The Hot Sardines bring their speakeasy jazz back to MIM, Phoenix's first visit since 2019

The New York hot-jazz band returns to the Musical Instrument Museum's 300-seat Music Theater on Tuesday, March 16, 2027.

Stride piano, a washboard and a singer who slips between English and French: the Hot Sardines' show sounds like a 1930s nightclub, and the last time Phoenix got it was 2019, in the same room they're heading back to.

The Hot Sardines play the Musical Instrument Museum Music Theater on Tuesday, March 16, 2027, at 7 p.m. The date was announced Oct. 27, and tickets are sold through MIM. The museum's event page has the details.

The band's origin story is one its members have told plenty of times. Singer Elizabeth Bougerol and pianist Evan Palazzo met after both answered a Craigslist ad for a jam session above a Manhattan noodle shop. Neither was a professional musician at the time — Palazzo worked in film production and Bougerol was a writer, according to a Lyric Theatre bio — but both had long wanted to play in a jazz band. Palazzo has said they started the group as a hobby and didn't begin playing professionally until 2011, the same year they headlined Midsummer Night Swing at Lincoln Center.

The name came from Bougerol spotting a tin of hot-sauce sardines in her Brooklyn co-op, per the Long Island Press. The music comes from further back: hot jazz and standards from the 1920s through the 1940s, with Palazzo on stride piano and Bougerol on vocals and washboard, fronting a larger band that reviewers have described as a suited-and-fedora'd seven-piece.

It's a sound that has traveled well beyond the speakeasy circuit. Forbes once named them one of the best jazz bands in New York, and the Globe and Mail reported they sold out Carnegie Hall nine months ahead of the date. On record, the catalog runs through *French Fries + Champagne*, the 2019 live album *Welcome Home, Bon Voyage* — cut at Joe's Pub in New York and Koerner Hall in Toronto, according to the Kurland Agency — and *C'est La Vie*, a bilingual set of songs in English and French.

A 1930s nightclub, rebuilt nightly in a 300-seat room full of instruments.

MIM is a natural fit. The Music Theater holds about 300, which means everyone sits close enough to watch Palazzo's left hand, and a museum built around the world's instruments is a fitting place for a band that treats a washboard as a lead voice. It's also the room where the band last played Phoenix, so this is a return to familiar ground rather than a first introduction.

Seven years is a long gap for a group that tours this much, and a lot of Phoenix jazz fans who found them since have never had the chance to see them here. If you're one of them, a Tuesday in March at MIM is about as civilized a night out as the city offers. Dress up a little. The band will.

Sources: MIM: The Hot Sardines, Mar 16, 2027 (mim.org); MIM Music Theater tickets (mim.org); The Hot Sardines — Lyric Theatre (lyrictheatre.com); Hot Sardines: speakeasy serenaders — Long Island Press (longislandpress.com); The Hot Sardines — Current (Palazzo interview) (youarecurrent.com); The Hot Sardines — SOPAC (sopacnow.org); The Hot Sardines — Qobuz (qobuz.com); Review: The Hot Sardines at the Purcell Room — London Jazz News (londonjazznews.com); The Hot Sardines — MyNorth (mynorth.com); The Hot Sardines' Elizabeth Bougerol — Globe and Mail (theglobeandmail.com); NEW ALBUM: The Hot Sardines to Release New Live Album — Kurland Agency (thekurlandagency.com); The Hot Sardines — Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org); JamBase: The Hot Sardines at MIM (jambase.com)