Peter Martin, Romero Lubambo to play Thursday, December 13 at The Sheldon

Having recently completed a commissioned composition celebrating the Sheldon Concert Hall's 100th anniversary, pianist Peter Martin now is set to return to the Sheldon for another performance in his eponymous concert series when he teams once again with guitarist Romero Lubambo (pictured) for a show at 8 p.m., Thursday, December 13.

Lubambo, a native of Brazil who's now based in NYC, has worked with Martin in singer Dianne Reeves' band and has played with many other jazz and Brazilian performers, including Trio da Paz, Astrud Gilberto, Al Jarreau, Ivan Lins, Flora Purim and Airto, Kenny Barron, Paquito D’Rivera, Harry Belafonte, Luciana Souza, Dave Douglas, and more. He and Martin previously performed together at the Sheldon in December, 2010.

Tickets for Peter Martin and Romero Lumbabo will go on sale at 10:00 a.m. this Saturday, November 3 via Metrotix. Prices are $50 for VIP preferred seating, which includes free parking; $35 orchestra; and $30 balcony. There's also a student ticket offer of "buy one, get one free" for the balcony only.

Jazz this week: Terell Stafford, Nevermore Jazz Ball, Taylor Ho Bynum Sextet, Cornet Chop Suey, and more

The autumn parade of jazz trumpeters in St. Louis continues this week with two more well-known touring musicians, even as the complete menu of upcoming local jazz and creative music events offers a variety of styles from avant to trad. Let's go to the highlights....

Tonight, trumpeter Terell Stafford opens a four-night engagement that continues through Saturday at Jazz at the Bistro. Stafford and his quintet are expected to showcase material from his album The Side of Strayhorn, a tribute to the music of composer and Duke Ellington associate Billy Strayhorn released last year on the St. Louis based MAXJAZZ label. In addition to the leader, the band includes Stafford's longtime associate Tim Warfield on saxophone, Bruce Barth on piano, Rodney Whitaker on bass and Dana Hall on drums. For more about Stafford and the Strayhorn project, check out this post from last Saturday.

Tomorrow night, saxophonist Rob Nugent and singer Kim Fuller will headline a free concert for the Jazz at Holmes series at Washington University. They'll play music primarily drawn from the collaborations between saxophonist Cannonball Adderly and singer Nancy Wilson, both of whom recorded for Capitol Records back in the 1960s and early 1970s.

Thursday also is the first night of the Nevermore Jazz Ball, a weekend-long series of events for swing dancers and fans of traditional jazz presented by Lindy Hop St. Louis. The Ball gets underway Thursday evening with the Sidemen performing at Atomic Cowboy. On Friday, Miss Jubilee and the Bella Rue Jazz Band will play for dancers at Casa Loma Ballroom.

The NJB's Cherokee Street Jazz Crawl on Saturday afternoon will present free live music from a dozen different acts at various venues and businesses along Cherokee St. Then on Saturday night, the New Orleans-based Meschiya Lake & Dem Little Big Horns will headline another evening of music for dancing at Casa Loma. Lake and her band also will play on Sunday evening at Atomic Cowboy for the Festival's "lagniappe." The Nevermore Jazz Ball also includes a number of dance classes and contests as well as other events; see the website for the complete schedule.

Elsewhere on Thursday, saxophonist Paul DeMarinis will play at Robbie's House of Jazz, with basically the same band that gigged at Jazz at the the Bistro a couple of weeks ago billed under the co-leadership of DeMarinis and guitarist Dave Black. Joined by pianist Nick Schlueter, bassist Ben Wheeler, drummer Kyle Honeycutt, and singer Debby Lennon, DeMarinis and Black will feature primarily original compositions from the various members of the group.

On Friday, Indianapolis-based jazz harpist Jan Aldridge Clark will play at Robbie's, backed by Bob DeBoo on bass and Kyle Honeycutt on drums; and drummer Paul Shaw leads a trio with vibraphonist Tom Rickard and bassist Bob DeBoo at Cigar Inn in Belleville.

On Saturday afternoon, Terell Stafford will present a free performance and workshop at Saxquest.

Then on Saturday night, cornet player and composer Taylor Ho Bynum's Sextet (pictured) will perform in a concert presented by New Music Circle at Luminary Center for the Arts. Adventurous yet relatively accessible, the group brings together a diverse lineup musicians who all are bandleaders in their own right, including Mary Halvorson (guitar), Jim Hobbs (alto sax), Bill Lowe (bass trombone & tuba), Ken Filiano (bass), and Tomas Fujiwara (drums). For more about Bynum and some extended video footage of the Sextet in concert, see this post from a couple of weeks ago.

Also on Saturday, singer Joe Mancuso leads a quintet at Jazz on Broadway in Alton, and singer/pianist Curt Landes will front a trio at Robbie's.

On Sunday afternoon, Saxquest will host another workshop and performance featuring the Oasis Saxophone Quartet, while the St. Louis Jazz Club will present their monthly concert, this time featuring traditional jazz and swing from Cornet Chop Suey at the Doubletree Hotel in Westport.

Looking beyond the weekend, on Monday guitarist Tom Byrne and Have You Heard? will do their Pat Metheny-inspired thing at BB's Jazz, Blues and Soups, and Webster University's student jazz combos will perform at the college's Community Music School, located at 535 Garden Ave in Webster.

For more jazz-related events in and around St. Louis, 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.)

Saxquest to host free events with Oasis Saxophone Quartet, Dan Thomas, Trio Chymera

Saxquest, the south side shop that sells and repairs woodwind instruments and also houses a museum of vintage saxophones,  has announced several additions to their schedule of free workshops and performances featuring visiting musicians.

In addition to the event at 2:00 p.m. this Saturday with trumpeter Terell Stafford previously mentioned in this post, Saxquest also will host a performance and clinic by the Oasis Saxophone Quartet at 1:00 p.m. this Sunday, November 4.

The Oasis Sax Quartet (pictured) is dedicated to presenting contemporary works for saxophone quartet, as will as standard and transcribed repertoire. Members of the group include Nathan Nabb, a professor at Stephen F Austin University in Texas who performs with the St Louis Symphony and Houston Symphony; James Bunte, who teaches at at the University of Cincinnati and plays with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra; Dave Camwell, a jazz performer, clinician, and teacher at Simpson College in Iowa; and James Romain, who's assistant director of jazz studies at Drake University and performs with the Minnesota Orchestra and the Des Moines Symphony Orchestra.

Other recent additions to the Saxquest schedule are events featuring saxophonist Dan Thomas on Friday, November 16; and Trio Chymera, with saxophonists Leo Saguiguit and Neil Osterkamp, on Saturday, December 8.

Thomas, who's originally from Canada, now is based in Kansas City, where he co-chairs the jazz department at the UM-KC Conservatory of Music and Dance along with former Jazz Messenger and fellow saxophonist Bobby Watson. Trio Chymera, which also includes pianist Rachel Aubuchon, is a chamber music group based at the University of Missouri in Columbia, where Saguiguit teaches and Aubuchon recently earned her masters' degree in music.

All events will be held at Saxquest, 2114 Cherokee St., and are free and open to the public.

Chris Vadala to perform with bands from Western Illinois U, Webster Groves HS on November 7 at Jazz at the Bistro

Saxophonist Chris Vadala is coming to St. Louis to perform with student jazz groups from Western Illinois University and Webster Groves High School at 7:30 p.m., Wednesday, November 7 at Jazz at the Bistro.

Vadala, who teaches at the University of Maryland and also is a clinician for Selmer saxophones, still is perhaps best known among jazz fans for his long association with trumpeter Chuck Mangione, during which he toured all over the USA and the world and performed on five gold and two platinum albums.

He also has played live or on recording sessions with many other well-known musicians, including Dizzy Gillespie, Quincy Jones, B.B. King, Chick Corea, Ella Fitzgerald, Aretha Franklin, Placido Domingo, Sarah Vaughn, Natalie Cole, Herbie Hancock, Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder, Henry Mancini, Doc Severinsen and Joe Lovano.

Vadala (pictured) will perform as a guest soloist with the Western Illinois University Jazz Studio Orchestra, directed by John Cooper, and the Webster Groves High School Jazz I ensemble, directed by Kevin Cole. Both bands will perform short sets, separated by a brief intermission. Tickets for the performance, which is presented by Jazz St. Louis, are just $5 and on sale now via Metrotix.

StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: A Terell Stafford sampler

As mentioned earlier here in this space, it's been a good fall season in St. Louis for fans of jazz trumpet, with gigs from the likes of Terence Blanchard, Wynton Marsalis, Christan Scott and Mike Metheny already completed and more to come.

More specifically, last week we featured some videos of the sextet of Taylor Ho Bynum (technically a cornetist, not a trumpeter), who will be here next Saturday to perform at Luminary Center for the Arts. Today, let's take a look and a listen to Terell Stafford, who's coming back to St. Louis to perform this Wednesday, October 31 through Saturday November 3 at Jazz at the Bistro.

Stafford has played in St. Louis a number of times in the last few years, most recently in March at the Bistro with drummer Matt Wilson's Arts & Crafts. Born in Miami and raised in Chicago and Silver Spring, Maryland, he earned degrees in music education at the University of Maryland and classical trumpet performance at Rutgers University before beginning his professional career.

In addition to performing with his own groups and Arts & Crafts, Stafford has played with well-known jazz musicians including Benny Golson, McCoy Tyner, Kenny Barron, the Jimmy Heath Big Band, the Jon Faddis Orchestra, the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, and the Clayton Brothers Quintet. He can be heard on more than 90 albums as a sideman, and has recorded six albums as a leader, the most recent of which, This Side of Strayhorn, came out in 2011 on the St. Louis based MAXJAZZ label. The album, which explores some of the compositions of Duke Ellington's longtime collaborator Billy Strayhorn, was Stafford's first to hit the Billboard charts and reached number one on JazzWeek's Jazz Radio Report.

Formerly a faculty member at the Julliard Institute of Jazz Studies in NYC, Stafford now serves as director of jazz studies and chair of instrumental studies at Temple University in Philadelphia and as a member of the board of the Jazz Education Network. In keeping with his interest in education, while he's in St. Louis to play at the Bistro, Stafford also will present a workshop at 2:00 p.m. Saturday, November 3 at Saxquest. He'll be accompanied by Eric Slaughter on guitar, Marty Morrison on drums, and Jeff Anderson on bass, and the event is free and open to the public.

Back at the Bistro, Stafford is expected to play material from his Strayhorn tribute, but unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be much in the way of online video documenting previous performances of those songs. So instead, we've got a sampler of Stafford playing in a variety of jazz styles, starting with the first video above, in which he demonstrates his considerable skills playing a ballad at the Mid-Atlantic Jazz Festival earlier this year.

Down below, there's a clip of Stafford playing the standard "Taking a Chance on Love" back in 2006 at the Jazz Baltica festival, fronting a band with saxophonist Tim Warfield, bassist Martin Wind, Matt Wilson on drums and the formidable Mulgrew Miller on piano.

We fast-forward a couple of years for the next clip, a rendition of the hard-boppish "Berda's Bounce" recorded in 2008 at the Dakota Jazz Club in Minneapolis with Warfield, Bruce Barth on piano, Phil Palombi on bass, and Dana Hall on drums.

In the fourth clip, we're back in 2012 as Stafford teams up with Chady Eby (tenor saxophone), Peter Edwards (piano), Rodney Whitaker (bass), and Jerome Jennings (drums) to play the New Orleans chestnut "Second Line" at Trinity Church in London.

Below that are a couple of clips providing additional insight into Stafford's playing. The first documents a recording session for saxophonist Paul Carr's album Standard Domain, and shows Stafford soloing on four different takes of pianist Joey Calderazzo's "Bye George." The sixth and final clip features a brief interview Stafford did earlier this year in Vancouver, in which he talks about his approach to music and the Strayhorn project.

For more, you can hear Stafford and his quintet performing material from This Side of Strayhorn on this NPR broadcast, recorded last year at NYC's Village Vanguard. The trumpeter also talks about the Strayhorn project in this interview published last year on AllAboutJazz.com.











(Edited after posting to fix a garbled paragraph and some type-formatting issues.)

So What: Local News, Notes & Links

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

* Pianist and St. Louis native Tom McDermott, who now lives in New Orleans, turned up again in last Sunday's episode of the HBO series Treme, which is set in the Crescent City. McDermott and Connie Jones were shown performing the pianist's composition “Kermit’s Rag” at The Columns hotel. You can read a brief interview about the show that McDermott (pictured) did recently with NOLA.com here.

* Meanwhile, New Orleans native Wynton Marsalis was in St. Louis last week, leading the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra in a performance of his composition "Swing Symphony" with the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra. While Marsalis and JaLCO were in town, they also spent some time teaching and playing with the East St. Louis High School Jazz Band. You can read more about that in Terry Perkins' article for the St. Louis Beacon, found here, and see some photos in an album posted on the SLSO's Facebook page.

* Jazz St. Louis will begin their first educational residency of the 2012-13 season next Monday, October 29 with a week-long return visit from well-known jazz educator Dr. Gene Aitken. A former winner of DownBeat Magazine’s Jazz Educator of the Year and a member of the International Jazz Educators Hall of Fame, Aitken will work with Jazz St. Louis’ JazzU ensembles, and conduct a series of lectures, workshops, and clinics at area schools including Ladue High School, Riverview Gardens High School, Seckman High School, Parkway South High School, Bishop DuBourg High School, and Webster Groves High School, the University of Missouri-St. Louis, and Webster University.

* And speaking of Jazz St. Louis, they've posted to their Facebook page an album of photos from last week's performances by yet another New Orleanian, trumpeter Christian Scott, at Jazz at the Bistro. Nextbop.com also just published an article on Scott's new quintet lineup here.

Jazz this week: Legacy Jazz Quintet, LNAC's 9th annual Noisefest, TKT Scholarship Concert, St. Louis Jazz Orchestra, and more

Although this weekend's calendar of jazz and creative music in St. Louis doesn't include any major touring headliners, there's plenty of activity from local and regional performers in a variety of styles from big band to free improv. Let's go to the highlights...

Tonight, saxophonist Ron Goff plays a free concert for the Jazz at Holmes series at Washington University, and the Tavern of Fine Arts presents its monthly "Avant-Garde Arts Night" featuring live improvised music.

On Friday, the Legacy Jazz Quintet will settle in for the first of two nights at Jazz at the Bistro. Led by Jazz St. Louis education director Phil Dunlap on piano, the group offers interpretations of classic jazz compositions, concentrating on the material from the hard-bop and post-bop eras.

Friday also is the first night of Lemp Neighborhood Arts Center's ninth annual "Noisefest/Festival of Mid-Western Contemporary Experimental Music." The event continues on Saturday and Sunday and will include a performance of Cage's "Imaginary Landscapes No. 4", sets from Jason Zeh, Kevin Harris, NNN Cook, Tony Renner and others; a modular synthesis workshop, and more.

Also on Friday, trumpeter Jim Manley will take the stage at Robbie's House of Jazz; saxophonist Tim Cunningham is at Jazz on Broadway in Alton; and the Willie Akins/Montez Coleman group plays at Cigar Inn in Belleville. If you're more in the mood for vocals on Friday, Joe Mancuso will be performing in concert at City Music & Education Center, while Al Fischer will open a two-night run of his cabaret show "Breaking The Rules" at the Kranzberg Arts Center under the auspices of the Presenters Dolan.

On Saturday, the Bosman Twins (pictured) will team with pianist Don Carson (Atlanta), bassist J. Michael Kearsey (Portland), and drummer Mike Scavatto for one of their semi-annual "Reunion Jazz Band" performances at BB's Jazz Blues and Soups. Also on Saturday, guitarist Dave Black does an early evening solo set at the Broadway Oyster Bar, and fellow plectrist Bryan Vaccaro leads a trio at the Wine Press.

On Sunday, there are big bands on both sides of the river, starting with the Tommy Money Orchestra playing a matinee concert at the Olin Theater on the campus of Lewis & Clark Community College in Godfrey. Then that evening, the Dave Dickey Big Band plays their monthly gig at Kirkwood Station Brewing Company. Also on Sunday evening, guitarist Eric Slaughter leads a trio with singer Erika Johnson at Herbie's Vintage in the Central West End.

Looking beyond the weekend, on Monday the annual TKT Scholarship Concert will take place at Wesbter University. The concert raises money for music scholarships in the names of Terry Jackson, Tony Saputo and Kirk Cappello, three Webster alumni who in 1991 were killed in a plane crash while touring with singer Reba McEntire. This year's theme is "A Centennial Celebration: Jazz Interpretations of the Music of Jimmy Van Heusen," with Van Heusen's compositions to be performed by the Webster jazz faculty and special guests including singer Erin Bode and bassist and St. Louis native Steve Kirby, who now heads the jazz program at the University of Manitoba in Winnepeg.

On Tuesday the St. Louis Jazz Orchestra under the direction of bassist Jim Widner will present "A Night of Duke Ellington" at the Touhill Performing Arts Center. Also Tuesday, Steve Kirby will stay in town for a gig at BB's Jazz Blues and Soups, teaming with saxophonist Willie Akins, guitarist Tom Byrne and drummer Montez Coleman as the "St. Louis Legends Jazz Quartet."

For more jazz-related events in and around St. Louis, 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.)

2012 St. Louis International Film Festival to include music-related films, live performances

The schedule has been released for the 2012 St. Louis International Film Festival, and as in years past, the menu of movies includes several with musical subjects or themes.

This year's SLIFF will take place from Thursday, November 8 to Sunday, November 18, with films screening at venues including the Hi-Pointe Theatre, Tivoli Theatre, Plaza Frontenac Cinema, Webster University’s Winifred Moore Auditorium, Washington University's Brown Hall Auditorium and the Wildey Theatre in Edwardsville.

Among the programs that may be of particular interest to StLJN readers:

* The 1927 silent film Siren of the Tropics, which was the feature film debut of singer, dancer and St. Louis native Josephine Baker (pictured). It will be shown at 7:00 p.m., Friday, November 16 at Webster University with live musical accompaniment by the Poor People of Paris.

* The Entertainers, a documentary about ragtime pianists competing for the title of "World’s Greatest Old-Time Piano Player." It will play at 3:00 p.m., Saturday November 15 at Webster University, with live performances from pianists Faye Ballard, Ethan Uslan, and former St. Louisan Donald "Four Arrows" Jacobs following the film.

* A program of films by Georges Méliès, including a restored version of his most famous movie, A Trip to the Moon (1902); a docudrama on the filmmaker; and a sampling of Méliès shorts with original musical accompaniment by the Rats & People Motion Picture Orchestra. The Méliès program will be shown at 7:30 p.m. Friday, November 9 at Webster University and at 7:30 p.m., Saturday, November 10 at the Wildey Theatre

* Beware of Mr. Baker, about the innovative yet often irascible drummer Ginger Baker, who's played jazz at various stages of his career but is best known for incorporating African rhythms into rock music with bands including Cream, Blind Faith, and Air Force. The documentary, which features interviews with Eric Clapton, Steve Winwood, Charlie Watts, Carlos Santana, Alex Van Halen, Jack Bruce, and others, will be shown at 9:00 p.m. Saturday, November 10 at Webster University and at 8:00 p.m. Saturday, November 17 at the Wildey Theatre.

Other films incorporating music as a subject or theme will include the biographical documentary Charles Bradley: Soul of America, as well as features such as A Late Quartet, the story of a fictional string quartet about to celebrate its 25th anniversary, starring Christopher Walken, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Catherine Keener; Wagner & Me, in which British actor and writer Stephen Fry examines his enthusiasm for Richard Wagner's music and confronts the composer's associations with anti-Semitism and Hitler; Floating Oceans, the third installment in a surrealistic multimedia opera from musician, composer and animator Alexis Gideon; and Mariachi Gringo, which stars X-Men's Shawn Ashmore as a Nebraskan who moves to Mexico to become a mariachi singer.

In all, more than 400 features, documentaries and short films will be screened during the festival. For a complete schedule, plus ticket and venue information, visit the SLIFF Web site.

Recently on Heliocentric Worlds

It's time once again for a gratuitous mention of StLJN's sibling site Heliocentric Worlds, where each day a new online music video is posted for your entertainment and edification.

Drawing on genres including jazz, blues, soul, funk, classic rock, prog rock and experimental, recent posts have included musicians such as Aretha Franklin, Bill Evans, Jimmy Witherspoon, James "Blood" Ulmer and Alison Krauss, Mongo Santamaria, Thelonious Monk, Colosseum, John McLaughlin, King Sunny Ade and His African Beats, Ella Fitzgerald and Count Basie, Bob Dylan, Sam and Dave, Return to Forever, Carla Bley Band, The Beatles, John Coltrane Quartet, Sun Ra Arkestra, Sly and the Family Stone, Weather Report, Don Pullen/George Adams Quartet, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Duke Ellington Orchestra, and Freddie King.

You can see all these performances, plus hundreds more clips from the carefully curated archives, by going to http://heliocentricworlds.blogspot.com/.

StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: Meet the Taylor Ho Bynum Sextet

This week, let's get acquainted with the Taylor Ho Bynum Sextet, who will be making their St. Louis debut in a concert presented by New Music Circle on Saturday, November 3 at Luminary Center for the Arts.

Bynum, a 37-year-old cornet and trumpet player from Boston, first became widely known in the jazz world for his association with multi-instrumentalist and composer Anthony Braxton, with whom he studied while attending Wesleyan University in the 1990s. In addition to his work with Braxton and leading his own bands, Bynum also is a member of The Fully Celebrated Orchestra, which has been named Boston's best jazz group in several polls, and a co-founded of the collective ensembles Paradigm Shift and Trio Ex Nihilo.

His other credits include work with Ghanaian drummer Kwaku Kwaakye Obeng, "avant-salsa" group Zemog el Gallo Bueno, the Boston Jazz Repertory Orchestra, and the Aardvark Jazz Orchestra, as well as Cecil Taylor, Bill Dixon, Fred Ho, Alan Silva, J.D. Parran, Elliot Sharp, Jay Hoggard, The Sound and Vision Orchestra, Alvin Batiste, Pheeroan akLaff, and many others. Bynum also is known for his interest in interdisciplinary collaborations, working with dancers, filmmakers, visual artists and others on a variety of projects.

The Sextet, which has been Bynum's main working band for the last few years, currently includes Mary Halvorson (guitar), Jim Hobbs (alto sax), Bill Lowe (bass trombone & tuba), Ken Filiano (bass), and Tomas Fujiwara (drums). Though their music includes both free improvisation and compositional elements suggesting Braxton's influence - such as melodies containing dissonance, odd intervals or big jumps, and asymmetric song forms - they also can swing pretty hard for a band usually labeled "avant-jazz," making for a sound that can be surprisingly accessible.

Today, we've got videos from two different concerts by the Sextet. The clip up above is the first part of about 19 minutes' worth of video from their show in 2010 at the jazz festival in Saalfelden, Germany, with the second part down below.

Below that, you can see an entire concert, recorded during the Crosscurrent Festival on September 11, 2011 at Le Poisson Rouge in NYC, and available here in five parts. The lineup is the same as above, except that Michael Formanek is in for Filiano on bass.

For more about Taylor Ho Bynum and the Sextet, check out this article published last year in the Boston Globe; this interview Bynum did in September to promote the annual Festival of New Trumpet Music (FONT Music); and this post from Destination: Out in which Bynum expounds about his bandmate and teacher Bill Lowe.

So What: Local News, Notes & Links

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

* Trumpeter Christian Scott spoke with the Post-Dispatch's Calvin Wilson for a short article in yesterday's paper. Scott continues at Jazz at the Bistro through tomorrow night.

* While they're in town getting ready to perform Saturday night with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra also are spending some time mentoring young musicians from East St. Louis High School. The St. Louis American's Kenya Vaughn has the story here.

* Back over at the P-D, book editor Jane Henderson writes briefly about Miles Davis: The Complete Illustrated History (pictured), a new book due out November 17 from Voyageur Press.

* The Sheldon Concert Hall has posted on their Facebook page a set of photos from last week's 100th anniversary gala.

* The Route 66 Jazz Orchestra is the new name of the group formerly known as the Meramec Jazz Band, and they've posted to their Facebook page a set of photos from Wednesday's gig at Sky Music Lounge in West County.

* And in one more Facebook photoset, the 2012-13 lineup of the trombone-centric student group Metrobones is captured for posterity here.

* A recent performance of music and poetry by saxophonist Oliver Lake in Pittsburgh is reviewed here.

Bobby McFerrin to headline The Sheldon's 2013 gala on Thursday, April 25

Singer Bobby McFerrin will headline the Sheldon Concert Hall and Art Galleries' annual fundraising gala next year, performing at 8:15 p.m. Thursday, April 25 at the Sheldon.

McFerrin (pictured) is best known for his hit song "Don't Worry, Be Happy," but also has a long history as an improvising vocalist, cutting his first sides with Pharoah Sanders and Grover Washington Jr. and going on to record and perform with Charles Lloyd, Weather Report, Herbie Hancock, and many other well-known jazz musicians.

In addition to his work in pop and jazz, the 10-time Grammy Award winner's career also has included forays into classical music, gospel, reggae and various other genres. His performance at The Sheldon will feature his new project, SpiritYouAll, which according the press materials pays homage to his father, opera singer Robert McFerrin, Sr, and the tradition of the songs "commonly known as Negro Spirituals."

(McFerrin Sr., the first African-American male singer to perform at the Met in New York City, lived in St. Louis for many years and performed several times at The Sheldon, including once with Bobby and his sister Brenda in a special benefit concert appearance in 1987.)

Tickets for The Sheldon's 2013 gala start at $500, and include a pre-concert dinner, preferred seating, complimentary valet parking and a tax deduction. They are on sale now and can be purchased by calling The Sheldon at 314-533-9900. Single tickets for the concert only will be priced at $50 orchestra, $45 balcony, and will go on sale at 10:00 a.m. Wednesday, March 13 via MetroTix.

Jazz this week: Christian Scott, Alarm Will Sound, Wynton Marsalis' "Swing Symphony," Jazz in Pink, Mike Metheny, and more

If you're a fan of jazz trumpet, it's a good week to be in St. Louis, as the calendar of live jazz and creative music performances for the next several days includes visits from three stellar trumpeters. Other concerts this weekend offer a variety of musical textures and styles, ranging from the intimate to the orchestral and from traditional to ultramodern. Let's go to the highlights....

Tonight, trumpeter Christian Scott (pictured) opens a four-night gig with his band at Jazz at the Bistro, with two sets each evening continuing through Saturday. The 29-year-old New Orleans native recently released the most ambitious recording of his still-young career, the 2-CD set Christian aTunde Adjuah, which offers a sprawling 23 tracks worth of varied moods and grooves. For more about Scott and the album, plus video clips of him performing some of the music from it, check out this post from a couple of Saturdays ago.

Tomorrow night, the contemporary chamber ensemble Alarm Will Sound kicks off its first-ever St. Louis season at the Sheldon Concert Hall. The group, whose 20 members live all around the USA, has performed regularly in NYC for a decade and toured across the country and in Europe. They'll play three concerts here this year, starting with a program featuring music by John Adams, Aphex Twin, Conlon Nancarrow, Edgard Varèse, and Charles Wuorinen, plus pieces written specifically for them by Israeli composer Yotam Haber and AWS cellist Stefan Freund. For more, see this interview with the group's artistic director Alan Pierson by the Post-Dispatch's Sarah Bryan Miller.

Then on Friday, the annual Wine, Dine and Jazz Festival in Belleville will get underway with a lineup including the Yard Dawgs Jazz Quartet, the Usual Suspects, and Musica Slesa. The free outdoor festival continues on Saturday with guitarist Tom Byrne and singer Ralph Butler in the Pat Metheny inspired ensemble Have You Heard?, along with singer Zena Bott-Goins, Milwaukee blues guitarist Alex Wilson, and Santana tribute act Stantana.

Also on Friday, guitarist Dave Black leads a trio at the Cigar Inn, just a short distance from the festival site in Belleville; saxophonist Michael Anthony Fitzgerald is at Jazz on Broadway in Alton; and saxophonist Sammy Hag will play at Robbie's House of Jazz.

On Saturday afternoon, saxophonist/clarinetist Victor Goines will do a free workshop and performance at Saxquest. Goines will be in town to play Saturday night with Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, who are teaming with the St. Louis Symphony for a performance of Marsalis' "Swing Symphony" at Powell Hall.  You can hear "Swing Symphony" in its entirety and see Marsalis talk at length about the project in this post from last Saturday. For more, check out Marsalis' brief interview with the P-D's Miller here. 

Also on Saturday, singer Feyza Eren performs at Robbie's House of Jazz; Sarah Jane and the Blue Notes are at the Wine Press; and the Funky Butt Brass Band returns to the Broadway Oyster Bar.

On Sunday, the St. Louis Jazz Club will present the St. Louis Stompers at the Doubletree Hotel at Westport; the Los Angeles-based, all-female group Jazz In Pink will be at the Sheldon Concert Hall in a benefit performance for Community Women Against Hardship (CWAH); and the St. Louis Jazz and Blues Vespers series at Second Baptist Church begins its 2012-13 season with a free concert featuring saxophonist Ray Vollmar and singer Deborah Sharn.

Looking beyond the weekend, on Monday trumpeter and Electronic Valve Instrument (EVI) player Mike Metheny will make the trip over from Kansas City to perform at Webster University. Metheny is a talented composer and player who sometimes doesn't quite get his due, perhaps simply because his guitarist brother Pat happens to be one of the most famous jazz musicians in the world. For this concert, he'll be backed by a local rhythm section including Kim Portnoy (piano), Nick Savage (drums), Willem von Hombracht (bass), and Steve Schenkel (guitar). Schenkel tells StLJN that the program will include one of Metheny's original tunes as well as interpretations of compositions by Bill Evans, Jimmy Smith, Duke Ellington, Benny Golson, Charlie Parker and more.

For more jazz-related events in and around St. Louis, 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.)

Oikos Ensemble's "Follow That Star: A Jazz Nativity" to be performed on Saturday, December 8 and Sunday, December 9

Though it's still a couple of weeks before Halloween, early harbingers of the Christmas season already are in the air, including the first announcement of a holiday-themed performance to hit StLJN's inbox this fall:  The Oikos Ensemble, featuring saxophonist Rev. Cliff Aerie (pictured) and his daughter, vocalist Arianna Aerie, will be returning to St. Louis again this year to team with local musicians for performances of the Christmas show “Follow That Star: A Jazz Nativity.”

This is the second year the Aeries have brought the production to St. Louis. (You can see some video highlights from last year's edition here.) This year's performances of "Follow That Star: A Jazz Nativity" will take place at 3:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. Saturday, December 8 and 3:00 p.m. Sunday, December 9, at First Congregational Church United Church of Christ, 10 W. Lockwood in Webster Groves.

Cliff Aerie, an ordained United Church of Christ minister, leads the Oikos Ensemble as a national jazz ministry. He and Arianna Aerie will be joined in St. Louis by singer Kim Massie, trumpeter Danny Campbell, pianist Carolbeth True, bassist Dave Troncoso, and drummer Kevin Gianino, with former KTVI and KDNL news presenter Gina Kurre as MC. 

"Follow That Star: A Jazz Nativity" is free and open to the public, no reservations are required, and parking is available on the lot next to the church and nearby.

Donations will be accepted to benefit the St. Louis Back Stoppers Inc. and Joplin Relief Tornado Fund. Concertgoers also are encouraged to bring nonperishable food items for the Webster‐Rock Hill Ministries Food Pantry and canned or bagged pet food for the Bi‐State Pet Food Pantry.  The performances are sponsored by The Missouri Mid‐South Conference United Church of Christ with underwriting support by the Deaconess Foundation.

StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: Wynton Marsalis' "Swing Symphony"

This week, we're taking take a look at, and a listen to, a single extended composition: Wynton Marsalis' "Swing Symphony," written by the trumpeter to be performed by the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra plus a full symphony orchestra. Completed in 2010, the work was premiered by Marsalis, JaLCO and the Berlin Philharmonic in June of that year. That concert was broadcast by PBS here in the USA, and "Swing Symphony" subsequently has been performed a number of other times, most notably in New York, Los Angeles and London.

Now St. Louis listeners will get a chance to hear "Swing Symphony" in person, as Marsalis and JaLCO are headed here to perform it with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra next Saturday, October 20 at Powell Symphony Hall.

In the first clip up above, you can hear Marsalis and the Berlin Philharmonic's conductor Simon Rattle talking about "Swing Symphony" in a conversation with composer and journalist Catherine Milliken, recorded in conjunction with the work's premiere.

Down below, you can see and hear that complete premiere performance of "Swing Symphony" from 2010, featuring Marsalis, the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, and the Berlin Philharmonic, conducted by Rattle. Below that, you can see Marsalis alone, talking directly to the camera about composing "Swing Symphony" in four segments that were recorded shortly after the Los Angeles Philharmonic performance.

For more about Wynton Marsalis' "Swing Symphony," check out this review of American premiere in September 2010 by the New York Philharmonic, and this one of the Los Angeles performance in February 2011.

And if you haven't got your tickets yet for next Saturday's performance, you may be interested to know that the SLSO is offering a 20% discount on the remaining seats. You can get the details on that discount offer here.

So What: Local News, Notes & Links

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

* Saxophonist Branford Marsalis, in town yesterday to perform at the Sheldon Concert Hall's 100th anniversary celebration, also found time for a visit to Saxquest, as documented in some photos here.

* Speaking of anniversaries, the Sheldon isn't the only mainstay of the St. Louis music celebrating one this month. Community radio station KDHX is turning 25, and the Riverfront Times' Kiernan Maletsky has details on the station's new building in Grand Center and the birthday party set for this Sunday at Schlafly Bottleworks in an article here.

* And speaking of Marsalises, the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra is offering a 20% discount on tickets to hear Wynton Marsalis (pictured) and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra perform Wynton's "Swing Symphony" next Saturday, October 20 at Powell Symphony Hall. Details on the discount offer are here.

* The Post-Dispatch's Kevin Johnson has an article this week on “Sounds From the Soul,” a new exhibit at the Griot Museum of Black History featuring images of music icons including Miles Davis, Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie, and other jazz, blues and soul performers. The exhibit, which runs through November, includes photographs and illustrations from the William P. Gottlieb Collection and from German artist Wolfram Schramm.

* Jazz St. Louis has posted on YouTube some video of their recent youth concerts featuring Metta Quintet.

Jazz this week: The Sheldon turns 100, Dave Black & Paul DeMarinis, Josh Quinlan, "A Jazz Heaven: Under The Rainbow" and more

The jazz and creative music calendar this weekend is front-loaded with an all-star ensemble convening Thursday at the Sheldon Concert Hall for a big birthday party. But while that concert may have the marquee names, there are plenty of other noteworthy shows happening around town over the next few days, too. Let's go to the highlights....

As mentioned above, the big-ticket event of the weekend happens tonight, as the Sheldon Concert Hall will commemorate its 100th anniversary celebration with a gala concert featuring the world premiere of pianist Peter Martin's new work "This Present Past," commissioned specifically to celebrate the hall's centennial.

Martin (pictured) will be joined by saxophonist Branford Marsalis, bassist Christian McBride, drummer Ulysses Owens Jr, soprano Christine Brewer, violinist David Halen and other members of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. Halen and his SLSO colleagues also will perform the world premiere of another commissioned piece, a string quartet composed by Stefan Freund, who teaches music at the University of Missouri and is cellist with the contemporary chamber ensemble Alarm Will Sound, who will perform next Thursday at The Sheldon.

Although the Sheldon concert is reported to be close to a sell-out, there may be a few tickets remaining at the door, but I'd suggest calling ahead before making the trip down there.

Elsewhere around town tonight, trumpeter Bob Ceccarini will play "Tin Pan Alley and the Music of Jerome Kern" in a free concert for the Jazz at Holmes series at Washington University. And although the Thursday night jam sessions hosted for several months by guitarist Tom Byrne at Highway 61 Roadhouse have ended, two new weekly events have begun downtown on Thursdays that may help fill the gap: Clave Sol, led by pianist Phil Gomez, now are hosting a Latin jazz jam session downtown at Lola, while retro-style singer Miss Jubliee will be performing swing, jazz and blues at Thaxton Speakeasy, 1009 Olive.

Tomorrow night, guitarist Dave Black and saxophonist Paul DeMarinis will play for the first of two nights at Jazz at the Bistro. Though the two veterans of the Webster University jazz faculty are capable of tackling a variety of musical styles, the promo material from Jazz St. Louis for the show says they'll be doing "straight ahead jazz," though likely with at least few twists along the way.

Also on Friday, Colorado-based saxophonist Josh Quinlan will be in town for a gig with his Funky Fresh Trio at Robbie's House of Jazz; and the new music ensemble eighth blackbird - the Chicagoans prefer the lower case - will perform at the Touhill Performing Arts Center.

Over on the east side, pianist Tim Garcia leads a trio at Cigar Inn in Belleville, and saxophonist Tim Cunningham is back at Jazz on Broadway in Alton.

On Saturday afternoon, saxophonist Wilie Akins will perform at the Metropolitan Gallery as part of the Nu-Art Series' "Tenor Madness Project." Also on Saturday afternoon, the touring musical revue In The Mood, featuring music from Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, and other Swing Era idols, plays the first of two shows at the Touhill, with a second performance in the evening. Then on Saturday night, trumpeter Randy Holmes will lead a sextet in a tribute to Art Blakey at Robbie's.

On Sunday afternoon, singer Wendy Gordon will present "Under the Rainbow," another performance in her "A Jazz Heaven" series, at the Florissant Civic Center Theatre. Jeanne Trevor, who starred alongside Gordon in earlier editions of the production, is back to sing music associated with Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan, along with a cast featuring singers Joe Mancuso, Chuck Flowers and Barbara Helmer, poet Clayton McCants, narrator Sheila Reed, and a band including Adrian Bowers (trumpet), Chad Evans (saxophones), Arthur Toney (piano), Jeff Anderson (bass), and Gary Sykes (drums).

Looking beyond the weekend, on Monday the Sessions Big Band will be back for their monthly gig at BB's Jazz, Blues and Soups. And on Tuesday, the funky organ trio Downstereo, who formerly played Sunday nights at now-shuttered Delmar Lounge, have set up a weekly gig at The Crow's Nest in Maplewood.

For more jazz-related events in and around St. Louis, 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.)

St. Louis Jazz and Blues Vespers concert series announces 2012-13 season schedule

The St. Louis Jazz and Blues Vespers series has announced their schedule of free concerts for the 2012-13 season.

The concerts take place on the third Sunday of each month, except in December, starting at 6:00 p.m. at the Second Baptist Church of St. Louis, 9030 Clayton Rd. (1/3 mile west of the St. Louis Galleria at McKnight).

The 2012-13 series will open on Sunday, October 21 with a performance featuring saxophonist Ray Vollmar and singer Deborah Sharn. The complete schedule for the 2012-13 season is:

Sunday, October 21: Ray Vollmar and Deborah Sharn
Sunday, November 18: Montez Coleman
Sunday, January 20: Ptah Williams
Sunday, February 17: Marquise Knox
Sunday, March 17: SIUE Jazz Faculty with Rick Haydon (pictured) and Jason Swagler
Sunday, April 21: Anita Rosamond

All concerts are free and open to the public, with no tickets needed. Free parking is available on the church's upper lot for guests who need to enter the building at sanctuary level, and also on the lower lot on the south side of the building.

StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: The evolution of Christian Scott

This week, we take a closer look at the latest phase in the career of trumpeter Christian Scott, who will be in St. Louis to perform Wednesday, October 17 through Saturday, October 20 at Jazz at the Bistro

The 29-year-old New Orleans native a couple of months ago released the two-disc, 23-track album Christian aTunde Adjuah. The title refers to the new last name Scott has adopted in acknowledgement of and tribute to his African heritage, and the record - his sixth major label release as a leader - is not only his most expansive in terms of sheer length, but also is being called by critics his most personal and musically ambitious to date.

The nephew of saxophonist Donald Harrison, Scott was something of a teenage phenom, entering Berklee College of Music at age 17 and completing his degree in just three years while also touring with his uncle and performing, recording and self-releasing music with his own band.

Though Scott subsequently has done some work as a sideman with Harrison, and has guest-starred on recordings by Mike Clark, David Benoit, Marcus Miller, the hip-hop group X Clan and some others, he's mostly eschewed the traditional approach to jazz apprenticeship to concentrate on making his own music. His band in recent months often has included St. Louis native and fellow Berklee grad Lawrence Fields on piano, as well as long time bassist Kris Funn, drummer Jamire Williams, and guitarist Matthew Stevens, who seems to play a big role in setting up the texture and feel of many of Scott's recent compositions.

That's the lineup of musicians you can see and hear up above in today's first video clip, a version of the song "Spy Boy" from Scott's new album that was recorded last November in a concert on the Berklee campus in Boston. ("Spy boys" are the advance scouts/lookouts for tribes of New Orleans' black "Indians" when they parade through the streets on Mardi Gras day. Growing up in New Orleans, Scott - who appears in traditional Indian garb on the cover of the new album - and his twin brother Kiel served as "spy boy" and "flag boy" for the tribe headed by his uncle Donald Harrison.)

Down below, you can hear another piece from Scott's new album called "New New Orleans (King Adjuah Stomp)," which was recorded earlier this year at the North Sea Jazz Festival with the same band save for Fields, who's supplanted by John Escreet on piano.

Below that, it's a version of Scott's composition "KKPD," again featuring the same band except this time with Milton Fletcher on piano. This was recorded in 2010 at the Festival de Jazz de San Sebastián in Spain.

The fourth clip showcases Scott's ballad skills on "Isadora," also recorded in 2012 at the North Sea festival. The fifth video is from 2011, and shows Scott on ABC's Jimmy Kimmel Live playing "Angola, LA & The 13th Amendment" from his previous album Yesterday You Said Tomorrow.

To wrap things up, today's sixth clip is the electronic press kit for Christian aTunde Adjuah, which features Scott talking about the album as well some brief musical excerpts.

For more about Christian Scott and Christian aTunde Adjuah, check out this interview that ran in August in the Village Voice; this interview with Capital Bop from around the same time; and this interview done last month with a San Diego radio station. The recent piece on Scott from Wax Poetics, and his 2011 interview with The Revivalist also are worth a look.

So What: Local News, Notes & Links

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

* The Riverfront Times has posted an album of photos from last month's U City Jazz Festival.

* Jazz St. Louis' education program (and trumpeter Terence Blanchard's band) were featured in a story that aired this week on the newscast of local NBC affiliate KSDK.

* And speaking of Jazz St. Louis, the organization this week also is touting a new fall menu at Jazz at the Bistro.

* Tomorrow night's Mephista Trio show at 560 Music Center, presented by New Music Circle, is previewed by the Post-Dispatch's Calvin Wilson.

* Euclid Records has planned a sidewalk sale for next Saturday, October 13 and Sunday, October 14, featuring reduced prices on their entire inventory plus lots of CDs and LPs marked down for clearance, live music (no jazz, though) and free beer ("if you're old enough to drink it").

* Broadcaster and jazz advocate Don Wolff (pictured) was profiled this week by Terry Perkins for the St. Louis Beacon. In related news, the Internet radio version of Wolff's "I Love Jazz" program has relocated online to a new streaming provider, LoudCity; and there's a new October episode of the TV version of "I Love Jazz" (shown on cable and online by HEC-TV) featuring the band Bach to the Future and a look at local jazz jam sessions.

* And while we're on the subject of jam sessions, the latest word is that the weekly Thursday night jam hosted by guitarist Tom Byrne at Highway 61 Roadhouse has ended, and, in another example of the visionary thinking we see so often here among the proprietors of local venues, will be replaced with....nothing. Perhaps if the management had ever done anything to actually promote the event, it might have drawn bigger crowds, but now we'll never know. Meanwhile, you still can catch Byrne playing around town with his trio, singer Feyza Eren, the Pat Metheny inspired Have You Heard?, and various other bands.

Jazz this week: Billy Childs Quartet, Tatsuya Nakatani, Mephista, Arturo Sandoval, and more

It's another busy week for jazz and creative music in St. Louis, with a couple of notable concerts of adventurous improvised music, plus an all-star quartet of modern mainstream players, a top Latin-jazz trumpeter, and more. Let's go to the highlights...

Tonight, pianist Billy Childs' quartet begins a four-night engagement, continuing through Saturday, at Jazz at the Bistro. Though Childs may be the nominal leader, it's something of an all-star band, with drummer Brian Blade, alto saxophonist Steve Wilson and bassist Scott Colley bringing together a rather eclectic menu of influences, ranging from straight-ahead jazz to rock and pop to experimental. For more about Childs, including a video interview and some performance footage, check out this post from last Saturday.

Also tonight, singer Joe Mancuso leads a quartet with Carolbeth True (piano), Willem von Hombracht (bass) and Kevin Gianino (drums) at Frontenac Grill. 

Tomorrow night, percussionist Tatsuya Nakatani returns to St. Louis, this time teaming with bassist Darin Gray and dancer/choreographer Vanessa Skantze for a concert at Lemp Neighborhood Arts Center
exploring the intersection of improvised music and the Japanese performance form called Butoh.

Also on Thursday, poet Eileen G'sell and guitarist William Lenihan's trio will join forces for "Stories: The New Beat Generation," a free concert of poetry and improvised music for the Jazz at Holmes series at Washington University.

On Friday, Lindy Hop St. Louis will present another in their series of monthly swing dances at the Mahler Ballroom, with music from Miss Jubilee and the Bella Rue Jazz Band. Also on Friday, the Willie Akins/Montez Coleman quartet is at Robbie's House of Jazz; trumpeter Jim Manley plays at One 19 North Tapas Bar & Restaurant; Sarah Jane and the Blue Notes are at Highway 61 Roadhouse; and drummer Paul Shaw leads a trio with bassist Bob DeBoo and vibraphonist Tom Rickard at Cigar Inn. 

Saturday,  the trio Mephista, featuring pianist Sylvie Courvoisier, electronic musician Ikue Mori, and percussionist Susie Ibarra, will perform at 560 Music Center in a concert presented by New Music Circle. Given the three musicians' diverse range of experiences, from classical to punk rock to avant-jazz, this is a tough concert to pigeonhole, stylistically speaking, but definitely recommended for fans of creative improvised music.

Also on Saturday, trumpeter Arturo Sandoval (pictured) returns to St. Louis to perform at the Sheldon Concert Hall. The Cuban native, who last performed here in 2006 at jazz at the Bistro, first became known in this country as a member of the Latin jazz/fusion group Irakere, and also benefited early in his career from the friendship and mentoring of trumpet great Dizzy Gillespie. On his own, he's become both an in-demand leader of his own combo and a frequent guest soloist with big bands and classical orchestras.

Looking beyond the weekend, on Monday saxophonist Paul Demarinis will bring his group to Webster University's Moore Auditorium, and drummer Joe Pastor's trio plays at BB's Jazz, Blues and Soups. Then on Tuesday, guitarist Dave Black and his band will be at BB's. 

For more jazz-related events in and around St. Louis, 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.)

Nu-Art Series getting "Tenor Madness" starting Saturday, October 13

The Nu-Art Series has announced two fall concerts to be presented under the theme "The Tenor Madness Project," that, fittingly, will feature two of St. Louis top veteran tenor saxophonists.

Willie Akins (pictured) will get it started at 3:00 p.m., Saturday, October 13, followed by fellow tenor man Freddie Washington at 3:00 p.m. Saturday, November 17.

Both Akins and Washington have been widely admired mainstays of the local jazz scene since the 1960s, though Washington took a hiatus during the 2000s for business and personal reasons. Both could be said to have a post-bop sensibility, influenced notably by John Coltrane, but each brings his own set of distinctive touches to even the most familiar material.

The Nu-Art Series "Tenor Madness" concerts will take place at the Metropolitan Gallery, 2936 Locust downtown. Tickets are $20 general admission, $10 for students at the door.