StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: New Music Circle presents streaming performances

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All of those online shows were streamed for free, and subsequently have been archived on their YouTube channel, so today, let's take a look at NMC's season so far.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.

| 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...