An artist that has graced numerous stages around the globe will perform at the Bermuda Music Festival 08 tonight.

Aaron Neville and the Quintet with Charles Neville will take audiences on a trip down memory lane spanning some 40-plus years in the music industry.

Mr. Neville is the third of the four famous Neville Brothers of New Orleans.

He is a product of that city's richly complex musical culture; his first vocal model was older brother Art, keyboardist and founder of the Meters.

His brother Charles played sax with B.B. King while brother Cyril became Aaron's partner in a funk band they called the Soul Machine. He is famous for songs such as: "Tell It Like It Is," "Ain't No Sunshine When She's Gone," "Our Love Is Here to Stay," "A Change is Gonna" and so, so many others.

In his long and distinguished career, his album "Nature Boy" is unique. It is a deeply satisfying suite of standards sung with remarkable sensitivity, it is both a hallmark and a revelation, in re-creating the great American songbook.

Mr. Neville, who spoke to The Royal Gazette over the phone earlier this week, talked about a career that has spanned some fifty-plus years, what the audiences could expect and how he felt about being on the same stage as Alicia Keys.

With a career, which has stood the test of time, one wonders how does one re-inspire oneself.

Mr. Neville explained: "It is just the love of music, I mean when I was a kid that was all I wanted to do.

"I wanted to sing and I would sing my way into the movies, into basketball games, in school plays and in front of my parents.

"I think music saved all of us (the Neville Brothers).

"Music saved us. To me it has been like medicine and whatever else is happening in the world it doesn't really matter."

On working with his siblings, he said: "It's been great.

"My brother Arty stared in the early 50s and I started in the late 50s and it was just two or three of us at a time up until the late 60s when we all got together.

"And so it has been 30-something years with the four of us.

"It is my brother Charles that is coming to Bermuda with his Quintet group. We call him 'the horn man, he plays the sax'."

Born and raised in New Orleans, Mr. Neville believes that the cultural influences had a lot to do with his style and success.

"We came up in a housing project, and we sang Du-Wops at night and they would run me away until they realised that I knew the notes and let me sing with them.

"Here in New Orleans there are so many styles of music and you could be playing ball and hear a band playing and you don't know what it is. It could be a Brass Band following a funeral, you don't know whose dead or nothin', they call it the Second Line, and the First Line is the family.

"And you follow the music dancing.

"Well you know New Orleans is known for the Mardi Gras. And the Mardi Gras Indians would meet up and fight with beats. And whether it was a tambourine so it is a mixture of all of that, then you have Dixie Land.

When I was 15 I played with an all blind band and I was playing piano with them."

Aside from his brothers, his favourite collaborations were with Linda Ronstadt. "I love playing with her and she loves playing with me," he said.

Inspiration continues as he and his brothers will go back into the studio next month to create a new album.

"We had one called 'Walkin' in the Shadow of Life' and it is such a great album," he said.

"We were working on that before (Hurricane) Katrina.

"It's like a little reflection of all of our lives in and on the bayou."

Regarding inspiration, Mr. Neville said: "With writing, I guess, I get inspired about things that are happening in the world.

"About life, about love and most of what we come across on our travels and people's lives inspired albums like 'Yellow Moon and 'Brother's Keeper."

"It was about homeless people living on the street with nothing to eat or nothin' like that and it is getting to be more and more of those people. So we are our brother's keeper!"

Mr. Neville said he was looking forward to visiting Bermuda for the first time: "I think I'm going to hang out for a few days and just chill."

And he was also relishign the opportunity to share a stage with Alicia Keys: "She's great you know, she is phenomenal, so I will stick around to hear her show."

His message to the Bermuda Music Festival 08 audience was simply: "Come and check the show out. "We are going to give them some music."