StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: Winter/spring 2015 jazz preview, part 4

Today, we continue with part four of StLJN's winter/spring 2015 jazz preview, covering the touring bands and musicians who will be be performing here during the first half of the year. (Parts one through three can be found here, here, and here.)

For this week's edition, we turn the calendar ahead to the third week of March, when a band fronted by saxophonist Lou Marini, trombonist Steve Wiest, and trumpeter Clay Jenkins will headline the show on Friday, March 20 for the Greater St. Louis Jazz Festival at the Touhill Performing Arts Center.

Up above, you can see Marini back in 2009, playing the head and soloing on the Crusaders' "Bayou Bottoms" at a 2009 gig in Los Angeles with an ensemble apparently called California Roll.

Down below, you can see Wiest at a show in June 2014 with Denver's Metropolitan Jazz Orchestra, taking one of the featured roles in "Superbone Meets The Badman," which composer/arranger Jay Chatterly wrote back in the 1970s for Maynard Ferguson.

In the third clip, you can see Jenkins playing the Tadd Dameron bebop standard "Hot House," accompanied only by student drummer Stockton Helbing at a masterclass in November 2013 at Oklahoma State University.

Video number four features the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra, who will headline the closing show of the Greater St. Louis Jazz Festival on Saturday, March 21 at the Touhill.

It's a full concert performance, recorded in 2011 at Jazzwoche Burghausen in Germany, and features guest vocals and guitar on a number of tunes by St. Louis favorite John Pizzarelli, who recorded his album Dear Mr. Sinatra with the CHJO.

(Alas, Pizzarelli won't be along for the GSLJF show, but St. Louisans will have another chance to catch him and Jane Monheit this spring when they headline the annual benefit gala for the Sheldon Concert Hall on Saturday, April 18.)

Next up is pianist and singer Freddy Cole, who will return to our town to perform Wednesday, April 1 through Saturday, April 4 at Jazz at the Bistro. Cole, the brother of singer and pianist Nat "King" Cole, is a familiar figure to St. Louis audiences from numerous appearances here over the years, but if you haven't seen him perform before, there's a complete show, undated but recent, recorded at New Morning in Paris that will give you a good idea of what to expect.

Today's penultimate clip features saxophonist Eric Person, who of course is originally from St. Louis but has made his home in NYC for the past couple of decades. He'll be back, though, on Thursday, April 2 to play with a trio in a free show for the Jazz at Holmes series at Washington University. Person can be seen here with bassist Joseph Lepore and drummer Shinnosuke "Shin" Takahashi playing Rahsaan Roland Kirk's "Black Diamond" in 2011 at Smalls in NYC.

Last but certainly not least today is guitarist John Abercrombie, who will be here the following Tuesday, April 7 to do a free performance with his quartet, also for the Jazz at Holmes series. We'll be doing a video showcase specifically about Abercrombie closer to the show date, but for now you can check out some very brief excerpts from a show he did in October in Japan with pianist Marc Copland, bassist Phil Donkin and drummer Anthony Pinciotti.

Look for part five of the 2015 winter/spring jazz preview in this space next week. You can see the rest of today's videos after the jump...