Jazz this week: David Sanborn Trio, Guitars and Saxes, Miles Davis Jazz Festival, and more

The weather in St. Louis is brutally hot this week, but if you can brave the scorching conditions enough to leave the house, there are several shows of interest to jazz fans happening during the next few days.

Most notably, saxophonist and former St. Louisan David Sanborn (pictured) and his current trio featuring organist Joey DeFrancesco will be in town on Monday and Tuesday to play at Jazz at the Bistro.

The gigs are benefit performances intended to raise money for Jazz St. Louis education programs. Regular tickets are priced at $50 and are being sold through Metrotix, and there also also are some VIP packages; call Jazz St. Louis at 314-289-4030 for information on those. To see some video clips of Sanborn and DeFrancesco in action earlier this year, check out this post.

On Friday, the 2010 edition of the smooth jazz package tour Guitars and Saxes comes to the The Pageant. This year's tour features saxophonists Kirk Whalum and Gerald Albright and guitarists Jeff Golub and Peter White. For some video clips of Golub and White, see this post, and you also can see Whalum and Albight in some excerpts from their 2009 "Sax for Stax" tour here.

On Saturday, the fifth annual Miles Davis Jazz Festival takes place at the Commons at Lewis & Clark Community College, 5800 Godfrey Road in Godfrey, IL. This year's featured performers are saxophonist Michael Anthony Fitzgerald, guitarist Brian White, the Howard Neal Band, Chicago-based saxophonist Michael Salter's 5-piece band Freakjar and Kansas City saxophonist Dave Panico, with KMOV's Vickie Newton serving as MC. Advance tickets can be purchased at the Alton Museum of History & Art and at Bossa Nova Lounge in Alton, or by calling 618-462-2763.

Elsewhere around town, Robbie's House of Jazz tonight will feature the Mark Pedigo Trio, with Pedigo on piano, bassist Nick Shea and drummer Matt Milunski. On Friday, the club has drummer Joe Winstein-Hibbs and the Webster Jazz Collective Quartet, and on Saturday, it's trumpeter Anthony Wiggins' quartet.

And it's also the weekend for the annual St. Louis Cabaret Conference, a summer conclave of performers, directors and teachers that also features several live public performances. Tonight, singers Liz Callaway and Jason Graae will perform at the Sheldon Concert Hall; on Friday, Rick Jensen performs at the Kranzberg Arts Center, and on Saturday, Tim Schall takes the stage at Kranzberg. The weekend wraps up with a showcase for conference participants on Sunday night at the Bistro at Grand Center.

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.)