While he's in St. Louis to perform a free concert for Washington University's Jazz at Holmes series on the evening of Thursday, November 13, saxophonist Dave Liebman (pictured) also will give a master class and a lecture on the Wash U. campus.
That afternoon, Liebman will host a performance/master class at 3:00 p.m., and at 4:00 p.m. he will lecture on "Improvisation, Aesthetics and World View." Both events are open to the public, are sponsored by the Washington University Department of Music, and will take place in Room 102 of the Music Classroom Building, 6500 Forsyth Blvd.
Jazz St. Louis has announced that guitarist Pat Martino (pictured) will perform at Jazz at the Bistro from Wednesday, February 18 through Saturday, February 21, taking the spot on the schedule originally designated for a four-night gig by pianist Robert Glasper and his group.
Glasper's dates have been postponed due to the anticipated birth of his child in February 2009; instead, he'll come to the Bistro next October as part of the 2009-10 season. Since the performances are in separate seasons, tickets for Glasper's February dates will not be honored for the new dates in October, and because of the price differential, they can not be used for Martino's gig. Instead, buyers must return their tickets to their point of purchase for a full refund.
Martino will be backed by organist Tony Monaco and drummer Scott Allan Robinson, suggesting that his sets will definitely acknowledge the guitarist's old-school Philly organ trio roots. Tickets are priced at $30 for Wednesday and Thursday, and $35 on Friday and Saturday, and will go on sale at 10:00 a.m. next Tuesday, November 4 through all Metrotix outlets, online at www.metrotix.com, via phone at 314-534--111 or through the Jazz St. Louis box offices at 314-289-4030.
Whether it's because of Halloween, the impending end of Daylight Savings Time, pre-Election Day activities, the economic recession, or something else entirely, it's a relatively slow weekend for jazz and creative music in St. Louis, with just a handful of shows to highlight:
Tonight, guitarist William Lenihan and pianist Ptah Williams will play music from Miles Davis' album Bitches Brew in a free concert for the Jazz at Holmes series at Washington University. Also tonight, percussionist Thomas Zirkle gives a free concert at St. Louis Community College-Forest Park's Mildred E. Bastian Performing Arts Center. The concert will feature Zirkle's compositions for solo marimba as well as new music for the duo HaZMaT, which teams Zirkle with fellow percussionist Matt Henry.
On Friday and Saturday, the Metta Quintet performs at Jazz at the Bistro. The NYC-based ensemble led by drummer H. Benjamin "Hans" Schumann has been in town all week for an educational residency for Jazz St. Louis, and they've brought a lineup that's significantly different from the one described on their Web site and in a post here last Saturday.
Schumann and bassist Joshua Ginsburg remain with the ensemble, but saxophonists Marcus Stickland and Mark Gross and pianist Helen Sung are gone. For their St. Louis gig this week, the Metta Quintet instead is featuring trumpeter Phillip Dizack, a 2007 graduate of Manhattan School of Music who's worked with saxophonist Greg Tardy and done freelance jazz and Latin gigs around NYC; alto saxophonist Sharel Cassity (pictured), who went to Juilliard and has worked with the Diva Jazz Orchestra, trumpeter Ingrid Jensen and guitarist Mark Whitfield; and the fine young pianist Lawrence Fields, a St. Louis native and recent graduate of Berklee College of Music.
Fields is, as many local listeners already know, an enormously promising player who has performed and/or recorded with notables such as Alvin Batiste, Branford Marsalis, Roy Haynes, Jeff “Tain” Watts, Terri Lynne Carrington and Nicholas Payton. You can see a profile of him done by Ruth Ezell for Living St. Louis, the local newsmagazine show of PBS affiliate KETC, in the embedded video window below.
As for Dizack and Kassity, I honestly can't tell you much beyond what you can see for yourself on their respective Web sites, though Jazz St. Louis director of operations Bob Bennett, a saxophonist himself, did note in an email that he digs Kassity's bop-flavored sound.
This just in: Jazz St. Louis is offering a two-for-the-price-of-one deal on tickets for Friday night's sets by the Metta Quintet. To take advantage of the special offer, order your tickets by calling the Jazz St. Louis offices at 314-289-4030 and using the coupon code METTA0801.
Looking beyond the weekend, the Sessions Big Band will be back at BB's Jazz Blues and Soups on Monday night, and on Tuesday, The Gramophone features saxophonist Bennett Wood along with election returns on the big-screen TV.
As usually happens at the end of one month and the beginning of another, gig information from both venues and musicians is still arriving at StLJN HQ. You'll find the latest updates on more jazz-related events in St. Louis this weekend and beyond on the St. Louis Jazz Notes Calendar.
(If you have calendar items, band schedule information, news tips, links, or anything else you think may be of interest to StLJN's readers, please email the information to stljazznotes (at) yahoo (dot) com. If you have photos, MP3s or other digital files, please send links, not attachments.)
Banjo player Béla Fleck (pictured), best known for his work with the jazz/world/jam band the Flecktones, is coming to St. Louis to perform with “The Africa Project” at 8:00 p.m. on Wednesday, April 1, 2009 at the Sheldon Concert Hall.
“The Africa Project” features musicians that Fleck met during a recent journey through Uganda, Tanzania, The Gambia, and Mali, during which he explored the Africanrootsof the banjo while also making a documentary film about the trip with director Sascha Paladino.
The resulting movie, Throw Down Your Heart, premiered at the 2008 South by Southwest film festival and took home the "24 Beats Per Second" Audience Award. In concert, "Fleck and a diverse group of African musicians celebrate this collaboration in a concert filled with the beautiful and complex sounds of their shared instrument."
Single tickets for Bela Fleck's "Africa Project" concert will go on sale at 10:00 a.m., Saturday, November 15. Tickets are $55 for orchestra seating and $45 for balcony seats, and can be purchased by calling MetroTix at 314-534-1111 or by visiting The Sheldon's Web site.
Cinema St. Louis will present a screening of Throw Down Your Heart as part of the 17th Annual St. Louis International Film Festival at 7:00 p.m., Sunday, November 16 at Webster University. You can see the trailer for Throw Down Your Heart in the embedded video window below.
Legendary trumpeter and St. Louis area native Miles Davis is one of the most talked-about and written-about musicians of the late 20th century, and he's now the subject of yet another book, Miles on Miles, which collects 30 interviews from various periods of Davis' storied career.
The blurb from publishers Lawrence Hill Booksdescribes the volume as "essential reading for anyone who wants to know what Miles Davis thought about his music, life, and philosophy. Miles on Miles reveals the jazz icon as a complex and contradictory man, secretive at times but extraordinarily revealing at others. Miles was not only a musical genius, but an enigma, and nowhere else was he so compelling, exasperating, and entertaining as in his interviews, which vary from polite to outrageous, from straight-ahead to contrarian. Even his autobiography lacks the immediacy of the dialogues collected here. Many were conducted by leading journalists like Leonard Feather, Stephen Davis, Ben Sidran, Mike Zwerin, and Nat Hentoff. Others have never before seen print, are newly transcribed from radio and television shows, or appeared in long-forgotten magazines."
Edited by Paul Maher Jr. and Michael K. Dorr, the hardcover tome has 320 pages and a list price of $24.95. Lawrence Hill Books is a division of Chicago Review Press that "specializes in mostly nonfiction on topics of African American and Latino interest, progressive politics, civil and human rights, and feminism." (For what it's worth, they've also published a book on Davis' longtime arranger and collaborator Gil Evans that looks interesting...)
Saxophonist David Sanborn is the subject of the cover story of the November 2008 issue of Jazz Times, which is hitting subscribers' mailboxes this week. The article written by Geoffrey Himes is headlined "The Blues and The Abstract Truth" - a nice nod to another famed St. Louis saxophonist, Oliver Nelson - and much of it is concerned with Sanborn's new CD release Here and Gone. The oft-mentioned story of how Sanborn discovered the music of Ray Charles, David "Fathead" Newman and Hank Crawford at a St. Louis Hawks game in 1956 is fleshed out a bit:
"After some of their home games in Missouri's Kiel Auditorium the NBA team would host a concert by one of the big bands of the day: Stan Kenton, Count Basie or Benny Goodman, for example. One day Sanborn's father took him to see a Hawks game followed by the Ray Charles Band, which had had a No. 1 R&B single with "I've Got A Woman." As always, the band played a few numbers before Charles hit the stage, but the singer was taking his time this night, so the group played instrumentals for half an hour. Many in the crowd were unmoved, but not Sanborn.
"I'd been hearing so much saxophone on the radio," he recalls, "that I couldn't get enough of it. To me, Fathead was as big a star as Ray. He had that same earthy sound, that same punch-in-the-gut feel as my favorite rock 'n' roll songs, but I could tell something else was going on, too. Some kind of sophisticated inner harmony was happening that reminded me of Benny Goodman or Count Basie. It was as if he were combining my records and my parents'."
The article also addresses those who are skeptical of and/or misunderstand Sanborn's approach to jazz, and makes the case for the St. Louis native's musical legitimacy, as exemplified by quotes from bassist Christian McBride, who says that Sanborn "has been wrongly dismissed by cerebral-minded critics who judge him from an Ornette Coleman standpoint," and guitarist Bill Frisell, who calls Sanborn "the real deal."
Noting that both McBride and Sanborn dig Ornette as well as Fathead and Hank, Himes gets Sanborn musing about how both approaches fit into the musical spectrum:
"I want to hear a story from a musician," he says finally, tentatively, "but there are different ways of telling a story. You can tell a story by deconstructing a song's harmony and showing another side to it, as Ornette did. But you can also tell a story by sticking to the original harmony and making an emotional connection through your timbre, as Hank did. Both are equally valid to me."
The article is one of the more perceptive pieces I've read about Sanborn, and I'd recommend it to anyone who enjoys his music. However, since Jazz Times doesn't put most of their print-edition content online, if you're not a subscriber you'll have to pick up a copy at a bookstore, newsstand or other purveyor of fine printed materials near you.
(It should be noted that the magazine does have some online-only content, including voting in their annual Readers Poll, which is going on right now. If you'd like to cast a ballot, go here.)
It's once again time for another shameless plug for StLJN's sibling site Heliocentric Worlds, where you'll find a new online music video posted every day.
The selection of videos is drawn from genres including jazz, blues, soul, funk, classic rock, prog rock and experimental; recent posts have featured clips of Art Blakey, Morissey-Mullen Band, Dexter Gordon, Cannonball Adderly, Howlin' Wolf, The Commodores, Horace Silver, Lambert Hendricks and Bavan, The Doors, Charles Lloyd, Sly and the Family Stone, Freddie King, Medeski Martin & Wood, Les McCann & Eddie Harris, Frank Zappa, Gil Evans Orchestra, Bootsy Collins and Kool & The Gang.
This week, we've got a grab-bag of videos related to the Metta Quintet, who will be in St. Louis next week to do an educational residency for Jazz St. Louis, culminating in performances at Jazz at the Bistro on Friday, October 31 and Saturday, November 1.
As the the official resident ensemble of JazzReach Performing Arts & Education Association in NYC, the Metta Quintet spends a good deal of time in educational settings, but the group's members - pianist Helen Sung, saxophonists Marcus Strickland and Mark Gross, bassist Joshua Ginsburg and drummer/JazzReach founder H. Benjamin Schumann - are all accomplished working players with substantial musical resumes outside the group as well. (Past members of the Metta Quintet include saxophonist Mark Turner and guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel, both of whom have led their own groups at the Bistro in recent years, and pianist George Colligan.)
Unfortunately, there seem to be no readily available videos online that feature the entire quintet in action, so instead, let's take at look at some clips featuring two of the group's better-known members. First up is a video featuring pianist Helen Sung performing "Blues Connotation" at the Perugia jazz festival in Italy earlier this year, backed by bassist Giuseppe Bassi, drummer Sangoma Everett and saxophonist Roberto Ottoviano.
The next video embed features an excerpt from a performance by saxophonist Marcus Strickland's group Twi-Life in April 2008 at Small's in NYC. The video quality is not great, as the clip was shot using only ambient light in a dark club, but the sound certainly is good enough to hear what Strickland is playing, ably abetted by guitarist Lage Lund, bassist Carlos Henderson and drummer E.J. Strickland.
Finally, since the Metta Quintet will be giving school performances and working with music students during their visit to St. Louis, today's final clip is an excerpt from a workshop in which they coach student musicians at the Garde Arts Center in New London, CT through some basic improvisations on the standard "C Jam Blues." Although the objective musical value of this clip is slight (assuming you're not one of the students involved, or a proud parent of same), it does provide a glimpse of how the Metta Quintet helps young musicians get acquainted with jazz concepts, as well as the enthusiasm they bring to the task.
The holiday season is just a few weeks away, and guitarist Steve Schenkel and singer Ashley Mason (pictured) are ready with a new Christmas-themed CD titled A Midnight Clear. The just-released CD features the duo's interpretations of 15 favorite seasonal songs, and you can check out two of the tracks for free on Schenkel's Web site.
Schenkel and Mason also have scheduled several live performances of the music from A Midnight Clear. On Sunday, November 9, they'll do a free in-store concert at 1:00 p.m. at Webster Records, accompanied by guitarist Dan Rubright and bassist Ric Vice.
On Thursday, December 4, they'll perform a free concert for the Jazz at Holmes series at Washington University backed by Vice on bass and Carolbeth True on piano, and on Monday, December 15, they'll take the stage at Webster University's Winifred Moore Auditorium, once again backed by Rubright and Vice.
The second meeting of Jazz St. Louis' new CD Listening Club will take place at 7:00 p.m. on Tuesday, November 11 at Borders, 1519 S. Brentwood Blvd. Cordell Whitlock, reporter and weekend anchor for local NBC affiliate KSDK (Channel 5), will be the special guest and JSL executive director Gene Dobbs Bradford will serve as moderator as the club discusses John Coltrane's landmark album Giant Steps. The event is free and open to the public, and no advance reservations are required.
There's lots going on in jazz and creative music this week in St. Louis, and so we bring you StLJN's weekly highlights post slightly earlier than usual to perhaps better help facilitate some advance planning.
One of the week's major attractions is the team-up of pianist and singer Les McCann (pictured) and saxophonist Javon Jackson, who will perform Wednesday through Saturday at Jazz at the Bistro. Both men previously have led their own bands at the Bistro, but their current collaboration, dubbed "Swiss Movement Revisited" in honor of McCann's famed partnership with the late saxophonist Eddie Harris, will be making its St. Louis debut.
Though McCann, who turned 73 last month, and Jackson, who's 43, are from different generations, they seem like a natural musical match - both men have made a lot of groove-oriented music over the course of their respective careers, but both also have shown a proclivity for occasional detours into more adventurous and/or eccentric territory. For some video of McCann and Jackson together, see this post from last Saturday. You may also enjoy perusing this interview Jackson did with StLJN back in 2005.
Also returning to St. Louis this week for a four-night stand is songwriter and poet Fran Landesman, who's performing a cabaret show called "The Gaslight Square Years" beginning Wednesday and running through Saturday at the Gaslight Theater, 356 N. Boyle in the Central West End. Landesman is something of a St. Louis legend, having (with her husband Jay) operated the Crystal Palace nightclub, one of the key venues during Gaslight Square's heyday in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Landesman also co-wrote (with pianist Tommy Wolf) the musical The Nervous Set, which ran briefly on Broadway and yielded the frequently recorded tune "Spring Can Really Hang You Up The Most." The St. Louis Beacon's Bob Duffy, a former Post-Dispatch writer who knew her way back in the day, has a feature story about Landesman and her show here.
UPDATE, 11:35 p.m., 10/23/08 - 52nd City's Thomas Crone blogs his impressions of Landesman's opening night performance here.
Elsewhere in town, NYC-based multi-intrumentalist Cooper-Moore, who plays original jazz- and blues-influenced music on both conventional and self-invented instruments, will perform Saturday at Joe's Cafe and Sunday at the Scott Joplin House State Historic Site's Rosebud Cafe. Cooper-Moore has roots in the 1970s avant garde and loft jazz scene, but since then he's forged his own distinctive musical path. For more on Cooper-Moore's performances, see these twoposts. You also can see an excerpt from a Cooper-Moore improv with bassist William Parker in the embedded video window below.
In addition to these distinguished visitors, St. Louis' local musicians also have much to offer this week, starting on Thursday when saxophonist Dave Stone and pianist Adam Maness (of Erin Bode's group and Orange) perform a free concert for the Jazz at Holmes series at Washington University. If you're still in the mood for more music after Stone and Maness, you can head over to Brandt's in the nearby Delmar Loop and catch the gypsy jazz stylings of Sandy Weltman and Hot Club Caravan.
On Friday, the Legacy Jazz Quintet, led by pianist Phil Dunlap and trumpeter Anthony Wiggins, will do a free performance in the St. Louis Art Museum's Griggs Gallery, while singer, pianist and saxophonist Hugh "Peanuts" Whalum plays at Brandt's.
Then on Saturday, guitarist William Lenihan's quartet will do a free concert at the Kemper Museum on the Wash U. campus as part of the ongoing series accompanying the museum's current "Birth of the Cool" exhibit.
Sunday evening brings two more events of interest, starting with a performance by guitarist Matthew Von Doran's trio, featuring Nick Jost on bass and Miles Vandiver on drums, at Music Folk in Webster Groves. (UPDATE - 11:50 p.m., 10/22/08: Von Doren emailed to say that his show Sunday at Music Folk has been canceled, but will be rescheduled at a later date.)
That same night, the 45th Oliver Sain Soul Reunion will take place at the Sheldon Concert Hall, featuring blues and soul from singers Renee Smith, Roland Johnson, Mae Wheeler, Skeet Rogers, Uvee Hayes and Beau Shelby as well as a goodly helping of Sain's funky instrumental compositions as played by the current Oliver Sain Revue. Dan Durchholz has more on Sain's legacy and this year's show in an article for the St. Louis Beacon, found here. (Full disclosure: Yr. humble editor is a member of said Revue, and will be at the keyboards Sunday night at the Sheldon.)
On Monday morning, Red Lehr and the Old St. Louis Levee Band, featuring pianist Pat Joyce, will do a "Coffee Concert" of traditional jazz at the Sheldon. (They'll repeat the program at another performance on Tuesday morning.)
On Monday evening, the annual TKT Memorial Scholarship Concert takes place at Webster University's Winifred Moore Auditorium. This year's event pays tribute to the musical legacies of Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, and Billy Eckstine, with featured performers including singers Jeanne Trevor, Sherri Drake, and Eddie Eaton; pianists Marion Miller, Carolbeth True, and Kim Portnoy; guitarists Steve Schenkel and Tom Byrne; Paul DeMarinis on tenor sax; and the rhythm section of Willem von Hombracht on bass and Kevin Gianino on drums. Also on Monday evening, the Sessions Big Band continues their ongoing series of gigs at BB's Jazz, Blues and Soups downtown.
(If you have calendar items, band schedule information, news tips, links, or anything else you think may be of interest to StLJN's readers, please email the information to stljazznotes (at) yahoo (dot) com. If you have photos, MP3s or other digital files, please send links, not attachments.)
Ever wish you could meet David Sanborn? Well, the St. Louis native (pictured), known for his distinctive sax sound that has made him one of the most successful musicians in jazz as well a first-call sideman for world-famous musicians ranging from David Bowie to Stevie Wonder, is offering to "meet and greet" a fan as part of a special eBay auction benefiting the VH1 Save The Music Foundation.
The winning bidder gets two tickets to one of Sanborn’s upcoming tour dates; a "meet-and-greet" with the saxophonist, and a copy of Here and Gone, Sanborn's latest CD on the Decca label.
Now in its eleventh year, the VH1 Save The Music Foundation has restored, maintained, or donated $43 million worth of musical instruments for 1,600 public schools in more than 100 cities around the country, serving more than 1.2 million public school students. Sanborn's auction ends this Friday, October 24; for more information, visit universalmusicstore.com.
This week's videos feature keyboardist Les McCann and saxophonist Javon Jackson, who will be in St. Louis next week to perform Wednesday, October 22 through Saturday, October 25 at Jazz at the Bistro. Their team-up is billed as "Swiss Movement Revisited," a reference to McCann's collaboration with the late saxophonist Eddie Harris and the famous live album the two recorded in 1969 at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland.
In part because their collaboration is relatively recent, there's not a whole lot of footage online showing Jackson and McCann playing together, but let's take a look at what is out there. First up is an excerpt from a recent performance at the Deer Valley Jazz Festival in Park City, Utah (also the home of the Sundance Film Festival). This clip apparently comes from some sort of promo for the Deer Valley fest, so there's also some interview footage with an audience member before the music starts.
The second clip features Jackson and McCann playing a tune called "Fun Time", composed by bassist Kenny Davis, at a show in May at the Dakota Jazz Club in Minneapolis. The video quality is rough, as it's from a cellphone camera. The third clip was shot around the same time, and shows McCann and Jackson on a visit to the High School for the Performing Arts in St. Paul, MN, where they interact with and listen to some student performers and then play a bit themselves. And finally, as a reminder of the collaboration that helped inspire the McCann/Jackson pairing, the fourth video is a vintage clip showing McCann and Eddie Harris performing the most famous song they recorded together, "Compared to What".
This week's notable jazz and creative music performances in St. Louis include a benefit concert featuring a well-known touring headliner and a number of shows spotlighting featuring local musicians.
The touring artist in question is singer Dianne Reeves (pictured), who performs Sunday night at the Sheldon Concert Hall in a benefit for Community Women Against Hardship. Touring in support of When You Know, her latest release on Blue Note, Reeves is working with a quartet including St. Louis native Peter Martin on piano, Romero Lubambo on guitar, Reuben Rogers on bass and Gregory Hutchinson on drums.
Then on Friday and Saturday, saxophonist Jason Swagler leads his group in a two-night stand at Jazz at the Bistro. A graduate of the jazz program at Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville, Swagler now teaches at SIU-E in addition to gigging around town with various bands playing straightahead jazz and funk.
And speaking of funk, Friday night also is when self-described "groove oriented modern jazz and funk" band Elastik Soul performs at The Gramophone. Meanwhile, other notable shows on Saturday include New Music Circle's Rich O'Donnell and friends doing a multi-media performance piece called WORDSDROW at Satori, located at 3003 Locust downtown, and keyboard player Tony Simmons offering a tribute to Ray Charles at the Black Cat Theatre in Maplewood.
On Sunday, singer Mary Dyson and pianist Brock Walker's trio will inaugurate the new jazz and blues vespers series at Second Baptist Church, 9030 Clayton Rd. near the Galleria. Looking beyond the weekend, on Monday the Sessions Big Band is at BB's Jazz, Blues and Soups, and on Tuesday, guitarist Pete Lombardo and his group perform at The Gramophone.
As usual, these are just some of the week's highlights, so to see listings of more jazz-related events in and around St. Louis this weekend and beyond, please visit the St. Louis Jazz Notes Calendar.
(If you have calendar items, band schedule information, news tips, links, or anything else you think may be of interest to StLJN's readers, please email the information to stljazznotes (at) yahoo (dot) com. If you have photos, MP3s or other digital files, please send links, not attachments.)
Singer Erin Bode has a new Christmas-themed CD coming out next month. It's called A Cold December Night, and Bode and her band will promote the release at live gigs in St. Louis throughout the holiday season, starting with a recently announced two-night engagement at Jazz at the Bistro on Wednesday, November 12 and Thursday, November 13.
Other details about A Cold December Night - including the exact release date, track listing, personnel and so on - are scarce so far, but as more information is made public, we'll have it for you here.
The Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra still is seeking players to take part in a performance of Symphony No. 13 (Hallucination City), a composition by Glenn Branca (pictured) scored for 80 electric guitarists and 20 bass guitarists. The performance will take place at The Pageant in St. Louis on Thursday, November 13 as part of the SLSO's Guitar Festival.
In addition to the concert, prospective participants also must be able to take part in two rehearsals at Powell Hall and a soundcheck at The Pageant. "Compensation is not possible," says the SLSO Web site, "but food and drink will be supplied at all rehearsals and the performance. All musicians will need to be able to read standard staff notation and follow a part measure by measure. For more information, contact glenn@glennbranca.com and you will be sent a detailed info sheet."
To get an idea of what the Branca piece is like, you can see some excerpts from a performance of Symphony No 13: Hallucination City last October in London in the embedded video window below.
Jazz St. Louis has made available two more podcasts in their ongoing series.
The third installment in the series features an interview with JSL director of education Phil Dunlap, and can be heard here. The fourth and latest podcast interview to go online features saxophonist Javon Jackson, who will be in St. Louis next week to perform with pianist Les McCann at Jazz at the Bistro. That podcast can be heard here.
JSL Web guru Adam Roach reports that the organization's site now has a new community section that will serve as a library for the series of podcasts, a soon-to-be-added set of photo galleries, and other materials. You can go directly to the list of available podcasts here. (As a result of the site remodeling, the links previously provided here to past interviews with Tony DeSare and Cedar Walton have changed. You now can find the DeSare podcast here, and the Walton podcast here.)
Users can also subscribe to the Jazz St. Louis podcast feed using iTunes or any podcast software using this link, and the JSL podcasts also are available now through the Apple iTunes store.
"Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill," a one-woman play with music depicting a day in the life of jazz singer Billie Holiday, is being presented this week at the Emerson Black Box Theater in Lindenwood University's brand new J. Scheidegger Center for the Arts, 2300 West Clay Street in St. Charles.
The play written by Lanie Robertson includes several of Holiday's songs, such as "Foolin' Myself," "Crazy He Calls Me" and "God Bless the Child." In this production, Holiday will be played by Lindenwood graduate student Hassie Davis, with Keith Williams directing and Cornelius Davis serving as pianist and music director. The show will be performed at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, October 16; Friday, October 17; and Saturday, October 18. Tickets are $10 each; to make reservations, call 636-949-4433.
From the Department of Shameless Self-Promotion, you are hereby humbly invited to check out my piece in the current Riverfront Times on the new documentary film M for Mississippi, which premiered this past weekend in Clarksdale, MS.
The film was produced by St. Louisan Jeff Konkel, the man behind the country blues label Broke and Hungry Records, and former St. Louisan Roger Stolle, who now lives in Clarksdale and runs Cat Head Delta Blues and Folk Art. It chronicles a week-long road trip through Missisippi hill country, during which Konkel and Stolle interview and record performances from a dozen bluesmen, each offering their own idiosyncratic personal take on the music. You can read my article about M for Mississippi online here, check out the film's official site here, and view a trailer in the embedded video window below.
(And in case you can't tell from reading my piece, I heartily recommend M for Missisippi to anyone with an interest in the blues, travel films or documentaries in general. It's a well-done, entertaining film, certainly worth the investment of time if there's a screening near you, and it's also available for purchase on DVD.)
Every couple of weeks in this space, we like to remind you, dear reader, that StLJN has a sibling site called Heliocentric Worlds, where you can view all sorts of online music videos from genres including jazz, blues, soul, funk, classic rock, prog rock and experiemental.
A different music video is posted every day, and over the past couple of weeks, featured artists have included Bootsy Collins, Kool & the Gang, Ella Fitzgerald, Brian Auger, Miles Davis, The Band, Woody Shaw and Jackie McLean, Fats Waller, Eric Clapton and B.B. King, Sex Mob with DJ Olive, Dirty Dozen Brass Band and Thelonious Monk.
This week, let's take a look at a couple of videos featuring the traditional jazz band the St. Louis Rivermen. These two clips are from the 37th annual Bix Beiderbecke Memorial Jazz Festival held in July 2008 in Davenport, Iowa.
First up is a video of the Rivermen playing the standard "I Can't Get Started," which was penned by Ira Gershwin and Vernon Duke, first popularized in the 1930s by trumpeter Bunny Berigan, and has since been recorded hundreds of times by musicians ranging from Billie Holiday to Maynard Ferguson. Down below, the Rivermen offer their version of "Dans Les Rues d'Antibes," which was composed by saxophonist Sidney Bechet and translates roughly as "On The Streets of Antibes."
Following the recent retirement of their former pianist and bandleader Jean Kittrell, the St. Louis Rivermen also have set up a new Web site of their own, which can be found here. Here's hoping that the group, now under the leadership of sousaphonist David "Red" Lehr, will continue their work of preserving and presenting traditional jazz for a good long while.
This week brings another eclectic mix of jazz and creative music performances to St. Louis. Here's a look at some of the highlights happening over the next few days:
Tonight, the all-star soul-jazz ensemble Godfathers of Groove begin a four- night stand at Jazz at the Bistro. Comprised of veteran organist Reuben Wilson (pictured), drum legend Bernard Purdie and guitarist Grant Green Jr., the Godfathers emphasize the bluesy, funky side of jazz, offering a 21st century take on the jazz organ group sound popularized in the 1950s and 1960s. For some video of the Godfathers of Groove in action, see this post.
If your mood this evening is more free jazz than funky, saxophonist Jay Zelenka's Squid Choir Orkestra is performing at the South Side alt-rock haven the Way Out Club, 2525 S. Jefferson, with electronic musician Eric Hall's new group as opening act.
Tomorrow night, saxophonist Paul DeMarinis and singer Debby Lennon team up to do a free concert for Jazz at Holmes series at Washington University, and multi-instrumentalist Sandy Weltman and Hot Club Caravan bring their gypsy jazz sound to Brandt's.
On Saturday, the Chicago-based group Eastern Blok featuring guitarist Goran Ivanovic returns to St. Louis, bringing their "Balkan Jazz" to The Gramophone. Also on Saturday, singer and guitarist John Pizzarelli will be in town to play a benefit for the Susan G. Komen Foundation at the Ritz Carlton; however, with tickets priced at $250 per person, only the well-heeled and/or truly fanatical would seem inclined to attend.
Then on Sunday afternoon, the St. Louis Jazz Club presents a traditional jazz concert from Peoria, IL's Dixie Daredevils at the Moolah Shrine Center.
And next Tuesday brings three events of note, with the Gerry Mulligan/Bob Brookmeyer-inspired quartet Utter Chaos playing at The Gramophone; radio and television personality Don Wolff doing a live cablecast of his I Love Jazz TV show from the Kemper Museum; and the first meeting of Jazz St. Louis' new CD Listening Club at Borders Books and Music in Brentwood.
As usual, these are just some of the week's highlights, so to see listings of more jazz-related events in and around St. Louis this weekend and beyond, please visit the St. Louis Jazz Notes Calendar.
(If you have calendar items, band schedule information, news tips, links, or anything else you think may be of interest to StLJN's readers, please email the information to stljazznotes (at) yahoo (dot) com. If you have photos, MP3s or other digital files, please send links, not attachments.
As the longtime host of the "I Love Jazz" radio program, currently heard Friday nights on KFUO (99.1 FM), Don Wolff has done many a live radio broadcast in his day. Now Wolff will be doing real-time television when the video version of I Love Jazz is cablecast live next Tuesday, October 14 from the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum on the Washington University campus.
Wolff tells StLJN that the series' third episode will focus on the museum's current "Birth of the Cool" exhibit and will include a segment on Miles Davis as well as live music from William Lenihan (guitar), Randy Holmes (trumpet), Kara Baldus (piano), Ben Wheeler (bass) and Miles Vandiver (drums). Also on tap are interviews with Lenihan, who teaches at Washington University and is involved with both the Kemper Museum's jazz programming and Wash U's Jazz at Holmes series; and Patrick Burke, author of the book Come In and Hear the Truth: Jazz and Race on 52nd Street and an assistant professor of music at the University.
The event gets underway with a reception from 5:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m., followed by the live cablecast from 7:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. The public is invited to attend, and it's free. However, because space is limited, you must make a reservation by calling Jayne at HEC-TV at 314-531-4455.
Of course, I Love Jazz also can be seen on the HEC-TV cable channel - consult your cable or satellite provider's program guide for specifics on how to find it on your TV - and presumably this episode will be rerun as previous ones have been. No word yet on whether or not the cablecast also will be streamed on HEC-TV's Web site, but someone's supposed to be getting back to me with further details, so watch this space for updates.
(Updated 8/9/08 with the names of the musicians performing on the show.)
Singers Will Downing and Lalah Hathaway (pictured) and saxophonist Gerald Albright will be the featured performers in "A Soulful Christmas 2008," a holiday-themed show coming to The Pageant on Sunday, December 14.
This will be Albright's second trip to St. Louis this year, as he performed at The Pageant in June as part of this year's "Guitars and Saxes" tour. Hathaway has a family connection to the Gateway City; she is the daughter of the late singer, pianist, songwriter, producer and St. Louis native Donny Hathaway.
Tickets for "A Soulful Christmas" go on sale at 5:00 p.m. Friday, October 10, and can be purchased online here, at The Pageant box office and at all Ticketmaster outlets.
While he's in town, Cooper-Moore also will play at 7:00 p.m. Sunday, October 26 at the Scott Joplin House State Historic Site's Rosebud Cafe. This concert is under the auspices of the Black Artists Group aka BAG II, and BAG II's Zimbabwe Nkenya will open the show with a solo performance of his own. For more on Cooper-Moore and the Joe's Cafe show, see this post.
Singer Mary Dyson and the Brock Walker Trio will be the first musicians to perform in a new jazz and blues vespers series that begins Sunday, October 19 at Second Baptist Church, 9030 Clayton Rd. at McKnight.
The concert is free and open to the public, and starts at 6:00 p.m. in the church's Sanctuary of the Beatitudes. Dyson, backed by Walker on piano plus bassist Terrance Coleman and drummer Keith Robinson, will perform two sets of jazz and popular music.
Dr. Stephen Jones, pastor of the church, will offer a brief, non-sectarian inspirational message between sets, and a free-will offering will be taken to benefit the musicians. Refreshments will be served in the church’s narthex after the vespers. Attire is casual, and there is free parking in the lighted lot surrounding the church.
The church plans to continue the vespers series on the third Sunday of each month, with pianist Carolbeth True and Two Times True scheduled to perform on Sunday, November 16. For more information, visit the Second Baptist Church Web site or call 314-991-3424.
This week, we've got four very short video clips featuring the Godfathers of Groove, who are coming to St. Louis to appear at Jazz at The Bistro starting next Wednesday, October 8 through Saturday, October 11. With the well-seasoned veteran Reuben Wilson on organ, legendary session man Bernard "Pretty" Purdie playing drums and Grant Green, Jr., son of legendary guitarist and St. Louis native Grant Green, on guitar, the Godfathers might be thought of as a sort of soul-jazz supergroup, with deep roots in the old-school organ-trio sound.
Unfortunately, there's not a whole lot of video of them online, so we'll have to make do with some brief teaser-type clips. All together, these four excerpts from a performance last December at the Jazz Cafe in London total less than six minutes of running time, but they should provide at least a general idea of the group's vibe and what to expect next week at the Bistro.
It looks to be a nice, crisp fall weekend here in St. Louis, perfect weather for getting out of the house and hearing some live music. Here's a look at some of the noteworthy jazz and creative music performances coming up over the next few days.
Due to the Vice-Presidential debate being held on campus, there's no Jazz at Holmes concert tonight at Washington University. However, if multi-media performance of a different sort piques your interest, Lemp Neighborhood Arts Center is presenting a show this evening featuring Italian composer and sound artist Alessandro Bossetti and Brooklyn, New York’s Byron Westbrook. They'll be performing "Corridors," which is described as "a multi-channel audio/video environment that uses video projections, amplifiers and speakers strategically placed within a performance space. The project emphasizes how redistributed energy of sound and light in space can alter perception." Also on the bill are the 7th epicycle, performing a new version of Mark Sarich’s improv/electronics piece “[you]like(it)” and Eric Hall doing solo electronics.
On Friday, trombonist Brett Stamps and his quartet begin a two-night stand at Jazz at the Bistro. Stamps has a wide range as a player, from traditional New Orleans-style jazz to big band swing to bop, hard bop and modern styles. His recent CD release Bad to the Bone teamed him with fellow trombonist Jim Owens for a set recalling the J.J. Johnson/Kai Winding collaborations of the 1950s. Expect at least a taste of several of the aforementioned genres and who knows, perhaps Owens will stop by and sit in for a number or two.
Unquestionably the biggest musical name in town this week is pianist Dave Brubeck (pictured), who returns to St. Louis on Saturday night to play at the Sheldon Concert Hall. The term "legendary" gets thrown around rather promiscuously in today's overheated media environment, but the adjective truly applies to Brubeck, a musician and composer whose work has evoked continued interest for more than 50 years now. Along with his classic quartet, he helped popularize the use of odd-meter time signatures in jazz, opening a lot of ears among both musicians and listeners along the way. It's a marvel that he's still out on the road performing at age 83, and the Sheldon is, as always, a fine venue for acoustic jazz.
There's lots going on this Sunday, starting in late morning with the brunch and concert paying tribute to Don and Heide Wolff at Harris Stowe State University, described in detail in this post. Featured performers at the concert at 1:00 p.m. will include Mae Wheeler, Gene Lynn, Bill Tucker, Willie Akins, Anita Jackson and Anita Rosamond. The information sent out by Harris-Stowe indicated that reservations for the brunch closed yesterday, but if you're interested in attending, call 314-340-3386 for the latest. The auditorium at Harris-Stowe is a good-sized room, and even if the brunch is sold out, they may very well still be able to accommodate additional concert-goers.
Later that afternoon, there's a benefit dinner and dance/concert for the Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville Friends of Music's scholarship fund, featuring performances by singer Mardra Thomas and the SIUE Concert Jazz Band conducted by saxophonist Jason Swagler. The "Hollywood Jazz" event gets underway at 5:00 p.m. in SIUE's Meridian Ballroom with a cocktail hour and performance by Thomas, followed by dinner and dancing.
Looking beyond the weekend, the Sessions Big Band is at BB's on Monday, and on Tuesday, saxophonist Logan Richardson performs at The Gramophone. Richardson is a Kansas City native now based in New York City. He studied saxophone with St. Louis native Greg Osby and has a CD on the Fresh Sound New Talent label. In addition to leading his own groups, Richardson has performed and recorded with Joe Chambers, Stefon Harris, Greg Tardy, Nashiet Waits, and many others. St. Louis saxophonist Bennett Wood will open the show.
As always, these are just some of the highlights of what's happening around town, so to see listings of more jazz-related events in and around St. Louis this weekend and beyond, please visit the St. Louis Jazz Notes Calendar. (If you have calendar items, band schedule information, news tips, links, or anything else you think may be of interest to StLJN's readers, please email the information to stljazznotes (at) yahoo (dot) com. If you have photos, MP3s or other digital files, please send links, not attachments.
As they do every October, the not-for-profit organization Music for Lifetime Achievement (MFLA) and the Sheldon Concert Hall are conducting their annual collection drive to gather used and new musical instruments for underprivileged students at St. Louis area schools. Over the past four years, the MFLA instrument drives have collected almost 500 instruments, which have been recycled to kids in St. Louis City and County school districts who otherwise would not have access to an instrument, and to a variety of community music programs.
If you've got an instrument to donate, you can bring it to any concert this month at the Sheldon, or drop it off during normal business hours, which are 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Monday though Friday. If you'd like to help but don’t have an instrument to donate, MFLA is also looking for financial contributions to help pay for necessary repairs of donated instruments and for accessories such as strings, reeds and sheet music.
For more information or to make a donation, call the Sheldon at 314-533-9900 or visit the MFLA Web site. MFLA will provide a "thank you" letter that serves as a tax deduction receipt for the value of the instruments or the funds donated.
Singer and pianist Harry Connick Jr. (pictured) is returning to St. Louis with his big band for a holiday-themed concert on Sunday, December 7 at the Fox Theatre.
Tickets for the show are priced from $48 to $73, and will go on sale at 10:00 a.m. next Friday, October 10 via MetroTix and the Fox Theatre box office.
Longtime St. Louis jazz radio host and advocate Don Wolff and his wife Heide will be honored at an event this Sunday, October 5 at Harris-Stowe State University.
"An Afternoon of Jazz" gets started with a brunch from 11:00 a.m. to noon, followed by tours of HSSU's Wolff Jazz Institute and a concert beginning at 1:00 p.m. with featured performers including singers Mae Wheeler, Gene Lynn, Anita Rosamond, Anita Jackson, Bill Tucker and Jeffrey Hardin and saxophonist Willie Akins. Tickets for the event are $10, and you can make reservations by calling 314-340-3386.
The Wolff Jazz Institute was established in April, 2002 when the Wolffs donated their personal collection to the University. It includes jazz recordings, books, periodicals, films and other materials that, according to HSSU, are valued at more than a million dollars.
Webster University has released the rest of the 2008-09 schedule of Monday night concerts by the University's jazz faculty. Here's the lineup:
Monday, October 13: The Paul DeMarinis Sextet, featuring DeMarinis on saxophones, Debby Lennon (vocals), Dave Black (guitar), Nick Schlueter (piano), Ben Wheeler (bass) and Kyle Honeycutt (drums).
Monday, October 27: The annual TKT Memorial Jazz Scholarship Concert, which this year will pay tribute to the musical legacies of Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, and Billy Eckstine. The featured performers will be singers Jeanne Trevor, Sherri Drake, and Eddie Eaton, backed by pianists Marion Miller, Carolbeth True, and Kim Portnoy; guitarists Steve Schenkel (pictured) and Tom Byrne; DeMarinis on tenor sax; and the rhythm section of Willem von Hombracht on bass and Kevin Gianino on drums.
Monday, December 15: "A Midnight Clear: Songs of Christmas," a CD release event featuring Schenkel and Dan Rubright on guitars, vocalist Ashley Mason and bassist Ric Vice.
Monday, January 26, 2009: The Kim Portnoy Ensemble, featuring Portnoy on piano along with DeMarinis, Vice, drummer Clarence Newell and a string quartet.
Monday, February 2: Willem von Hombracht and the St. Louis New Jazz X-tet.
Monday, February 9: Dan Rubright and Tangole, featuring Rubright and von Hombracht with violinist John McGrosso and percussionist Ted Rubright.
Monday, February 16: "A Tribute to Dexter Gordon" with DeMarinis and Willie Akins on saxophones plus True, von Hombracht and Gianino.
All concerts start at 7:00 p.m. and will be held in the Winifred Moore Auditorium on the Webster University campus. Tickets are $5 for general admission, $3 for seniors and free to students with a current school ID, except for the TKT Scholarship Fund show, which will be $10 for general admission and free to students.
While he's in St. Louis to perform a free concert for Washington University's Jazz at Holmes series on the evening of Thursday, November 13, saxophonist Dave Liebman (pictured) also will give a master class and a lecture on the Wash U. campus.
