Mardra and Reggie Thomas
After the almost-overload of last weekend's Jazz and Heritage Festival, it's kind of a light week for jazz concerts in St. Louis. But there's at least one concert of note, and plenty of music on local club stages, so let's review some of the choices. .
The biggest event of the week is probably tonight's concert by Mardra and Reggie Thomas for the Whitaker Music Festival at Missouri Botanical Garden. For the series' final jazz offering of the year, the Thomases - vocalist and pianist, respectively - will be backed by guitarist Rick Haydon, John Williams on drums and Zeb Briskovich on bass. This should be a good show - Reggie is one of the best keyboard players in the St. Louis area, and whenever he and Mardra work together, they've usually got something special up their sleeves. If the weather stays nice, look for a big turnout, too.
On Thursday, singer Rosie Carlino makes her St. Louis debut at Finale. I haven't heard any of Ms. Carlino's music yet, and from the description on her Web site (warning: poorly thought-out Flash interface), she may be as much of a pop performer as a jazz singer. But word has it that she'll have some top local jazz players in her backup band for this gig, including Haydon and bassist Tom Kennedy, so if that sounds like it might be your sort of thing, check it out.
Finale also will present the fine guitarist Corey Christiansen tonight, so if you're still up for some live music after the show at the Garden, there's potential for a solid double-header there. Elsewhere this weekend, Crossings has Farshid Etniko, the duo version, on Thursday and the Jim Manley Trio on Wednesday; and various standing gigs around the city are still going strong, including Jeremy Davenport at Busch's Grove all weekend, Dave Stone doing his Friday night thing at Mangia Italiano and Willie Akins performing Saturday at Spruill's.
You can see more options by consulting the St. Louis Jazz Notes Calendar, which will be getting a major update over the next 48 hours as all the info for July gets entered.
(If you have calendar items, news tips, links, or anything else you think may be of interest to StLJN's readers, please email the information to stljazznotes at yahoo dot com.)
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