Wednesday, October 30, 2019

Jazz this week: TAUK, Clayton, Coffin & Wilson, River City Sound Clinic & Gerald Nicosia, Blue Strawberry opens, and more

It's another busy week for live jazz and creative music in St. Louis, with sounds from funk and fusion to free improv and straight-ahead swing, plus the opening of a new local venue for cabaret performances, and more. Let's go to the highlights...

Wednesday, October 30
Funk/jam quartet TAUK returns to perform at the Old Rock House, having recently released the third volume in their "Real Tauk" series of live recordings; and The 442s will debut some new music from bandleader Adam Maness and composers Christopher Stark and Stefan Freund in a concert at The Sheldon.

Elsewhere around town, this week's "Wednesday Night Jazz Crawl" features Miss Jubilee at The Stage at KDHX, the weekly jam session at the Kranzberg Arts Center, and The People's Key doing a 1980s-themed show for Halloween at The Dark Room.


Thursday, 
October 31
The new Central West End cabaret venue Blue Strawberry opens with St. Louisan Ken Haller's latest show, "When I'm 65." The club will feature cabaret and other singers on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, plus additional live music on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and food and drinks throughout the week. To find out more, read this post from last week.

Also on Thursday, the Jazz at Holmes series at Washington University presents a free concert by Italian vibraphonist Marco Pacassoni (pictured, center left) with guitarist William Lenihan, bassist Joseph Lepore and drummer Steve Davis; and singer Denise Thimes is back home from Chicago to present the "Mildred Thimes Foundation 15th Annual Benefit Concert" at The Sheldon, with saxophonist Tim Cunningham providing the entertainment for the pre-show VIP event.

Friday, November 1
Bassist John Clayton, saxophonist Jeff Coffin and drummer Matt Wilson (pictured, top left), all in town for week-long educational residencies at Jazz St. Louis, will team up to conclude their stays with the first of two nights of performances at the Bistro.

As often happens with these ad hoc combinations, given the diversity of their respective experiences and usual modes of musical expression, it's hard to predict what they'll sound like together. All three do have their own catalogs of compositions from which to draw, and there definitely should be a high level of musicianship happening, even if there's some stylistic tension along the way.

Also on Friday, Dizzy Atmosphere plays vintage swing and Gypsy jazz in a concert at The Focal Point; the Sentimental Journey Dance Band plays for dancers at the Casa Loma Ballroom, and Blue Strawberry's opening weekend continues with a performance from St. Louisans Rosemary Watts and Joe Dreyer.

Saturday, November 2
Trumpeter George Sams' Nu-Art Series returns with "Jazz n' Tongues: Musical Improvisation to the poetry of Gerald Nicosia" featuring Sams and an ensemble of St. Louis musicians christened the River City Sound Clinic with Nicosia (pictured, with Sams, at bottom left) on stage at the Kranzberg Arts Center.

Also on Saturday, former St. Louisan Mark Deutsch presents another performance on his invented instrument, the Bazantar, at the Focal Point;  nine different up-and-coming St. Louis bands and performers will be featured in "Labor of Love - A Kranzberg Arts Foundation Music Resident Benefit Concert" at .ZACK in Grand Center, and the opening weekend at Blue Strawberry concludes with Amy Friedl Stoner singing "A Little Bit of Everything."

Sunday, November 3
The St. Louis Record Show will present their last event of the year at the American Czech Center, and the St. Louis Jazz Club presents the Funky Butt Brass Band in a concert at the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel St. Louis - Westport.

Then on Sunday evening, pianist Ptah Williams' trio performs at The Judson House, and the student musicians of the JazzU Big Band will perform at Jazz St. Louis.

Monday, November 4
Students in Webster University's Student Jazz Combos will show off what they've learned this semester in a performance at Webster's Community Music School.

Tuesday, November 5
Trumpeter Garrett Schmidt leads a quintet in a concert at the Gaslight Theater.

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.)

Sunday, October 27, 2019

Sunday Session: October 27, 2019

Billy Cobham
Here's this week's roundup of various music-related items of interest:

* The strange revival of vinyl records (The Economist)
* A stroke of genius: Guitarist and Brookline native wins MacArthur fellowship (WickedLocal.com)
* Q&A: Herb Alpert (TheaterJones.com)
* Mingus’s Lost String Quartet (London Review of Books)
* In Reversal, WNYC Says New Sounds Will Stay On The Airwaves (Gothamist.com)
* Kinks 1969 epic chimes with Britain’s mood today, says singer Ray Davies (The Guardian)
* The Renaissance of Marilyn Crispell (DownBeat)
* The 2010s: Classical Music's Decade Of Reckoning (NPR)
* Adam Rudolph: The Matrix Reloaded (Jazz Times)
* When the Beatles Walked Offstage: Fifty Years of “Abbey Road” (The New Yorker)
* 'Fresh Air' Marks The Centenary Of The Birth Of Jazz Singer Anita O'Day (NPR)
* Shorter, Salvant and Benson Among DownBeat Readers Poll Winners (DownBeat)
* Come blow your horn: the glory days of Ronnie Scott's jazz club – in pictures (The Guardian)
* How Untitled Goose Game adapted Debussy for its dynamic soundtrack (TheVerge.com)
* The dorky recorder you had in school just got a futuristic remake (CDM.link)
* Billy Cobham: Blowin’ in the Crosswinds (Jazz Times)
* How ‘Moonlight Serenade’ Defined a Generation (Smithsonian)
* Uri Caine Pays Tribute to Octavius Catto (DownBeat)
* Summoning the ghosts of Record Row (Chicago Reader)
* Joe Lovano’s New Septet Echoes the Past, Looks to the Future (DownBeat)
* Jazz Foundation of America Honors Roy Haynes, Raises $475K at Annual Loft Party (DownBeat)
* The Long Journey of Charlie Parker’s Saxophone (Smithsonian)
* The Hissing of Vintage Tapes (Tedium.co)
* What Makes Music Enjoyable? It’s Complex, But Measurable (Forbes.com)
* Nubya Garcia in Full ‘Blume’ (DownBeat)
* How the Internet Archive is Digitizing LPs to Preserve Generations of Audio (Archive.org)
* The “cost of living” in Spotify streams (Alex.Leonard.ie)
* The Necessity of Musical Hallucinations (Nautil.us)
* The Rise and Fall of Hip-Hop's First Godmother: Sugar Hill Records' Sylvia Robinson (Billboard)

Saturday, October 26, 2019

StLJN Saturday Video Showcase:
Violin virtuosity from Regina Carter



Today, it's time for a look at some videos featuring violinist Regina Carter, who will be back in St. Louis to perform starting Wednesday, November 6 through Sunday, November 10 at Jazz St. Louis.

Generally acclaimed as the top jazz violinist of her generation, Carter has performed at major venues around the world, released 10 albums as a leader, and been the recipient of numerous honors, including a MacArthur Fellowship "genius grant" in 2006 and the Doris Duke Award in 2018.

The Detroit native has been a regular visitor to St. Louis in recent years, most recently in October 2018 to headline a benefit concert for Community Women Against Hardship at the Sheldon Concert Hall.

Another of her previous gigs, in 2015 at Jazz St. Louis with her "Southern Comfort" band, was previewed here at the time with a Saturday video post and you can check out that post for more background on her.

On this visit, Carter will be playing in a duo with pianist Xavier Davis, who's been part of her band for the last couple of years, starting not long before her Ella Fitzgerald tribute Accentuate The Positive was released in 2017.

Today's collection of recent performances featuring Carter starts with the two of them, along with the rest of Carter's band, in the first clip up above, an audience-shot excerpt from a show they did in April of this year at Stony Brook University in New York.

After the jump, you can see an excerpt from Carter's guest performance with pianist Chucho Valdez in a concert this past June at Prospect Park in Brooklyn NY.

That's followed by a couple of duets with bassist Robert Hurst, "Strung Out" and "R&R," recorded a couple of years ago for NPR's "Night Owl" feature and released in January 2019.

Then in the next clip, Carter dips into an almost jazz-fusion sound on "Lapis Refugii" with the AMC Trio, a Slovak group led by pianist Peter Adamovič.

Last but not least, the final video is an interview of Carter by fellow violinist Christian Howe, recorded in August, 2018.

For more about Regina Carter, read the excerpt about her from Mark Stryker's book Jazz From Detroit published earlier this year, and these two interviews from January 2018 and August 2019.

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

Friday, October 25, 2019

So What: Local News, Notes & Links

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

* Saxophonist Harvey Lockhart (pictured) has been chosen as one of 25 semi-finalists this year for the national Music Educator Award given annually by the Recording Academy and Grammy Awards.

As reported by the Post-Dispatch's Sarah Bryan Miller, Lockhart was recognized for his work as band director for Riverview Gardens High School - he subsequently joined the faculty at Cardinal Ritter this summer - and for his not-for-profit organization HEAL Center for the Arts. Ten finalists for the award will be named in December, with one winner selected to attend the Grammy Awards ceremony next year.

* Open Studio has posted to YouTube a video of last Saturday's concert by pianist Geoffrey Keezer.

* Musical instrument retailer and service center Saxquest will present their 2019 Woodwind Instrument Expo on Saturday, November 16 at St. Charles Community College. The event will offer musicians the opportunity to try instruments and accessories from a variety of manufacturers. Admission is free, but attendees who would like access to private rooms are encouraged to register in advance.

* An article by Charles Waring at UDiscoverMusic.com offers a reappraisal of guitarist Grant Green's Blue Note album Born to Be Blue, which recently was re-released as part of the label's "Tone Poet Audiophile Vinyl" reissue series.

* The Sheldon has posted to Facebook an album of photos from saxophonist David Sanborn's concert last Friday night.

* And speaking of The Sheldon, HEC-TV has produced a feature story about the hall's new outdoor plaza.

* The impending opening next week of the new Central West End cabaret venue Blue Strawberry was the subject of a short feature story from Riverfront Times writer Ella Faust.

* Also in the RFT, the building that currently houses Vintage Vinyl is the subject of a "Then and Now" feature by Jaime Lees.

Thursday, October 24, 2019

Blue Strawberry bringing cabaret sounds to Central West End starting October 31

Clockwise from top left: Haller, Sullivan, Ross, Watts & Dreyer 
St. Louis is getting a new venue for cabaret-style entertainment with the debut next week of Blue Strawberry at 364 N Boyle in the Central West End.

Set to open on Thursday, October 31, Blue Strawberry is owned by Jim Dolan, who through his company The Presenters Dolan has been producing cabaret shows here since the mid-2000s in a variety of locations, the most recent being the Gaslight Theater, which has hosted several iterations of Dolan's Gaslight Cabaret Festival just a few doors down the street on Boyle.

Blue Strawberry, which also will offer a full bar and food menu, will feature performances by a mix of local and touring singers on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, with additional live music on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

St. Louis cabaret favorite Ken Haller will provide the entertainment for opening night with his new show "When I'm 65." Others scheduled for the first month include St. Louis' own Rosemary Watts and Joe Dreyer on Friday, November 1; singer and actress K.T. Sullivan with a tribute to the late Barbara Cook on Saturday, November 16; and the "Crown Prince of New York cabaret" Steve Ross with a show of Cole Porter songs on on Friday, November 29 and Saturday, November 30.

You can see a complete schedule of upcoming performances and purchase advance tickets at the Blue Strawberry website or at LicketyTix.com.

Wednesday, October 23, 2019

Jazz this week: Freddy Cole & Houston Person, Arturo Sandoval & Jane Monheit, and more

This week's calendar of live jazz and creative music in St. Louis includes two shows featuring two visiting headliners for the price of one, plus a Middle Eastern instrumental virtuoso and the usual assortment of performances in various styles from our hometown's own.

Let's go to the highlights...

Wednesday, October 23
Pianist and singer Freddy Cole and his quintet with special guest saxophonist Houston Person (pictured, top left) will perform for the first of five nights continuing through Sunday at Jazz St. Louis.

Cole, the brother of the legendary Nat "King" Cole, shares his late sibling's general air of suavity and his good taste in songs and musicians, but has established his own identity as a performer, as defiantly noted in his original song "I'm Not My Brother, I'm Me." Person, a veteran steeped in bebop, blues and ballads, seems a fine match for Cole, as both not only are of the same generation but share an old-school musical sensibility.

Also in Grand Center, this week's "Wednesday Night Jazz Crawl" includes pianist Ethan Leinwand at The Stage at KDHX, the jam session hosted by bassist Bob DeBoo, and singer Erika Johnson, debuting her new organ trio at The Dark Room.

Thursday, October 24
Guitarist Brian Vaccaro leads a quartet in a free concert for the Jazz at Holmes series at Washington University, and keyboardist Andrew Stephen returns to The Dark Room.

Friday, October 25
Guitarist Dave Black, recovered from a serious cycling accident this summer that took him out of action for a couple of month, plays solo at The Dark Room; and Iraqi-American oud player Rahim Al Haj brings his trio, plus guest pianist Adaron "Pops" Jackson, to the Kranzberg Arts Center.

Also on Friday, the Ambassadors of Swing play for dancers at the Casa Loma Ballroom; and the Oîkos Ensemble teams up with SkyStone Conservatory Dance Ensemble and the Logos Readers for "Earth Walk Returns," a multi-disciplinary performance at the First Congregational Church of Webster Groves.

Saturday, 
October 26
The annual "Friends of the Sheldon Benefit" features trumpeter Arturo Sandoval, his band, and guest singer Jane Monheit (pictured, bottom left) in a performance at the Sheldon Concert Hall.

Sandoval, the Cuban-born protege of Dizzy Gillespie turned multiple Grammy Award winner, certainly can bring the pyrotechnics on trumpet when the situation calls for it, while Monheit belongs in any discussion of the top women jazz singers working today.

Both usually headline their own shows, though they have done some select gigs in this configuration, and so it should be interesting to hear what musical ground brings them together, and how they choose to navigate it.  You can see some recent performances by Sandoval on video in this post from last Saturday.

Also on Saturday, The Gaslight Squares return to the Frisco Barroom.

Sunday, October 27
Miss Jubilee performs for jazz brunch at Evangeline's; and bassist Ben Wheeler’s Sketchbook plays an evening concert at the Kranzberg Arts Center.

Monday, October 28
Dizzy Atmosphere plays vintage swing and Gypsy jazz at The Shaved Duck, and pianist Kim Portnoy leads a big band playing original works in a concert at Winifred Moore Auditorium on the Webster University campus.

Elsewhere around town, the Folk School of KDHX has moved their Traditional Jazz Jam Session to Monday nights, and made it a weekly event.

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.)

Sunday, October 20, 2019

Sunday Session: October 20, 2019

Nat "King" Cole
Here's this week's roundup of various music-related items of interest:

* Remembering the Weirdest Album Launch Stunts of the 2010s (Pitchfork.com)
* Frank Zappa Marks 50th Anniversary of ‘Hot Rats’ With Massive Reissue (Rolling Stone)
* Jazz legend John Surman on a well-travelled career and why he's angry about Brexit (Irish Examiner)
* “It Was Beyond My Wildest Dreams” Pianist Ahmad Jamal Recalls ‘At The Pershing’ (UDiscoverMusic.com)
* Percussionist Adam Rudolph Crafts a Tapestry of Sounds (DownBeat)
* Diverse Curation Sustains Belgrade Jazz Festival (DownBeat)
* Art Blakey: Praise the Messenger (Jazz Times)
* Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Reveals 2020 Nominees: Soundgarden, Whitney Houston & More (Billboard)
* Steve Miller cracked the code of 1970s radio. But he’s still raging against the music industry (Washington Post)
* Why Everything Is Getting Louder (The Atlantic)
* What will a music company look like in 2025? (MusicBusinessWorldwide.com)
* INTERVIEW: Morton Subotnick And Lillevan (TheQuietus.com)
* Finalists Announced in 8th Annual Sarah Vaughan International Vocal Competition (DownBeat)
* Why MLK Believed Jazz Was the Perfect Soundtrack for Civil Rights (JStor.org)
* Before & After: Leon Parker (Jazz Times)
* Oscar nom, opera at the Met, a move to L.A.: New Orleans trumpeter Terence Blanchard's big year (NOLA.com)
* What lost photos of Blue Notes say about South Africa’s jazz history (TheConversation.com)
* How ‘Almost Famous’ Foretold the Future of Music Journalism (TheRinger.com)
* The Transformative Power of Nat ‘King’ Cole (DownBeat)
* An actual bear broke into a woman’s house and started playing piano (ClassicFM.com)
* Matana Roberts’s Memphis (ThisIsEarhart.com)
* The Tragic Story of America’s First Black Music Star (Smithsonian)
* ECM Records: Curating A New World Of Music (SFJAZZ.org)
* Ronnie Scott’s at 60 (TheBlueMoment.com)
* Humanity is Not an Algorithm: What We Lose with WNYC’s Cancellation of New Sounds (ICareIfYouListen.com)
* How Liverpool’s first girl band dubbed ‘the female Beatles’ had run-in with John Lennon (Express.co.uk)

Saturday, October 19, 2019

StLJN Saturday Video Showcase:
Spotlight on Arturo Sandoval



This week, let's take a look at some videos featuring trumpeter Arturo Sandoval, who will perform with his band and vocalist Jane Monheit for the annual "Friends of the Sheldon" benefit next Saturday, October 26 at the Sheldon Concert Hall. It will be Sandoval's first local appearance since a weekend in October 2017 at Jazz St. Louis; Monheit last performed here in November of that year, also at Jazz St. Louis.

Born in Cuba, the 69-year-old Sandoval first gained recognition in the USA in the late 1970s as a member of Cuban jazz-fusion band Irakere. Around that same time, he met fellow trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, who became a friend, mentor, and eventually, employer of Sandoval via Diz's United Nations Orchestra.

Thanks in part to Gillespie's mentorship, Sandoval's solo career took off, resulting in offers to record in the USA and tour around the world. He eventually defected to the United States in 1990 while touring with Gillespie, and became a naturalized American citizen in 1998.

In all, Sandoval has released more than 30 recordings as a bandleader, and continues to tour regularly, playing jazz and occasional symphonic gigs, as well as scoring films. He's won a total of ten Grammy Awards to date, plus a Presidential Medal of Freedom and many other honors.

You can see and hear various aspects of the trumpeter's musical personality in today's collection of videos, starting up top with a version of the venerable standard "Peanut Vendor" recorded in 2017 at the Java Jazz Festival in Indonesia.

After the jump, there are two clips recorded in November 2017 at the studios of KNKX radio in Tacoma, WA, as Sandoval performs "Here's That Rainy Day" and "Soca Beat."

Next, you can see two videos of Sandoval last year at the Jazz Trumpet Festival in Brazil, performing his mentor Gillespie's signature song "A Night In Tunisia" and "Funky Cha-Cha" with the Speaking Jazz Big Band.

The final video shows Sandoval in June of this year performing his second original trumpet concerto with the Prague National Orchestra.

For more about Arturo Sandoval, read his May 2019 interview with AllAboutJazz.com, and listen to his 2018 interview with KIOS radio in Omaha, and his September 2019 interview on the "Get Happy with Dr. Marissa" podcast.

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

Friday, October 18, 2019

So What: Local News, Notes & Links

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

* Guitarist Eddie Roberts (pictured) of The New Mastersounds, who will perform tomorrow night at Atomic Cowboy Pavilion, was interviewed by KDHX's Chris Lawyer.

* Saxophonist David Sanborn was a guest Tuesday morning on KMOX's Charlie Brennan program, and was interviewed about his performance tonight at The Sheldon.

* The collaborative production of "Such Sweet Thunder" staged earlier this month in Grand Center, which featured music from the Jazz St. Louis Big Band, was reviewed on HEC-TV's Two on the Aisle.

* Stanley Nelson, director of the new documentary Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool, was interviewed by Arts Today magazine.

* On a related note, the latest reviews of Nelson's film include pieces by Adam Sieff of London Jazz News and Josh Terry for Deseret News.

* Also on the Miles Davis beat, Jazz Times magazine is conducting a reader giveaway, offering a package of Davis-related prizes including a copy of his new album Rubberband, a T-shirt, and more. You can enter the giveaway here.

* Finally, an article on the website Something Else! looks back and asks, "50 Years Ago: Who Tried to Kill Miles Davis on a New York City Street?"

Thursday, October 17, 2019

Nu-Art Series returning with poet Gerald Nicosia, River City Sound Clinic on Saturday, November 2 at Kranzberg Arts Center

Trumpeter and impresario George Sams' Nu-Art Series is returning to action next month with "Jazz n' Tongues: Musical Improvisation to the poetry of Gerald Nicosia," which will be presented at 8:00 p.m. Saturday, November 2 at the Kranzberg Arts Center.

The event, which is presented in conjunction with the St. Louis University music department, is free and open to the public. It will feature Sams and Nicosia (pictured) plus an ensemble of St. Louis improvising musicians dubbed the River City Sound Clinic, including cellist Tracy Andreotti, violinist Alyssa Avery, percussionist Henry Claude, clarinetist Eric Mandat, pianist Greg Mills, bassist Darrell Mixon, and saxophonist Aaron Parker.

Gerald Nicosia, who lives in Marin County, CA, is a poet, critic, and writer best known as the author of Memory Babe: A Critical Biography of Jack Kerouac; a historian of the Beats, the Sixties, and the Vietnam War; and the author of the 2001 book Home to War, about the experiences of Vietnam veterans returning to the US. His fourth and most recent collection of poetry, Night Train to Shanghai, was published in 2014 by Grizzly Peak Press.

As for the Nu-Art Series, Sams tells StLJN that he's got more events planned for the 2019-20 presenting season, most notably a residency and concert by trumpeter Eddie Henderson in the spring. Watch this space for more details as they become available...

Wednesday, October 16, 2019

Jazz this week: David Sanborn, Norman Brown's "Summer Storm," The New Mastersounds, Diego Figueiredo, and more

It's a jam-packed week for jazz and creative music in St. Louis, with notable shows including a homecoming for one of our city's favorite sons, plus sounds from a visiting Broadway star, a British funk band, a Brazilian guitarist, and much more.

Let's go to the highlights...

Wednesday, October 16
Singer and actress Rachel Bay Jones, known as one of the stars of the Broadway show Dear Evan Hansen, performs for the first of two nights at Jazz St. Louis as part of their series of co-presentations with Cabaret Project of St. Louis.

Nearby in Grand Center, the weekly "Wednesday Night Jazz Crawl" features Sweet & Low (guitarists Adam Wilke and Celia Shacklett) at The Stage at KDHX; the jam session hosted by bassist Bob Deboo at the Kranzberg Arts Center; and trumpeter Kasimu Taylor's quartet at The Dark Room.

Thursday, October 17
Guitarist Bob Lanzetti of Snarky Puppy will perform at Pop's Blue Moon; and the Jazz at Holmes series at Washington University presents a free concert of Argentinian and Brazilian music, featuring pianist Ken Kehner, guitarist William Lenihan, bassist Joseph Lepore, and drummer Steve Davis with Amy Greenhalgh (violin), Ranya Iqbal (cello), and Victoria Voumard (viola).

Also on Thursday, saxophonist Andy Ament leads a trio at The Pat Connolly Tavern, and keyboardist Ryan Marquez returns to The Dark Room.

Friday, October 18
Saxophonist David Sanborn (pictured, top left) will be back home again for a performance at The Sheldon, helping to celebrate the completion and official debut of a plaza, walkway and vertical garden on the west side of the hall.

Also on Friday, Brazilian guitarist Diego Figueiredo (pictured, center left) will perform with backing from bassist and singer Janet Evra's quartet at the Grandel Theatre; and Jazz St. Louis will be "Celebrating Ella Fitzgerald" for the first of two nights with singer Anita Jackson, pianist Adaron "Pops" Jackson, bassist Jahmal Nichols, drummer Montez Coleman and saxophonist Ben Reece.

Elsewhere around town, the Original Knights of Swing plays for dancers at the Casa Loma Ballroom; singer Jan Shapiro returns to the Ozark Theatre; and trumpeter Jim Manley will play a late evening gig at Sophie's Artist Lounge & Cocktail Club.

Saturday, October 19
British funk/jazz group The New Mastersounds (pictured, bottom left) returns for a performance at the Atomic Cowboy Pavilion.

They're celebrating their 20th anniversary as a band with a new album, Shake It, released last month, and a tour featuring guest vocalist Lamar Williams, Jr. For more about Shake It plus some videos of recent performances, take a look at this post from last Saturday.

Also on Saturday, guitarist Norman Brown and his "Summer Storm" show, featuring saxophonist Euge Groove, singer Lindsay Webster, and the Coleman Hughes Project, will play two shows at the Grandel Theatre; pianist Geoffrey Keezer leads a trio in a concert at Open Studio in Grand Center's Centene Center for the Arts; and the New Orleans Suspects are back in town to play at the Broadway Oyster Bar.

Sunday, October 20
Miss Jubilee performs for jazz brunch at Evangeline's, while guitarist and singer Tommy Halloran returns to The Dark Room.

Also on Sunday, the St. Louis Jazz Club presents the Arcadia Dance Orchestra at the Moolah Shrine Center's Oasis Room.

Tuesday, October 21
Pianist and singer Jesse Gannon plays at BB's Jazz, Blues and Soups.

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.)

Sunday, October 13, 2019

Sunday Session: October 13, 2019

Art Blakey
Here's this week's roundup of various music-related items of interest:

* Ain’t No Limitations: The Soul Rebels pave the roads and knock down the doors (Offbeat)
* Are Albums Dying? ⁠— 15% of Music Fans Under 25 Have Never Listened to a Full Album (DigitalMusicNews.com)
* Harry Nilsson’s Animated Film ‘The Point!’ Gets 50th Anniversary Digital Release (Rolling Stone)
* Remembering Ginger Baker (DownBeat)
* Ginger Baker: A Jazz Drummer With a Rock Reputation (Billboard)
* Bill Frisell Remembers Ginger Baker: ‘Nobody Sounded Like That’ (Rolling Stone)
* Ginger Baker’s Best: A Deep Dive Into the Late Drummer’s Hidden Gems (Listen) (Variety)
* Cold Gettin’ Dub: Rap 12"s and the Forgotten Artform of Bonus Beats (RedBullMusicAcademy.com)
* Sean Jones: A Challenging Life (Jazz Times)
* John Anderson, World's Greatest Soul Record Dealer, Is Dead (The Daily Beast)
* Live Review: 2019 Monterey Jazz Festival (Jazz Times)
* A new ‘Porgy and Bess’ raises old questions about race and opera (TheUndefeated.com)
* An AJMF Conversation with Jimmy Heath (AtlantaJMF.org)
* Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood: 'Instead of cocaine, hook me up with a recorder group!' (The Guardian)
* Cut Your Own Vinyl Records With This $1,100 Machine (Wired)
* On ‘Fly Or Die II,’ Jaimie Branch Lets the Music Breathe (DownBeat)
* Deutsches Jazzfestival Frankfurt Celebrates 50 Years of Fruitful Collaborations (DownBeat)
* Art Blakey's Legacy: A Rallying Cry And A Gathering Place (NPR)

Saturday, October 12, 2019

StLJN Saturday Video Showcase:
"Shake It" with The New Mastersounds



This week, we're checking out some videos featuring The New Mastersounds, who will be coming to St. Louis to perform next Saturday, October 19 at the Atomic Cowboy Pavilion.

A funk/jazz quartet with a stripped-down sound that's been compared to the Meters, Booker T and the MGs, and St. Louis' own Grant Green, The New Mastersounds - guitarist and bandleader Eddie Roberts, drummer Simon Allen, bassist Pete Shand, and keyboardist Joe Tatton - last played here in May 2016, also at Atomic Cowboy.

This time around, they're celebrating their 20th year as a band, plus the release of a new album, Shake It, which came out in September on Roberts' new Color Red label. The new album and their current tour also are their first to feature vocalist Lamar Williams Jr. (whose dad played bass with the Allman Brothers Band and Sea Level).

You can see the Mastersounds with Williams in the first video up above, a mini-set recorded in May of this year at Paste Studio in NYC that features the songs "Let's Go Back," "Shake It" and "Love They Deserve."

After the jump, there's a full set of music, recorded in September at Terminal West in Atlanta, that includes all the songs from Shake It.

That's followed by another full set of music, recorded in July at Ardmore Music Hall in Philadelphia.

The last three videos depict live-in-the-studio performances that were part of the Mastersounds' immediately previous album The Nashville Sessions 2, released last November. Like the original Nashville Sessions album, it was recorded live-to-tape in a single session before a small audience at Welcome to 1979 Studios in Nashville, with the results including the tracks seen here, "Yokacoka," "All I Want (Right Now)" and "3 on the B."

For more about The New Mastersounds, check out Eddie Roberts' interview last year with Jambase.com and an interview he did around the same time with "The Sound Podcast with Ira Haberman."

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

Friday, October 11, 2019

So What: Local News, Notes & Links

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

* Last weekend's production of "Such Sweet Thunder" by Jazz St. Louis, St. Louis Shakespeare Company, Big Muddy Dance Company, and Nine Network was reviewed by Mark Bretz of Ladue News.

* The artwork that will be featured in "The Shape of Abstraction Trumpet and Voice, Call and Response," tonight's performance by trumpeter Keyon Harrold and writer Quincy Troupe at the St. Louis Art Museum, is the subject of a feature story by St. Louis magazine's Samantha Stevenson.

* Stanley Nelson, director of the new documentary Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool, was interviewed by AllAboutJazz.com's Victor L. Schermer

* The Sheldon Concert Hall has posted to Facebook an album of photos from last Saturday's performance by singer Cecile McLoran Salvant.

* When saxophonist and composer Benny Golson was in town last weeks to appear for Jazz St. Louis' "Whitaker Jazz Speaks" series, he also went to the University of Missouri-St. Louis to give a master class to jazz students, which was covered in an article on the UMSL Daily website.

* Radio host, photographer and author Dennis Owsley's new book St. Louis Jazz: A History was reviewed by Repps Hudson of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

* In related news, Owsley (pictured) last week announced via social media and emails to friends and colleagues that he and his wife Sara are moving to the Phoenix, AZ area to be close to their grandchildren.

The move already is underway, but Owsley says he'll be continuing his radio program "Jazz Unlimited," which airs Sunday nights on St. Louis Public Radio. Since he's been recording the program on his home computer for more than 10 years and submitting it either on disc or by email, the only change will be "that it goes 1500 miles to St. Louis Public Radio rather than 15 miles," he said.

Wednesday, October 09, 2019

Jazz this week: Artemis, Keyon Harrold & Quincy Troupe, "Jazz Heaven" and more

This week's calendar of live jazz and creative music in St. Louis includes the local debut of a buzzworthy new band, a homecoming for a couple of native sons, the latest chapter in a series of tributes to famous figures in jazz, and more.

Let's go to the highlights...


Wednesday, October 9
The all-star band Artemis (pictured, top left) will make their St. Louis debut with the first of five nights of performances at Jazz St. Louis.

Formed a couple of years ago at the instigation of pianist Renee Rosnes, Artemis features a lineup of musicians who all are bandleaders in their own right, including tenor saxophonist Melissa Aldana, clarinetist Anat Cohen, trumpeter Ingrid Jensen, bassist Noriko Ueda, and drummer Allison Miller.

Given the difficulties of juggling six busy schedules, Artemis has had only occasional chances to work together a unit, but their five-night run here should give them ample opportunities to dig into their catalog, which includes original compositions from the various members as well as familiar material ranging from Thelonious Monk to the Beatles. In the meantime, you can get idea of what to expect by checking out the videos in this post from last Saturday.

Thursday, October 10
Singer Robert Nelson performs at the Chase Club, and drummer Stephen Haake leads a trio at The Dark Room.

Friday, October 11
Trumpeter Keyon Harrold and writer Quincy Troupe (pictured, center left) will team up for a program called "The Shape of Abstraction: Trumpet and Voice, Call and Response" at the St. Louis Art Museum.

Both St. Louis natives, Troupe and Harrold also are connected through Miles Davis. Troupe co-authored the trumpeter's autobiography and later wrote his own memoir about their relationship, while Harrold supplied music for the soundtrack of Don Cheadle's 2016 film Miles Ahead, a semi-fictionalized account of Davis in the 1970s, and also has been involved in several tributes to Davis.

Along with poetry by Troupe and music by Harrold, the event will feature images of works of art by black artists currently on view at the museum as part of the exhibition "The Shape of Abstraction: Selections from the Ollie Collection."

Also on Friday, the Jazz Troubadours will perform at Evangeline's, and Miss Jubilee plays for dancers at the Casa Loma Ballroom.

Saturday, October 12
On Saturday afternoon, singer Wendy Gordon (pictured, bottom left) presents the latest production in her "Jazz Heaven" series, "Gone But Not Forgotten," at the Florissant Civic Center Theatre, with a cast of singers including Kim Fuller-Barnes, Joe Mancuso, Robert Nelson, Roland Johnson, Michael Chatman, and the Legend Singers Chorale Ensemble.

Saturday night, singer and bassist Janet Evra performs in concert at the Jacoby Arts Center in Alton; local and regional electronic musicians and bands will gather for Synthfest IV at The Heavy Anchor; and the Funky Butt Brass Band returns to the Broadway Oyster Bar.

Sunday, October 13
Singer Chuck Flowers returns to BB's Jazz, Blues and Soups, and saxophonist Chad Evans and singer Felica Ezell-Gillespie will perform in a matinee concert at the Ozark Theatre.

Also on Sunday, percussionist Joe Pastor leads a trio at Evangeline's, and Orchestrated 9th will reprise their "Tribute to Herbie Hancock" at Troy's Listening Room.

Monday, October 14
Dizzy Atmosphere plays vintage swing and Gypsy jazz at The Shaved Duck.

Tuesday, October 15
Cabaret Project St. Louis will present their monthly "Singers Open Mic" at Sophie's Artist Lounge & Cocktail Club, and Arvell Keithley, Jim Manley and the Wild Cool & Swingin' Horns return for an encore performance at the Gaslight Theater.

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.)

Sunday, October 06, 2019

Sunday Session: October 6, 2019

Wallace Roney
Here's this week's roundup of various music-related items of interest:

* NIH Bets $20 Million Music Can Heal Our Brains (Forbes.com)
* Chicago’s Hidden Indie Rock Archive (WBEZ)
* The New Golden Age of Jazz Radio (AllAboutJazz.com)
* Wilco’s Search for Joy (SPIN)
* The captivating story behind John Coltrane’s lost soundtrack for a Québécois filmmaker (GQ)
* Theo Croker Steps Out (Jazz Times)
* Larry Willis, Resourceful Pianist at Home in Several Divergent Styles, Has Died at 76 (WBGO)
* Larry Willis 1942-2019 (Jazz Times)
* Tyshawn Sorey: Music and Mindfulness (New Music Box)
* How Wallace Roney Taught His Young Ensemble to ‘Trust the Music’ (DownBeat)
* How Isaac Hayes Changed Soul Music (The New Yorker)
* King Crimson’s ’21st Century Schizoid Man’: Inside Prog’s Big Bang (Rolling Stone)
* Violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter stops mid-concerto as audience member starts filming (ClassicFM.com)
* ACT Devises Tribute to Pannonica de Koenigswarter (DownBeat)
* Richard Wyands 1928-2019 (Jazz Times)
* Move On Up: Chicago Soul Music and Black Cultural Power (By the Book) (PopMatters.com)
* Monterey Festival Celebrates Risk-Taking Artists (DownBeat)
* Capturing the Ephemeral Beauty of Improvisation (New York Review of Books)
* Cab Calloway’s childhood house will be razed, HCD says (BaltimoreBrew.com)
* Turning The Tables: Celebrating Eight Women Who Invented American Popular Music (NPR)
* Guitarist Bill Frisell Picks His Favorite Blue Note Albums (Jazziz)
* At A Korean Jazz Picnic, No Need To Know The Music (AllAboutJazz.com)
* The economics of streaming is changing pop songs (The Economist)
* At New York Listening Session, Harry Connick Jr. Connects to Cole Porter (DownBeat)
* The soul of a jazz man (Harvard.edu)

Saturday, October 05, 2019

StLJN Saturday Video Showcase:
Spotlight on Artemis



This week, let's take a look at some videos featuring members of Artemis, the all-star, all-woman band who are coming to St. Louis to perform starting next Wednesday, October 9 through Sunday, October 13 at Jazz St. Louis.

Named for the Greek goddess of wilderness and the hunt, Artemis was convened by pianist Renee Rosnes and features musicians originally from the US, Canada, Israel, Chile, and Japan, including trumpeter Ingrid Jensen, tenor saxophonist Melissa Aldana, clarinetist and saxophonist Anat Cohen, bassist Noriko Ueda, and drummer Allison Miller. (Vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant, who's performing tonight at The Sheldon, also has been featured on some Artemis gigs, but she won't be with them in St. Louis.)

Although they first came together a couple of years ago, Artemis has yet to record, and has done only a limited number of performances, presumably because finding a time when all six members - all bandleaders in their own right - are available to gig presents a significant challenge. In those shows, they've offered up new arrangements of familiar songs from Thelonious Monk, the Beatles, the Great American Songbook, and more, as well as original music composed by various band members.

Unfortunately, since they haven't done a lot of touring, there's not much video online of them as a band, either. Specifically, there seems to be three shows that have been documented (using that term very loosely here) at least in part on video and posted online, and in two of those, they're not even using the name Artemis yet, but instead are billed as "Woman to Woman."

Nomenclature notwithstanding, those clips still provide something of an idea of what audiences might expect to hear next week, and so you can see the first one, which captures an entire set from July 2017 at the Festival de Jazz de Vitoria-Gasteiz in Spain, up above.

After the jump, there are two extended excerpts from a show a couple of weeks earlier at New Morning in Paris, featuring five members of what is now Artemis, plus Salvant on vocals and Sylvia Cuenca substituting for Allison Miller on drums.

Finally, the last video actually is a playlist, compiling 16 short excerpts ranging in length from under a minute to two minutes plus, from Artemis' show at the 2018 Newport Jazz Festival, a performance which many observers considered to be one of the festival's highlights. The quality of these short clips ranges from "OK but short" to "bad," but as there seems to be no other video documentation of the show, they seemed to be worth including.

For more about Artemis, listen to the episode of NPR's "Jazz Night In America" from last November that features them.

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

Friday, October 04, 2019

So What: Local News, Notes & Links

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

* The Riverfront Times this week published their annual "Best of St. Louis" issue, and the winners in the "Staff Picks" section include The Dark Room (pictured) as "Best Jazz Club" and BB's Jazz, Blues and Soups as "Best Blues Club."

Meanwhile, in the "Reader's Choice" polling, BB's Jazz, Blues and Soups took the awards for both "Best Blues Club" and "Best Jazz Club." You can see a complete list of all the winners in various categories here.

* Also in the RFT, music editor Daniel Hill reports on the latest developments at KDHX, as station management this week cancelled two public meetings that had been scheduled "to address recent allegations of racial insensitivity and mismanagement against the station's top brass."

* In advance of his performance with trumpeter Keyon Harrold next Friday at the St. Louis Art Museum, writer Quincy Troupe was interviewed by Chris King of the St. Louis American.

* The Route 66 Jazz Orchestra has posted to Facebook an album of photos from their performance on Tuesday at the Sheldon Concert Hall.

* The new outdoor plaza opening later this month at The Sheldon is the subject of a feature story on the website ConstructForStL.org.

* As touted last week in this space, Universal Music Group and the Miles Davis estate have released a new, animated music video for "Moon Dreams" as recorded by the trumpeter on his album Birth of the Cool. Directed by Nicolas Donatelli, whose credits include visual effects on videos for pop-country star Taylor Swift, the clip is "influenced by Miles Davis’ own sketches and imagines a night in New York City through every era of jazz."

* Also on the Miles Davis beat, reviews of the new documentary film Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool continue to appear, including new assessments from the Boston Herald and Glide magazine; and the film's director Stanley Nelson was interviewed by Boston NPR affiliate WBGH.

Wednesday, October 02, 2019

Jazz this week: "Such Sweet Thunder," Ben Lamar Gay, Cécile McLorin Salvant, and more

This week's calendar of live jazz and creative music in St. Louis includes visits from a Grammy Award winning singer and an intriguing, genre-busting musician making his debut here, plus a multi-media event bringing together the words of Shakespeare and the music of Duke Ellington, and more.

Let's go to the highlights...


Wednesday, October 2
Pianists Adam Maness and Peter Martin will team up for the first of two evenings of duets (plus a Thursday matinee) at Jazz St. Louis.

Also on Wednesday, the Route 66 Jazz Orchestra returns for a "Notes From Home" performance at the Sheldon Concert Hall.

Thursday, October 3
"Such Sweet Thunder," a collaboration among Shakespeare Festival St. Louis, Big Muddy Dance Company, and Jazz St. Louis, will be presented for the first of three nights at the Public Media Commons in Grand Center.

The event, which is free and open to the public but requires a ticket, will feature the Jazz St. Louis Big Band playing Duke Ellington's score along with the actors, dancers, and big-screen video supplied by Nine Network.

Also on Thursday, singer and bassist Janet Evra and her quartet play at Joe's Cafe; singer Cheri Evans and CEEJazzSoul return to the Chase Club; and Kansas City jump blues band Grand Marquis will take the stage at BB's Jazz, Blues & Soups.

Friday, October 4
Jazz St. Louis will present the first of two nights of "Abbey Road at 50," with the Beatles' penultimate release re-imagined as jazz by keyboardist Ryan Marquez, The People's Key, and guest vocalist Lola.

Also on Friday, vibraphonist Tom Rickard leads a trio at Cigar Inn, and multi-instrumentalist Lamar Harris will be in his not-so-secret identity as DJ Nune for late night sets at The Dark Room.

Saturday, October 5
Multi-instrumentalist Ben Lamar Gay (pictured, top left) and his quartet will make their St. Louis debut in a performance presented by New Music Circle at Off Broadway.

The Chicago native's sound is a bit hard to pin down, involving disparate elements including free jazz, Brazilian music, electronics, and more, but you can get some idea of his musical range by perusing the videos collected in this post from Saturday before last.

Also on Saturday, three-time Grammy Award winning vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant (pictured, bottom left) returns with pianist Aaron Diehl's trio for a performance at the Sheldon Concert Hall.

For a look at what Salvant has been up to since her last appearance here in 2017 (besides snagging that third Grammy for her most recent album The Window), check out this post from last Saturday featuring video from several recent performances.

Sunday, October 6
Dizzy Atmosphere plays swing and Gypsy jazz for brunch at The Dark Room, and the Jazz Troubadours play their monthly first-Sunday gig at Evangeline's.

Monday, October 7
Pianist Carol Schmidt and saxophonist Paul DeMarinis will play a concert of duets at the Thompson Music Building Recital Hall on the Webster University campus.

Tuesday, October 8
Former St. Louisan Mark Deutsch, who's been living in California for much of the last two decades, returns home to perform on his self-invented instrument, the Bazantar, at the Sheldon Concert Hall;  and the Glen Smith/Eric Slaughter Quartet will play a concert at the Gaslight Theater.

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.)