The film, which was written and directed by Bryan Dematteis, tells the story of the multi-disciplinary arts group that operated in St. Louis in the late 1960s and early 70s and helped launch the careers of musicians including Oliver Lake, Hamiet Bluiett, Charles "Bobo" Shaw, Baikida Carroll, Floyd LeFlore, and others.
It was first made available to local audiences in November 2020 as part of the St. Louis International Film Festival, but this will be the first, and so far only, scheduled airing on free TV. (Unlike many other Nine Network programs, it will not be available for later viewing on the station's app or website.)
Nine Network has produced a promotional trailer for the broadcast, which you can see in the embedded video window below.
When the COVID pandemic hit last year, New Music Circle, like other local presenters, had to cancel their entire upcoming slate of concerts. Since then, NMC has made a successful pivot to presenting online, offering a lineup for their 62nd season with a musical diversity and quality of artists very similar to what they've had in recent seasons presented in person.
All of those online shows were streamed for free, and subsequently have been archived on their YouTube channel, so today, let's take a look at NMC's season so far.
The concerts are presented in reverse chronological order, starting up above with the most recent stream from this past Monday, January 25, which featured solo performances by bassist Damon Smith and saxophonist and electronic musician JayVe Montgomery, plus an introduction and reading by poet Brett Lars Underwood.
After the jump, you can see performances streamed on Monday, January 11 by saxophonist and clarinetist Ken Vandermark and the duo of saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock and drummer Tom Rainey.
Moving back in time into 2020, next up are solo sets from December 21 by electronic musicians Charmaine Lee and John Wiese.
That's followed by a another video with a solo performance by percussionist Claire Rousay and a duet by saxophonist Michael Foster and drummer Ted Byrnes, originally streamed on December 7.
Two St. Louis musicians are featured in the next video, which first streamed on November 23 and dociments solo performances by percussionist Kaleb Kirby and electronic musician JoAnn McNeil
The penultimate video is a recording of NMC's first online concert of the season, a performance by Sistas of the Nitty Gritty, featuring multi-instrumentalist and composer Angel Bat Dawid with Anaiet Sivad on piano and Brooklynn Skye Scott on bass that originall streamed on October 5.
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The final video, though not officially part of NMC's 2020-21 season, was first streamed last July. It's a compilation of short performances on video by various New Music Circle board members and affiliated musicians, including NNN Cook & Nestor, Michael Williams, the late Tracy Andreotti, Aaron E. Johnson, Fred Tompkins with Greg Mills, Alex Cunningham, and 18andCounting.
NMC's next streaming presentation will feature solo sets from guitarists Wendy Eisenberg and Kee Avil at 8:15 p.m. CST, Monday, February 8 on New Music Circle's YouTube channel. As with previous shows in the series, it will be free to view, but NMC will cheerfully accept donations to help defray the costs of this and other performances.
You can see the rest of today's videos after the jump...
* Julius Hemphill: The Boyé Multi-National Crusade for Harmony, a new seven-CD box set featuring previously unheard recordings by the late saxophonist, former St. Louisan and Black Artists Group co-founder Julius Hemphill (pictured), has been released by New World Records
* Jazziz magazine is promoting the new music streaming service Qobuz.com with a specially compiled Miles Davis playlist, "Miles After Dark," which "features 50 laid-back, chilled-out Miles tracks that are sure to ease you into a state of absolute relaxation."
What's the most performed song ever written by a St. Louis jazz musician? While it's probably impossible to ever know with absolute certainty, at first one might guess that it's something from Miles Davis' Kind of Blue.
After all, it is the best-selling jazz album of all time, and tunes from it such as "All Blues" and "So What" frequently get played at jam sessions and on cover gigs, and have been recorded by various other musicians besides Davis.
However, the popularity of Davis and Kind of Blue notwithstanding, further investigation suggests that the most likely candidate for most-performed song probably is "Night Train," first recorded in 1951 by saxophonist and St. Louis native Jimmy Forrest. A #1 R&B hit for Forrest, "Night Train" over the years has spawned dozens of cover versions recorded by well-known artists, as well as countless live performances by assorted jazz, rock, R&B, country and variety bands.
Forrest (pictured) was born on January 24, 1920 in St. Louis, making tomorrow the 101st anniversary of his birth. To celebrate, we're taking an in-depth look at "Night Train," a song that's interesting for a number of reasons beyond its sheer popularity.
Recognized by the Grammy Hall of Fame as one of the top jazz singles of all time, "Night Train" may be just a 12-bar blues in Ab, but it has taken a trip through American culture that also helps to illuminate certain aspects of the nature of musical composition; the malleability of the blues; and the flow of musical ideas between black and white musicians and audiences in the middle of the 20th century. The whole story is after the jump...
Here's StLJN's weekly wrap-up of assorted links and short news items of local interest:
* Saxophonist Ben Reece this week released a new recording with his Unity Quartet.
Titled Hard Times, the album (pictured) features 12 original compositions performed by Reece and Rob Nugent on saxophones, Cody Henry on sousaphone and Ron Sikes on drums. It was recorded "live in the studio" at Midtown Sound House in St. Louis, with Dan Merhmann engineering.
* The first development of artists' housing from the St. Louis Art Place Initiative, located in the Gravois Park neighborhood on the south side, is now accepting applications. The program is intended to build "wealth and equity through homeownership for low to moderate-income artists of all disciplines." Find out more at http://stlartplace.org/.
This week, StLJN salutes drummer and St. Charles native Dave Weckl, who celebrated his 61st birthday earlier this month on Friday, January 8. First gaining wide recognition in the mid-1980s as a sideman with Chick Corea, Weckl over the course of his career has become a very popular and oft-imitated drummer and bandleader, with fans all over the world.
So today - slightly delayed, as this post was bumped last week to make room for a tribute to the late David "Red" Lehr - let's check out a sampling of just some of the music he's made, starting up above with "Big B Little B," recorded at the Dave Weckl Band reunion show in the summer of 2019 at the Chesterfield Amphitheater. The reunion featured most of Weckl's band from the 1990s, including Buzz Feiten on guitar and fellow St. Louisans Tom Kennedy on bass and Jay Oliver on keyboards, with saxophonist Gary Meek completing the lineup.
After the jump, you can see Weckl performing in an acoustic trio with Chick Corea, the man who gave him his big break back in 1985, and bassist John Patitucci, in a concert recorded in 2018 at the San Sebastian Jazz Festival (sometimes known as Jazzaldia) in Spain.
Next up, you can see a video that Weckl and Jay Oliver released back in 2014 to promote their album "Convergence." The in-studio performance of Stevie Wonder's "Higher Ground" was arranged by Oliver and sung by vocalist Chrissi Poland, with a band including Dean Brown (guitar), Jimmy Johnson (bass), Brandon Fields (saxophone), Eric Jorgensen (trombone), and Michael McGuffey (trumpet), plus backing vocalists Nita Whittaker, Raffia Ford, and Abdul Hamid Royal,
THat's followed by a full set from Chick Corea's Elektric Band, recorded in 2003 at the Estival Jazz Switzerland. In addition to Corea and Weckl, that's Eric Marienthal on saxophones, Frank Gambale on guitar, and Michael Pope on bass.
The fifth video, recorded all the way back in August 1998 at the Musicians Institute in Los Angeles, features what some consider to be the "classic" lineup of Weckl's band, with Oliver, Kennedy, Feiten and saxophonist Brandon Fields.
The final clip, which was recorded in 1996 at Festival Hamburg in Germany, features a trio of Weckl, guitarist Mike Stern, and bassist Jeff Andrews, and highlights what the title calls "The Legendary Big Drum Solo" from that show.
You can see the rest of today's videos after the jump...
Here's StLJN's weekly wrap-up of assorted links and short news items of local interest:
* The Sheldon this week announced that their annual fund-raising gala will take place online on Saturday, April 10. The event will be hosted by Chris Thile, the singer, mandolinist and former presenter of public radio's "Live From Here," and will include performances from Wynton Marsalis, John Pizzarelli, Dianne Reeves and Peter Martin, and more. For more information or to register, visit The Sheldon's website.
* Woodwind players and St. Louis natives J.D. Parran(pictured) and Marty Ehrlich are among the musicians featured in composer Joseph Daley's new commissioned work “Colorations-Explorations,” which debuted this week on video with Parran directing an ensemble featuring 18 clarinets of various ranges (including Ehrlich), percussionist Warren Smith, and a rhythm section.
* Saxophonist Greg Osby recently released an album called Reflections of the Eternal Line as part of an unusual trio with Swiss drummer Florian Arbenz and painter Stephan Spicher, and you can read the story behind the recording as recounted by Arbenz in a post on the website JazzItOut.com.
* St. Louis Public Radio's "St. Louis On The Air" on Thursday broadcast the story of “I’m Dreaming of No One But You,” written in 1942 by Leona Augustine of Washington MO and re-discovered by her grandson Jacob Luecke, who's releasing a brand new big-band recording of the song.
Beginning in the early 1960s, Lehr enjoyed a long and prolific career playing traditional jazz, both here in St. Louis and for fans around the USA and the world. Although there's not much video online from the first several decades of his career, fortunately there's plenty of video documentation of Lehr performing with various bands from the past 15 years or so, amply demonstrating both his musical skills and his showmanship.
So let's take a look at a small but representative selection of those videos, starting with the first clip above, which features Lehr's Powerhouse Five performing "Tiger Rag" in November 2009 at the Suncoast Dixieland Jazz Classic in Clearwater, FL. Along with Lehr, who uses the number for one of his signature walkabouts through the audience, the band includes Noel Kaletsky (clarinet), Steve Lilley (cornet), Ray Templin (piano, vocals) and Jack Tartar (drums).
After the jump, you can see the St. Louis Rivermen playing "Running Wild" and "Royal Garden Blues," both recorded in November 2010 at the Arizona Classic Jazz Festival in Chandler, Arizona. The band's lineup includes Lehr, Kaletsky, and Lilly, along with Bobby Grimm (banjo), Jim Maihack (trombone), Don Schroeder (drums), and John Sheridan (piano).
The fourth video features the same lineup of the Rivermen performing "Clarinet Marmalade" and "Black Bottom Stomp" as part of two different shows at the 2011 Glacier Jazz Stampede in Kalispell, MT.
In the penultimate clip, recorded in 2011 at the Central Illinois Jazz Festival in Decatur, IL, Lehr and the band are joined by his longtime collaborator (and original leader of the Rivermen), Jean Kittrell, who steps up to the mic for a bit of banter and then sings "I Aint Got Nobody."
The final video, also recorded at the 2011 Central Illinois Jazz Festival, documents a brief ceremony dedicating the festival and paying tribute to Red Lehr.
Here's StLJN's weekly wrap-up of assorted links and short news items of local interest:
* Trumpeter Keyon Harrold has written an essay for USA Today about the recent incident at a New York City hotel in which he and his teenage son were assaulted and falsely accused of theft.
* Saxophonist David Sanborn is starting a new series of online master classes on Sunday, January 31. For details on the classes and pricing, or to register, visit his website.
* AllAboutJazz.com recently surveyed readers to find out what they consider to be the "top jazz cities" in the world, and St. Louis came in at #42. (Insert your own Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy joke here.) The top five jazz cities as determined by AAJ.com readers are New York, Chicago, New Orleans, Paris, and London; Kansas City was ranked as #13.
Tuba and sousaphone player David "Red" Lehr, a mainstay of traditional jazz in St. Louis since the early 1960s, died Tuesday, January 5 at his home in New Athens, IL. He was 83 years old.
Lehr (pictured) first became known to local jazz fans in 1963, performing with Don Scherr’s Banjo Band in Gaslight Square. He formed his own group, the Old St. Louis Levee Band, in 1965 and worked regularly in the St. Louis area. Then in 1978, the group teamed up with pianist and singer Jean Kittrell, going on to perform on the Robert E. Lee riverboat in St. Louis for the next 13 years.
Known for his showmanship as well as his musical skills, Lehr also worked with Kittrell in the Jazz Incredibles trio (along with banjo player John Becker) and the St. Louis Rivermen. After Kittrell retired. Lehr took over leadership of the Rivermen, and also led his own group, the Powerhouse Five. Over the course of his long career, he performed at traditional jazz festivals all across the USA; toured in Europe, Canada, and Japan; and played on more than 25 recordings.
When not working as a musician, Lehr with his wife Carolyn ran Lehr’s Market in New Athens, passing on the business to his son Jeff upon retirement. Survivors in addition to his wife and son including a daughter, Lori (Thomas) Knapp of Smithton, IL; sisters Vera Robb of Belleville, IL and Fern Frick of Mt. Vernon, IL; three grandchildren; and various nieces and nephews.
Funeral arrangements will be handled by Kurrus Funeral Home in New Athens. Visitation will be from 3:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. Friday, January 8, 2021 and from 9:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. on Saturday, January 9 at St. John UCC in New Athens. COVID-19 restrictions will be followed, with masks and social distancing required. Funeral services will be private, but will be live-streamed at 11:00 a.m. Saturday, January 9 at https://www.facebook.com/KurrusFH.
StLJN will present a tribute to David "Red" Lehr as this week's Saturday Video Showcase.
As the new year begins, no one is sure exactly when live music will resume on a widespread, regular basis or when touring artists will be able to start traveling again. We can, however, still keep an eye and ear on some of the jazz artists who seem likely to be influential over the next 12 months. So let's take a look at some performances from six musicians who made news in the year just ended and are poised for even bigger things in 2021.
First up is Nubya Garcia, whose most recent album Source showed up on a lot of critics' year-end "best of" lists for 2020. The London-based saxophonist and her band are seen here performing a mini-set for NPR's Tiny Desk Concerts at Soup Studio, a recording facility built on a decommissioned floating lighthouse that's moored on the River Thames in London. It's also where Garcia recorded Source, and this set features three songs from the record.
After the jump, you can see a set by drummer, producer and "beat scientist" Makaya McCraven, performing with his band in August 2019 at the Flow Festival in Helsinki, Finland. McCraven in 2020 released Universal Beings E&F Sides, an extension of his critically-acclaimed 2018 album Universal Beings, which the New York Times said "affirms the drummer and beatsmith's position as a major figure in creative music."
Next up is another Londoner, saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings, who is seen here with Sons of Kemet, one of three bands he leads, in a set recorded live in March 2019 at the Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, TN.
That's followed by a set by the most-talked about young vibraphonist in jazz, Joel Ross. This clip was recorded in August 2020 at the Arts Center at Duck Creek in upstate New York, with Melissa Aldana on tenor saxophone, Matt Brewer on bass and Craig Weinrib on drums.
The fifth video features another up-and-coming saxophonist, Immanuel Wilkins, who debut album Omega, released in August by Blue Note, earned much positive attention from critics and fans alike. Wilkins and his quartet are seen here in a show recorded in November 2019 at the Millennium Stage of the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC.
Today's sixth and final video features trumpeter Theo Croker, who's been around since the mid-2000s, but has enjoyed favorable buzz recently thanks to his 2019 album Star People Nation and the EP Understand Yourself, which came out last year. The video was recorded in June 2019 at Paste Studio in NYC.
You can see the rest of today's videos after the jump...
It's the start of a new year and a new month, which means it's time once again to check in on StLJN's sibling site Heliocentric Worlds, where each day there's posted a new online music video, drawing on genres including jazz, blues, soul, funk, prog rock, classic rock, experimental, and more.
The most-viewed posts added to the site last month were:
Other recent posts have included videos of performances by the Gene Harris Quartet, Al Jarreau, Taj Mahal, Ella Fitzgerald, Chuck Berry, Return To Forever, The Surfrajettes, Cécile McLorin Salvant and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, Andrew White Quartet, Eric Burdon & War, Roger Troutman & Zapp, The Rolling Stones, Lou Reed, Lightnin' Hopkins, Betty Carter, Procol Harum, David Bowie, Pat Metheny and Charlie Haden, Artemis, Rufus Harley, Steel Pulse, Clark Terry, Hot Tuna, Tom Waits, Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, and Elvin Jones.
If you've missed out seeing and hearing all this until now, not to worry - you still can catch all these videos, plus thousands more from the archives, by going to https://heliocentricworlds.blogspot.com/.
* As part of the recent series of shows by Pink Floyd tribute act El Monstero, The Pageant, St. Louis-based sound and lighting contractor Logic Systems, and other vendors tested out new procedures and techniques for putting on shows with reduced COVID risk, and writer Kevin Mitchell reported on their efforts for the trade magazine Production Lighting and Sound News.
* Saxophonist Greg Osby(pictured) in October did a live-streamed performance with pianist John Chin and bassist Lonnie Plaxico for the online Woodwind Fest 2020, which now has been archived on YouTube.
* Ending a year that already has seen more than the usual share of death and tragedy, St. Louis lost two more veterans of the local music scene in the latter half of December.
On Tuesday, December 15, cellist Tracy Andreotti died at age 55. She was the principal cellist for Union Avenue Opera and a founding member of the Vernacular String Trio, the Perihelion Trio, and the Trinity Piano Trio. Andreotti also performed with the St. Louis Philharmonic, the New City Chamber Orchestra, the Gateway Festival Orchestra, and various string quartets and chamber music groups, including a seven-year stint with the contemporary music ensemble Synchronia. In addition to playing notated music, she also was an improvisor, frequently performing in various events presented by New Music Circle and the Nu-Art Series, and collaborating with visual artists, dancers, poets, and many other musicians. No cause of death was disclosed; arrangements were handled privately by Hutchens Funeral Homes.
Then on Friday, December 25, pianist Charles Creath died at age 68 after what his St. Louis Post-Dispatch obituary called "a short illness." The grandson of famed 1920s and 30s multi-instrumentalist Charlie Creath, Creath played all sorts of music in his long career, but was best known for his work as musical director for the St. Louis Black Rep and as pianist and artistic director of touring group The Gospel People. Creath's passing also was noted by an obituary in the St. Louis American. Funeral arrangements are pending at this time.
