Jazz Big Band Recommendations?

If you ever go to New Orleans, there is a not-well-kept-secret that the place to hear the best jazz in town is Preservation Hall. They bring in great sounding no-name bands to maintain the heritage of old fashioned jazz. The room is small and rustic to provide an enjoyable, and intimate experience. Preservation Hall records these presentations and sells the CDs at there website. To give you an idea of their popularity, lines circle around the block on weekends, but only the front of the line gets in because of the small size of the room.

Maybe I missed it, but in all of these great suggestions nobody mentioned the Kenny Clarke/Francy Boland Big Band or CBBB as often referred by. This was a band several years ahead of their time and many of their recordings have been reissued in CD format. "Now Hear Our Meanin'", "Handle With Care", "Jazz is Universal". Mostly European players who matched their American counterparts.

Also check out the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra.

Right on, Redwoodgarden! Preservation Hall is a must visit for any trip to New Orleans. I have several of their CDs, which although somewhat noisy, I find to be very well recorded from an imaging/soundstage perspective.

Great suggesion about Clayton/Hamilton. BTW, I just got in a DVD of the Mike Vax Big Band at Morningside College. Apparently, it's a recording they made at a jazz festival in 1995. I think it's a bunch of guys that used to play with Kenton. Haven't watch it yet.

And here's another one I pulled from the NPR jazz program. This groups been around for awhile. http://www.vanguardjazzorchestra.com/. They do some top flight stuff and they have a new release that you can purchase from their website.

I "third" the Dave Holland big band.