Jazz this week: Houston Person, Zappa Plays Zappa, and more

Hard-swinging veteran tenor saxophonist Houston Person (pictured at left) returns to Jazz at the Bistro this week for a four-night stand that runs trhough Saturday. St. Louis jazz fans are quite familiar with Person by now, as he's appeared at the Bistro as both leader and co-leader several times in recent years. His soulful, meat-and-potatoes style, built on blues, bop and ballads, may indeed be from the "old school," but Houston is a musician of substance as well as a real crowd-pleaser. Some things, done well enough, never get old, and Person's classic approach would seem to be one of those things.

On Thursday night, the Zappa Plays Zappa tour, which has been on the road since the spring of this year, arrives at The Pageant. ZPZ is a repertory project of Frank Zappa music under the direction of his eldest son, Dweezil, and features a band of young unknowns fronted by DZ and guest stars Napoleon Murphy Brock, Steve Vai and Terry Bozzio. For more on what to expect, check out the interviews Dweezil did with RFT's Michael Allen Goldberg here and the Post-Dispatch's Calvin Wilson here, as well as StLJN's previous coverage here, here and here.

On Saturday, the Pageant has the smooth jazz package show "A Holiday Celebration" with singer Will Downing, guitarist Norman Brown and saxophonist Gerald Albright. Sales for the first performance were brisk enough that the The Pageant added a second show at 11:00 p.m., and as of this writing it seems that tickets are still available for that late show. You can also see a brief video interview with Albright, courtesy of the ever-handy YouTube, in the embedded window below.

UPDATE: 3:00 a.m., 12/14/06: STLtoday now has online an Q&A with Will Downing by P-D pop critic Kevin Johnson. For concert-preview purposes, the key quote is:

"This is a glorified regular show," Downing said..."We throw in a few Christmas songs to get everybody into the holiday spirit. But me, Gerald and Norman do the best of the songs we're known for, and then we throw in Christmas. That's the excuse to come back to town."

Some other noteworthy sounds this weekend nclude singer Valerie Tichacek at Cookie's Jazz and More on Thursday; trumpeter Jim Manley's Wild, Cool and Swingin' at the same venue on Friday; and the Willem Von Hambrecht Trio with Debby Lennon at Crossings Taverne and Grille on Saturday. On Sunday, the St. Louis Jazz Club is having its annual Christmas Party, featuring music by Jean Kittrell and the St. Louis Rivermen, at the Moolah Shrine Center, and guitarist Tom Byrne does a free, in-store matinee performance at Webster Records.

For more of this week's jazz events, please consult the St. Louis Jazz Notes Calendar.

(If you have calendar items, band schedule information, 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. No attachments, please.)