The Tony Monaco Trio
Finale Music and Dining has added a couple more shows to their summer schedule that will be of interest to St. Louis area jazz fans.
Organist Tony Monaco, a disciple of the blues-and-bop organ style pioneered by Jimmy Smith, is set to make his St. Louis debut at the club on Wednesday, July 26. Although he seems to be best known on the East Coast, Monaco's most recent CD was popular enough to show up on Jazz Week's national best-seller chart for several months, and judging from the testimonials on his Web site, he's held in high esteem by his fellow organists, especially Joey DeFrancesco, who penned a very laudatory endorsement of Monaco's skills. From the little of I've heard of his music, he sounds like the real deal, and since I like jazz organ, I'm looking forward to hearing him in person.
The following week, smooth jazz guitarist Denny Jiosa will check into the Clayton club on Saturday, August 5. In addition to his main Web site, Jiosa's got a MySpace page here, and you can read a brief interview with him here. (Scroll about 1/4 of the way down the page.)
With both Monaco and Brian Auger, who's playing Finale on Wednesday, August 2, both working at the second-floor club, one can't help but wonder about the difficulties of getting a Hammond organ up in there. Patrons can access Finale either by stairs or an elevator that, although I haven't measured it, seems like it would be a tight fit for a B-3. I saw Auger's Hammond up close when he played in St. Louis at Generations a couple of years ago, and while he's removed the pedals and some of the cabinetry, it's still a very large piece of gear. On the other hand, given that there's a hotel in the same building, there's bound to be a freight elevator somewhere around there. But even so, I can't imagine it's too much fun being the B-3 roadie.
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