The Hot Sardines – Adelaide Cabaret Festival

Quality is timeless. Just ask New York-based jazz ensemble The Hot Sardines. Fuelled by the belief that classic jazz feeds the heart and soul, the musos are on a mission to make old sounds new again. Think brassy horn arrangements, rollicking piano melodies, and a chanteuse whose vocals transport you to a time when Big Apple speakeasies, Parisian cabarets and New Orleans jazz halls were all the rage.

These mischief-makers of hot jazz, who started out playing underground neo-speakeasies in Brooklyn, have had a whirlwind last couple of years. The eight-piece band (seven, with a tap dancer) has toured more than 250 cities throughout North America, Europe and Asia, blowing out their vintage-on-steroids sound to crowds as big as 25,000 at the Montreal Jazz Festival. They’ve hit No. 1 on iTunes Jazz, spent more than a year on the Billboard charts and racked up 20 million streams from fans in 90+ countries on Spotify.