StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: Fall 2013 jazz preview, part 2

Today, it's part two of StLJN's Fall 2013 jazz preview, with videos spotlighting the various jazz and creative music performers who will be coming to town over the next few months. In part one, posted a week ago, we covered most of the month of September; today's segment takes up where that one left off, on Thursday, September 26.

That's when drummer and University City native Ronnie Burrage will return home for the first of three local dates that week, at Robbie's House of Jazz. The next two nights, on Friday, September 27 and Saturday, September 28, Band Burrage - which also includes saxophonist Rick Tate, singer Shenel Johns, bassist Nimrod Speaks, and St. Louis' own Eric Slaughter on guitar - will play at the Kranzberg Arts Center. In the clip up above, you can see an excerpt from a gig of theirs recorded just last month at the University Club in Philadelphia.

Down below, there's a video featuring pianist Antonio Figura, who also will be in St. Louis on Thursday, September 26, playing a free concert for the Jazz at Holmes series at Washington University. Though the clip is a promo for a Figura gig at La Palma Club in Rome, rather than a full performance, it seems to be the best/only footage online of him playing live in a trio setting. For his performance here, Figura will be supported by drummer Steve Davis and William Lenihan, director of Wash U's jazz program, on bass.

Below that, it's singer and pianist Diana Krall, who will be making her first St. Louis appearance since 2007 on Friday, September 27 at the Fox Theatre. In this video, shot at the 2013 Umbria Jazz Festival in Italy, you can see Krall and her band tacking a Bix Biederbecke number that she recorded for her most recent album, the 1920s-flavored Glad Rag Doll.

If Krall's carefully modulated cool isn't your sort of thing, there's something dramatically different on tap the following evening, as experimental duo Aluechatistas come to town on Saturday, September 28 to play the five-year anniversary celebration for KDHX's "Wrong Division" at Schlafly St. Louis Brewery & Tap Room. Guitarist Shane Perlowin and Ryan Oslance mix up free jazz, math rock, noise, and plenty of other musical ideas, as you can see in today's fourth video, a full set recorded in May of this year in Tallahassee, FL.

Below that, you can see excerpts from The Bad Plus' "On Sacred Ground: Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring," which the acclaimed trio will perform in a free concert sponsored by Jazz St. Louis on Thursday, October 3 at the Viragh Center for the Arts at Chaminade College Prep.

In addition to The Bad Plus' take on Stravinsky's most famous composition, the program also will feature a contingent of players from the St. Louis Symphony playing some of the composer's other works. (If you're interested in hearing The Bad Plus' entire performance of The Rite of Spring, you can hear the audio of their 2012 concert at NYC's Lincoln Center here.

Today's sixth clip features another St. Louis expat, multi-instrumentalist Marty Ehrlich, who's coming home for the first time in several years to play with his Rites Quintet in a concert presented by New Music Circle on Friday, October 4 at the Kranzberg Arts Center. In this video, the group - Ehrlich on reeds, James Zollar on trumpet, Hank Roberts on cello, and Michael Sarin on drums - plays the title song from their 2012 album Frog Leg Logic.

The same evening Ehrlich and company are at the Kranzberg, pianist Laurence Hobgood's trio will be joined by saxophonist Ernie Watts for the first of two nights at Jazz at the Bistro. Hobgood and Watts first played together under the auspices of the pianist's primary employer, singer Kurt Elling, for the 2010 album Dedicated To You - Kurt Elling Sings Music of Coltrane and Hartman and subsequent tour. They then joined forces again for a one-off gig (without Elling) last year at the Bistro, which went well enough that they're coming back to play a full weekend on Friday, October 4 and Saturday, October 5.

Since there's no real video documentation of the Hobgood-Watts combination as such, the clip you'll see in the seventh position is from one of Elling's gigs, and features a medley of "What's New," "Lush Life," and "Autumn Serenade", recorded in 2010 at the Umbria jazz festival.

Today's final video features the Brubeck Brothers band, led by the famed pianist's sons Dan Brubeck, a drummer, and Chris Brubeck, a bassist and trombonist, in a performance recorded last year at the Moscow Conservatory. Joined by guitarist Mike DeMicco and pianist Chuck Lamb (co-founder of the semi-fabled 1970s Midwest fusion band Dry Jack), the Brubecks will be in St. Louis on Saturday, October 5 to perform a tribute to their dad at the Sheldon Concert Hall.

Look for part three of StLJN's Fall 2013 jazz preview next week.