More on Headhunters 2005

What looks like a slightly updated version of the Billboard story about Herbie Hancock's new ensemble of Headhunters linked here last week is now on the wires, and there are a couple of added details. First, Paul Simon and Angelique Kidjo have been added to the guest list on Hancock's next album, due this fall. And the second tidbit, the one of local interest, was that St. Louis is one of just a handful of cities that are going to see the updated version of the Headhunters this summer.

It seems that Hancock will be the guest artist-in-residence at this year's Bonnaroo Festival in Tennessee, and so presumably was looking for some surrounding dates within easy travel distance. I wanted to point this out because St. Louis seems to be passed over by a lot of touring artists, and there are many major figures in jazz who have appeared here once or twice in the last twenty years (Sonny Rollins, I'm looking at you!) or not at all (Hello, Cecil Taylor? Come on down!), so it's kind of cool that, for once, we're getting something that most of the rest of the country won't get to see (at least until Hancock's new record comes out at the end of the summer).

(Edited on May 15 to add: Steve Pick tells me that Cecil Taylor has performed in St. Louis at least once. In 1989. Taylor was booked to play the VP Fair (!) over the Fourth of July weekend, but ran into travel problems and missed his set time down at the riverfront. He wound up playing an impromptu concert that night at the Prestige Lounge in Gaslight Square, since torn down and replaced by a new housing development. If anyone reading this was at that performance, I'd love to hear your account of it. Notwithstanding this new information, for which I am indebted to the always well-informed and erudite Mr. Pick, I still wish someone would bring Taylor back to St. Louis for a proper concert.)