Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Jazz this week: Kevin Eubanks, Keyon Harrold, RnR with Rick Braun & Richard Elliot, and more

This week's schedule of jazz and creative music in St. Louis is atypically busy for this time of year, but rather than complain about a surfeit of potential choices, let's go to the highlights:

On Thursday, guitarist Kevin Eubanks, back on the road playing jazz again after wrapping up a long stint as bandleader on NBC's Tonight Show, performs at the Casino Queen.

Also on Thursday, guitarist Chris Burchett does a free concert for the Jazz at Holmes series at Washington University, and Robbie's House of Jazz presents the JW Trio, with bassist Nick Jost, drummer Joe Winstein-Hibbs and vibraphonist Ben Portner.

On Friday, trumpeter and St. Louis native Keyon Harrold (pictured) returns home from NYC with his quintet to begin a two-night stand at Jazz at the Bistro, ostensibly in celebration of the release of his CD Introducing Keyon Harrold, which came out in the fall of last year on the Criss Cross label. Harrold is considered a rising star among jazz trumpeters, and also has gotten some high-profile sideman gigs with various R&B and hip-hop performers. For more about him and some video performances, see this post from a couple of weeks ago.

(Jazz St. Louis is offering a two-for-the-price-of-one discount on tickets for Harrold's sets on both Friday and Saturday. It's available by calling the Jazz St. Louis office at 314-289-4030, or at the door. To get the discount, use promotion code KHJUL10.)

Also on Friday, The Pageant begins a late-summer series of smooth jazz shows with RnR, featuring trumpeter Rick Braun and saxophonist Richard Elliot. To see video of them laying down some of their popular funk-flavored sounds, check out this post.

That same evening, guitarist Eric Slaughter's trio will be at Robbie's; and the blues documentary film M for Mississippi, a co-production of the St. Louis based Broke & Hungry Records, finally gets an official local premiere nearly two years after its release with a screening at the south side rock club Off Broadway.

On Saturday afternoon, singer Erika Johnson will conclude up the Nu-Art Series' summer set of concerts featuring local jazz vocalists, performing the music of Anita O'Day in a matinee concert at the Metropolitan Gallery downtown.

Then on Saturday evening, singer Anita Rosamond plays a free concert in Lafayette Park; the 2010 St. Louis Tap Festival wraps up with the annual "All That Tap" extravaganza at the Touhill Performing Arts Center; and the Tim Aubuchon Quartet plays at Robbie's House of Jazz. Aubuchon is a tenor saxophonist and an assistant professor of music at Truman State University in Kirksville, and he'll be backed pianist Ken Kehner, drummer Brian Steever and bassist Kevin Hennessey.

For more jazz-related events in St. Louis this weekend and beyond, please visit the St. Louis Jazz Notes Calendar, which can be found on the left sidebar of the site or by clicking here. You also can keep up with all the latest news by following St. Louis Jazz Notes on Twitter at http://twitter.com/StLJazzNotes or clicking the "Like" icon on the StLJN Facebook page.

(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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