“Ben Jaffe, the artistic director of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, reported on his Instagram account that his much beloved tuba, which was stolen in late February, has been recovered,” writes Doug MacCash in Monday’s (3/12) Times-Picayune (New Orleans, LA). “ ‘I am delighted and relieved to announce that our Preservation Hall Tuba has found its way home,’ Jaffe wrote. ‘We were able to retrieve the tuba through an anonymous tip.’ The tuba, boldly marked with the name of the band, has been a symbol of the group for more than a decade. ‘The horn’s signature lettering had been removed and it suffered a little damage, but nothing a bit of “Tender Loving Repair” can’t remedy,’ Jaffe wrote. The tuba was taken from a car after a Saturday performance. When the horn went missing, after a Feb. 24 show at the Music Box Village in the Bywater neighborhood, Jaffe established a telephone hotline for tips, although it’s unclear if that was the source of the information that led to the instrument’s recovery.” As was recently reported in the Wall Street Journal, there has been a rash of tuba thefts, including in Los Angeles, Greensboro (N.C.), Minneapolis, and Tacoma, Washington.
Posted March 13, 2018
