2005 in review: StLJN's "greatest hits"

This is not a gold record. It is a record spray-painted gold.

With 2005 coming to a close, it seems like a good time to revisit a few choice posts from the last 7 and 1/2 months. Several of these are about free stuff you can download from the Net, because who doesn't like free stuff? Throw in some live show reviews, commentaries and an interview, and you've got what passes for St. Louis Jazz Notes' greatest hits so far:

One of the very first posts here in late April contained an extensive review of a big band concert at UMSL featuring the St. Louis Jazz Orchestra with pianist Mulgrew Miller as special guest.

In May, I had a few thoughts about the just-announced lineup for the US Bank St. Louis Jazz Festival, and what I'd like to see in future festivals. A follow-up post in August discussed some of the funding issues facing local music festivals.

There was some good free stuff in June, including links to a free downloadable copy of Miles Davis' autobigraphy, and some video clips from interviews about jazz history with several famous musicians.

June also featured reviews of two of my favorite live shows of the year, from Herbie Hancock's Headhunters 2005 at the Pageant, and the Dave Douglas Quintet at the aforementioned US Bank St. Louis Jazz Festival.

In July, this post rounded up a number of sources for free jazz MP3s. More recently, this December post had info on downloading a free copy of a classic Julius Hemphill recording.

In September, there was a post about how to assist New Orleans musicians who survivied Hurrican Katrina, and that assistance is still needed by many, even now. A follow-up post in December suggested some local New Orleans merchants who could benefit from mail, phone and Web orders.

And in November, saxophonist Javon Jackson was kind enough to give StLJN an exclusive interview. One of my goals for this site on 2006 is to have more original content - interviews, reviews, feature stories, breaking news, whatever - and I'm grateful to Mr. Jackson (and his representatives) for agreeing to be the first touring musician to submit to an interview for this site. Good guy, and a interesting player/composer, too.

All in all, it may not exactly be a Pulitzer Prize-winning lineup of pieces, but if you've just started reading the site recently, I think you'll find it worth your time to go back and check out some of these earlier entries.

Coming up next, hopefully on New Year's Day, I'll have a brief year-end commentary and a bit more about what I hope to do here in 2006. Until then, thanks for reading, and best wishes for a Happy New Year!

(Edited 1/4/06 to fix a typo)

Local papers offer "best of 2005" jazz picks

The venerable journalistic tradition of the year-end wrap-up is in full effect on the Net and TV and in newspapers this week, and the Post-Dispatch's music writers have weighed in with their "best of 2005" picks in this weekend's edition. Pop critic Kevin Johnson offers an overview of the last 12 months of local music news, including some jazz-related items, here. Meanwhile, Terry Perkins and Calvin Wilson write about their jazz favorites from the past year here.

Over at my own home in print, the Riverfront Times, we didn't get quite as much space to expound, with a year-end wrap-up format that limited our picks to one favorite recording and one "overlooked" recording per writer. Frankly, though I chose to write about the Pat Metheny Group's The Way Up as my favorite recording, there were easily a half-dozen others that were just as good in their own way, including the recently discovered Coltrane recordings with Monk and with his own group, the most recent records from Dave Holland's small group, Marty Ehrlich, and the Keith Jarrett-Gary Peacock-Jack DeJohnette Trio, and several others. Plus, there's lots of highly touted stuff from 2005 that I simply haven't gotten around to hearing yet.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that these year-end best-ofs are, by their nature, rather subjective and, like all critical rantings, should be taken with a grain of salt. Even those of us who get paid to write about music sometimes have trouble keeping up with everything that's out there. And sometimes, the difference between a record making the cut or not can be determined by something as mundane as the number of words allotted per freelancer.

In this case, with only one record to write about, I chose Metheny's CD primarily because I felt it represented a successful culmination of years of work by one of the major groups in contemporary jazz. In contrast, Ehrlich's terrific record feels to me more like the beginning of a direction that will yield even greater music in time, and the records from Holland and Jarrett, though both excellent, are more of a piece with their other recent works. I chose not to write about the Coltrane recordings simply because I wanted to feature something from a living musician.

My choice for "overlooked recording" was Backstabber's Ball, the excellent debut recording by bassist and St. Louis native Neal Caine, who was just in town this week for the Big River Hurricane Relief concert at the Sheldon. I recently did an interview with Caine, and the resulting feature article - an exclusive to St. Louis Jazz Notes - will be posted here soon.

Jazz at the Bistro reorganizing?

The end of the year means trying to tie up loose ends, and that includes going through some accumulated mail, including annual December fund-raising appeals from various local not-for-profit organizations. Most are fairly run-of-the-mill, urging recipients to make a donation and get one more tax deduction before year's end. But this year's letter from Jazz at the Bistro, mailed earlier this month under the signature of executive director Gene Dobbs Bradford, includes what would seem to be a fairly significant piece of news:

"We will soon reveal our new name, Jazz St. Louis, which will better communicate the depth and breadth of our educational and concert programming. The Jazz at the Bistro concert series will continue as before. Within our new image Jazz at the Bistro will be a specific part of a diverse program, encompassing innovative community partnerships, education initiatives and high-quaity performances. Jazz St. Louis will be unlike any other organization in the region."

This brings up several questions, not the least of which is, "Wasn't there already an organization called Jazz St. Louis?" Yes, there was such a group, run by a woman named JoAnn Collins, that produced jazz events in St. Louis for a number of years. Collins no longer lives here, and the organization has been dormant for some time now. However, in the course of researching this story, a former board member of the old Jazz St. Louis has indicated to me that there have been discussions between Collins and the Bistro organization to secure rights to the name.

Calls to the Bistro's publicist to confirm this, and ask more questions, have so far gone unreturned. That's not a big shock, considering it's the week between Christmas and New Year's Day, but it means that any official response won't come until next week.

In the meantime, the reasons for the name change and its potential consequences are worth considering. One possible reason would be to simply reflect the current reality that the organization is already more than just a concert series, as demonstrated by workshops featuring visiting musicians, the formation of an all-star student ensemble, and this past summer's collaboration with Washington University on a three-week workshop showing secondary school teachers how to incorporate jazz into their curricula.

Another reason would be to lay groundwork for future expansion, such as presenting events in venues other than the Bistro space in Grand Center. However, Bradford already helps program the US Bank St. Louis Jazz Festival, and it doesn't seem like existing concert venues such as the Sheldon, Roberts Orpheum, Touhill or Pageant would need outside help to present jazz acts.

There are, of course, other halls that don't currently present jazz, but at least in theory, could. For example, the Grandel Square Theater, home to the St. Louis Black Repertory Company and just a couple of blocks from the Bistro, has presented a cabaret series in the past, and is currently underutilized, as the Black Rep only performs for about seven months out of the year. It could easily be used as a concert venue for certain types of acts, if someone with the necessary time, money and connections were inclined to pursue it.

This is, I should note, pure speculation on my part, just one of many theoretical possibilities. So exactly what will the newly constituted Jazz St. Louis be doing, and where will they be doing it? Stay tuned to this space, as there's obviously lots more to this story that could have a significant impact on the local jazz scene. I'll be following up on this next week, and will bring you the latest scoop as I get it.

In a related note, while searching the Bistro Web site for any more info on this topic, I found that they've added a a weblog and message board to their site. The blog entries from early in the 05-06 season are focused on the various acts playing the club, but more recent entries seem mostly concerned with fundraising, including an announcement that JATB will have a 10th anniversary fundraiser with music by Steve Tyrell at the Roberts Orpheum Theater on Saturday, April 8, 2006.

The most recent blog entry is from the first week of December, and the message board has, so far, generated little traffic, so I think there's still some untapped potential there. Still, it's good to see JATB is at least trying some new ways to communicate with their audience, and it will be interesting to see what they do with these online tools as time progresses.

Kim Massie releases new CD recorded live at Jazz at the Bistro

Kim Massie

St. Louis vocalist Kim Massie has released her new CD Attitude, recorded live this past September at Jazz at the Bistro. The CD features jazz and blues standards as performed by Kim and a band including Gus Thornton on acoustic and electric bass, Lew Winer III on tenor and soprano saxophones and vocals, Isaac Jerome Harris on drums, and yours truly on piano and Rhodes.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with the way the CD turned out. The recording quality is clear, with only a few balance problems attributable to the circumstances of live performance, and I think the performances chosen for the CD are an accurate representation of what went down that weekend. Given the program of well-known material, the music isn't particularly innovative, but everyone seemed to have a good time and I think that comes across on the recording. Those who are already fans of Kim's will definitely enjoy the album, and I think it may make a few new fans for her as well.

You can read a review and see a track list here, and purchase a copy of the album at one of Kim's live performances. (Full disclosure: I don't get a cut of the sales, as I've already been paid for both the gig and the recording.) No definitive word yet on additional distribution, but my understanding is that it will also soon be available through Kim's Web site and at some local stores, too.

I've played a few gigs with Kim since the dates at the Bistro, and hope to have the chance to perform with her again in 2006. Until then, Attitude is a nice reminder of an enjoyable weekend of music.

Free download of music from James "Jabbo" Ware

Earlier this week, the Daily Download from All About Jazz offered a free download of a track from former St. Louisan and Black Artists Group member James "Jabbo" Ware. Although a new track from a different artist is featured every day, previous downloads are archived on the AAJ site, and so if you missed the chance to get "Saint Louis Train" as recorded by Ware's Me We and Them Orchestra on the CD Vignettes in the Spirit of Ellington, you can still get a free MP3 of it here.

Bistro will be a no-Fly zone in January

There are a couple more schedule changes in the second half of Jazz at the Bistro's tenth anniversary season. Most significantly, four nights of performances by the group Fly, featuring saxophonist Mark Turner, that were scheduled for the first week in January have been cancelled. This is particularly diappointing because the group was one of the more musically adventurous acts scheduled in what is mostly a retrospective sort of year to commemorate JATB's 10th anniversary.

Ticket holders can call 314-531-1012 for refund information. A replacement act seems unlikely at this late juncture, but I am going to try to find out the reason for the cancellation and will report back with any info I can glean.

UPDATE, 6:05 p.m., 12/29/05: Terry Perkins, local freelance scribe who covers jazz for the Post-Dispatch, All About Jazz, and others, emails with the info that Fly canceled all their late December and January dates some time ago because one of the band members' wives is due to deliver a baby the first week of January. However, their booking agent neglected to inform the Bistro, who only learned of the cancellation a couple of weeks ago when they contacted the band to confirm travel arrangements. (Ouch! Not cool for the band, the club or the booking agent...) At that point, it was too late to book a suitable replacement act, and so it looks like the room will be dark next week.

In a related note, the shows by the student ensemble the THF All-Stars have been moved to the weekend of April 21-22. Tickets for the originally scheduled dates will be good for the new dates; those who can't attend can get a face-value refund at any Metrotix outlet.

Post-Dispatch previews Big River Hurricane Relief concert

The Post-Dispatch's Calvin Wilson did a brief interview with pianist and music director Peter Martin about tonight's Big River Hurricane Relief concert at the Sheldon, and you can read the resulting story here.

Jazz this week: Big River Hurricane Relief and New Year's Eve

Saxophonist Wess Anderson is one of the New Orleans musicians
who will be featured in the Big River Hurricane Relief concert.


The big event in St. Louis this week involving touring jazz performers is the Big River Hurricane Relief concert at the Sheldon on Thursday night. The concert will feature vocalist Dianne Reeves and a number of top New Orleans musicians, including St. Louis expats Peter Martin, Jeremy Davenport, Neal Caine and Tom McDermott, and you can read more about it in my Riverfront Times Critic's Pick.

As for jazz on New Year's Eve, our town's premiere jazz club Jazz at the Bistro will be dark this week, as the First Night celebration takes over the Grand Center neighborhood that serves as the club's home. The First Night event does include some entertainment that may be of interest to jazz listeners, including the world music sounds of Farshid Etniko, singer Kim Massie and JATB head honcho Gene Dobbs Bradford doing his moonlighting thing, playing harmonica with the Blues Inquisition band. Get the details at the First Night Web site.

(UPDATE, 12:45 a.m., 12/29/05: STLtoday has a printable PDF of the First Night schedule here.)

Elsewhere in town, Cookie's Jazz and More in Webster Groves is also dark for New Year's Eve, but will feature performances by the Carolbeth True Trio on Thursday and the Tom Byrne/Erika Johnson duo on Friday night. The nearby Crossings Taverne and Grille features trios all weekend, with Dave Venn appearing on Thursday, pianist/vocalist Leslie Maclean on Friday and the Jan Shapiro Trio on Saturday.

In University City, Brandt's is showcasing two female vocalists on New Year's Eve, with Mae Wheeler performing early and Kim Massie (presumably hurrying over from her set at First Night) taking the late shift. And in Clayton, Finale has a package deal that includes dinner, a hotel room and music by Swing Set, Swing Cat Swing, and blues-rock guitarist Billy Peek.

If you're a musician or venue who would like to have our events included in this space and in the St. Louis Jazz Notes calendar, please email the relevant information to stljazznotes at yahoo dot com.

Reviews of Miles Davis' Cellar Door box set

Today is the official release date for the Miles Davis box set The Cellar Door Sessions 1970, and reviews are beginning to appear across the Net. Blender magazine gives the set four stars, while All About Jazz has an "extended analysis" here, and writer Ben Ratliff weighs in for the New York Times here:

"The Cellar Door Sessions, 1970, a new six-CD box set full of live Miles Davis music, represents a stretch when Davis was making organic, linear music. It is six musicians in a working band, making sense of a new paradigm on a nightclub stage in Washington, from a Wednesday to a Saturday...In everyday terms, this box set is too much music. One of these discs alone, perhaps the second or the sixth, can be nearly overwhelming; each demands concentration. But for now that's beside the point. It's filling a hole in general knowledge, and it establishes better than before that there was, in fact, a third great Miles Davis group beyond the quintets of the 1950's and 60's"

(edited 12/27/05 to correct the name of the box set)

Free improv, jazz featured at 52nd City event

The collaborative weblog 52nd City is launching a new e-zine, and the preview party is scheduled for 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. Friday, December 30 at the soon-to-be-closed Gallery Urbis Orbis, 419 N. 10th St. downtown.

The event will feature live improvisational music by Eric Hall, Jeremy Brantlinger and Jason Hutto, experimental video from Van McElwee, and a poetry and jazz performance by Stefene Russell and Dave Stone. The $5 cover also gets you some light refreshments catered by the Hartford Coffee Company, and proceeds will go to support the group's various publishing projects planned for 2006.

Yellowjackets reschedule 2006 dates at Bistro

The Yellowjackets include St. Louis native
Marcus Baylor, third from left, on drums

Over the weekend, Jazz at the Bistro announced that fusion band the Yellowjackets, scheduled to return to St. Louis as part of the Bistro's 10th anniversary season, have changed their upcoming St. Louis dates from April 12-15 to May 31- June 3, 2006. Tickets for the original dates will be honored for the rescheduled performances, but if you purchased tickets and can't attend the new dates, full refunds will be available.

No reason for the date change was given, and there's information available yet about who might be booked to fill the second weekend in April. If/when something is announced, we'll have the info here.

And to all, a good night...

What with holiday activities, a CPU fan on the main StLJN computer that needs replacing, and a right shoulder that still hurts when I type, it's likely there will be no posts here for the next couple of days.

However, I'll be back soon with the usual news, links and so on, along with some year-end stuff.

In the meantime, thanks for reading StLJN, and, in the words of the noted philosopher and humanitarian Herschel Krustofski, I wish you "a Merry Christmas, a Happy Hanukkah, a Kwaazy Kwanza, a Tip-Top Tet, and a solemn, dignified Ramadan."

(edited 12/27/05 to fix a type that was bugging me)

Bhob Rainey to perform at LNAC on Friday, December 23

Bhob Rainey

From the Department of Last-Minute Notices, via this morning's email: Free-improvising saxophonist Bhob Rainey is playing a gig at 8 p.m. this Friday, December 23 at the Lemp Neighborhood Arts Center. He'll play solo and collaborate on some improvs with St. Louis musicians. Also on the bill are 6th Epicycle, which includes Mark Sarich and Christopher Meuther on cello and electronics, and Jeremy Kannappel's Ghost Ice project, which involves work with manipulated vocal sounds.

Brown on Big River Hurricane Relief benefit

In today's column, the Post-Dispatch's Sylvester Brown talks with pianist Peter Martin and trumpeter Jeremy Davenport about the Big River Hurricane Relief benefit concert, which will be held at the Sheldon on Thursday, December 29.

John Norment remembered

John Norment 
(photo by Roscoe Crenshaw/St. Louis American)

I'm sorry to have to report that St. Louis jazz saxophonist and composer John Norment has passed away at the age of 63. He died Tuesday, December 6 after a battle with cancer, and funeral services were held on Tuesday, December 13 before he was buried at Laurel Hill Memorial Gardens.

The Post-Dispatch ran a brief death notice, including a so-far-unused guestbook for memories at Legacy.com, while the American had a very nice article on the funeral by Roscoe Crenshaw that included quotes from a number of musicians who knew John. A small sampling:

Saxophonist and composer Oliver Lake, who flew in from New York, explained, “John was one of my first teachers. He helped me to get started on the instrument. We were neighbors. I definitely wanted to get here and see him off. He’ll be missed.”...Drummer Jerome “Scrooge” Harris called Norment “a friend for 40 years. Excellent writer, composer and performer. Loved him dearly - like a brother.” Another buddy, trumpeter Floyd LeFlore, remarked, “The saxophone was an extension of his soul. He played for God and you and you and you, ‘cause music was his life.”

As mentioned earlier, though I was not a close friend or frequent musical associate, I did have the opportunity to work with John Norment a few times during the Nineties as both a musician (in the short-lived group Open End) and as a producer of several live events that included John or one of his groups. My thoughts about his musicianship are still best summed up by a brief item I wrote (unbylined) about him for the Riverfront Times on the occasional of his being named "Best Jazz Artist" in the 2003 "Best of St. Louis" issue:

Some jazz musicians stay inside, expertly navigating the changes while inventing fresh new melodies on the spot. Others go outside, discarding the boundaries of harmony and stretching music into pure sound with a restless yearning to grab the whole world and channel it through a horn. One of the things that makes saxophonist-composer John Norment distinctive is his ability to do both -- to play both inside and outside, sometimes even in the same solo, and yet have it all make perfect sense. A skinny man of average height with a frizzy mop of gray hair, Norment looks and talks like a mild-mannered individual -- until he picks up his horn and reveals himself to be part deep thinker, part slapstick comedian and all master musician. Equally adept on alto, tenor and soprano saxophones, Norment has a unique musical mind teeming with intriguing ideas, as well as the experience and technique to realize those ideas in a most satisfying manner.

In addition to being an excellent musician, John was a fine person and always interesting and fun to be around. It's a shame he had to leave this plane of existence after a relatively short time, but he left many great memories of his music and his humanity. As Oliver Lake said so simply, he will be missed.

Dee Dee Bridgewater to perform at the Sheldon's 2006 gala

Dee Dee Bridgewater

Vocalist Dee Dee Bridgewater will headline the Sheldon Concert Hall's annual fundraising gala to be held on Friday, April 21, 2006. In addition to her Grammy Award winning work as a jazz vocalist, Bridgewater has won a Tony Award for performing in the Broadway musical The Wiz, and also hosts the program JazzSet on the NPR radio network.

This concert is being billed as a 100th birthday tribute to Josephine Baker, the legendary entertainer born in St. Louis who became the toast of pre-WWII Europe. The art galleries at the Sheldon will be featuring a Baker-related exhibit at the same time.

Since it's a fundraiser, good tickets are expensive - $500, to be precise, which includes cocktails and dinner, preferred seating, a post-concert reception and other perks. Fortunately, there also will be single tickets available for $40 and $45, but they don't go on sale until April 1.

Edited 12/18/05 to fix a typo and add a link

Jazz this Week: Ray Vega's Latin Jazz Quintet, Danita Mumphard holiday show, and more

Ray Vega

Apologies in advance, but for medical reasons - specifically, an injured shoulder that's making it rather painful to type - this is going to be a brief entry.

Ray Vega's Latin Jazz Quintet is the main touring attraction in town this week, performing two sets a night at Jazz at the Bistro through Saturday.

Heading west from midtown, singer Danita Mumphard and Trio Tres Bien will do a special holiday show Saturday night at Cookie's, in Webster Groves, and trumpeter Jeremy Davenport continues his ongoing residency at Busch's Grove in swanktastic Ladue. Also, though the concert scene is slow this week, there's alwyas live jazz at nightspots like Crossings Taverne and Grille, Brandt's, and elsewhere.

The promised update to the St. Louis Jazz Notes calendar has been delayed (due to the same bum shoulder) so please follow the links from this story or the sidebar directly to the clubs' Web sites to see who's playing where when. With any luck, the calendar update will get done sometime over the weekend, so if you're a musician, venue or presenter who's like to have your event included for upcoming weeks/months, I promise that it will not be an act of total futility to send your information to stljazznotes at yahoo dot com.

Download vintage Julius Hemphill album for free

Julius Hemphill

Screwgun Records, the label run by saxophonist Tim Berne, is offering a free download of Dogon A.D., a landmark early recording by the late saxophonist Julius Hemphill. (Direct link to 51 mb ZIP file here.)

Recorded in 1972 right here in St. Louis (at Oliver Sain's Archway Studios, if memory serves) the album features Hemphill on alto and flute, trumpeter Baikida Carroll, cellist Abdul Wadud, and drummer Philip Wilson performing three extended Hemphill compositions. Berne, a protege and student of Hemphill, has brought several of Hemphill's records back into print in recent years, and he talks about his mentor, teacher and friend in this interview.

Juilliard jazz ensemble with Victor Goines will play at the Sheldon in March

This just in: Saxophonist Victor Goines, who heads the jazz program at the famed Juilliard music school, will bring the Juilliard Jazz Small Ensemble to the Sheldon Concert Hall for a workshop and performance on Thursday, March 30. The program will give a number of St. Louis student jazz musicians the opportunity to participate in a two-hour workshop with Goines and the Ensemble, culminating in the performance.

It's a little early to reserve your seat, though, because tickets don't go on sale until February 25. And as a side note, including the upcoming New Orleans benefit in December and his scheduled appearance with his quintet in February 18 as part of the hall's jazz series, this will be Goines' thrid performance at the Sheldon this season.

Post reviews SLSO's Riley/Glass program

This weekend, the Post-Dispatch has a review written by John Huxhold of last week's SLSO chamber concerts at the Pulitzer Foundation featuring the music of Philip Glass and Terry Riley.

Notes from the Net: Barber reviewed, Terry celebrates, Reeves and Sanborn interviewed, and more

Patricia Barber

Pianist/vocalist Patricia Barber, who's set to make her St. Louis debut at Jazz at the Bistro next year during the weekend of March 10-11, recently gigged in Boston, and the blog from local public radio station WGBH has a review...St. Louis-born trumpet legend Clark Terry is getting ready to celebrate his 85th birthday on December 14th with a concert in Portsmouth, NH, and the local paper has an interview with him here...Vocalist Dianne Reeves, who's performing at the Sheldon Concert Hall at month's end, was interviewed by KXJZ radio in Sacramento, CA about her work on the soundtrack to the film Good Night, and Good Luck, and you can hear the conversation here...Saxophonist David Sanborn, a native of suburban Kirkwood, MO, recently did an interview with USA Today talking about, among other things, how music helped him overcome a childhood bout with polio...Almost 40 years later, critics are still debating Miles Davis' electric period, and now author Philip Freeman has a new book, Running the Voodoo Down: The Electric Music of Miles Davis, that "places Davis's controversial 1960s and 1970s albums in a new and different light, encouraging us to hear Miles's music alongside the work of Sly Stone, Jimi Hendrix, and the trumpeter's own sidemen."...On the "rebuilding-New-Orleans" front, Harry Connick Jr. and Branford Marsalis are among the New Orleans musicians supporting Habitat for Humanity's plans for a "musician's village" to be built in the city...And last but not least, if you've read Jack Kerouac's classic Beat Generation novel On The Road, you probably know that St. Louis is one of many cities mentioned in the book. Now, organizers of "On The Road: A Kerouac Circus" are seeking found audio from our town and others mentioned in the text for "a project to gather ambient sounds (sounds that happen to be in an environment) from locations mentioned in Kerouac's On the Road in order to create a sonic portrait of the big cities, small towns, backwoods, deserts and mountains that Kerouac visited and wrote about."

Shop NOLA for Xmas

Let's face it, it's not that easy to find a
good selection of mojo bags at the local mall

The need in New Orleans and throughout the Gulf area continues to be great, and though attention may have waned in some quarters, there are still charitable concerts being held, recordings sold and fundraisers scheduled to help meet that need. But it's worth noting that there's another way that interested folks can help New Orleans, and that's to spend some money with merchants who are back in the city and open for business.

The city is encouraging tourists to visit, but if a vacation isn't an option for you right now, you can still drop a few dollars into the New Orleans economy by buying a holiday gift or two by phone or on the Internet. Courtesy of a thread on this subject at the political website Daily Kos, you'll find lists of some New Orleans merchants geared up for phone, mail and Web orders here, here and here. Along similar lines, you might also enjoy Louie's Juke Joint, temporarily selling their eclectic variety of New Orleans and Louisiana-related merchandise from higher and drier ground on the East Coast.

Now playing: the AAJ Daily Download

Posting will continue to be light around here for at least a couple more days, but I did want to call to your attention a new feature in the StLJN sidebar: the free "Daily Download" from All About Jazz.com.

Look about halfway down the right-hand column, and you should see a little box with a thumbnail of the CD cover and some information about each day's track. Clicking on the track name will, in turn, take you to a page where you can download it. Most of the artists featured so far could be characterized as "lesser known" or "emerging" but, hey, it's an inexpensive way to sample some new stuff, and you never know when something will catch your ear and warrant further investigation. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this new feature, and if you wish, please feel free to share your thoughts and reactions in the comments.

Jazz this week: Female singers, minimalist classics, a New Orleans documentary, and more

Irvin Mayfield is one of the performers featured in the film
Make It Funky, which will be shown at a special benefit
screening at BB's on Saturday.

Time is tight today, so I'll apologize in advance if this post seems somewhat terse. Yet even with the twin pressures of work and the impending holiday season bearing down, there's a variety of sounds in St. Louis this week that may offer respite to the weary music lover.

Tonight, vocalist Anita Rosemond celebrates the release of her new CD Timeless with two sets at Busch's Grove. With a band including Tim Cunningham on saxophone and Dan Smith on trumpet, there should be some good jazz chops on display.

The Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra's series of modern chamber music performances at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation continues this week, with Philip Glass' "1 + 1" and "Music in Similar Motion" and Terry Riley's "In C" set to be performed both Wednesday and Thursday. .

On Friday and Saturday, singer Erin Bode takes the stage at Finale Music and Dining for two nights of holiday standards, while over at Jazz at the Bistro, the Carolbeth True Trio appears the same two nights as part of the Bistro's "Spotlight Series".

Saturday is also the day that BB's Jazz, Blues and Soups will present a screening of the New Orleans music documentary Make it Funky, with the doors opening at 6 p.m., the movie at 8 p.m. and live music by Jumping Johnny Sansone and Scottie Miller & Wailing Wall following the film at around 10 p.m.

Although this is billed as a "premier screening," the film has been available on DVD for a while now; I rented it at a nearby Blockbuster outlet. And while the emphasis is on on New Orleans' R&B and brass band traditions, there's some jazz content, too. I particularly enjoyed the in-concert trumpet battle shown early in the film, as the lesser known (to me, anyway) Troy Andrews gives Irvin Mayfield and Nicholas Payton all they can handle, and then some, and trombonist Big Sam and his band the Funky Nation provide some moments reminscent of Fred Wesley and the JBs. Jazz critic and Rifftides blogger Doug Ramsey has also seen the film, and weighs in here: "If you have never been to New Orleans or can’t quite remember what it was like before Katrina, this disc—part documentary, part concert—captures much of the look and feeling of the Crescent City and the spirit of a swath of its music," says Ramsey. The suggested $10.00 minimum donation for admission to the screening will benefit the Louisiana Cultural Economy Foundation.

On Sunday, the New Orleans sound gets an airing in another venue, as traditional jazz band Cornet Chop Suey performs at the annual Christmas event for the Saint Louis Jazz Club. StLJC events are open to the general public; call 636-305-0285 or 314-962-0683 for details.

And for more details on what else is going on this week, check the St. Louis Jazz Notes Calendar (still needing a bit of an update, but it's coming soon, honest). If you're a musician or venue who'd like to have your gig listed on the calendar, and possibly in this space as well, send all the crucial details about the event to stljazznotes at yahoo dot com.

Concord catalog sale offers online discount

Miles Davis' classic hard bop sessions originally recorded in the 1950s
for Prestige are now part of the vast Concord jazz catalog

When the Concord Music Group acquired Fantasy Records not long ago, it took control of a treasure trove of jazz material originally recorded for other independent labels that Fantasy had purchased over the years, including Milestone, Riverside, Prestige, Savoy and many more. Between Concord's own extensive catalog and the Fantasy acquisition, it may be a slight exaggeration to say that just about every major figure in jazz is represented somewhere in those archives, but only a slight one.

Now, just in time for Christmas, Concord is putting a good chunk of their catalog on sale, with prices on some CDs as low as $8.98 and a 10% discount off the whole order if purchased online at ConcordCatalog.com. They're also offering free shipping on orders for $100 or more.

I haven't compared the sale prices on individual CDs to other vendors around the 'net, but I'm sure that if you want to do the research many of these items could be found for similar prices, or perhaps even cheaper, elsewhere. Still, with the sale prices, online discount and free shipping, it shouldn't be too tough to put together something that qualifies as a good deal. If there are fellow jazz lovers on your gift list, or if you'd just like a "present" or two for yourself, it's worth a look.

(And in case you're wondering: While I'm certainly not averse to the notion of trying to make a buck off of this site, I'm not profiting from any orders placed with Concord. I just got the print catalog in the mail, and thought the sale offer was worth passing along.)

Notes from the Net: Lake and Caine lauded, Reeves and Monheit on tour, Miles set ready for release, and more

Oliver Lake

All About Jazz's New York writers have a year-end "best of 2005" article posted, and two players with St. Louis connections are mentioned on the list. The big band of saxophonist Oliver Lake was cited for one of the year's best live performances, and the Backstabber's Ball CD from bassist Neal Caine was named one of the year's best debut albums...Vocalist Dianne Reeves, due at The Sheldon later this month, is currently on tour with a Christmas show. Meanwhile, singer Jane Monheit, who was at The Sheldon just a few weeks ago, is also incorporating some holiday music into her current sets, but according to a review by Seattle Times critic Paul DeBarros, the end result is less than satisfying: "At her opening Tuesday, a holiday-themed show drawn mostly from her pop-ish new album, The Season (Epic), you had the feeling Monheit was inhabiting a series of roles, but not speaking from any one, true place....Who is Monheit, exactly? And why does she seem less coherent and consistent now than she did four years ago, when Come Dream With Me debuted at No. 1 on the jazz charts?"

You'll have to wait until December 27 to get your hands on a copy of Miles Davis' Cellar Door Sessions box set, but this wire story has a few details about the release, and there's a review of the set (and Bill Evans' new live-at-the-Vanguard box set) here...The New York Times had an interesting article by Nate Chinen this week about how the indie-rock aesthetic is crossing over to jazz, thanks to artists like The Bad Plus, Brad Mehldau and James Carter. (If you hit a registration roadblock trying to access the Times directly, the same story is also available here.)... Summing up the history of jazz on a single page would seem to be a tall order, but the American and British Studies Program at New Bulgarian University in Sofia, Bulgaria gives it their best shot here, with biographies, photos and full-length, free MP3s from major jazz figures including Jelly Roll Morton, Sidney Bechet, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Bix Beiderbecke, Count Basie, Lester Young, Lionel Hampton, Mahalia Jackson, Billie Holiday, Dizzy Gillespie, Ella Fitzgerald, George Shearing, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, John Lewis, Dave Brubeck, Charles Mingus, Bud Powell, Oscar Peterson, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Stan Getz, Gerry Mulligan, Cannonball Adderley, Bill Evans, Chet Baker, Ornette Coleman, Herbie Hancock and Wynton Marsalis.

Longtime St. Louisans may remember singer Maggie Finley, who worked in St. Louis clubs and theater productions in the Eighties and Nineties under the name Asa Harris. Her father Ace Harris was a singer, pianist and arranger for the original Ink Spots, while her uncle Erskine Hawkins was a trumpeter and composer who wrote "Tuxedo Junction." Finley is now working as a hospice chaplain in Seattle...And bringing it all back home for our final item, Post-Dispatch gossip columnist Deb Peterson writes that performers at this year's First Night celebration in the Grand Center arts district will include Latin-jazz-world music band Farshid Etniko as well as the Blues Inquisition, which features Jazz at the Bistro's Gene Dobbs Bradford on vocals and harmonica.

Lou Donaldson interview in Post-Dispatch

Today's Post-Dispatch/STLtoday has a story by freelancer Terry Perkins previewing Lou Donaldson's appearance this weekend at Jazz at the Bistro. Among other things, we learn that the veteran saxophonist has made some nice coin as a result of hip-hoppers sampling his music, and that the legendary turban-wearing master of the B-3, Dr. Lonnie Smith, will indeed be playing organ behind Donaldson this weekend. Read the whole thing here.