StLJN Saturday at the Movies: Tri-Factor (with Hamiet Bluiett) meets Bateau Lavoir, plus John Zorn's Masada performs live

Since last week's video post featured a couple of singers doing well-known standards, it seemed appropriate to take this week's clips in a completely different direction, spotlighting a couple of efforts that most would categorize as "avant-garde" or "experimental".

The first clip is from a collaborative performance involving the group Tri-Factor, featuring St. Louisan Hamiet Bluiett on baritone sax, Billy Bang on violin and Kahil El'Zabar on percussion, and a Belgian group called Bateau Lavoir.

Formed in 1998, Bateau Lavoir combine spontaneous music with improvised video, and that's what's purportedly going on in this clip, which is from an event called "2Shot7" and was recorded in 2003 in Antwerp. Their lineup at the gig with Tri-Factor included Thomas Campaert, Giles Thomas and Patries Wichers, with Markus Hansen providing the visuals. This particular clip isn't the greatest quality, but since it's rather unusual it seemed worth sharing anyway.

Today's second video is of a performance by one of the better known lineups of John Zorn's Masada, playing a composition called "Karaim" in 1999 at the Warsaw Summer Jazz Days festival in Poland. For this concert, the band was made up of Greg Cohen on bass, Joey Baron on drums, Zorn on alto sax and Dave Douglas, who will be playing at Jazz at the Bistro next month with the SF Jazz Collective, on trumpet. (Astute readers will note that Douglas' upcoming gig isn't the only St. Louis connection in this video, though, as Zorn actually spent a year here in the Gateway City during the mid-1970s studying music at Webster University.)