The phrase "world music" may be problematic, most notably in its lack of specificity in lumping together a whole bunch of unrelated non-Western musical traditions and concepts, but it's also a useful reminder for musicians that there are a lot of sounds out there beyond what gets covered in a traditional conservatory education or bandstand apprenticeship here in the USA.
Moreover, since jazz tends to absorb influences from whatever it rubs up against, jazz musicians in particular may benefit from broadening their horizons to include the entire globe. But where to begin?
This week for "Music Education Monday," here are three suggestions for places online where you can start your trip:
* 50 Great Moments in World Music may have a click-bait title, but the editors at parent site Songlines have done a good job assembling a list of highlights, along with audio and video clips, from musicians, bands and composers from around the world that have crossed over into Western popular and concert music over the past few decades.
* WorldMusic.net's "Guide to World Music" offers a more systematic overview and reference for various musical styles and traditions, with new articles also added periodically to the parent site.
* And for a deeper dive, Coursera has a free online class in "Listening to World Music" that offers a guided tour of sorts in the company of other like-minded travelers.
* In anticipation of the unveiling of the Miles Davis memorial statue in downtown Alton, IL - now less than two weeks away - the statue's sculptor Preston Jackson was the subject of a feature story in the Alton Telegraph.
* After a recent gig with singer D'Angelo at the FYF Festival in Los Angeles, St. Louis-born trumpeter Keyon Harrold got a chance to hang out with actor/director Don Cheadle and Miles Davis' nephew Vince Wilburn Jr (pictured). Harrold performs on the soundtrack of Cheadle's upcoming film Miles Ahead, for which Wilburn is a co-producer.
* In an interview recorded earlier this month at the Newport Jazz Festival, popular trumpeter Chris Botti talks about Miles Davis and his influence on subsequent generations of musicians.
* The recently unearthed "unofficial release" Miles Davis Live in Tokyo 1975 was reviewed by Tim Niland at his blog Music and More.
* Does Miles Davis belong in the St. Louis Classic Rock Hall of Fame? If you think so, you can cast your ballot for Davis (and various other St. Louis musicians of note) here. Voting ends on September 15.
For your Sunday reading, here are some interesting music-related items that have hit StLJN's inbox over the past week:
* The Soulful Genius of Stevie Wonder: How ‘Songs in the Key of Life’ Changed Music Forever (The Daily Beast)
* “It’s not just a party, it’s our life”: Jazz musicians led the way back to the city after Katrina — but what is this “new” New Orleans? (Salon.com)
* Dr. Michael White lost everything in Hurricane Katrina except what mattered most: New Orleans jazz (New Orleans Times-Picayune)
* It Was New Orleans’ Musicians—Not Its Politicians—Who Saved The City Post-Katrina (The Daily Beast)
* Review: Jason Moran in Edinburgh (Jazz Journal UK)
* The invisible instrument: the theremin (The Guardian UK)
* Electronic Sturm und Atonal Drang in Berlin (Counterpunch)
* Music, paid fairly (Medium.com)
* The One Real Problem With Rolling Stone's 'Greatest Songwriters Of All Time' (NPR)
* How Can Frank Zappa's Colorful Life Possibly Fit in a Documentary? (Rolling Stone)
* ‘For Those Who Are, Still’ Review: Jazz Bassist William Parker Expands His Vision (Wall Street Journal)
* Hackers Are Sabotaging My Spotify Playlists With Awful Ambient Music (Vice.com)
* Inaugural Rhodes Fest Celebrates Great American Keyboard (DownBeat)
* Carlos Santana Talks Reuniting Santana IV, New Band With Wayne Shorter & Herbie Hancock (Billboard)
* The Birthplace of American Music Has Been Handed Over to Real-Estate Speculators (Alternet)
* Kamasi Washington Talks Jazz in the 21st Century (The Talk House)
* Complete edition of John Cage's Diary to be published (The Wire UK)
* How Flying Lotus Built Brainfeeder, His Spiritual Little Empire (TheFader.com)
* How The 'Kung Fu Fighting' Melody Came To Represent Asia (NPR)
* A memorial for Paul Jeffrey, Duke's late jazz champion (Indy Week)
* George Walker: the great American composer you've never heard of (The Guardian UK)
Today, it's the third part of StLJN's video preview of jazz and creative music performers coming to St. Louis this fall. (You can see part 1 here, and part 2 here.)
Continuing from last time in chronological order, we resume in mid-October with the New Mastersounds, who will be here Tuesday, October 20 to play at the Old Rock House. You can see them at the top of this post jamming on the tune "Dusty Groove" in a video recorded in June of this year at a gig in Oakland, CA.
After the jump, there's a video featuring guitarist Kevin Eubanks, who will perform with his trio Wednesday, October 21 through Saturday, October 24 at Jazz at the Bistro. It's an episode of the Voice of America's program "Beyond Category" that features footage of Eubanks playing with his trio as well as an interview with former "Tonight Show" bandleader.
Next up is singer Banu Gibson, who will perform a program of Randy Newman songs in a matinee on Sunday, October 25 at the Sheldon Concert Hall. The video shows Gibson singing "It's A Jungle Out There" - written by Newman as the theme for the TV show "Monk" - earlier this year at The Mint, in New Orleans, accompanied by former St. Louisan Tom McDermott on piano and Matt Perrine on sousaphone.
The next two clips feature performers from the Gaslight Cabaret Festival, starting with singer Lina Koutrakos and singer/pianist Rick Jensen, who will return to St. Louis to perform Sunday, October 25 at the Gaslight Theater. The first clip features Koutrakos singing "One for My Baby (and One More for the Road)" with Jensen on piano, and was recorded in 2013 at the Metropolitan Room in NYC.
Then it's singer Kat Edmonson, who's booked to appear on Thursday, October 29 and Friday, October 30 at the Gaslight Theater. This version of her singing "Rainy Day Woman" was recorded in March 2015 for radio station WNRN in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Last but certainly not least, it's the veteran tenor saxophonist Houston Person, who will be coming back to town for gigs on Friday, October 30 and Saturday, October 31 at Jazz at the Bistro. In this clip, Person and pianist Joe Alterman's trio, with James Cammack on bass and Gregory Hutchinson on drums, work out on "Kelly's Blues" at a gig back in August 2012 at Jazz At Lincoln Center's Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola.
Look for part 4 of StLJN's Fall 2015 jazz preview here next week. You can see the rest of today's videos after the jump...
Here's the latest wrap-up of assorted links and short news items of local interest:
* Trumpeter Bobby Shew was interviewed by the Alton Telegraph about his upcoming appearance in Alton on Saturday, September 12 in conjunction with the unveiling of the Miles Davis memorial statue.
* Saxophonist Greg Osby has a new entry up on his blog, offering some back story and a reappraisal of his 1998 album Banned in New York, which began as a Mini-Disc field recording and wound up being issued as an "official bootleg" by Blue Note .
* The Jazz at Holmes series of free concerts at Washington University has announced their schedule for Fall 2015, starting with a return appearance from Italian pianist Antonio Figura(pictured) on Thursday, September 10. The series continues most Thursdays until the semester finale on December 10, featuring students from Wash U's jazz performance program. You can see the whole schedule here.
This week's calendar of jazz and creative music performances in and around town features the returns of several notable St. Louis expat musicians as well as shows paying tribute to both local and all-time jazz greats.
Let's go to the highlights...
Thursday, August 27
Tonight, guitarist Tom Byrne and singer Erika Johnson will perform at Evangeline's; and the Tavern of Fine Arts presents their monthly "Experimental Arts Open Improv Night" with live improvised music.
Garfield, a Metro East native who's toured extensively with George Benson, and Ligertwood, a Scotsman who's sung with Brian Auger and Santana, have teamed up with Stevens and band for a couple of previous gigs here, and with the addition of Horne, another former St. Louisan, this show should offer plenty of funk and fireworks.
Also on Friday, singer, songwriter, guitarist and former St. Louisan Javier Mendoza(pictured, center left) returns from his new home in Nashville to front Estereotipo, the latest iteration of his Latin/jazz project, for the first of two nights at Jazz at the Bistro.
Sunday, August 30 Wendy L. Gordon(pictured, lower left) will present the sixth annual show in her "Jazz Heaven" series at the Florissant Civic Center Theatre, this time offering a "Tribute to St. Louis Legends" with help from a cast including Linda Kennedy, Jeanne Trevor, Joe Mancuso, Uvee Hayes, J Samuel Davis and more.
Monday, August 31 "Blind" Willie Dineen and the Broadway Collective will return to BB's Jazz, Blues & Soups.
Wednesday, September 2 Erin Bode will sing standards for the first of two nights to kick off the fall presenting season at Jazz at the Bistro.
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.)
Given that old adage about converts being the most zealous believers, perhaps it should come as no surprise that two of the most prominent current custodians of the New Orleans piano tradition are transplants to the city.
Jon Cleary originally from is England, while Tom McDermott is from right here in St. Louis, but both have made New Orleans their home and have immersed themselves in the history and practice of the city's indigenous music. For today's Music Education Monday, we've got master classes on video from each of them in which they share their knowledge of and perspective on New Orleans piano styles.
Cleary (pictured, top left) has worked as a sideman with John Scofield, Bonnie Raitt, Taj Mahal, B.B. King, Ryan Adams, and Eric Burdon, and also leads his own group, the Absolute Monster Gentlemen. His video was produced by Artists House Music, and features Cleary discussing important New Orleans pianists such as James Booker, Professor Longhair and Jelly Roll Morton, and addressing a variety of other topics including songwriting technique and collaborating in the studio,
Tom McDermott (pictured, top right) has lived in New Orleans since 1984. In addition to recording 10 albums as a leader and numerous appearances in film and on TV and national radio, he has performed with the Dukes of Dixieland, arranged music for the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, and co-founded the New Orleans Nightcrawlers and the the Danza Quartet. His video "New Orleans Piano Traditions" was recorded in 2012 at Tulane University.
* A new Tumblr called Milestones is compiling photos, videos and other online material about Miles Davis. While much of the content will be familiar to fans who have been online for a while, there are some nice finds, too, including rarely seen photos and musical transcripts.
For your Sunday reading, here are some interesting music-related items that have hit StLJN's inbox over the past week:
* A Radical Plan to Save the Big Music Labels: Shrink the Big Music Labels (ReCode)
* A Classic 1970s Synthesizer Is Reborn for the 21st Century (Wired)
* The Quest for Fire Music: Documenting the Free Jazz Revolution (New York Observer)
* The wonders of the internet – listen to John Cage and Morton Feldman in conversation (The Guardian UK)
* The 100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time (Rolling Stone)
* Does ‘Rolling Stone’ Know It Declared Songwriting Dead? (FlavorWire)
* Review: Diana Krall aces jazz, struggles with pop in Oakland (Contra Costa Times)
* The Least Historically Accurate Music Biopics Ever Made (Vulture)
* Gene Kelly as jazz icon: Widow’s program celebrates his art (SF Gate)
* Curtis Institute and the case of Nina Simone (Philadelphia Inquirer)
* Jazz Heavyweight Terence Blanchard Won't Turn a Blind Eye (Mother Jones)
* Spirit Of Protest Spun From Blues And Avant-garde (Classical Voice America)
* TO IRONY AND BEYOND (MoreIntelligentLife.com)
* 'We’ll retire at 106. What else can we do?' The rockers who won't call it a day (The Guardian UK)
* Organized chaos - A Q&A with Alvin Fielder (Arkansas Times)
* Hurricane Katrina and the Healing Power of Jazz (Time)
* 10 Years After Katrina, New Orleans' Brass Bands March On (NPR)
* The 250 Best-Selling Musicians of All Time (Digital Music News)
* How 'Playola' Is Infiltrating Streaming Services: Pay for Play Is 'Definitely Happening' (Billboard)
* A Rational Conversation: Does Anybody Even Have Time For An 80-Minute Album? (NPR)
* Studies Show that the Brains of Jazz, Folk and Classical Musicians Are Not Equal (Mic.com)
* From Nation Time to management time (The Wire UK)
* Javon Jackson Still Learns from the Masters (DownBeat)
* How Widespread Is Ghostwriting in Music and How OK With It Should You Be? (Vice.com)
* How John Birch helped inspire a Dizzy Gillespie presidential run (Boston Globe)
Today, it's part two of StLJN's fall 2015 video preview of touring jazz and creative music performers coming to town over the next several months. Part one last week covered the month of September, so today's installment picks up in the first week of October with a video featuring saxophonist Evan Parker and trumpeter Peter Evans.
Parker and Evans will kick off New Music Circle's 2015-16 season with a concert on Friday, October 2 at Joe’s Cafe, 6014 Kingsbury Ave. The clip up above, recorded in September 2013 at the Stone in NYC, shows a full set of improvised music from the two of them, plus cellist Okkyung Lee, who did a solo concert here for NMC last year.
After the jump, you can see Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, who will be back in St. Louis to headline the "Friends of the Sheldon" benefit gala on Saturday, October 3 at the Sheldon Concert Hall. The video shows a full set of Marsalis and JaLCO playing arrangements of material from the Blue Note catalog in a gig earlier this year at the Harrogate International Festival in England.
Next, there's a clip of the band Yellowjackets, who will be returning to St. Louis to play Wednesday, October 7 through Saturday October 10 at Jazz at the Bistro. For this visit, the group once again will have a new bass player, Dane Alderson, who hails originally from Australia.
Alderson replaces Felix Pastorius, who had a relatively short tenure in the band, having replaced founding member Jimmy Haislip back in 2012. In this clip, recorded in July at the North Sea Jazz Club in, you can hear Alderson's bass solo on "Dreamland." (For more Yellowjackets, see this video showcase post that ran before their appearance here last year.)
Today's fourth video clip features is Wendee Glick, the New Hampshire-based singer who will kick off the fall edition of the Gaslight Cabaret Festival on Thursday, October 8 at the Gaslight Theater. Unfortunately, there aren't many videos online of Glick performing, but this excerpt from her version of "No Moon At All," recorded at the Colonial Inn in Concord, MA, provides at least a small sample of her work.
Glick will be followed at the festival the next evening by singer Maxine Linehan, who will perform on Friday, October 9, also at the Gaslight Theater. Linehan is seen here singing "What'll I Do?" in 2014 at Metropolitan Room in NYC.
The sixth video is the electronic press kit for saxophonist Adam Larson's upcoming album "Selective Amnesia", which should be out by the time he arrives in St. Louis to perform Wednesday, October 14 and Thursday, October 15 at Jazz at the Bistro.
Today's final clip features MarchFourth!, who will perform on Monday, March 19 at the Old Rock House. They're seen here in an audience-shot video playing "The Limit" in a gig in April 2015 at The Funky Biscuit in Boca Raton, FL.
Look for part three of StLJN's fall 2015 jazz preview here next week. You can see the rest of today's videos after the jump...
Here's the latest wrap-up of assorted links and short news items of local interest:
* Following up on a story first mentioned here a couple of weeks ago, community radio station KDHX this week has launched their fall fund drive early and with a bit more urgency than usual.
* Euclid Records, the indie label associated with the St. Louis based music store of the same name, will be releasing a two-LP 180-gram vinyl version of Talk Thelonious by keyboardist Terry Adams with NRBQ. The tribute to Monk will be out in November on vinyl from Euclid, and also will get a CD release from Clang!, both via Burnside Distribution.
This week's schedule of live jazz and creative music in and around St. Louis avoids the late-summer doldrums with tributes to two jazz greats, plus a variety of shows in genres and styles ranging from pre-war swing to contemporary to free improvisation. Let's go to the highlights...
Thursday, August 20
Singer Erin Bodereturns to Cyrano's, guitarist Dave Black and Friends will perform at Nathalie’s, and pianist Brad Ellebrecht and singer Tom Kernan play at the Tavern of Fine Arts.
Saturday, August 22
Speaking of jazz legends, there will be a tribute to another jazz great - who also crossed paths with Basie morethanonce - as Robbie's House of Jazz presents Danita Mumphard (pictured, center left) and Trio Tres Bien interpreting songs made famous by Ella Fitzgerald at the Ozark Theatre.
Elsewhere on Saturday, Gypsy jazz band Franglais will be joined by guest saxophonist Dave Stone for a gig at Evangeline's; and the Sidney Street Shakers will be part of the musical menu for the one-year anniversary celebration at the Tick Tock Tavern.
Sunday, August 23 Cornet Chop Suey plays a free concert of traditional jazz and swing at Carondelet Park; and
saxophonist Christopher McBride (pictured, lower left), who's been splitting time between Chicago and NYC, will return to offer up contemporary sounds at the Kranzberg Arts Center.
McBride's band for the late-afternoon performance will include trumpeter Quinten Coaxum and pianist Willem Delisfort as well as St. Louis' own Bob Deboo on bass and Montez Coleman on drums.
Monday, August 24
The eclectic acoustic band The 442s will play a free outdoor concert at the Public Media Commons, 3653 Olive St in Grand Center.
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.)
MarchFourth!, a "musical and performance group" from Portland, OR that supplements their lineup of horns, percussion, bass and guitar with stilt-walkers, acrobats and dancers, is coming to St. Louis to play an all-ages show at 8:00 p.m. Monday, October 19 at the Old Rock House.
Sporting mutated, mismatched marching band uniforms and playing mostly original, instrumental music, the group (pictured) incorporates "influences from rock, ska, jazz, klezmer, Hip Hop, and swing styles of music, among others."
They've toured Germany, The Netherlands, France, British Columbia, China and the United States, turning up with some frequency on the summer festival circuit here, as well as taking on all sorts of other gigs, from opening for No Doubt singer Gwen Stefani to playing in a Microsoft commercial. You can see a video of them performing "Dynomite" back in 2012 in the embedded window below.
Tickets for MarchFourth! at the Old Rock House are $15 in advance, $18 day of show and will go on sale at 5:00 p.m. this Friday, August 21.
As one of the top schools for jazz, Berklee College of Music in Boston benefits from a a steady supply of working professional musicians visiting campus to augment the instruction provided by permanent faculty.
For this week's Music Education Monday, you can check out some of that extra instruction provided to Berklee percussion students, as we look in via video on drum clinics presented there by the well-known drummers Gregory Hutchinson and Ralph Humphrey(pictured).
A native New Yorker, Hutchinson emerged on the national jazz scene in the early 1990s and rapidly became a first-call drummer working with a wide variety of musicians, including Betty Carter, Ray Brown, Red Rodney, Joe Henderson and Charles Lloyd as well as Joshua Redman, Dianne Reeves, Wynton Marsalis, John Scofield, Roy Hargrove, Diana Krall, Harry Connick Jr, Joshua Redman, Christian McBride, Maria Schneider, the collective band James Farm, and many more. Hutchinson will be back in St. Louis next month to perform with an all-star band at Jazz at the Bistro as part of the venue's 20th anniversary celebration.
Humphrey is based in Los Angeles, with a recording and touring career spanning more than five decades. He's perhaps best known for his work in the 1970s with trumpeter Don Ellis' big band and Frank Zappa, but he's also done thousands of sessions for TV and movie soundtracks, and gigged or recorded with notables including Wayne Shorter, Al Jarreau, Toshiko Akiyoshi and Lou Tabackin, Manhattan Transfer, Natalie Cole, Joe Farrell, Tierney Sutton, Alphonso Johnson, and many others. Humphrey also has been seriously involved in music education, designing the drum program for the Percussion Institute of Technology, where he taught for 16 years, and heading the drum department at the Los Angeles Music Academy.
You can see the videos of both of their Berklee drum clinics after the jump...
Along with trumpeter Kasimu Taylor's previously announced set outdoors near the statue site on Third St., several Alton nightspots will feature jazz music that evening after the ceremony.
Veteran big-band trumpeter Bobby Shew(pictured), who's played with Woody Herman, Maynard Ferguson, Buddy Rich, Louis Bellson, and other top bands, will visit Alton to perform with drummer Montez Coleman's quintet in a post-unveiling gig at Elijah P's, 401 Piasa St.. Also that evening, trumpeter Jim Manley will lead a trio at Bossanova Restaurant and Lounge, and trumpeter Dan Smith will be playing at Catdaddy’s Tavern.
* The 2015 Newport Jazz Festival may be in the history books, but the fest's celebration of Davis' historic performances there is still reverberating, as fans attending this year's event shared their memories of Davis for a short video posted on the Miles Davis Facebook page.
* Meanwhile, writer Ashley Kahn, who among other things penned the definitive account of the recording of Davis' historic album Kind of Blue, was interviewed about the trumpeter's history at Newport on Boston radio station WBGO.
* On another related note, reviews of the box set of Davis' performances at Newport released last month are still coming in. Writing for Jazz Times, Colin Fleming calls the box "enough to get you pacing in excitement," while dual reviews in The Guardian (UK) found it to be "a real prize" and "coolly swinging".
For your Sunday reading, here are some interesting music-related items that have hit StLJN's inbox over the past week:
* Composing Music With Recurrent Neural Networks (Hexhedria.com)
* The recording of the music for Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation (London Jazz News)
* Music Therapy Might One Day Help People With Epilepsy (HealthDay.com)
* Secret Life of a Rock and Roll Trucker (Narrative.ly)
* Jerry Lee Lewis: ‘I worry about whether I'm going to heaven or hell’(The Guardian UK)
* R. Crumb’s Vibrant, Over-the-Top Album Covers (1968-2004) (OpenCulture.com)
* Prince Compares Record Contracts To Slavery In Rare Meeting With Media (NPR)
* The sensational world of band riders (and the not so glamorous reality) (Minnesota Public Radio)
* Columbia House, once a mail-order giant, files for bankruptcy (Los Angeles Times)
* Astronomer Uses Stars as Musical Instruments (Technology Review)
* Rain is sizzling bacon, cars are lions roaring: the art of sound in movies (The Guardian UK)
* Chess Records and the ten 7"s that helped shape modern music (The Vinyl Factory)
* Rare Photographs of Jazz Icons From the Archives of Metronome Magazine (Slate)
* Finally, A Non-Embarrassing Classical-Music Scene in a Blockbuster Movie (The New Yorker)
* We analyzed a month of Beats 1 tracks to figure out Apple’s taste in music (Quartz.com)
* The Word is Beat: Jazz, Poetry & the Beat Generation (AllAboutJazz.com)
* SoundExchange Launches PLAYS Search Engine: Who's Claiming Your Recordings? (HypeBot.com)
* As Newspapers Cut Music Critics, a Dark Time for the Arts or Dawn of a New Age? (WQXR)
* Tech and Artificial Intelligence Are Changing Music as We Know It. Here Are the 6 Big Ways (Mic.com)
* These Three Museums are Dedicated to Preserving the History of American Jazz (Atlanta Black Star)
* Could an Old-School Tube Amp Make the Music You Love Sound Better? (Collectors Weekly)
* Maiden Voyage: Herbie Hancock In The 1960s (WFIU)
* What's So Smooth About the New Smooth Jazz? (PopMatters)
* Back on song: New Orleans 10 years after Katrina (The Guardian UK)
* Anita Pointer: Civil-Rights Activist, Pop Star, and Serious Collector of Black Memorabilia (Collectors Weekly)
* Shorter Leads All-Star Tribute to Pastorius at Hollywood Bowl (DownBeat)
As the start of the fall presenting season approaches, it's time once again for a video preview of the touring jazz and creative musicians and bands who will be visiting St. Louis in the next few months. Here's a look at who's coming to town during the fall of 2015, presented in chronological order.
Although bandleader and drummer King has played the Bistro many times with The Bad Plus, this will be the Trucking Company's debut at the venue. You can hear them in the first video clip up top, playing a piece called "Blue Candy" that was recorded in June, 2010 at the Artists Quarter in St. Paul, MN with King on drums, Erik Fratkze on guitar, Brandon Wozniak on sax, and Adam Linz on bass.
The following week, pianist Monty Alexander will return to the Bistro for the first time to perform with his trio on Wednesday, September 9 and Thursday, September 10. After the jump, you can see a clip of Alexander, bassist John Clayton and drummer Jeff Hamilton playing "Mojo" back in 2013 at the studios of radio station KPLU in Seattle.
A couple of days after that, trumpeter Bobby Shew will be in the area to take part in the festivities surrounding the unveiling of the Miles Davis commemorative statue in Alton, IL. Shew will play with drummer Montez Coleman's band after the ceremony on Saturday, September 12 at Elijah P's in Alton. In today's third video, he can be seen performing his own composition "The Red Snapper" earlier this summer with the Airmen of Note big band.
Next up, Jazz St. Louis will celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Bistro from Wednesday, September 23 through Saturday, September 26 with a band assembled especially for the occasion, featuring musicians who have been frequent visitors to the Bistro over the years as bandleader or co-leaders - specifically, bassist Christian McBride, pianist Cyrus Chestnut, drummer Gregory Hutchinson, guitarist Russell Malone, trumpeter Terell Stafford, and saxophonist Tim Warfield.
Since the band has been put together just for this occasion, for purposes of this preview you'll have to settle for seeing clips of the musicians individually (with one exception). So, today's fourth video shows McBride's trio with pianist Christian Sands and drummer Ulysses Owens, Jr. playing - "Fried Pies" earlier this year, also at KPLU.
That's followed by Chestnut's trio playing Charlie Parker's "What Price Love," recorded earlier this year at Shanghai Jazz in Madison, NJ; and then a clip of a drum solo by Greg Hutchinson, recorded last year at the Drum Daze expo in Columbus, OH.
The seventh video shows Russell Malone fronting his own quartet at the 2009 Jazz at Marciac festival in France, playing the Duke Ellington standard "Caravan."
Last but not least, Stafford and Warfield - old friends who grew up near each other in Pennsylvania, and frequently share the same bandstand - can be heard in the final clip performing "The Touch of Your Lips" at the 2006 Jazz Baltica festival in Salzau, Germany, assisted by Matt Wilson on drums, Martin Wind on bass, and the late pianist Mulgrew Miller.
Look for part 2 of the Fall 2015 jazz preview in this space next week. You can see the rest of today's videos after the jump...
* Trumpeter Keyon Harrold is one of the featured musicians on Revive Music Presents Supreme Sonacy, Vol. 1, a compilation album released last week on Blue Note. Harrold performs with fellow trumpeter Maurice Brown and saxophonist Jaleel Shaw on a version of Lee Morgan's "The Procrastinator" and a remix/interlude called "Playing Catch Up."
* Washington University graduate Sarah Plovnick has received a 2015-16 Fulbright-mtvU Fellowship to study combinations of jazz and Dominican music and their influence on music education in the Dominican Republic. Plovine is one of five recent U.S. college graduates selected to participate in the joint effort by the U.S. Department of State and mtvU, MTV’s 24-hour college network, which seeks "to explore the power of music to influence culture and engage audiences overseas on topics of global importance."
It's shaping up to be an eclectic late-summer weekend of jazz and creative music in and around St. Louis, with performances in styles ranging from ragtime to swing to smooth jazz and R&B to experimental. Let's go to the highlights...
Thursday, August 13
Pianist Adam Maness will play while artist Vesna Delevska paints at Lilly's Music & Social House, and bassist Willem von Hombracht will team up with saxophonist Dave Stone at Thurman Grill.
(Jazz at the Bistro, meanwhile, is on pause this weekend, as the Bistro will serve as a venue for Grand Center's "Music at the Intersection" series on Friday, and will host a third-party production - see below for more - on Saturday.)
Saturday, August 15
You can take your pick from three different pianists working in three very different styles, as the Friends of Scott Joplin will present Terry Parrish(pictured, top left) playing ragtime at the Scott Joplin State Historic Site's Rosebud Cafe; Greg Mills will offer free improv, contemporary and experimental sounds at Tavern of Fine Arts; and Marvin F. Cockrell and Focus with special guest singer Alvin Garrett(pictured, center right) will perform smooth jazz and R&B for “A White Affair” at the Ferring Jazz Bistro.
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.)
For this week's Music Education Monday, you can take in a couple of master classes on video from the veteran saxophonist Ernie Watts.
In addition to his own recordings as a leader, Watts (pictured) has played with an exceptional range of jazz, rock and soul musicians and groups, including Buddy Rich, Bobby Hutcherson, Doc Severinsen and the Tonight Show band, bassist Charlie Haden's Quartet West, Marvin Gaye, the Rolling Stones, and many more.
He last performed in St. Louis with Severinsen and the Tonight Show alumni band in 2013 at the Touhill, and also was heard here in 2012 with pianist Laurence Hobgood's quartet at Jazz at the Bistro.
In today's first master class video, recorded in 2012 at the Jazz Education Network conference in Louisville, KY, the saxophonist offers his thoughts on "A Melodic Approach to Improvisation." The second video also was recorded in 2012, at the Mariachi Sax Boutique in Moscow, which seems to be the Russian equivalent of St. Louis' Saxquest.
* Davis' so-called "Lost Quintet" of the 1960s will be the subject of The Miles Davis Lost Quintet and Other Revolutionary Ensembles, an upcoming book by Bob Gluck that will be published next year by the University of Chicago Press.
* The unveiling ceremony for the commemorative statue of Davis in downtown Alton, IL is a little more than a month away, and the Miles Davis Memorial Project committee wants everyone to know that the event on Saturday, September 12 will be free and open to the public. As a reminder, they've produced a flyer, which you can see after the jump.
For your Sunday reading, here are some interesting music-related items that have hit StLJN's inbox over the past week:
* Robert Glasper Will Make You Listen to More Jazz (Vice)
* NYC’s famous Music Row is about to be a ghost town (New York Post)
* At 78 and with myriad health issues, surf-rock legend Dick Dale plays through the pain (Pittsburgh City Paper)
* Open the Music Industry’s Black Box (New York Times)
* Buddy Guy: 'I Worry About The Future Of Blues Music' (NPR)
* With His "65-92" Concert, Kamasi Washington Looked Back on the Music of the Watts and Rodney King Riots (LA Weekly)
* Live Review: Kamasi Washington at Seattle’s Neumos (7/30) (Consequence of Sound)
* These mics capture sounds from the edge of human hearing – and beyond (CreateDigitalMusic.com)
* Newport Jazz Festival 2015 Day 1 Highlights: Snarky Puppy, Chris Potter, Ambrose Akinmusire & More (Billboard)
* Newport Jazz Festival 2015 Day 2 Highlights: Jonathan Batiste, Jose James, Jack DeJohnette & More (Billboard)
* Have We Reached Peak Vinyl? (Stereogum)
* DARPA hired a jazz musician to jam with their artificially intelligent software (Tech Insider)
* Newport Jazz lineup left no gaps unbridged (Boston Globe)
* Review: The 2015 Newport Jazz Festival (Jazz Times)
* Hemingway Showcases Amazing Versatility During Stone Residency (DownBeat)
* Jazz iconoclast Steve Coleman on the ancient bedrock of human creativity (Chicago Reader)
* An Interview With the Most in Demand Drummer - Brian Blade (Cash Box Canada)
* Is streaming a threat to music? Not if musicians have anything to do with it (Los Angeles Times)
* The Band, The Capitol Albums 1968-1977 - album review: Pioneering rockers who changed the course of popular music (The Independent UK)
* Strong Bookings Illustrate Why Newport Retains Vaunted Stature (DownBeat)
* Blind Willie Johnson: The Soul of a Man (Arts & Labor)
Longtime StLJN readers know that it doesn't take much prompting to get yr. humble editor to start posting Count Basie videos, and this week, we're using Jazz St. Louis' upcoming "Basie's Birthday Bash" as an excuse for getting down with the Count.
Scheduled for Friday, August 21 and Saturday, August 22 at Jazz at the Bistro, the event will commemorate the 111th anniversary of Basie's birth in Red Bank, NJ with the Jazz St. Louis Big Band performing his music.
As suggested above, this isn't the first time that Basie has been featured in this space. While the 2010 post on Basie, featuring a show recorded in 1965 for the BBC, unfortunately has been gutted by linkrot, last year's "Basics of Basie", posted prior to the Basie "ghost" band's appearance at the Greater St. Louis Jazz Festival, is still intact as of this writing. And since that post featured a half-dozen of Basie's most recognizable songs, today we'll concentrate mostly on some longer performances.
The first video up above captures a full set of the Basie band in 1962, performing what would have been a fairly standard collection of material for them at the time. The lineup still featured many of the players from the famed "New Testament" edition of the group that began in the 1950s, including saxophonists Marshal Royal, Frank Wess, Eric Dixon, Frank Foster, and Charlie Fowkes; trumpeters Al Aarons, Sonny Cohn, Thad Jones, and Snooky Young; trombonists Henry Coker, Quentin "Butter" Jackson, and Benny Powell, plus the rhythm section of guitarist Freddie Green, bassist Eddie Jones, and drummer Sonny Payne and the singer, Irene Reid.
After the jump, you can see Basie in 1968 on the TV program Jazz Casual, performing in a quartet with Green, Payne and bassist Norman Keenan.
That's followed by a complete set recorded in 1975 in Stockholm, at which point the band's featured soloists included trombonist Al Grey s and the one-two tenor saxophone punch of Eddie 'Lockjaw' Davis and St. Louis native Jimmy Forrest.
Up next is another complete show, from 1981 in Paris, and then, a repost in one video of the entire 1965 performance for the BBC that was referenced above, recorded for the rather prosaically named Show of the Week.
Last but not least is a little gem from a 1959 TV appearance in which the Basie band backed up Lambert, Hendricks and Ross on their vocalese version of "Avenue C," which the trio had recorded on their 1957 album Sing A Song of Basie. While most of the band lays out during the portion of the song in which the singers recreate the sectional parts, the whole thing is worth hearing just for Basie's piano fills.
* The Goldenrod Showboat, once home to performances of traditional jazz and ragtime from the 1960s to the 1970s while moored on the St. Louis riverfront, is finally headed for the scrapyard. Attempts to resurrect the boat (pictured) have been abandoned after a recent attempt to move it from a remote spot along the Illinois River near Kampsville, IL to a safer location resulted in major structural damage.
* Jazz radio update: This Saturday on Radio Arts Foundation-St. Louis, “Somethin’ Else” host Calvin Wilson will showcase the music of fast-rising bassist and singer Esperanza Spalding. The program begins at 8:00 p.m. and can be heard over the air on 107.3 FM, on HD radio at 96.3 HD-2, and online at http://www.rafstl.org/listen.
This week's calendar of live jazz and creative music in and around St. Louis includes shows from a couple of New Orleans acts - one a former St. Louisan - as well as a diverse assortment of performances from local musicians.
Friday, August 7
Pianist Tom McDermott, a St. Louis native who since the 1980s has made his home in New Orleans, will be back town to perform at the Tavern of Fine Arts. McDermott (pictured, top left) has earned a reputation as an expert on historic New Orleans jazz and blues piano styles, mixing in classical music, Brazilian choro, and more as the mood strikes him.
Meanwhile, Jazz at the Bistro will host the first of two nights of "Saturday Night Fish Fry," featuring blues guitarist and singer Mike Aguirre(pictured, center left) and a backing group including members of the Funky Butt Brass Band, musicians who have played with Albert King and Chuck Berry, and Jazz St. Louis' own Bob Bennett on tenor sax.
Saturday, August 8
Also from New Orleans, multi-instrumentalist and singer Trombone Shorty and Orleans Avenue(pictured, lower left) will perform outdoors at Ballpark Village's City View Concert Stage.
With a galvanizing live show, Shorty has crossed over successfully to jam-band and rock audiences, and given his increasing popularity plus the availability of cheap general admission tickets, this gig should draw a large crowd. You can check out some sample live performances from Trombone Shorty and Orleans Avenue in this video post from last week.
Also on Saturday, singer Joe Scalzitti and the St. Louis Big Band begin the final weekend of their tribute show "Sinatra at 100" at the Kranzberg Arts Center; guitarist Vincent Varvel and pianist Adam Maness will play at Tavern of Fine Arts; and trumpeter Jim Manley's All-Star Group returns to Nathalie's.
Sunday, August 9
The St. Louis Jazz Club presents a matinee performance by pianist Pat Joyce at the Ozark Theatre, and Gypsy jazz duo Coco Rico will play an early evening show at Nathalie's.
Tuesday, August 11
Singer Feyza Eren will perform at Evangeline'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.)
