StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: Spotlight on Jamie Cullum

This week, let's focus our video spotlight on the British singer and pianist Jamie Cullum, who's returning to St. Louis for the first time in four years to perform on Sunday, June 8 at The Pageant.

After making his local debut here at The Pageant back in 2006, Cullum's most recent St. Louis appearance was in March 2010 at the now-shuttered Roberts Orpheum Theater. Since then, he has, among other things, become the host of an award-winning weekly program on BBC Radio 2; had a second child with wife Sophie Dahl, a popular model and TV presenter in the UK; and put out his first album since 2009, Momentum, which was released in May of last year.

Cullum has spent a good portion of the last year supporting Momentum, touring and making media appearances like the one in today's first clip, an episode of the web series Live@Home that features performances of several songs from the album.

After the jump, you'll find a couple of clips from Cullum's European tour in the fall of 2013. The first shows him playing the Beatles' "Blackbird" and his own "Save Your Soul" at the Paradiso in Amsterdam, accompanied by Graeme Blevins (sax), Rory Simmons (guitar), Brad Webb (drums) and Loz Garratt (bass). The second is a version of Jimi Hendrix' "The Wind Cries Mary" recorded on a small boat on the Seine in Paris, apparently as some sort of promotional stunt.

That's followed by Cullum's full show from February 2014 at the Jakarta International Java Jazz Festival, which should offer more than a few hints about what to expect from his performance here next week.

The final two clips are both about Momentum, as Cullum is interviewed about the album generally, and then goes track-by-track "explaining the what and why" of each song.

For more about Jamie Cullum, check out this review of his set earlier this month at the Cheltenham Jazz Festival in the UK, and this interview and performance recorded this week for radio station WNYC.

You can see the rest of today's videos after the jump...