After a couple of relatively slow weeks to start the new year, this week's musical offerings include several touring jazz performers playing on St. Louis stages. Let's go to the highlights:Saxophonist Javon Jackson's Superband, featuring former Miles Davis sideman Jimmy Cobb on drums and Ronnie Matthews on piano, performs at Jazz at the Bistro starting tonight and continuing through Saturday. Jackson's recent recordings have been compared by some critics to the 1970s CTI releases from players such as Stanley Turrentine and Grover Washington Jr., and while Jackson (pictured) definitely can bring the funk when the situation calls for it, he also can play modern, hard bop and straight-ahead swinging jazz very well. This week's engagement likely will include some of all those styles, perhaps with a bit more straight-ahead playing than on some gigs due to the most welcome presence of Cobb, who was the drummer on Miles Davis' landmark Kind of Blue.
On Friday and Saturday, trumpeter Chris Botti plays the Touhill Performing Arts Center. I wrote a Critic's Pick about Botti for this week's Riverfront Times, and you can read it online here.
Also on Friday, the Pablo Ziegler Quintet for New Tango with special guest singer Claudia Acuna performs at the Edison Theatre on the Washington University campus. It's not clear from the publicity just how large a role Acuna has in this production, but from what I can tell, Ziegler, who worked with tango legend Astor Piazzolla, certainly seems worth hearing in his own right.
UPDATE - 11:55 p.m., 1/16/08 - Terry Perkins interviewed Ziegler for an article in Thursday's Post-Dispatch, elucidating the pianist's connection with Piazzolla and answering my question about Acuna: she'll sing seven songs with Ziegler's group. Read the whole article here.
On Sunday, BAG returns to the Scott Joplin House State Historic Site to pay tribute to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. with a program called "One for King," featuring performances from the BAG Trio, poet Michael Castro, and more. Admission is free, and the concert is billed as being "family friendly."
Some other local gigs of note: Brandt's has the Richard Fuller Quartet on Thursday, Trio Tres Bien on Friday and Mo & Dawn on Saturday, while Cookie's Jazz and More will present Kim Massie on Friday and the Carolbeth True Trio on Saturday. Looking beyond the weekend, the Sessions Big Band performs at BB's Jazz, Blues and Soups on Monday night.
For more local jazz-related events, 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. If you have photos, MP3s or other digital files, please send links, not attachments.)
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