Jazz this week: Greater St. Louis Jazz Festival, San Gabriel Seven, THF Realty All-Stars, BAG II & the Poets Collective, and more

This week's biggest jazz event is the Greater St. Louis Jazz Festival, which features daytime clinics and workshops for area student musicians as well as three major evening performances open to the public.

The first of those performances happens tonight at Jazz at the Bistro, where festival guest artists Bobby Watson (pictured, alto sax), Mike Metheny (trumpet) and Steve Wiest (trombone) will play two sets with a rhythm section featuring UMSL jazz program director Jim Widner on bass, Ken Kehner on piano, Miles Vandiver on drums and Bob Borgestede on guitar.

On Friday at the Touhill Performing Arts Center, Watson, Metheny and Wiest will perform in concert with the UMSL big band, directed by Widner. And on Saturday at the TouPAC, acclaimed composer/arranger Gordon Goodwin's Big Phat Band will close out the festival with what I think is their debut performance in the St. Louis area and one of their few Midwest dates this year.

Elsewhere in town: Finale Music and Dining features smooth jazz saxophonist Rod Tate on Thursday, and the return of the California based Latin-jazz-fusion group San Gabriel Seven on Friday. Back at Jazz at the Bistro, the THF Realty All-Stars, a group of standout young musicians drawn from Jazz St. Louis' ongoing educational programs, will perform on Friday and Saturday nights. (As an aside, It's too bad these shows had to be scheduled the same nights as the student-friendly festival shows at the TouPAC; here's hoping that perhaps next year festival co-sponsors UMSL and Jazz St. Louis can avoid a similar conflict.)

On Thursday at Washington University, the final Jazz at Holmes concert of the spring 2007 semester will feature drummer Bensid Thigpen, a member of the original Black Artists Group and the brother of drumming great Ed Thigpen. He'll lead a band featuring Chad Evans on sax, Ptah Williams on piano, and Daryl Mixon on bass. As always, the Jazz at Holmes concerts are free and open to the public.

On Friday, there's another free Black Arts Guild show at the Scott Joplin House State Historic Site, featuring BAG II's "The Group," with Zimbabwe Nkenya, Jerome "J-Dubz" Williams and Glenn "Papa" Wright, and the Poets Collective, which includes Shirley Bradley LeFlore, Michael Castro, K. Curtis Lyle, Blue-Mashibini, Charles Wartts and others.

There are also a couple of noteworthy shows at Lemp Neighborhood Arts Center this week. On Thursday, the South Side performance space will present Graham Reynolds and the Golden Arm Trio. Hailing from Austin, TX, Reynolds is best known as the composer responsible for the music used in A Scanner Darkly, the recent screen version of Phillip K. Dick paranoid sci-fi classic directed by fellow Austinite Richard Linklater and starrring rotoscoped, animated versions of Robert Downey Jr. and Keanu Reeves. St. Louis electronic musician Eric Hall will open the show.

Then on Sunday, LNAC presents Megafaun, described as "an unusual group that combines elements of 'old-timey' folk and traditional music with a story-telling performance art production." Also on the bill are LNAC's head honcho Mark Sarich, with "a set of 'at the threshold of audibility' cello work along with some newly composed electronics," and a third performer yet to be confirmed.

There's even more going on this weekend and beyond, so to see a more complete listing of St. Louis jazz and creative music events, please visit 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.)