StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: Winter/spring 2012 jazz preview, part one

This week, we've got the first installment of a video preview of jazz and creative music bands and musicians who will be coming to St. Louis to perform this winter and spring.

First up are The Bad Plus, who will return here to kick off the New Year playing Wednesday, January 4 through Saturday, January 7 at Jazz at the Bistro. In the clip up above, they're performing "Beryl Loves to Dance" during a gig earlier this year at the Dakota Jazz Club in Minneapolis.

Down below is a clip of saxophonist Ravi Coltrane who will follow TBP into the Bistro, performing there Wednesday, January 18 through Saturday, January 21. Here, Coltrane and his band - Luis Perdomo on piano, Drew Gress on bass and drummer E.J. Strickland - can be seen playing Ornette Coleman's "Tribes of New York" at Chicago's Jazz Showcase in December 2010. (Note that since it was uploaded when YouTube still restricted the length of individual videos, the performance is divided into two parts in separate embed windows.)

Next up is a short interview clip featuring saxophonist Branford Marsalis and pianist Joey Calderazzo, who will come to town for a duo concert on Sunday, January 22 at the Sheldon Concert Hall. In this clip, part of a series of promo videos for their recent duo CD Songs of Mirth and Melancholy, you can hear a bit of the recording session while Marsalis and Calderazzo discussed how they picked the tunes for the album.

Below that is a solo clip of percussionist Chris Corsano, who will be in St. Louis for a concert presented on Saturday, January 28 at Kranzberg Arts Center under the auspices of New Music Circle. The video shows an excerpt from an improvised set in 2009 at the Sonic Arts Research Centre in Belfast, Ireland.

For something completely different, check out the next video from organist Dr. Lonnie Smith, who will be here Wednesday, February 1 through Saturday, February 4 at Jazz at the Bistro. The gospel-flavored "Pilgrimage," from Smith's 2009 CD Rise Up, features him providing a variety of organ textures in support of guitarist Jonathan Kreisberg, with additional underpinning from drummer Jamire Williams.

The next video features pianist Chucho Valdés and his Afro Cuban Messengers, who are set to play on Saturday, February 11 at Sheldon Concert Hall. Here, they're playing "Zawinul's Mambo," which incorporates bits of Weather Report's "Birdland" in 2010 at the Jazz San Javier festival in Spain. The musicians are Valdés, Lázaro Rivero (bass), Juan Carlos Rojas (drums), Carlos Manuel Miyares (tenor sax), Reinaldo Melián (trumpet), Yaroldy Abreu (percussion), and Dreiser Durruthy (percussion, batá, vocals).

After that, you can see a clip of "Hofim" from saxophonist and clarinetist Anat Cohen, who will perform with her quartet Wednesday, February 15 through Saturday, February 18 at Jazz at the Bistro.

Today's final video feature trumpeter and singer Byron Stripling, who will do a week-long educational residency for Jazz St. Louis culminating in performances on Friday, February 22 and Saturday, February 23 at the Bistro. In this clip, Stripling sings and plays the standard "St James Infirmary" with the student big band from Texas A&M University.

Look for part two of the winter/spring 2012 jazz preview next week...