StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: Winter/spring 2019 jazz preview, part four

Today, it's part four of StLJN's winter/spring 2019 jazz preview, featuring videos of noteworthy jazz and creative music performers who will be coming to St. Louis in the first part of 2019. You can see part one of the series here, part two here, and part three here.

First up is a show that, chronologically speaking, should have been part of last week's post, but was left out due to a clerical error. That would be the upcoming appearance by trumpeter Jaimie Branch, cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm, and Ståle Liavik Solberg presented by New Music Circle on Saturday, February 9 at The Stage at KDHX.

Branch, a Chicago native who has gained international attention since moving to NYC a few years back, has her own working band, Fly or Die. But she's also played with a variety of other ensembles, including with Lonborg-Holm and Solberg (billed here as "The Party Knüllers") as seen in the first video up above, an excerpt from a show in June 2018 at Da Vinci Art Alliance in Philadelphia.

After the jump, we get back on schedule with Marilyn Maye, known as "the grand dame of cabaret," who will present her show "It's Better with a Big Band" on Wednesday, March 6 and Thursday, March 7 at Jazz St. Louis. The video is an excerpt from Maye's 90th birthday party (!) last April at Feinstein's/54Below in New York City, in which she sings "Guess Who I Saw Today" and "Fifty Percent."

Maye will be followed at Jazz St. Louis by another distinctive vocalist, Kurt Elling, who will check in for a five-night run at the Bistro starting Wednesday, March 13 and continuing through Sunday, March 17.

Elling can be seen in the second video after the jump singing the Julian Priester/Tommy Turrentine composition "Long As You're Living" at the International Jazz Day 2018 All-Star Global Concert in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Though he'll have his regular working band in St. Louis, here he's backed by a group including Branford Marsalis (tenor sax), Terri Lyne Carrington (drums), Antonio Farao (piano), and Ben Williams (bass).

That same week, New Music Circle will present flute player and composer Nicole Mitchell’s Liberation Narratives, featuring poet Haki Madhubuti, on Saturday, March 16 at Xavier Hall on the St. Louis University campus.

"Liberation Narratives" also is the title of Mitchell's 2017 album featuring Madhubuti, but since there doesn't seem to be any live-performance video of the two of them available online, the next clip offers a look at Mitchell, her Black Earth Ensemble, and poet Jamila Woods doing a set in 2017 at "Centennial Brooks," a gathering in Chicago of scholars, writers, musicians, and fans paying tribute to Gwendolyn Brooks, the first African-American poet to win the Pulitzer Prize.

Next up, it's guitarist Ralph Towner, who will be doing a solo performance on Wednesday, March 20 at Graham Chapel on the Washington University campus. Towner is featured in the fifth video playing his original composition "The Reluctant Bride."

Also on Wednesday, March 20, the eclectic ensemble MarchFourth will make their return to St. Louis with a show at the Old Rock House. You can see a representative example of their syncretic style, which draws on everything from marching bands to Afrobeat, jazz, rock and more, in the penultimate video, a mashup of The Doors' "Roadhouse Blues" and the JBs' "Doing It To Death" (misidentified as 'James Brown's "Funky Good Time"') recorded in 2017 at the Sioux Falls Jazz Fest in Iowa.

Today's final video feature singer Michael Bublé, who will be performing on Friday, March 22 at the Enterprise Center. While there's an argument to be made that Bublé at this juncture is more of a pop performer that a jazz singer, he still touches enough different stylistic bases to merit including a clip of him singing "Haven't Met You Yet," recorded in October 2018 on the Australian TV show Sunrise.

Look for part five of StLJN's winter/spring 2019 jazz preview next week in this space. You can see the rest of today's videos after the jump...