Friday, April 25, 2014

So What: Local News, Notes & Links

Here's the latest wrap-up of assorted links and short local news items of interest:

* Yesterday, the New York Times' City Room blog ran a short feature on saxophonist Hamiet Bluiett, who's recovering from two strokes in the last two months, but nevertheless is planning to perform this Saturday.

Bluiett is living in NYC again after spending several years back home in southern Illinois, but according to the NYT article, continues to have financial as well as health difficulties and is getting help from the Jazz Foundation of America.

* The news is considerably better for fellow saxophonist, St. Louis expat, and World Saxophone Quartet co-founder Oliver Lake, who this week was named one of 20 winners of a 2014 Doris Duke Artist Award. The prize is worth a minimum of $225,000 over a three to five year period, with possible additional funding of another $50,000 if certain conditions are met.

* Enjoy The View, saxophonist David Sanborn's new album with Joey DeFrancesco, Bobby Hutcherson, and Billy Hart (pictured above with Sanborn), is now available for pre-order from iTunes, with immediate digital delivery of the preview track "Delia."

Meanwhile, Sanborn is wasting no time getting to work on his next recording, this week launching a PledgeMusic campaign to finance the costs. The album will reunite him with bassist Marcus Miller in the studio for the first time in nearly 15 years.

In addition to the usual premiums like downloads of the album, signed CDs, and VIP concert tickets, Sanborn is offering plenty of high-end options, too, including private concerts (which, for locations in the USA, start at $25K plus expenses) and the chance to have him play a solo on your recording ($7,500 when done from Sanborn's home studio).

* Trumpeter Clark Terry was the subject of a feature story in the New York Observer.

* Pianist and former St. Louisan Tom McDermott's collaboration with producer, songwriter and musician Van Dyke Parks was featured on New Orleans community radio station WWNO's "American Routes" program.

* Saxophonist Eric Person will take part in a tribute to the late drummer Chico Hamilton next Tuesday, April 29 at The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music in NYC. Person worked with Hamilton for eight years and made several albums with him.

* The Route 66 Jazz Orchestra has posted on Facebook an album of photos from their recent performance at the Kirkwood Station Brewing Company.

* Speaking of photo albums on Facebook, The Gramophone has posted one with shots from Davina and the Vagabonds' performance there last weekend.

* Singer Joe Mancuso is profiled in the new issue of Uptown magazine.

* The late St. Louis pianist and ragtime historian Trebor Tichenor is the subject of a tribute on the website West Coast Ragtime (incorporating StLJN's item on Tichenor's passing, with our permission according to Creative Commons licensing.)

* Jazz radio update: This Saturday's episode of Calvin Wilson's program "Somethin' Else" on Radio Arts Foundation-St. Louis will put the bass in the place with performances from Ron Carter, Gary Peacock, Esperanza Spalding, and more.

Then on "The Jazz Collective," Jason Church is offering tunes from Richard Smith, Les Sabler, Jeff Lorber Fusion, Stan Sargeant, John Klemmer, Fourplay, Béla Fleck and the Flecktones, Richard Elliot, and Tommy Halloran's Guerrilla Swing.

Wilson's program airs at 8:00 p.m. Saturdays, followed by Church at 9:00 p.m., on 107.3 FM, 96.3 HD-2, and online at http://www.rafstl.org/listen.

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