DownBeat Readers Poll voting open until Monday, August 24

As has become its custom in the Internet age. DownBeat magazine once again is allowing online voting in this year's annual Readers Poll. You can see a list of those already elected to the magazine's Hall of Fame here, and cast your ballot for your favorite musicians, bands and recordings of the year here.

If you're concerned with online privacy, please note that - ostensibly to help the mag's staffers curb any attempts at ballot box-stuffing - you must submit your name and address in order to vote. Results of the 2009 DownBeat Readers Poll will be reported in the magazine's December issue.

Tickets on sale Monday, August 3 for Sonny Rollins concert at the TouPAC

Tickets for the much-anticipated concert by saxophonist Sonny Rollins (pictured) that's scheduled for Saturday, September 19 at the Touhill Performing Arts Center will go on sale to the public next Monday, August 3.

The show is being presented by Jazz St. Louis, and will be Rollins' first performance in St. Louis in more than a decade.

Tickets are priced at $125, $50 and $35, will go on sale at 10:00 a.m. Monday, August 3, and can be purchased by calling the TouPAC's box office at 314-516-4949 or online at www.touhill.org.

Jazz this week: Sax for Stax with Gerald Albright & Kirk Whalum, All That Tap XVIII, Dr. John, and more

As we head toward August and what's usually the slow time of the year for live jazz in St. Louis, there are still some noteworthy performances happening, including a couple of touring acts that are passing through town in the next few days.

On Thursday, saxophonists Gerald Albright and Kirk Whalum (pictured) bring their "Sax for Stax" tour to the Ameristar Casino St Charles' Bottleneck Blues Bar. Named after Albright's recent CD that paid tribute to the hitmaking Memphis R&B label of the 1960s and 1970s, the tour also features some material from each man's back catalog, setting up the potential for some friendly jousting between the two old friends.

As an aside, it's my understanding that a number of the tour dates have also featured Kirk Whalum's sax-playing nephew, Kenneth Whalum. If Kirk's uncle - our town's Hugh "Peanuts" Whalum, a fine pianist, singer and saxophonist - should happen make it out to St. Charles that night to sit in, there could be three generations of musical Whalums on one stage, which would be pretty cool. (Not to mention the possibly of a four-way tenor "battle"...) You can see some video excerpts from an earlier show in the Sax for Stax tour in this post from a couple of Saturdays ago.

Then on Saturday night, the 18th annual All That Tap concert will take place at the Touhill Performing Arts Center, culminating the week-long St. Louis Tap Festival that began on Monday. The concert will feature the festival's founder and director, tap guru Robert L. Reed, and a stellar roster of dancers with credits from film, TV and Broadway performing with live musical accompaniment from pianist Carolbeth True and her trio. (For a bit of history and insight about the connection between tap dance and jazz music, go here and here.)

Looking beyond the weekend, on Tuesday the New Orleans pianist and singer Dr. John and his band, the Lower 911, will perform at The Pageant. In keeping with our town's general affinity for the sounds of the Crescent City, Dr. John is always a popular attraction in St. Louis, but good tickets still may be available since this show was a relatively late addition to the calendar.

For more listings of jazz-related events in 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.)

MAXJAZZ to release new CDs from pianists Manuel Valera and Jeb Patton

The latest email newsletter from MAXJAZZ brings word that the St. Louis-based indie label will release CDs this fall from pianists Manuel Valera and Jeb Patton.

Valera is a native of Cuba and the son of saxophonist Manuel Valera, who has played with Paquito D’Rivera, Chucho Valdes, Gonzalo Rubacalba and Tito Puente. The younger Valera has performed and recorded with well-known musicians in both jazz and Latin music, including D’Rivera, Vincent Herring, Donny McCaslin, Claudio Roditi, Louis Hayes, Bobby Sanabria, Dave Valentin, and many others. Though he has not (as far as I know) played in St. Louis yet as a bandleader, he is one of two keyboardists in the band Waverly Seven, who performers here in November 2007 at Jazz at the Bistro.

Valera's MAXJAZZ debut Currents will be released on Tuesday, October 6. It features Valera performing a mix of standards and original compositions with James Genus on bass and Ernesto Simpson on drums. You can see and hear a sample of Valera's playing in the embedded video window at the end of this post.

Jeb Patton is the pianist for the Heath Brothers Quartet, who played at Jazz at the Bistro in March 2008. Patton also works regularly with singer Sachal Vasandani, and in the past has played with Etta Jones, the Faddis/Hampton/Heath Sextet, Winard Harper, Antonio Hart, Rufus Reid, Jimmy Cobb, Carl Allen, Jackie McLean, Frank Wess, James Moody, Terell Stafford, Sean Jones, and many others.

His CD New Strides, also a debut for MAXJAZZ, will be released Tuesday, November 7. It features Patton, bassis David Wong and drummer Pete VanNostrand in a program of originals and new interpretations of standards, aided by special guests including saxophonist Jimmy Heath and drummer Albert "Tootie" Heath.

Phil Dunlap's Afghanistan adventure

Earlier this summer, pianist and Jazz St. Louis education director Phil Dunlap spent a week in Kabul, Afghanistan, teaching jazz to Afghani musicians under the auspices of a cultural exchange program called Jazz Bridges. You can read an account of Dunlap's Afghanistan adventure and see photos (including one of Dunlap wearing a rather cumbersome-looking-but-no-doubt-necessary bulletproof vest) in a story published here by the online news site the St. Louis Beacon.

StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: A St. Louis saxophone sampler

The St. Louis area is known for having produced many fine jazz trumpeters over the years. Indeed, the legacy of musicians such as Miles Davis, Clark Terry, Lester Bowie and Harold "Shorty" Baker is significant enough that local jazz historian and radio host Dennis Owsley chose City of Gabriels as the title of his book on the history of jazz in St. Louis.

However, St. Louis also has been home to many outstanding jazz saxophonists over the years. Players like David Sanborn, Oliver Lake, Hamiet Bluiett and Julius Hemphill are well-known to jazz fans for their musical accomplishments and their association with the Gateway City. Today, let's take a look at some videos featuring three more saxophonists with roots in St. Louis.

First up is Eric Person, a St. Louis native who's seen here with his groove-oriented project Metamorphosis in a clip recorded last November at the Blue Note in NYC. Since moving to New York in 1982, Person has performed and recorded with a wide variety of musicians from many genres, including McCoy Tyner, Dave Holland, Chico Hamilton, John Hicks, Ronald Shannon Jackson, the World Saxophone Quartet, Vernon Reid, Ben Harper, Ofra Haza and Bootsy Collins. The song in this video is called "Justification," and the band includes Zaccai Curtis (keyboards), Cary DeNigris (guitar), Chulo Gatewood (electric bass) and Brandon Lewis (drums).

Down below, there's a video from Chris Cheek, a St. Louis native and graduate of Webster University who in addition to leading his own bands has played played with Paul Motian, Guillermo Klein, Seamus Blake, David Berkman, Jen Chapin, Kurt Rosenwinkel and many others. This clip shows Cheek and accordionist Victor Prieto playing Cheek's composition "Shelter" at a concert in NYC, location otherwise unspecified.

The third video features Butch Thomas, another St. Louis native and Webster University graduate who's worked with big rock stars like Sting, Lenny Kravitz, and Thomas Dolby as well as with bass legend Jaco Pastorius and a whole host of other well-known names. After living in NYC and London, Thomas recently relocated to Florida, and his appearance on a local TV program in Tampa yielded this clip of him performing "Caribbean Woman" from his self-titled debut CD released last year.

St. Louis Jazz Cafe closes

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch's Kevin Johnson is reporting today in a blog post that the St. Louis Jazz Cafe has closed, effective immediately. The club, located downtown at 1500 St. Charles in the Terra Cotta Lofts building, had been open for just four months.

Operation manager Tim Simms is quoted in Johnson's story saying that although the abrupt timing of the shutdown was due to noise complaints from neighbors - the Terra Cotta Lofts is a residential building - the cafe had been losing money due to lack of a late-night crowd. A commenter on the post, which you can read in its entirety here, said that "the place was packed on Fridays and Saturdays (”noise”) and empty the rest of the week (”losing money”)". According to the story, the cafe's owners hope to reopen in a new location, but there was no indication as to a time frame.

Even in good times, the restaurant/bar business can be a tough way to make a dollar, and given the state of the overall economy this year, and the inherent problems with this particular location, I suppose this doesn't come as a great shock. Still, the loss of any local jazz venue is unfortunate for listeners and players alike. Here's hoping that the St. Louis Jazz Cafe's proprietors are both sincere about their expressed desire to reopen, and successful in finding a new, more suitable location.

Jazz this week: Good 4 The Soul, Lamar Harris, Le Jazz Hot, and more

There's only time for a short post today, as yr. humble editor is in the process of setting up a new computer here at StLJN HQ to replace the on-its-last-legs system I've been using, but I did want to call to your attention a handful of jazz-related events happening this weekend in St. Louis.

On Friday and Saturday, the jazz/funk/R&B group Good 4 The Soul returns once again to Jazz at the Bistro, closing out the venue's summer 2009 season. JATB will go dark during August, with clarinetist Scott Alberici scheduled to kick off the 2009-10 season on September 4 and 5.

Also on Friday, trombonist/low brass man Lamar Harris will do a free concert on the grounds of the Saint Louis Art Museum as part of the Museum's Art After Five series. In case of rain, the show will move inside the Museum to the Grigg Gallery.

Meanwhile, over at the St. Louis Jazz Cafe, Le Jazz Hot, with pianist Ptah Williams (pictured), saxophonist Chad Evans, bassist Daryl Mixon and drummer Bensid Thigpen, will perform on Friday; the Usual Suspects Quartet will play on Saturday; and pianist Dave Becherer's trio will be providing the music for Sunday brunch.

For more listings of jazz-related events in 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.)

Notes from the Net: Miles and Sonny re-released; Jazz Times to publish again; plus news, reviews, interviews, and more

Here's the latest compilation of assorted news briefs and links related to jazz, improvisation, and creative music in St. Louis, including news of musicians originally from the Gateway City, recent visitors, and coming attractions, plus assorted other items of interest:

* Starting, as usual, with some Miles Davis-related news, it seems that Concord Music Group will be releasing Miles Davis & Sonny Rollins: The Classic Prestige Sessions, 1951-1956 on August 4. The two-CD set compiles everything Davis and Rollins did together for the Prestige label during those years. For more recent news of everything and anything Miles-ish, we encourage you to visit Miles Davis Online, where proprietor Jeff Hyatt recently has been posting more lots more rarely seen photos and art, including a very nice portrait of Davis painted by singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell.

* Speaking of trumpeters, a recent guest post at Destination: Out by famed horn-blower Dave Douglas spotlighting some of his favorite solo music from various contemporary trumpeters included tracks from St. Louis' own Lester Bowie and Baikida Carroll

* Here's a review by Wade Luquet for AllAboutJazz.com of a couple of recent club gigs by in New Orleans by pianist and St. Louis expat Tom McDermott.

* Another piano-playing former St. Louisan, Linda Presgrave, just emailed to say she'll be playing with her quartet at NYC's Kitano on Wednesday, August 5.

* Turning to the "coming attractions" file, there's news this week of three musicians who will be part of the 2009-10 season at Jazz at the Bistro. First, bassist Christian McBride (pictured) has a new CD, Kind of Brown, with his new Inside Straight quintet just out on the Mack Avenue label. McBride will be at the Bistro from November 18 to November 21, with (we've been told) St. Louis' own Peter Martin on the piano bench in place of Eric Reed, who's on the CD.

* Meanwhile, singer Kurt Elling recently was on NPR performing material from his new CD Dedicated to You. Elling will return to St. Louis in December to perform music from the CD, which pays tribute to the historic collaboration between singer Johnny Hartman and saxophonist John Coltrane.

* And the piano trio The Bad Plus are bringing their quirky approach to re-imagining and improvising on rock, pop and classical material to the Sioux Falls, SD JazzFest. They'll be back at the Bistro as the first act of the new year in January, 2010.

* Last but not least, there's some good news about the magazine Jazz Times, which was forced to suspend publication a few weeks ago due to financial problems. The mag has been sold to new owners, and will return in August with new content. (Alas, freelance writers and photographers who have been waiting for months on payment for pieces already published under the old regime will only be getting .50 on the dollar; Howard Mandel has the scoop on that unfortunate development here, as well as an interesting comparison of the stated circulations of Jazz Times and its main competitor Down Beat.)

StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: "Sax for Stax" with Gerald Albright and Kirk Whalum

This week, let's take a look at some video clips of performance excepts from the "Sax For Stax" tour featuring saxophonists Gerald Albright and Kirk Whalum. The tour, named after Albright's recent CD of songs made famous by the legendary Memphis R&B label, comes to the St. Louis area for a show on Thursday, July 30 at the Ameristar Casino St. Charles' Bottleneck Blues Bar.

Both men have been frequent visitors to St. Louis in recent years as part of smooth jazz package shows such as Jazz Attack and Guitars & Saxes, and Whalum also has been known to sit in on local gigs featuring his uncle, St. Louis-based singer, pianist and saxophonist Hugh "Peanuts" Whalum. These four clips were recorded early in the tour, on March 27 at the Nokia Theater in NYC.

A Jazz Heaven to evoke Billie, Ella and Miles on Saturday, August 8 at the Kranzberg Arts Center

Via email, singer Wendy Gordon (pictured) shares the news that that she'll be presenting a new show called A Jazz Heaven (When Billie & Ella Met Miles & Friends) at 5:00 p.m. Saturday, August 8 at the Kranzberg Arts Center, 501 N. Grand (at Olive).

The cabaret-style performance, set in the late 1940s at the Savoy in New York City, tells the stories of jazz greats Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Miles Davis and others through music associated with each of them, with Gordon's original poetry serving as narration.

Gordon will play the role of Holiday, with veteran St. Louis radio personality Edie B. as the narrator, Virginia Williams as Ella and Adrian Bowers as Miles. The cast and musicians Arthur Toney (keyboards), Jeff Anderson (tenor sax and bass) and Marty Morrison (drums and percussion) will perform songs including "God Bless The Child", "How High the Moon", "'Round Midnight" and "Milestones".

Tickets for A Jazz Heaven are $25 each, and can be purchased in advance by calling Gordon at 314-838-9198, or at the door. (Given that the cabaret space at the Kranzberg seats a maximum of 80 people, advance purchase probably is a good idea if you want to be assured of a seat.)

Jazz this week: Peter Martin, Jim Manley, Tim Cunningham, and more

While there are no major touring jazz headliners passing through St. Louis this week, there are several noteworthy shows from locally based musicians coming up over the next few days.

Tonight, trombonist/bassist Wayne Coniglio will do a free concert for the Jazz at Holmes series at Washington University, while guitarist Tom Byrne's trio performs at the St. Louis Jazz Cafe.

Tomorrow, pianist Peter Martin, a St. Louis native who has worked with jazz luminaries such as Dianne Reeves, Chris Botti and Christian McBride, will play a free solo piano concert in the Grigg Gallery of the Saint Louis Art Museum as part of SLAM's "Art After Five" series. For more on Martin and a couple of video samples, see this post from last Saturday

Also on Friday, the hard-swinging trumpeter Jim Manley (pictured) returns to Jazz at the Bistro to open a two-night stand. I quite enjoyed Manley's latest CD, Eight, and though he gigs around town frequently in a duo setting and with various other ensembles, this weekend should give him a good chance to stretch out a bit playing straight-ahead jazz with a full rhythm section.

Meanwhile, the St. Louis Jazz Cafe this weekend will emphasize smooth jazz, with the band 3 Central on Friday night and two shows from the popular saxophonist Tim Cunningham on Saturday.

As always, these are just some of the notable performances coming up around town; for more listings of jazz-related events in 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.)

Dr. John coming to The Pageant on Tuesday, August 4

New Orleans pianist and singer Dr. John (pictured) and his band the Lower 911 will return to St. Louis to play a concert at The Pageant on Tuesday, August 4.

The good Doctor has been a frequent visitor to the Gateway City over the years, dispensing his musical gumbo of blues, jazz, R&B and funk most recently this past spring at the Sheldon Concert Hall as part of the entertainment for that venue's annual benefit gala.

Tickets for Dr. John's concert at The Pageant go on sale at 5:00 p.m. this Friday, July 17 via the Pageant box office and Ticketmaster.

St. Louis Stompers headed to Iowa for Bix Fest

The St. Louis Stompers once again will be one of the featured bands at the Bix Beiderbecke Memorial Jazz Festival, which is scheduled this year for Thursday, July 23 through Sunday, July 26 in Beiderbecke's hometown of Davenport, Iowa.

The event is one of the longest-running and best-known traditional jazz festivals in the country, and the Stompers even merited mentions in preview stories about the event in both the local Quad Cities paper and the Chicago Tribune. For more information on BixFest, check the event's Web site.

St. Louis American's Chris King reporting from Montreal Jazz Festival

Via email, St. Louis American editor Chris King has alerted StLJN to the fact that he was in Montreal for that city's just-concluded jazz festival, and filed a series of online dispatches for the paper, including an account of Ornette Coleman's concert and the saxophonist's acceptance of the fest's Miles Davis Award.

You can read King's other online missives here and here, with more coverage to come in this week's print edition, which will be out Thursday.

Jazz St. Louis CD Listening Club on vacation until September

Jazz St. Louis has announced that their CD Listening Club will be "on vacation" for the months of July and August, but will return for a second year at 7 p.m., Tuesday, September 8 at Borders Books and Music, 1519 S. Brentwood Blvd. in Brentwood.

Subsequent meetings of the CD Listening Club will be held on the second Tuesday of each month, with guests and featured CDs for the 2009-10 season yet to be announced. For more information, you can call JSL's Kedra Tolson at 314-289-4034 or contact her via email at kedra@jazzstl.org.

Recently on Heliocentric Worlds

If you're looking for a few moments of music-related diversion via the Internet, may we humbly suggest that you check out StLJN's sibling site Heliocentric Worlds? There's a different online music video featured every day, drawing on genres including jazz, blues, soul, funk, classic rock, prog rock and experimental.

Recent posts have showcased video clips from Bill Frisell, Henry Threadgill, Emerson Lake and Palmer, the Crusaders, Memphis Slim, Dave Holland, the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, Rufus Thomas, McCoy Tyner and Gary Bartz, Santana, Ray Charles, Curtis Mayfield, Diamanda Galas, and Bill Evans. You can see them all, plus hundreds more videos from the archives, by visiting http://heliocentricworlds.blogspot.com.

StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: Spotlight on Peter Martin

This week, we feature a couple of videos with pianist Peter Martin, a St. Louis native who has worked with internationally known jazz musicians such as Dianne Reeves, Chris Botti, Christian McBride and many others. Martin will be playing a free solo concert at 7:00 p.m. next Friday, July 17 in the Saint Louis Art Museum's Grigg Gallery as part of the museum's Art After Five series.

The clip up top is an excerpt from a free performance at the Sheldon Concert Hall earlier this summer that was scheduled at the last minute when Martin's concert for the Whitaker Music Festival at Missouri Botanical Garden was rained out. Martin is joined by fellow St. Louisan Montez Coleman on drums plus Reginald Veal on bass and Victor Goines on saxophones.

Down below, you can see Martin in a 2004 performance at the Jazz Baltica Festival with singer Dianne Reeves, playing "You Go To My Head" with a band that also includes trumpeter Roy Hargrove, bassist James Genus and drummer Greg Hutchinson.

Martin also has his own YouTube channel, which features a mix of travel videos, piano instruction, and some performance clips, including a nice one of him doing a solo performance of "Viva La Vida", a tune from the rock band Coldplay that's also featured on Martin's new solo piano CD Set of Five. Alas, none of those clips can be embedded here, because they're all in widescreen format, which breaks the Blogger layout template, but you can see them all by going here.

Old Webster Jazz and Blues Festival set for Saturday, September 19

The ninth annual Old Webster Jazz and Blues Festival will take place from noon to 11:00 p.m., Saturday, September 19 along Gore, Allen and Lockwood avenues in the business district of the St. Louis suburb of Webster Groves. Admission is free.

Performers on the event's two stages will include Wild, Cool & Swingin', Two Times True, Dogtown Allstars, Soulard Blues Band, the Webster University Faculty Jazz Band, Standard Time, guitarist Matthew Von Doran's trio, the Webster Groves High School Jazz Band, and the St. Louis Jazz & Blues Revue. In addition to the music on stage, the Funky Butt Brass Band will perform while strolling on Lockwood Ave. from 2:00 p.m. until 5:00 p.m.

For more information, visit www.oldwebsterjazzfestival.com or call 314-961-4656.

Jazz this week: The Cunninghams, Monterey Jazz Festival's Next Generation Jazz Orchestra, St. Louis Ragtimers, Dawn Weber, Erin Bode, and more

Though summer vacation season is officially underway, the next few days will offer St. Louis jazz fans a pretty fair number of musical choices during what's usually a relatively slow time of year.

Tonight, the Monterey Jazz Festival's Next Generation Jazz Orchestra (pictured at left), a select ensemble of mostly teenage musicians from the West Coast that's touring the country this summer, stops in St. Louis for a performance at Jazz at the Bistro. The East St. Louis High School Jazz Band will open the show.

There are also a couple of noteworthy free concerts tonight, as trumpeter and singer Dawn Weber plays for the at Jazz at Holmes series at Washington University, and singer Erin Bode takes the stage for the Whitaker Urban Evenings concert series at St. Louis Place Park, located at St. Louis and Rauschenbach Avenues on the near North Side. Rounding out the musical menu for Thursday is drummer Joe Pastor's trio at the St. Louis Jazz Cafe.

On Friday and Saturday, Jazz at the Bistro will feature keyboardist Reggie Thomas' jazz-organ trio OGD, augmented for the occasion by the great tenor saxophonist Willie Akins, while the St. Louis Jazz Cafe has the Usual Suspects Quartet on Friday and smooth jazz saxophonist Tim Cunningham on Saturday.

On Sunday afternoon, the St. Louis Jazz Club will present a concert featuring the St. Louis Ragtimers plus special guest pianist Dr. Dave Majchrzak. Note that while yhis show originally had been announced as playing at one of the SLJC's longtime venues, the Moolah Shrine Center in Maryland Heights, it's been moved to a new location, the Doubletree Hotel in Chesterfield.

Then on Sunday night, the jazz vocal duo The Cunninghams (pictured at right) , featuring multi-instrumentalist and former St. Louisan Don Cunningham and his wife, singer and pianist Alicia Cunningham, will perform at the Sheldon Concert Hall. Now a resident of Las Vegas, Don Cunningham got his start in the music business in St. Louis' Gaslight Square, and this show is being billed as "Coming Home One Mo' Time," perhaps in recognition of the reduced touring schedule he and Alicia have adopted in recent years after spending the previous couple of decades criss-crossing the U.S., Asia and Europe as headliners of their own show and special guests with the Count Basie Orchestra.

I won't reiterate all of StLJN's previous coverage of the Cunninghams, because, hey, that's what links are for. Suffice it to say that they are fine musicians and old-school entertainers in the best possible sense, the sort of jazz veterans who should be heard and celebrated while the opportunity is still there, so go check 'em out.

As always, these are just some of the notable performances happening over the next several days; for more listings of jazz-related events in 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.)

Beacon article spotlights local cabaret scene

An article written by Terry Perkins for the Saint Louis Beacon local news site takes a look at our town's cabaret offerings, covering the work of promoter Jim Dolan's Cabaret St. Louis organization at the new Kranzberg Arts Center at Grand and Olive, as well as an upcoming local conference for cabaret singers. You can read the whole piece online here.

Greg Worzel launches new label with debut CD from teen singer

Via email, keyboardist Greg Worzel tells StLJN that he's launching a new independent jazz label called Prospect Records. Based in the St. Louis suburb of O'Fallon, MO, the new imprint will make its debut with Like Someone In Love, the first recording from 17-year-old vocalist Emily Nicole (pictured).

Worzel has worked previously with singer Anita Rosamond and produced her CD Timeless. He's also the producer of Nicole's debut, which will be introduced at a CD release party that will be held from 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. next Wednesday, July 15 at Jive and Wail, 6101 Mid Rivers Mall Dr. in St. Peters.

Nicole's singing experience to date includes musical theater productions at Francis Howell HS in St. Charles, performances with the Patt Holt Singers choral group, and a featured spot with Worzel's Rhythm of the Nite band. Audio samples from Like Someone In Love are available on her (rather minimal at present) Web site.

StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: Ray Charles sings "America The Beautiful"

Absent any major breaking news, yr. humble StLJN editor will be on a brief vacation from posting this holiday weekend.

Should you find yourself jonesing badly for fresh content over the next two days, remember that the StLJN sidebar - that's the column over on the right-hand side, for those who don't speak bloggish - has a new Daily Download and feature stories from AllAboutJazz.com every day, plus an extensive list of links to many other noteworthy jazz sites. You can also check out our Bloglines page for a bunch of continuously updated jazz-related news feeds, or visit StLJN's sibling site Heliocentric Worlds and take in some of the hundreds of cool music videos there.

Here's hoping you have a safe and enjoyable Independence Day weekend...

Notes from the Net: Jimmy Wilkins profiled; Rollins, Elling and Botti on the road; plus news, reviews, interviews, and more

Here's the latest compilation of assorted news briefs and links related to jazz, improvisation, and creative music in St. Louis, including news of musicians originally from the Gateway City, recent visitors, and coming attractions, plus assorted other items of interest:

* Starting with some Miles Davis-related items, it seems that the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of Davis' Kind of Blue continues without pause, as KoB drummer Jimmy Cobb's all-star So What band played at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center in Saratoga Springs, NY this past weekend as part of an extensive touring schedule.

Also, here's a review of the new reissue of Davis' Sketches of Spain, written for PopMatters.com by Sean Murphy. For more Miles-related news and links, as always we exhort you to visit Jeffrey Hyatt's fine site Miles Davis Online, which recently has spotlighted some rarely-seen photos of the trumpeter alongside interviews with the photographers who shot the pics.

* The late trumpeter and St. Louis native Lester Bowie's 1981 album The Great Pretender was the subject of a recent "Listening Party" post on NPR's A Blog Supreme.

* Here's a recent feature story from the Las Vegas Sun about St. Louis native, trombonist and bandleader Jimmy Wilkins (pictured), a veteran of the Count Basie Orchestra who now lives in Vegas.

* And here's a rediscovered vintage 1999 audio interview of saxophonist, composer and one-time Webster University student John Zorn by Chris Comer.

* Former St. Louisan Bob Koester was profiled last week in the New York Times on the occasion of the 55th anniversary of his Delmark Records label. Koester also owns Chicago's Jazz Record Mart.

* Turning to news of recent visitors to St. Louis, it took Jazz St. Louis three tries to get trumpeter Terence Blanchard here to St. Louis this past season - Blanchard's twice-rescheduled week at Jazz at the Bistro finally happened in May - but the trumpeter isn't always quite so hard to get. Thanks to a gap in their tour schedule, he and his band were able to travel to Canada to play a last minute gig at the Ottawa Jazz Festival on just two days' notice after promoters secured a last-minute grant from the Canadian government.

* Singer Tony Bennett is helping to open a new location for the Frank Sinatra School fo the Arts in his hometown of Astoria, Queens. Bennett was in St. Louis in May to play the Fox Theatre.

* Banjo player Bela Fleck took his Africa Project to Caramoor International Music Festival in Connecticut this past week. The tour was in St. Louis in April at the Sheldon Concert Hall

* Turning to news of coming attractions, saxophone colossus Sonny Rollins is playing this week at the Vancouver Jazz Festival. Rollins will be in St. Louis in September to play a Jazz St. Louis-sponsored show at the Touhill Performing Arts Center.

* Meanwhile, trumpeter Chris Botti is playing at LA's Greek Theatre this weekend. Botti also will be here in September, at the Fox.

* Singer Kurt Elling also is north of the border this week, performing at the Edmonton International Jazz Festival. For a limited time AOL Music is streaming Elling's new CD Dedicated to You: Kurt Elling Sings the Music of Coltrane and Hartman for free. Released June 23 on Concord Jazz, it features saxophonist Ernie Watts, The Laurence Hobgood Trio and the string quartet ETHEL accompanying Elling. You can stream the album here. Elling will perform the Hartman/Coltrane material here in December at Jazz at the Bistro, with St. Louis' own Willie Akins taking Watts' part.

* Finally, from the "general interest" files, no doubt there's been plenty of gloomy news in the jazz world recently, from the cancellation of festivals this year in New York, St. Louis, and lots of other places to Jazz Times magazine's recent suspension of publication. However, veteran critic Josef Woodard, writing in the Santa Barbara Independent, remains optimistic about the resiliency of the music and the people who play and listen to it: "Jazz retains its status as America’s greatest indigenous art form and the 20th century’s great musical invention, but the music and its facilitating institutions are facing ominous forces...(snip)...The bright side of this sobering downturn is that jazz is a survivor...Jazz will out, but those of us who need it may have to go some extra miles to satisfy our needs. It won’t be the first time."

* And, in a demonstration of Woodard's point about jazz representing the very best of the United States of America, Jazz at Lincoln Center is now accepting band applications for the 2009-2010 Rhythm Road: American Music Abroad program. American music groups specializing in jazz, urban/hip hop and other American roots music including bluegrass, blues, Cajun, country, gospel and zydeco are invited to apply. Over the past four years, 108 musicians from 28 ensembles have toured with the program, visiting 97 countries on five continents. The program, now in its fifth year, is a collaboration with The U.S. Department of States Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. Applications are due by Aug. 10.

Jazz this week: Support your local jazz musicians

The Independence Day weekend is not usually a busy time for touring jazz acts visiting St. Louis, and that's true again this year. However, if you've got an urge to hear some jazz over the next few days amidst the flurry of backyard cookouts, fireworks displays, and similar seasonal activities, you can check out one or more of these performances featuring some of St. Louis' fine local musicians:

Tonight, Dizzy Atmosphere (pictured) will bring their blend of string-band swing and Gypsy jazz to the Missouri Botanical Garden in a free concert for the Whitaker Music Festival.

Due to the holiday weekend, there's no Jazz at Holmes concert this Thursday, and Jazz at the Bistro is dark this weekend, too. However, it's business as usual at the St. Louis Jazz Cafe, which will present pianist James Matthews' trio on Thursday night, Good 4 The Soul on Friday, Trio Tres Bien on Saturday, and the Dave Becherer Trio for Sunday brunch.

Of course, there are a number of recurring weekly gigs around town that are worth hearing, starting tonight with guitarist John Farrar's Park Avenue Jazz at Hammerstone's and pianist Ptah Williams at Riddle's. On Thursday, you can check out singer Gene Lynn at Sasha's on Shaw, and on Friday saxophonist Dave Stone continues his long running engagement at Mangia Italiano.

Since Saturday is the big holiday, I'm not sure if saxophonist Willie Akins will be doing his regular weekly performance that evening at Spruill's, and the club's infrequently updated Web site is little help; best to call ahead if you're thinking of going. Last but not least, on Sunday you can check out trumpeter Jim Manley and keyboardist Mark Friedrich at Jimmy's Cafe on The Park for brunch, and the St. Louis New Jazz X-Tet will play their usual Sunday night show at Riddle's. Looking beyond the weekend, there's a free show by saxophonist Bennett Wood at The Gramophone on Tuesday.

As always, you can find more listings of jazz-related events in St. Louis this weekend and beyond by visiting 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.)