Jazz this week: Grady Tate, Don Vappie and the Creole Jazz Serenaders, Carl Stone and more

It's a busy week for jazz on St. Louis stages, with three touring acts in town and a number of interesting local events happening as well.

Drummer and vocalist Grady Tate (pictured at left) is doing a four-night stand at Jazz at the Bistro, performing two sets a night through Saturday. Tate long ago secured his reputation as a top session drummer with literally hundreds of recordings, working with many famous musicians and entertainers, including Quincy Jones, Jimmy Smith, Lionel Hampton, Stan Getz, Pearl Bailey, Tony Bennett, Ella Fitzgerald, Aretha Franklin, Lena Horne, Peggy Lee, Della Reese, Sarah Vaughan, Michael LeGrand, Lalo Schrifin, Andre Previn, and the Tonight Show Band. Tate is also well-regarded as a singer - he actually had something of a pop hit in the 1960s with "Windmills of My Mind," from the original version of the film The Thomas Crown Affair - and given his proclivity for romantic ballads, and the fact that this gig has been billed specifically to tie into Valentine's Day, I'd expect to see him concentrating on vocals this weekend.

Just a couple of blocks away at the Sheldon Concert Hall, guitarist/banjoist Don Vappie and the Creole Jazz Serenaders (pictured at right)will bring their traditional New Orleans sound to town for a concert on Saturday night. Vappie was here last late in 2005 as part of the Big River benefit organized by Peter Martin at the Sheldon, and I guess the management liked what they heard enough to bring him in for his own show. While their material may be heavy on the standard New Orleans repertory, please don't call them "Dixieland," for Vappie and his ensemble are the real deal, not a bunch of straw-hatted, striped-shirt-wearing pretenders.

Then on Sunday, in what would be a rather head-whipping sort of musical contrast if you've been to see Tate and/or Vappie this week, electronic musician Carl Stone returns to town to do a concert for New Music Circle at Christman Studios. For more about Stone, see this post from last week.

On the local front, guitarist William Lenihan will do a free concert at Washington University's Holmes Lounge on Thursday night as part of the Jazz at Holmes series. On Friday, guitarist Todd Mosby and percussionist Henry Claude will perform the score for "Heaven Sense," a multi-media performance/installation at the Contemporary Art Museum. On Saturday night, Mosby and Claude will share a stage again as the Guitar Circus ensemble (also featuring guitarists Tom Byrne, Walker McClellan and Dan Rubright and tuba player David Hartung) performs in concert at Trinity Presbyterian Church, 6800 Washington.

Looking beyond the weekend, on Monday, Webster University's jazz faculty will present "Crossing The Bridge - Rollins and Hall Revisited," a program paying tribute to the famous collaboration between tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins and guitarist Jim Hall. Paul DeMarinis will stand in for Sonny - a tall order, to be sure, but I'm betting he's up to the task - while guitarist Steve Schenkel will take Hall's role, backed by Willem von Hambrecht on bass and Kevin Gianino on drums.

UPDATE: 2:30 a.m., 2/16/07 - The Rollins/Hall tribute concert at Webster U's Winifred Moore Auditorium will be followed by a screening of Saxophone Colossus, Robert Mugge's film about Rollins that includes some semi-infamous footage of Rollins performing in a old rock quarry - he broke his foot when jumping from the stage - as well as at the 1986 premiere of the tenor giant's "Concerto for Saxophone and Orchestra" in Japan. The screening is included in the $5 ticket price.

On Tuesday, trombonist Brett Stamps leads the SIU-Edwardsville Concert Jazz Band in a "Notes from Home" concert at the Sheldon. For more about that show, which is also something of a release party for Stamps' debut CD as a leader, see this post.

And for more about what else is going on in St. Louis jazz over the next few days, please see 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.)