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In the months after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast and the levee system in New Orleans and surrounding areas crumbled, New Orleans musician Allen Toussaint looked on the bright side.

“So there’s a lot of devastation, but a lot of exciting opportunities to do things good,” he said. “Out of this lemon will come lemonade.”

After the storm, Toussaint, already one of the city’s most successful musicians behind the scenes in his roles as songwriter, producer and pianist, performed and recorded as a front man more than ever before.

Many others, their regular gigs in New Orleans being, at least temporarily, unavailable, journeyed into the world at large, touring nationally and internationally. The Hot 8 Brass Band was among them.

The Hot 8 caught a major break when they appeared in Spike Lee’s epic documentary, When The Levees Broke.

“That was one of the blessings that we got out of the storm,” sousaphone player and co-founder Bennie Pete said.

Playing beyond New Orleans had been a goal for the Hot 8 since the band formed in 1995.

“We wanted to one day be traveling, but it was far away,” Pete recalled. “After the storm, it was right there.”

Katrina, tragic and destructive as it was, provided opportunities for musicians and non-musicians alike, he added.

“It gave everybody, I feel, a chance for a new start,’ ” Pete said.

Pete and bass drummer Harry Cook are the last of the Hot 8’s original members. Fluid as the membership of bands normally is, their group lost members through a series of tragedies.

Three Hot 8 players experienced gun-related deaths of the kind that reflect the violence for which New Orleans is notorious. A fourth member, trombonist Demond Dorsey, died of a heart attack at 28. A fifth member, trumpeter Terrell “Burger” Batiste, lost his legs in 2006 when he stopped to fix a tire during a drive to Atlanta to visit family displaced by the flood.

The New Orleans-set HBO series, Treme, re-created Hot 8 member Dinerral Shavers’ memorial service and funeral parade last season in an episode titled “Slip Away.” Sitting in his car, the 25-year-old drummer was shot dead, three days after Christmas 2006, during a suspected turf-war shooting.

Despite the band’s many losses, the band played on.

“Losing band members the way we did, that inspired us to keep going,” Pete said. “Plus, being in tune and in contact with our deceased band members’ familes, their parents, their sisters, their brothers, they came up to us and said: ‘Y’all don’t stop. Y’all sound good. Y’all keep this going. I remember my boy, right there with y’all.’

“So it was like we couldn’t stop. We had to bring this thing full circle, polish it back up and have it like it was before, with some new members, but in true dedication to the ones we lost.”

Filming the Shaver funeral scenes for Treme was tough for the surviving band members. A re-enactment of their slain band mate’s memorial, too, wasn’t necessarily how they wanted to be seen by a worldwide TV audience.

“We would rather be on there jamming and having fun,” Pete said. “But it was a big opportunity for us to show the world who Dinerral Shavers was and what had happened to him. So we had to get it together and make it happen.”

Blowing audiences away during its frequent out-of-town gigs, the Hot 8, having marched through tragedy, makes it happen all over the world.

“If we have a show outside of the city, with a packed house, that’s a great accomplishment for us,” Pete said. “We want to be able to have shows in the West, in the East, in the South. Wherever we at, we want people coming to hear the Hot 8 Brass Band, not just a New Orleans act. Now that’s coming true for us. It’s a beautiful thing.”