So What: Local News, Notes & Links

Here's the latest wrap-up of assorted links and short local news items of interest:

* Jazz St. Louis will celebrate the first-ever International Jazz Day with an open jam session from 7:30 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. on Monday, April 30 at Jazz at the Bistro. Pianist Adaron “Pops” Jackson’s trio will host. Admission is free and open to the public, though seating is limited. Musicians who want to participate are encouraged to sign up starting at 7:00 p.m. that night at the Bistro.

* Trumpeter Clark Terry's recently published autobiography was reviewed by The Australian newspaper.

* Trumpeter, singer and St. Louis native Jeremy Davenport (pictured) recently was featured in a photo essay in New Orleans magazine about the French Quarter. Davenport and his band are the house group at New Orleans' Ritz-Carlton Hotel.

* Last Thursday's performance by Béla Fleck and the Flecktones at the Sheldon Concert Hall was reviewed by KDHX's Jared Corgan.

* St. Louis Volunteer Lawyers and Accountants for the Arts has three more "Business Edge" workshops for artists and musicians coming up this month, starting with a "Copyright Clinic" next Monday, April 9. Next up is "Inside the Music Business: Legal Essentials," which was rescheduled for Monday, April 16 after an earlier date was canceled due to inclement weather. The series wraps with "Is It Okay? Fair Use for Filmmakers" on Monday, April 23.

All workshops take place from 7:00 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. at the Regional Arts Commission, 6128 Delmar (across from The Pageant). The cost is $10 in advance, $15 at the door, with advance registration recommended. For more information, visit the website or call VLAA at 314-863-6930.

* The Post-Dispatch's Sarah Bryan Miller reported this week that St. Louis may be getting a new classical radio station this summer. "The Radio Arts Foundation-St. Louis, which provided considerable financial support to the old "Classic 99," KFUO-FM, hopes to be on the air with a new FM station in early June, pending FCC approvals. The new station, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) corporation, will broadcast over a combination of regular analog radio, an HD-2 channel and live streaming over the Internet."

Initial funding is coming from The Centene Foundation, which gave $200,000 to get things started and has promised another $1 million, and a fundraising drive that will begin this month. The total cost, including operating expenses, is expected to be $5 million to $6 million over two years. Of particular interest to local jazz fans is a quote in the story from station manager Jim Connett, who said that the new station will feature "everything — chamber music, vocal music, choirs, opera, symphonic, jazz" and what he called "cultural programming." More on this story as it develops...