This just in: Saxophonist Branford Marsalis (pictured) and pianist Joey Calderazzo, who has played with Marsalis for 13 years as part of his quartet, will perform in a duo concert at 7:30 p.m. Sunday, January 22 at the Sheldon.
Marsalis and Calderazzo in June of this year released a duo CD, Songs of Mirth and Melancholy, on the saxophonist's Marsalis Music label. The disc generally has received very favorable reviews, such as this one from Jazz Times' Jeff Tamarkin and this one from AllAboutJazz.com's Mark F. Turner.
Single tickets for Branford Marsalis and Joey Calderazzo at the Sheldon are $45 for orchestra seats, $40 for the balcony, and will go on sale at 10:00 a.m. Saturday, October 8 via MetroTix.
With nice weather forecast for St. Louis for the next few days and a diverse menu of music that includes both fine local players and big-name touring acts, it should be a good weekend to get out and hear some live jazz. Let's go to the highlights:
Also tonight, the Jazz at Holmes series at Washington University presents a free concert from a group billed as "St. Louis Swing." Though announcements from the JAH series typically list the musicians who are playing, the description for this week doesn't mention anyone specifically: "Featuring a 7-piece band consisting of clarinet, trumpet, trombone, banjo, piano, bass, and drums, this performance will run the gamut of swing music from Count Basie and Lester Young to Benny Goodman." I really have no idea why they're being so darned cryptic about the lineup of players, but if you enjoy that era of jazz, it's a free show, so why not check it out, right?
On Friday, Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra return to St. Louis to perform once again at the Sheldon Concert Hall as part of a benefit for the Sheldon's educational programs. At last word, this show was very close to a sell-out, but if you really want to go, it may be worth it to call the Sheldon directly to see if there have been any last-minute cancellations or returns.
Also on Friday, the funk/fusion/rock/jam band Garage A Trois will be back in town for a show at 2720 Cherokee. For more about them, plus a sampling of their performances on video, see this post that ran here on StLJN before their last St. Louis gig in August 2010.
And if that's not enough, there's still more fusion on Friday, thanks to the debut of the new local group Rare Departure, who that evening will open a two-night stand at Jazz at the Bistro. The band features Rick Haydon (guitar), Miles Vandiver (drums), Zeb Briskovich (bass), Jason Swagler (alto sax) and Adaron "Pops" Jackson (keyboards) playing electrified fusion jazz in the style of Weather Report, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Yellowjackets, and Return to Forever.
In addition to all of the above on Friday, bassist Bob DeBoo will lead a quartet with Ptah Williams on piano and Willie Akins on tenor sax at Robbie's House of Jazz; and guitarist Tom Byrne will bring his trio with bassist Chris Watrous and drummer Ron Carr to the Cigar Inn in Belleville.
On Saturday, singers Jeanne Trevor and Wendy Gordon will be at Robbie's to perform "Billie Holiday & Nina Simone Meet," a cabaret show devised by Gordon. There's a package deal that includes dinner before the show; see the website or call Robbie's for details.
On Sunday, guitarist and singer George Benson (pictured) will be back in town for the first time in more than five years to perform at the Touhill Performing Arts Center under the auspices of Jazz St. Louis. As one of the most famous jazz musicians of the last 40 years, Benson likely needs no further introduction to readers of this site, but if you'd like to sample some of his guitar prowess on video, check out this post from last Saturday. Also, Benson recently spoke with Calvin Wilson of the Post-Dispatch for an article that's now online here.
Looking beyond the weekend, on Monday Benson's keyboard player David Garfield is staying in town to join forces with saxophonist Jim Stevens for an early set at BB's Jazz, Blues and Soups; and on Tuesday, the St. Louis Jazz Orchestra, directed by bassist Jim Widner, will play at the Touhill.
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.)
The Riverfront Times' 2011 "Best of St. Louis" issue is out, and this year's winner for "Best Jazz Artist" is baritone saxophonist Hamiet Bluiett (pictured). (Bluiett also won the BOSTL award two years ago, with pianist Peter Martin getting the trophy in 2010. )
* Fans of legendary trumpeter and St. Louis native Clark Terry will be glad to know that his book Clark: The Autobiography of Clark Terry (pictured) is shipping now, and should be available at your favorite bookstore or online retailer soon. If you order a copy from Amazon.com using this link, StLJN gets a small (as in "a few cents") commission.
* The University City edition of Patch.com has coverage of last Saturday's U City Jazz Festivalhere, and a story about a proclamation from the U. City mayor honoring singer Jeanne Trevor here. Also, if you have a Facebook account, you can see some pictures of the event, posted by Jason Church of Smooth Jazz 96.3 HD-3 on his Facebook page here. UCJF organizer Mike Silverman told StLJN that plans already are underway for next year's festival.
Pianist Peter Martin will team with New Orleans trumpeter Wendell Brunious to provide the music for "ArtSounds: French Quarter Fête," an event to benefit the Sheldon Art Galleries to be held at 6:30 p.m. on Saturday, November 19 at the Sheldon.
Martin and Brunious will team with bassist Chris Thomas - who, like Martin, originally is from St. Louis - and drummer Jason Marsalis in a group billed as the New Orleans Modern Jazz Masters. Brunious, 56, has played with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band and the Eureka Brass Band and is the son of trumpeter John "Picket" Brunious, while Marsalis is the son of famed pianist and teacher Ellis Marsalis and the brother of musicians Wynton, Branford and Delfeayo Marsalis .
The evening also will include a viewing of artwork by artist Ralston Crawford, who though "often remembered for his pre-World-War II precisionist paintings of urban and industrial subjects...produced a significant body of work after 1949 inspired by the visual and auditory culture of New Orleans." The exhibit of Crawford's work currently on display at the Sheldon galleries contains more than 150 photographs, prints, paintings and films.
Patron tickets for the event are on sale now at prices from$100 to $500, and include a pre-concert cocktail and hors d’oeuvres reception with music from the Funky Butt Brass Band, VIP concert seating, a post-concert dessert reception and a tax deduction. Patron tickets can be purchased before Tuesday October 25 by calling the Sheldon’s development department at 314-533-9900.
Tickets for just the concert, which begins at 8:00 p.m., are $35 orchestra, $30 balcony, and will go on sale at 10:00 a.m., Saturday, October 22 via MetroTix or the Sheldon's website.
This week's Audio Archive entry features S.O.S., a 1977 session from the great baritone saxophonist Hamiet Bluiett. Recorded live at an NYC performance space called Axis, S.O.S teams Bluiett with a stellar rhythm section comprised of Don Pullen on piano, Fred Hopkins on bass and Famoudou Don Moye on percussion.
When originally issued as an LP on the India Navigation label, it featured a single track, "Sobre Una Nube (On a Cloud)" split between the two sides. That material was reissued along with five additional tracks in 1996 as a two-CD set, first in Japan using the original title, and later elsewhere, under the title Im/possible to Keep.
The track order on that 2-CD set (and on this downloadable version):
Disc 1 1. Oasis/The Well 2. Sobre Una Nube (On a Cloud)
Disc 2 1. Pretty Tune 2. Yusuf/Sankofa 3. Tune Up 4. R.B. (Dedicated to Ronnie Boykins)
Both of the CD reissues since have gone out of print, but fortunately, thanks to the music-sharing blog Pharoah's Dance, it's still available to hear and enjoy. To download a free copy of Hamiet Bluiet's S.O.S., go here, and scroll down to the third comment. There are four Rapdishare URLs there, each representing one of the four parts of the complete two-CD set compressed into a .zip file. From there, just copy, paste, download, unzip, and enjoy! (If you don't know how to use .zip files, this may be helpful.)
The StLJN Audio Archive links only to recordings that are out-of-print or that never have been commercially available. The purpose of the Audio Archive is encourage discussion, appreciation and knowledge of St. Louis jazz artists, and we encourage you to support them (or their estates) by purchasing authorized recordings and merchandise or, whenever possible, attending live performances.
For this week's video showcase, we train our gaze on guitarist and singer George Benson, who will be back in St. Louis to play next Sunday, October 2 at the Touhill Performing Arts Center as part of Jazz St. Louis' "Legends of Jazz" concert series.
Before Benson became a pop and R&B star via his renditions of vocal tunes such as "This Masquerade" and "On Broadway," he already had established a reputation as a top-notch jazz instrumentalist. His new album Guitar Man, which will be released next week on the Concord label, is being touted as something of a return to those roots, and in a nod to that release, today we look at some clips that emphasize Benson's considerable skills as a guitar player.
First up is a clip from 2008, featuring Benson performing the Jose Feliciano composition "Affirmation" at the North Sea Jazz Festival 2008 in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
Next up, we go back to 1992, to a show in Seville, Spain at which Benson fronted an all-star band led by George Duke in versions of two songs that happen to have a St. Louis connection: "Valdez In The Country," written by St. Louis native Donny Hathaway, and Miles Davis' "All Blues."
The final three videos come from a 1989 performance that teamed Benson with the trio of the great pianist McCoy Tyner, with Avery Sharpe on bass and Aaron Scott on drums. Benson cuts loose on three familiar jazz tunes - "Round Midnight," "Stella By Starlight," and "Alligator Boogaloo," demonstrating once again that he's got plenty to say with his guitar as well as his voice.
Here's the latest wrap-up of assorted links and short local news items of interest:
* The Miles Davis estate has responded to the story aired earlier this week on local NBC affiliate KSDK (and linked here) about the deteriorating condition of the trumpeter's childhood home in East St. Louis, stating that "The Miles Davis family spends thousands of dollars yearly to maintain the property which suffers from repeated vandalism." Read the whole statement here.
The first-ever U City Jazz Festival will be held this Saturday, and last week I was able to talk with organizer Mike Silverman about the event for a story that's now up on the Riverfront Times' music blog.
To access the offer, go to the event's listing on Metrotix.com, click "Buy Now" and when prompted, enter the discount code PM2011. The offer does not apply to VIP or student tickets.
As fall officially begins, it's another fairly busy week for jazz and creative music in St. Louis, so let's go straight to the highlights:
Tonight, the vocal group Take 6 will make their debut at Jazz at the Bistro, continuing with two sets a night through Saturday. Though primarily known as gospel and pop performers, Take 6 do have some jazz cred as well, both for the lush harmonies they've deployed skillfully throughout their career, and more specifically for their 2008 CD The Standard, which featured interpretations of jazz-associated songs ranging from "Sweet Georgia Brown" to "Seven Steps To Heaven." Presumably, they'll be leaning on that material a good bit this week, and perhaps doing some tunes from the more R&B-oriented album Beautiful World (2002) as well.
On Thursday, bassist Tom Kennedy is back in town to lead a trio with guitarist Bill Lenihan and drummer Miles Vandiver in a free concert for for the Jazz at Holmes series at Washington University.
Then on Friday evening, Peter Martin continues his ongoing concert series at the Sheldon, this time teaming up with New Orleans pianist David Torkanowsky (pictured) for a duo piano concert. Torkanowsky perhaps is best known for his work with the band Astral Project, but he has collaborated with many New Orleans musicians, including the Meters and various members of the Neville family.
Also on Friday, bassist Willem von Hombracht will lead a group featuring saxophonist Eric Schugren (from NYC) and drummer Cornell Fauler (from LA) at Robbie's House of Jazz; and guitarist Daryl Darden will bring a trio to the Cigar Inn in Belleville.
Saturday brings the first-ever U City Jazz Festival, a free, all-day outdoor event held in Heman Park on Olive Blvd. Performers will include singer Jeanne Trevor, Latin jazz band Clave Sol, the Classical Jazz Quartet, a student group billed as the U City Young Lions, and a band led by drummer Maurice Carnes that will do a tribute to John Coltrane. The event also will include a workshop for student musicians led by Carnes, guitarist Bill Lenihan and pianist Kara Baldus Vandiver. Also on Saturday, saxophonist Greg Lewis and Press Play will perform at Robbie's.
On Sunday, the eclectic string ensemble Bridge, with guitarist Dave Black, will play a concert at the Wildey Theatre in Edwardsville.
Looking beyond the weekend, on Monday pianist Kim Portnoy will lead a group in performance of some of his original compositions at Webster University's Winifred Moore Auditorium, and on Tuesday, the Bosman Twins are featured in a free outdoor concert at the Missouri History Museum in Forest Park as part of the museum's Twilight Tuesdays series.
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.)
Here's the latest wrap-up of assorted links and short local news items of interest:
* In advance of their gig this Wednesday through Saturday at Jazz at the Bistro, Joey Kibble of the vocal group Take 6 (pictured) did an interview with Calvin Wilson of the Post-Dispatch.
* Pianist Peter Martin, who will play a duo concert with pianist David Torkanowsky on Friday at the Sheldon, was the subject of a brief profile by the P-D's Deb Peterson.
* The new Miles Davis set of formerly bootleg live recordings from 1967 is reviewed by Terry Perkins for the St. Louis Beacon.
* Lastly, former P-D theater reviewer and restaurant critic Joe Pollack reports for St. Louis magazine on the London funeral of Fran Landesman, poet, writer and former co-owner of the Crystal Palace nightclub in St. Louis' Gaslight Square.
For this week's Audio Archive post, we reach back to 1965 for the first full-length recording by one of St. Louis' longtime favorites, singer Jeanne Trevor. Pow! Jeanne Trevor Sings!! originally was released on the Mainstream label and is revived here courtesy of the music-sharing blog Soundological Investimigations.
Drawing inspiration from the classic tradition of female jazz vocalists, most notably Ella Fizgerald, Trevor has been a staple on St. Louis stages for close to 50 years, and continues to perform today. In fact, she's on the bill for next Saturday's inaugural U City Jazz Festival.
For those interested in St. Louis' Gaslight Square era, this album is a must-hear, for it brings together three well-known acts from that time period on one recording. In addition to Trevor on vocals, Pow! also features the Quartette Trés Bien - Jeter Thompson (piano), Richard Simmons (bass), Albert St. James (drums), and Percy James (percussion), who are uncredited on the sleeve for contractual reasons - plus the ever-versatile Hugh "Peanuts" Whalum on tenor sax.
The album includes 12 tracks: "People Will Say We're In Love," "Don't Blame Me," "Get Out Of My Life," "I've Got You Under My Skin," "Four," "Lady With A Painted Smile," "Moonlight Serenade," "The Last Moment," "I Know That You Know," "From An Ancient Proverb," "The Lady's In Love With You," and "Visit Me."
Pow! Jeanne Trevor Sings!! never has been issued on CD, and vinyl copies recently have sold for $50 or more on various online auction sites. You can download it for free by going here and scrolling down to the first comment. You'll see three links, representing the file storage sites Sharebee, Multiupload, and Flameupload. Choose one, click on it, and follow the instructions.
The StLJN Audio Archive links only to recordings that are out-of-print or that never have been commercially available. The purpose of the Audio Archive is encourage discussion, appreciation and knowledge of St. Louis jazz artists, and we encourage you to support them (or their estates) by purchasing authorized recordings and merchandise or, whenever possible, attending live performances.
This week, we offer the third and final installment of our video overview of the fall 2011 schedule of touring jazz and creative music performers coming to St. Louis. (Part one can be seen here, and part two is here.)
On Friday, October 28, New Music Circle will present a concert at the Kranzberg Arts Center featuring music composed by James Mobberley and Paul Rudy, both of whom are associated with the Conservatory of Music at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.
In the video embed window up above, you can see and hear Mobberly's piece "Caution to the Winds" for piano and tape, recorded in 2008 in the Netherlands by pianist Kristina Sandulova. In the first window down below, you can find an excerpt from Rudy's performance, including both live and pre-recorded material, in 2009 at the Galileo 400th Anniversary event at the American Academy in Rome, Italy.
That same weekend, the Clayton Brothers Quintet will be in town on Saturday, October 29 to perform at the Sheldon Concert Hall. Oddly, there doesn't seem to be a single full-length performance video featuring the CBQ anywhere on the 'net, so the only available option for providing a taste of their music is a promotional clip, which combines still photos with a studio recording of the song "Brother to Brother" and is seen in the third embed window.
Below that, you'll find a video of guitarist John Scofield, who be in town with his jazz quartet to play Wednesday, November 2 through Saturday, November 5 at Jazz at the Bistro. The quartet, which offers a relatively straight-ahead jazz sound compared to Scofield's more funk-oriented projects, also includes bassist Ben Street, drummer Bill Stewart and pianist Michael Eckroth. This clip shows them playing "The Night Has A Thousand Eyes" at a concert on September 8, 2011 in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Reeves can be seen in the next embedded window, performing "Goodbye" at the 2010 North Sea Jazz Festival 2010 with a band that includes her longtime pianist and musical director, St. Louis' own Peter Martin. Below that, you can check out Jamal leading his quartet through a rendition of his signature tune "Poinciana" in October, 2009 at l'Espace Carpeaux at Courbevoie, France.
After that, singer Kurt Elling will be the next major touring jazz act in town, playing Wednesday, November 16 through Saturday November 19 at the Bistro. This clip of Elling features him singing Stevie Wonder's "Golden Lady" In November 2009 at the New Morning in Paris, joined by his trio - Laurence Hobgood (piano), Harish Raghavan (bass) and Otis Brown III (drums) - plus special guest Ernie Watts on tenor sax.
A couple of weeks later, the veteran pianist Ramsey Lewis will make his debut at the Bistro, performing there Wednesday, November 30 through Saturday, December 3 with his Electric Band. You can see them here playing Lewis' late-1970s hit "Sun Goddess," in a video taken from a performance in August 2011 at Duc de Lombards in Paris.
Next up is a clip of composer, violinist and multimedia artist Tony Conrad, who will be in St. Louis on Saturday, December 3 for a performance presented by New Music Circle at the White Flag Projects gallery. This particular video is an excerpt from a solo performance by Conrad in 2009 at the San Francisco Art Institute.
Last, but certainly not least, we have a clip of saxophonist and St. Louis native Greg Osby, who's coming back home to play Wednesday, December 14 through Saturday, December 17 at the Bistro. The video shows the first part of a performance of Osby's composition "Vertical Hold" by an ensemble that featured Osby on alto sax, with Steve Laspina (bass), Marc Copland (piano), Melissa Aldana (tenor sax) and Kendrick Scott (drums).
There's a touch of fall in the air here in St. Louis, and along with cooler weather, this weekend also will feature plenty of noteworthy jazz and creative music performances. Let's go the highlights:
On Friday, singer Kim Massie returns to Jazz at the Bistro for the first evening of a two-night stand. If you're planning on heading down, don't forget that the Bistro's new set times of 7:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. are now in effect for all shows.
Also on Friday, a group billed as the Pleasant Tones Trio, with pianist Dave Becherer, drummer Gary Sykes and bassist Daryl Mixon, will be at Robbie's House of Jazz, and guitarist Dave Black's trio plays at the Cigar Inn in Belleville.
On Saturday, there's a variety of musical choices, starting with this year's edition of the annual Old Webster Jazz and Blues Festival in downtown Webster Groves. The free, all-day outdoor event begins at noon and will feature performances from young blues singer/guitarist Marquise Knox, singer-songwriter Javier Mendoza's "Latin jazz" ensemble, the Funky Butt Brass Band, Webster University's jazz faculty ensemble, the Webster Groves High School jazz band, Alvin Jett and Phat Noiz, Jim Stevens, guitarist Tom Byrne's Pat Metheny tribute Have U Heard? and more.
That evening, the free-improvising multi-instrumentalist Joe McPhee (pictured) and his group Survival Unit III, with cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm and percussionist Michael Zerang, will perform at Kranzberg Arts Center in a concert sponsored by New Music Circle. For much more about McPhee and a selection of videos featuring him, see this post.
On Sunday afternoon, the St. Louis Jazz Club will have its annual picnic at the Concord Farmers Club, 10140 Concord School Rd, featuring music by the New Orleans R&B cover band Gumbohead, Time and Place, and Banjos & Brass.
Also on Sunday afternoon, Matthew Von Doran will present a guitar clinic at Music Folk, and that evening, pianist Phil Gomez and his Latin jazz band Clave Sol will play at BB's.
Looking beyond the weekend, on Monday bassist Willem von Hombrecht will lead a quartet in a concert at Webster University's Winifred Moore Auditorium , and drummer Joe Pastor's trio will perform at BB's.
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.)
One nomination is for the complete episode that originally aired in December 2010, which you can see online here, along with most of the other episodes of I Love Jazz produced to date. The other is for an educational segment featuring trumpeter Adam Hucke and Jazz St. Louis education director Phil Dunlap, and you can see that here.
Overall, HEC-TV received a total of 24 Emmy nominations, including "Station of Excellence." Along with Wolff, the team producing I Love Jazz includes John Baker, Madeline Dames, Julie Winkle and Christopher Martinez. This year's local Emmy winners will be named at a ceremony on October 22 at the Renaissance Grand Hotel.
* The Post-Dispatch had a nice feature by Amy Betrand on Sunday about the family of saxophonist Carlos Brown Jr., who plays with the East St. Louis High Sschool jazz band and the Jazz St. Louis All-Stars.
This week's Audio Archive post comes to us once again from the fine avant-jazz music sharing blog Nothing Is v2.0, and features Whisper of Dharma, a rare album by the Human Arts Ensemble that originally was issued in 1972 on the Committee for Universal Justice label (pictured, above left), and later reissued in 1977 on Arista Freedom (pictured, below left).
The Human Arts Ensemble was an offshoot of St. Louis' Black Artists Group, created as a vehicle for musicians of all races to perform together, while including a core of musicians from BAG. HAE first recorded under the nominal co-leadership of drummer Charles "Bobo" Shaw and saxophonist James Marshall, who conceived the idea, and then just Shaw, but from all accounts the group essentially functioned as a musical collective.
Whisper of Dharma was recorded on October 6, 1972 in St. Louis, and features of lineup of players that includes Shaw (drums, small instruments) and Marshall (alto sax, radong, wooden flutes) as well as Joseph Bowie (trombone, congas, small instruments), Oliver Lake (tenor sax, radong, flute, small instruments), J.D. Parran (tenor and sopranos saxes, bass clarinet, small instruments), Floyd Leflore (trumpet, small instruments) and Baikida E.J. Carroll (gong, small instruments). The album also marks the recording debut of Oliver Lake's son Gene Lake, now a respected professional drummer, then just 6 years old and credited on the session with drums and small instruments. Whisper of Dharma includes what in the original LP format were two side-long pieces, the title track and "A World New," and has never been reissued on CD.
To download a copy of the Human Arts Ensemble's Whisper of Dharma, go here, scroll down to the bottom of the post and click on the link that says "Download Whisper of Dharma." That takes you to a Rapidshare page with the download; look for the green button that says "download" and follow the instructions there.
The StLJN Audio Archive links only to recordings that are out-of-print or that never have been commercially available. The purpose of the Audio Archive is encourage discussion, appreciation and knowledge of St. Louis jazz artists, and we encourage you to support them (or their estates) by purchasing authorized recordings and merchandise or, whenever possible, attending live performances.
This week, let's take a look at some video clips of multi-instrumentalist Joe McPhee, who will be performing next Saturday, September 17, at the Kranzberg Arts Center in a concert presented by New Music Circle. The show will feature McPhee with his band Survival Unit III, which also includes Fred Lonberg-Holm on cello and electronics and Michael Zarang on percussion.
McPhee, who will turn 72 this year, was born in Miami, raised in Poughkeepsie NY, and now spends a lot of time in Chicago when he's not on the road. He began his musical career as a trumpet player, later learning to play saxophone at age 32 after being inspired by the music of John Coltrane, Albert Ayler, and Ornette Coleman, and currently performs on a variety of brass and reed instruments.
McPhee first recorded in 1967 with trumpeter Clifford Thornton, and made several albums as a leader for the small CMJ label before connecting in the mid 1970s with Werner X. Uehlinger, a Swiss businessman who founded the labels HatHut and HatArt specifically to record and release McPhee's music. Those recordings helped bring McPhee to the attention of European audiences as well as music critics and journalists in the USA, though paying work in his home country remained scarce for years. McPhee has continued to record prolifically, with more than 60 titles as a leader released on HatHut and several other independent labels.
During the 1980s McPhee developed his own concept of improvisation called "Po Music," influenced by composer Pauline Oliveros’ theories of "deep listening" and the book Lateral Thinking: a Textbook of Creativity by Edward de Bono. In the 1990s, he began collaborating frequently with Chicago-based musicians, including Lonberg-Holm and Zerang as well as reedman Ken Vandermark and trombonist Jeb Bishop. McPhee also plays in the group Trio X with bassist Dominic Duval and drummer Jay Rosen, and has performed with Peter Brötzmann, Evan Parker, Mats Gustafsson and many other notable improvising musicians.
There seems to be just one online clip available of McPhee with Survival Unit III, which was used here in part 1 of StLJN's fall jazz preview a couple of weeks ago. So today, we offer some videos showing McPhee playing in several different contexts, starting with some solo pieces.
The first one in the embed window up above is called "Pig Knuckles and Rice," and was recorded in March of this year at the University of the Streets in NYC. Down below, you can see and hear an excerpt from McPhee's performance at a tribute concert for saxophonist Albert Ayler presented last December in Paris. In the third slot, McPhee plays another solo piece, "Old Eyes (For Ornette Coleman)," recorded in May 2009 at The Local 269 NYC.
Below that, you can check out McPhee in a duo with bassist Dominic Duval, playing a loose interpretation of Thelonious Monk's "'Round Midnight," and below that, there's an excerpt from a 2010 duo performance with drummer Chris Corsano (who will play in St. Louis in January in another concert presented by New Music Circle.)
We wrap up with a two-part excerpt from a performance by Trio X in March, 2006 in Vilnius, Lithuania, a show that was released as a double LP by NoBusiness Records.
The fall season of presenting jazz and creative music in St. Louis gathers some momentum this week, as Jazz at the Bistro and Webster University open their 2011-12 seasons. Let's go to the highlights:
Tonight, saxophonist and East St. Louis native Andre Delano will perform with Good 4 The Soul at the Sheldon Concert Hall as part of the "Notes From Home" series. Another East St. Louisan, saxophonist Corey Allen, will open the show.
On Thursday, the Jazz at Holmes series at Washington University moves back indoors to its usual location in Ridgley Hall's Holmes Lounge for a free concert by trombonist Tom Hanson's octet, playing what's being billed as "West Coast jazz". Also on Thursday, guitarist and expat St. Louisan Daryl Darden, back home for a couple of weeks, teams up with keyboardist Curt Landes for a performance at the semi-private club Joe's Cafe.
On Friday and Saturday, the Funky Butt Brass Band (pictured) will open the 2011-12 presenting season at Jazz at the Bistro. Word is that each night they'll be performing some New Orleans favorites during the first set, and a mix of material, including songs from their new CD, in the second. Note also that the Bistro's new set times of 7:30 p.m. and 9:00 p.m. are now in effect, for this weekend and for all shows going forward.
It's also the weekend for the annual St. Louis Art Fair, which usually features a few performers of interest as part of its lineup of live entertainment. This year, Jazz St. Louis executive director Gene Dobbs Bradford will be playing with his blues band at 5:30 p.m. on Friday, and on Saturday, the event will include sets from Swing DeVille (11:00 a.m.), the Sheldon Jazz Quintet with Rick Haydon and Carolbeth True (3:30 p.m.), and the East St. Louis High School Jazz Band (6:30 p.m).
(The Art Fair and its producing organization Cultural Festivals, Inc are having some problems with their website at present - talk about bad timing! - but you can see the program book for the entire festival, which includes schedules for all the entertainment stages, in .pdf form here. )
Looking beyond the weekend, on Monday night the Webster University jazz faculty will open their annual concert series with a program called "It Was A Very Good Year: Great Jazz Recordings of 1961" at Winifred Moore Auditorium. Details on the setlist are scarce, but given the number of outstanding jazz recordings that came out that year, they've got plenty of good material from which to choose. Also on Monday, the Sessions Big Band returns to BB's.
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.)
Here's the latest wrap-up of assorted links and short local news items of interest:
* A new episode of HEC-TV's I Love Jazz began airing September 1 on the local cable network. The episode features performances by guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli and singer/pianist Tony DeSare from their concert earlier this year at the Sheldon, as well as stories about young musician Michael Ferrante of the Jazz St. Louis All-Stars and the East St. Louis High School Jazz Band's trip to New York City for the Essentially Ellington competition at Jazz at Lincoln Center. You can watch the whole episode online here.
* The Funky Butt Brass Band's new CD You Can Trust The Funky Butt Brass Band was reviewed by the RFT's Christian Schaefer.
* Jazz St. Louis still needs volunteers to help staff an information booth this weekend at the 2011 Saint Louis Art Fair in Clayton. Specificaly, JSL needs help from 7 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. on Saturday and from 10:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. and 1:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. on Sunday. If you're interested, email JSL's Devin Rodino at devin @ jazzstl.org or call him at 314-289-4144.
* Single tickets for the 2011-12 We Always Swing series in Columbia are on sale now via the organization's box office and Ticketmaster. Although this year's series includes a number of musicians who also will be playing St. Louis, there are several who, so far, do not have a stop scheduled here, including Nilson Matta's Brazilian Voyage with Anne Drummond and Vic Juris, singer Rene Marie, pianist Benny Green and guitarist Russell Malone.
It's been a bit slow around here for the last several days, thanks to the Labor Day weekend and a relative lack of breaking jazz-related news, but over at StLJN's sibling site Heliocentric Worlds, there's always a new music video posted each day, drawn from genres including jazz, blues, soul, funk, classic rock, prog rock and experimental.
Recent posts have includes performances from Bill Evans & Lee Konitz, Thelonious Monk, Erroll Garner, King Curtis & the Kingpins, the Duke Ellington Orchestra, Jim Hall, Bill Laswell's Axiom Sound System featuring Pharoah Sanders, the Allman Brothers Band, the O'Jays, Zawinul Syndicate, Bill Frisell, Barbara Dennerlein & Emily Remler, Janis Joplin, Roy Hargrove, Cecil Taylor, Hank Crawford, David "Fathead" Newman and Friends, Weather Report, Roswell Rudd, Bobby "Blue" Bland, Branford Marsalis Quartet, Dave Holland Quintet, Steely Dan, and the Dirty Dozen Brass Band.
Today, we continue with part two of our video sampler previewing some of the touring jazz and creative music performers who will be visiting St. Louis this fall. (For part one, see this post.)
First up is guitarist Stanley Jordan, who will be here with his trio to perform Wednesday, October 5 through Saturday, October 8 at Jazz at the Bistro. In this clip, recorded in 2009 in Italy, he's playing "Impressions" with bassist Aldo Mella and drummer Kenwood Dennard.
Down below, we continue with a video of pianist Matthew Shipp, who's performing on Friday, October 14 at 560 Music Center in a concert presented by New Music Circle. This clip features Shipp, bassist Michael Bisio and drummer Whit Dickey in an excerpt of performance recorded in April of this year in Cold Spring, NY.
Below that, we've got Troy "Trombone Shorty" Andrews and his band Orleans Avenue, performing the song "One Night Only" in June 2010 on the Late Show with David Letterman. Shorty and the band will return to St. Louis on Tuesday, October 18 to play at the Old Rock House.
Batting fifth today is keyboardist Jeff Lorber, who's coming to town to play Wednesday, October 19 through Saturday, October 22 at Jazz at the Bistro. Lorber's group of the gig will include saxophonist Eric Marienthal and bassist Jimmy Haslip, who, along with drummer Will Kennedy, can be seen with him in this clip doing Weather Report's "Mysterious Traveller" last September at Seattle's Jazz Alley.
Last but not least, it's saxophonist Sherman Irby, who will be in town to do a week-long educational residency for Jazz St. Louis that wraps up with performances on Friday, October 28 and Saturday, October 29 at the Bistro. Irby is seen and heard here with his group Organomics at Cecil's Jazz Club in West Orange, NJ. The other members of the band are Bruce Edwards (guitar), Fred McFarlane (organ) and Alvester Garnett (drums), and the tune is called "Organ Starter."
That brings us to the end of today's post, and takes us up to the end of October on the calendar. Next week in this space, we'll have something different - most likely, a more detailed look at an upcoming concert - but look for part three of the fall preview in two weeks...
As seems to be the case every year, the Labor Day weekend means that the jazz and creative music calendar in St. Louis is a bit sparse for the next few days. However, there still are a few noteworthy events happening, so let's go the highlights:
Tonight, guitarist and St. Louis native Daryl Darden is back home from the West Coast for a visit, and is playing at Robbie's House of Jazz with a group that will include pianist Nick Schlueter, drummer Leon King and bassist Willem von Hombracht.
Also tonight, drummer Bensid Thigpen opens the fall 2011 Jazz at Holmes series at Washington University, leading his trio and special guest vocalist Marsha Evans in a free outdoor concert on the Quadrangle at Wash U's main campus. For more on the fall 2011 Jazz at Holmes series schedule, see this post.
Also on Friday, guitarist Eric Slaughter's trio is back at the Cigar Inn in Belleville, and pianist Roley Overmeyer will play at Jazz on Broadway in Alton.
On Sunday, there's a benefit and jam session for the veteran saxophonist Willie Akins at the Ambassador Events Center's Klub Klymaxx. Akins has been diagnosed with prostate cancer, and although his prognosis is said to be good, the medical bills are piling up. No word on who the players at this benefit will be, but given Akins' reputation and long career in St. Louis, one would imagine there'll be a good turnout.
Looking beyond the weekend, on Monday night guitarist Tom Byrne's Pat Metheny-inspired project Have You Heard? will perform at BB's.
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.)
(Edited after posting to add the Jazz at Holmes show.)
This just in: Saxophonist Branford Marsalis (pictured) and pianist Joey Calderazzo, who has played with Marsalis for 13 years as part of his quartet, will perform in a duo concert at 7:30 p.m. Sunday, January 22 at the Sheldon.
