! This CD also includes a selection from our performance at the Ford Montreux Detroit Jazz festival. The new release should be available this summer. Stay tuned for news about our big CD release extravaganza!

Since its formation in 1990, the A La Carte Brass and Percussion Band has earned quite a reputation. By combining the sound of a traditional New Orleans brass band with the percussion section of a Latin salsa band, the group harmonizes a variety of indigenous American music styles. New Orleans Creole music, hip hop, junkyard go-go, traditional American jazz and rock are fused in original compositions and arrangements of popular tunes.

With a vocalist, two trumpets, a trombone, a tenor and a baritone saxophone, a sousaphone, and four percussionists who play timbales, congas, snare and bass drums, a variety of cymbals, chekere, tambourines, samba whistles, shakers, wood blocks, etc., the 11-member band is a sight to behold. But it is their unique sound that has garnered critical accolades.

Mike Joyce of The Washington Post writes of the band's first CD "Boogeyin!" (released in December 1994 by Wildchild!, a subsidiary of Mapleshade Records) that for "all the band's brassy exuberance and Afro-Cuban thrust - the very qualities that make "That Mellow Saxophone" and Lee Morgan's "Sidewinder" so hard to resist - the album is graced by arrangements that blend the soulful and the sublime."

The band has opened for many national acts, including Art Neville and the Meters, the Radiators, Lee Ritenour and Larry Carlton, Little Feat, and Dr. John. The band has played at The Barns of Wolftrap, and at the nationally acclaimed Birchmere Club in Virginia.