The Hurricane Brassband, Netherlands
(a biography)

A typical brassband in New Orleans style. You can hire them for parade or stage work, funerals, workshops etc. etc. In 1983 together with another musician Hugo Kuijpers started a sage jazz band in Maastricht. They called it the “Original Stöb Jazz Band”. He’s still playing in this band which now is called the “New Orleans Dusty Duds”, and became the leader of it. René Cardynaals, Petra Dallwitz and Franck van de Wijer also are there with him. The band plays traditional standards, tunes like those of Joe “King” Oliver, Louis Armstrong’s Hot 5 and 7, Clarence Williams, Ferdinand “Jelly Roll” Morton etc.

After visiting the 1986 Ascona Jazz festival in Switzerland Petra, René and Hugo for the first time in their lives met with New Orleans brass bands. It was Doc Paulin’s Brass Band and Harold Dejan’s Olympia Brass Band, and they really got something out of it. Back in Maastricht, René took the opportunity to open up a 12 piece brass band. René on tuba was leader and manager, Petra played bass drum and Hugo was one of the two trumpet players. The band was called the “King Zulu’s Brass Band” playing traditional brass band tunes. Later, in the year 1990, Franck joined the band on clarinet and in 1995 Rob Hardy became the snare drummer of the band.

In 1997 the first visit of New Orleans introduced the idea to change the way of playing and also the repertoire. A new and
smaller formation was set up, the Hurricane Brass Band. Petra, Franck, Hugo, René and Rob started it together. The name recalls the first glasses of Pat O’Brien’s Hurricanes some of the members enjoyed over there in New Orleans.
Servé van Dorsselaer was the trombone player from the start and Ron Schellings played the tenor saxophone. After Ron left the band in 1999, Jan-Hugo Gouweloos played on tenor.

Hugo became musical leader and nowadays the band still holds on to playing the traditionals, some of them in a funky way and they even play some modern tunes. During the past the band has improved musicality through the personal tuition of Harold Batiste and Thomas l’Etienne. It has also strongly been influenced by Roger Lewis from the Dirty Dozen, Benny Jones & Uncle Lionel (Batiste) from the Tremè Brass Band of New Orleans.

From 2002 Jan van Gaalen has been replacing Jan-Hugo, playing the alto sax and since 2004 Fats von Gerolstein is on tenor sax.