Notes from the Net: Miles, Motian and Fleck reviewed; Sanborn, Barber and Zorn on tour; Bridgewater interviewed and more

Bela Fleck and the Flecktones will perform
at The Pageant in St. Louis on Saturday, April 1

Reviews of Miles Davis' Cellar Door Sessions box set are still coming out, and here's another one, from Audiophile Audition via Avant Music News... Drummer Paul Motian's band, which includes former St. Louisan Chris Cheek on saxophone, is getting some good notices both for their latest CD and their live show...Bela Fleck and the Flecktones are due in St. Louis on April 1 to perform at The Pageant. Here's a review of their latest recording, The Hidden Land...Also coming soon is pianist Patricia Barber, who will make her St. Louis debut at Jazz at the Bistro on March 10 and 11. From there, it's on to, among other places, Carnegie Hall...John Zorn and a new edition of his Electric Masada Band were in the Twin Cities last week; while Marty Ehrlich was playing chamber music in New York City...The Chris Botti-David Sanborn tour reaches St. Louis on March 3 for a concert at the TouPAC. Here's a review from the first date of the tour last week in Des Moines, IA, and it sounds like a good time was had by all:

"It was a fun setup for a jazz gig: A pair of veteran horn players fresh to each other's onstage idiosyncracies, which guaranteed both crisp chops and a looser flair. Instead of the old opening act-headliner divide, Sanborn and Botti began together and traded off taking breaks throughout the nearly two-hour show to grant the other guy the solo spotlight."

Although the Sheldon may be throwing the most ambitious series of events in the US, others are taking note of Josephine Baker's 100th birthday, too. A retrospective screening of a number of her films recently took place in New York, and in Chicago, a new musical theater piece about Baker's early years is opening for a limited run. Meanwhile, Dee Dee Bridgewater, who will be at the Sheldon in April to help kick off the Baker celebration, was recently interviewed by DJ Leroy "The Jazzcat" Downs.

Closer to home, the "We Always Swing" concert series in Columbia, MO is now in the record business, too, issuing Soulful Serendipity, a duo CD featuring the late pianist James Williams and saxophonist Bobby Watson that was recorded live at a house concert in Columbia is 2003...And did you know that Preservation Hall Jazz Band business manager Russell Jaffe is now living in St. Louis? I sure didn't, until I saw this story from, of all people, KSDK sportscaster-turned-Baxteresque-newsman Mike Bush.

And finally, for this week's dose of deep thinking, check out this article about the new book Jazz Consciousness: Music, Race, and Humanity (Wesleyan University Press) and the accompanying interview with the author, musicologist and bass clarinetist Paul Austerlitz. A short excerpt:

"As we have seen, genre, race, and nation are "invented traditions" that are strategically invoked to further particular agendas. In the same way, "planetary humanism" is an unabashedly strategic and utopian reaching-out for universalism. By usurping the unmarked category to refer to jazz and by appropriating Euro-classical influences, African American musicians seize power. This power manifests itself not only in ideas about music and in the musical experience, but even in the mind-set that remains when the sound stops. So while it cannot be divorced from the power-plays that permeate social life, jazz consciousness creates an aesthetic space that reconfigures the mind-set.

Reed player Anthony Braxton articulates an overt vision of musical utopianism. He argues that "trans-African music" is a means of humanizing the world, a means of liberating all people. While he developed in the black nationalist milieu of the AACM, Braxton espouses an inclusive approach that embraces Euro-classical music (especially Schoenberg) as well as the music of white jazzers (especially the saxophonists Warne Marsh and Paul Desmond). Braxton argues that, as survivors of slavery, African Americans have a special place in world culture, that the humanizing power of black music can liberate all people from the shackles of closed-mindedness. Du Bois agreed that African Americans have "a contribution to make to civilization and humanity, which no other race can make." Jazz consciousness is central to this contribution."