StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: Winter/spring 2020 jazz preview, part four

It's time for the latest installment in StLJN's winter/spring 2020 jazz preview, featuring videos of noteworthy bands and musicians who will be coming here to perform over the next few months. This is part four of the series, which lists the shows in chronological order. You can see part one here, part two here, and part three here.

Picking up where last week's post left off, the next visitors to our town will be famed vocal group The Manhattan Transfer, making their first-ever club appearances here before what likely will be packed houses starting Wednesday, April 1 through Sunday, April 5 at Jazz St. Louis.

Given that they've been a major act for more than 40 years now and still headline at much larger venues and festivals - like the Nisville International Jazz Festival in Serbia where today's first video was recorded in August 2018 - demand for tickets should be brisk.

The next weekend, Jazz St. Louis will present another ad hoc combination of musicians in town for educational residencies, this time featuring saxophonists James Carter and Roxy Coss and trumpeter Riley Mulherkar on Friday, April 10 and Saturday, April 11. 

Carter can be seen in the first video after the jump, performing with his organ trio in 2018 at the Sons D'Hiver festival in Paris.

The next clip features Coss, performing music from her most recent album Quintet earlier this month in the studios of radio station KNKX in Tacoma, WA.

As for Mulherkar, while there are a number of videos online of him playing with The Westerlies, the brass quartet he co-founded, drummer Sammy Miller's band and others, there's a paucity of recent clips showing him as featured soloist with a small ensemble. As a result, he's seen in the next video, which was featured on his YouTube channel, leading the band and playing a brief solo behind singer
Dee Dee Bridgewater doing "St. James Infirmary" as recorded in September, 2016 at Jazz at Lincoln Center. 

Next up, it's Cuban-born pianist Harold Lopez-Nussa, who will return here to perform Wednesday, April 15 through Sunday, April 19 at Jazz St. Louis. Lopez-Nussa and his trio are featured in today's fifth video, a recording of their appearance last December on NPR Music's "Tiny Desk Concert."

That same week, guitarist and singer John Pizzarelli will be back in town to perform on Saturday, April 18 at the Sheldon Concert Hall for the Sheldon's educational foundation. Pizzarelli can be seen in the sixth clip, playing Nat King Cole’s “Straighten Up And Fly Right” as recorded on his most recent album For Centennial Reasons: A 100 Year Salute to Nat King Cole.

After that, it's singer Veronica Swift, who will make her St. Louis debut with performances on Wednesday, April 22 and Thursday, April 23 at Jazz St. Louis. Today's penultimate video shows her scat-singing an intro to launch an uptempo version of Duke Ellington's "It Don't Mean A Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)" in November 2019 at the Birdland Theater in New York City.

The final video today features the veteran Western swing band Asleep at the Wheel, who will be performing on Friday, April 24 at the Sheldon Concert Hall. They're seen here playing "The House Of Blue Lights," long a staple of their live repertoire, as recorded for their DVD Live from Austin, TX.

You can see the rest of today's videos after the jump. Look for part five of StLJN's winter/spring 2020 jazz preview next week in this space...