Jazz this week: The Bad Plus and more

The jazz and creative music concert schedule in St. Louis is not exactly jam-packed for the first full weekend of 2011, but I suppose that's all the more reason to get out and catch The Bad Plus (pictured) as they return to Jazz at the Bistro tonight through Saturday.

You can read my preview of TBP in this week's Riverfront Times, and to see some videos of the band playing material from their most recent CD Never Stop, check out this post from last Saturday.

Elsewhere around town, the new year seems to be getting off to a bit of a slow start. There's nothing jazz-oriented on tap this week at the Pageant, the Touhill or the Sheldon, and at this writing, Robbie's House of Jazz hasn't updated their website with schedule information for the new year. Area universities have yet to resume classes, and so the Jazz at Holmes series at Washington University has yet to announce their winter/spring 2011 schedule.

On the bar/restaurant scene, Mangia Italiano is under new ownership and will be closed for renovations until mid-month, thus temporarily sidelining their long-running Friday night attraction, saxophonist Dave Stone's trio.

To sum up, it looks like the 2011 concert schedule won't really get rolling until next week, but in the meantime, there are just a few more local gigs to commend to your attention.

On Thursday, saxophonist Dave Cheli will perform free improvisation with his sons, Kevin (drums & percussion) and Dominic (keyboards) at Stone Spiral Coffeehouse. and on Saturday, the Chelis will split a bill with flute player Fred Tompkins and pianist Jim Hegarty at the St. Charles Coffeehouse (which, name notwithstanding, actually is in St. Peters). Tompkins and Hegarty promise "some original music and our own versions of pieces by Ornette Coleman, Brian Eno and Douglas Ewart."

Looking beyond the weekend, BB's Jazz Blues and Soups has guitarist Tom Byrne's trio early on Sunday night, and the Sessions Big Band on Tuesday.

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.)