StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: 2019 Greater St. Louis Jazz Festival

This week, let's take a look at some videos featuring musicians who will be performing for the 2018 Greater St. Louis Jazz Festival next Friday, April 12 and Saturday, April 13 at the Touhill Performing Arts Center. 

Friday night's concert will feature the DIVA Jazz Orchestra, an all-woman big band based in NYC that was founded and still is led by drummer Sherri Maricle. They celebrated their 25th anniversary as a band in 2018 and have released ten albums to date, the most recent being last year's 25th Anniversary Project, which featured all original music composed and arranged by current members of the orchestra.

As you'd expect, aside from Maricle, the lineup of musicians has changed and evolved over the years, and several alumni have gone on to careers as solo artists and bandleaders, notably trumpeter Ingrid Jensen and saxophonist and clarinetist Anat Cohen.

You can see DIVA in action in the first video up above, which documents their complete set at the 2017 International Women's Brass Conference, held in June of that year on the campus of Rowan University in Glassboro, NJ.

After the jump, you can see two more performances recorded in 2018 at the Cummings Theatre in Cazenovia, NY, starting with "Jami's Tune" by trumpeter Barbara Laronga, and then "Square One," composed and arranged by alto saxophonist Alexa Tarentino.

Saturday night's concert at the Touhill is billed as tribute to bassist and UMSL jazz studies director Jim Widner, who founded the GSLJF and is retiring from teaching this year. Drummer and producer Gregg Field , a former student of Widner's, will lead a "all-star" big band assembled specifically for the occasion, featuring a number of musicians with connections to Widner and the festival.

Though a complete lineup of musicians hasn't been announced, the tribute's advertised participants include a number of well-known players, such as saxophonist Tom Scott, trumpeter Scotty Barnhart, pianist, saxophonist and arranger/composer Gordon Goodwin, bassist Carlitos del Puerto, pianist Shelly Berg, and more. You can see and hear some of those musicians in action in the rest of today's videos.

Field, who first made his reputation as the drummer for a latter-day edition of Count Basie's band, can be seen in the third video after the jump, driving the student musicians in the 2017 Disneyland Resort All American College Band in a concert from behind his kit.

Next, you can see Barnhart playing the ballad standard "I Thought About You," as recorded in 2017 at a demonstration performance for Monette trumpets, followed by Tom Scott doing his tribute to Grover Washington, "Got to Get Closer To You," at a gig in 2016.

That's followed by Berg's brief solo take on 'They Can't Take That Away from Me," recorded in 2016 as a tribute to his friend Larry Rosen; an unaccompanied bass solo from 2015 by Del Puerto; and, last but not least, a full set from Goodwin's Big Phat Band, recorded earlier this year at the Folsom Jazz Festival in California.

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