StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: Spotlight on Peter Martin

This week, we feature a couple of videos with pianist Peter Martin, a St. Louis native who has worked with internationally known jazz musicians such as Dianne Reeves, Chris Botti, Christian McBride and many others. Martin will be playing a free solo concert at 7:00 p.m. next Friday, July 17 in the Saint Louis Art Museum's Grigg Gallery as part of the museum's Art After Five series.

The clip up top is an excerpt from a free performance at the Sheldon Concert Hall earlier this summer that was scheduled at the last minute when Martin's concert for the Whitaker Music Festival at Missouri Botanical Garden was rained out. Martin is joined by fellow St. Louisan Montez Coleman on drums plus Reginald Veal on bass and Victor Goines on saxophones.

Down below, you can see Martin in a 2004 performance at the Jazz Baltica Festival with singer Dianne Reeves, playing "You Go To My Head" with a band that also includes trumpeter Roy Hargrove, bassist James Genus and drummer Greg Hutchinson.

Martin also has his own YouTube channel, which features a mix of travel videos, piano instruction, and some performance clips, including a nice one of him doing a solo performance of "Viva La Vida", a tune from the rock band Coldplay that's also featured on Martin's new solo piano CD Set of Five. Alas, none of those clips can be embedded here, because they're all in widescreen format, which breaks the Blogger layout template, but you can see them all by going here.