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The last time there were as many trombones in a movie as there are in “Take Me to the River: New Orleans,” Harold Hill was probably leading a parade. The ongoing vitalization of the Crescent City’s music culture really is like something out of a horn salesman’s fever dream, with younger generations readily taking up New Orleans’ traditional second-line culture in a way that can only make the aging elders of other regional music scenes green with envy. It’s this intergenerational mix, as well as the city’s world-famous melting pot of styles, that director Martin Shore means to celebrate in his latest documentary, the bulk of which consists of recording sessions he’s set up that foster collaborations between the old guard and new. The spirited end result suggests that New Orleans might be the one major city in America with no musical generation gap to speak of.

He was a one-eyed, drug-addicted piano genius who wore a wig stuffed with marijuana and once held a gun to his head on stage – now a new film tells James Booker's extraordinary story

It was the legendary Louisiana musician Dr John who memorably described James Booker as "the best black, gay, one-eyed junkie piano genius New Orleans has ever produced". Though Booker – who died from hard living in 1983 at the age of 43 – would have undoubtedly approved of the description, it does diminish his musical stature somewhat, while only hinting at his flamboyance and talent for self-destruction.

In a new documentary, Bayou Maharajah, which screens at the Barbican this week as part of the London jazz festival, Booker emerges as a complex figure, dogged by demons and an on-off addiction to heroin. "When I moved to New Orleans in 2006, I heard his name a lot," says its director, Lily Keber, who hails from Georgia.

New Orleans — For more than two decades, the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival has closed with a performance by the city's own Neville Brothers.

On Sunday, that tradition changed. Aaron Neville performed on a stage with his new band while young brass band frontman Troy "Trombone Shorty" Andrews closed the festival's biggest stage – where the Neville Brothers once held court the last day.

Andrews and his band, Orleans Avenue, entertained a jam-packed crowd as the festival ended its 2013 run. A sea of faces stretched to the track's back fence.

Neville said he views the closing lineup change as kind of a "passing of the guard.

"Trombone Slim, as I call him, will do a great job," Neville said of Andrews. "I remember when it was Professor Longhair out there and then we did it for a long time. It's time. Slim is a big musician and I'm proud of the way he's handled himself.