StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: Kneebody offers fusion "For The Fallen"

Today, StLJN's video spotlight shines on the group Kneebody, who will be returning to St. Louis to perform Wednesday, March 29 through Saturday, April 1 at Jazz at the Bistro.

Formed in 2001 in Los Angeles by four former students at the Eastman School of Music - keyboardist Adam Benjamin, trumpeter Shane Endsley, bassist Kaveh Rastegar, and saxophonist Ben Wendel - plus drummer Nate Wood, Kneebody has a hard-to-pigeonhole sound that might be called contemporary fusion, an evolution from 1970s/80s-style fusion in that it incorporates not only jazz and rock, but many other musical influences as well.

Their St. Louis gigs will be in support of their latest recording Anti-Hero, which was released earlier this month and is their eighth studio album. You can see an "album trailer" for Anti-Hero in the first video up above, which includes excerpts from the track "For the Fallen".

After the jump, there's a clip of an in-studio performance of "Uprising", another song from Anti-Hero. That's followed by two videos from Kneebody's gig at the venue Subculture during the Winter Jazz Fest in New York City in January of this year, capturing the beginning of their set, followed by the song "The Balloonist".

The final two clips, both from 2014 in Boston, show that the material released on Anti-Hero has been in development for some time, as you can see Kneebody play the album's title track at the Beantown Jazz Festival, and then, a set of music from the album performed at the Berklee School of Music Performance Center.

For more about Kneebody and Anti-Hero, check out the interview with the band published in February on Vice.com; Rastegar's video interview with For Bass Players Only from last November; and Wendel's 2015 interview with Jazz Times.

You can see the rest of today's videos after the jump...