StLJN Saturday at the Movies: Lester Bowie's New York Organ Ensemble

This week's videos showcase the late trumpet great Lester Bowie, who grew up in St. Louis but is perhaps best known as a member of the Art Ensemble of Chicago. In addition to his work with AECO, Bowie led many different bands of his own, served as a key point of contact between Chicago's Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians and St. Louis' Black Artists Group, and for a time was married to another St. Louis music legend, singer Fontella Bass.

These two clips are from a 1992 performance by Bowie and the New York Organ Ensemble, most likely their show at the Jazzaldia Festival in San Sebastien, Spain. The NYOE was built around around the B-3 playing of Amina Claudia Myers, and gave Bowie a chance to give voice to the influences of gospel, soul, funk and blues found in many of the St. Louis avant-garde musicians of his generation.

One certainly can hear echoes of the church and a bit of New Orleans in this piece, which, in addition to Bowie and Myers, features St. Louis native Kelvyn Bell on guitar; Julian Priester on trombone; a young and skinny looking James Carter on tenor sax; and, although he's not credited onscreen, I'm pretty sure that's Bowie's Art Ensemble bandmate Famoudou Don Moye on drums.