Most of the musicians on this latest Serenaders disc have been practicing and playing New Orleans jazz for 45 years. Pianist Butch Thompson talks in the liner notes about meeting trumpeter/leader Clive Wilson and clarinetist Tommy Sancton at Preservation Hall in the ’60s, when they were youngsters rabidly soaking up the sounds.

Surely the players here love the New Orleans revival sounds of George Lewis and Bunk Johnson, but they also hearken back to the classic jazz of Morton and Armstrong. Thompson is especially masterful in this regard, playing Morton as expertly as anyone alive. Nevertheless, Sancton is the nicest surprise here. After many years abroad as a journalist in France, he has returned to New Orleans post-Katrina to see what he could do to help the city, and has been playing regularly at the Hall. He sounds wonderful on this disc, playing all over the horn, taking elaborate solos and playing gorgeous filigree.

Wilson has chosen the repertoire carefully. There’s nothing too hackneyed, and a few tunes (“Heart Full of Rhythm,” Hoagy’s “Lying to Myself,” “All That I Can Ask of You is Love”) that even veteran trad listeners might not know. Jelly Roll’s “Tom Cat Blues” gets a fresh, Creolized treatment, and “Climax Rag” and “King Porter Stomp,” two tunes that require some work, are splendidly laid out. The whole album is a beautiful specimen of that increasingly rare New Orleans sound, the six-piece traditional jazz band.