Sunday Session: June 7, 2020

Idris Ackamoor

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

* Buddy Bolden’s Blues (64Parishes.org)
* Killing Of George Floyd Prompts Response From Music Industry, Performers (DownBeat)
* Remembering “Uganda” Roberts (Offbeat)
* Robert Northern, who, as ‘Brother Ah,’ became a synthesizer of sounds, dies at 86 (Washington Post)
* Thundercat Looks For Connection During A Bewildering Moment (DownBeat)
* The Chance Music Of New Orleans’ Kidd Jordan (DownBeat)
* Lennie Niehaus, Jazz Player and Composer for Clint Eastwood Films, Dies at 90 (Variety)
* Idris Ackamoor: An Afro-Futurist Odyssey (AllAboutJazz.com)
* Sandy Jordan Research on Clifford Jordan (AtticToys.com)
* The Law Police Used To Discriminate Against Musicians Of Color (NPR)
* On Taking Lip [Service] (WQXR)
* Of George Floyd and John Coltrane (Jazz Times)
* Add some township jive! How London's jazz scene set itself apart (The Guardian)
* Pandemic Entrepreneurship for Jazz Musicians (Jazz Times)
* What Socially Distanced Live Performance Might Look Like (Vulture.com)
* Venues, Festivals Search For Hope Amid A Slowly Opening Economy (DownBeat)
* A TCM Series and a New Book Celebrate the Expansive Pleasures of Jazz in the Movies (WBGO)
* Jim Snidero Explores South Korea (Jazz Times)
* Lennie Niehaus 1929–2020 (Jazz Times)
* This Is How Much More Money Artists Earn From Bandcamp Compared to Streaming Services (Pitchfork.com)
* How Jazz Helped Fuel the 1960s Civil Rights Movement (OpenCulture.com)
* Think You've Been Productive in Quarantine? Try Checking in with Tim Berne and David Torn (WBGO)
* Arturo O’Farrill’s ‘Four Questions’ Brings Together Art, Activism (DownBeat)
* Swing Time: Ahmed Abdullah (Relix.com)
* How Can Artists Respond to Injustice? Thoughts from Seven Musicians (New Music Box)
* The Radically Inclusive Music of Ornette Coleman (The New Republic)
* The Ballad of Tommy LiPuma (AllAboutJazz.com)
* The New Sounds Of Protest And Hope (NPR)

Sunday Session: December 29, 2019

Red Garland

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

* Blue Note’s Tone Poet Vinyl Reissue Series Will Continue in 2020 (Jazz Times)
* Free jazz veteran Yosuke Yamashita marks 50 years of his trio's 'reckless' playing (Japan Times)
* Frank Sinatra: A Son of Immigrants Sings America's Heart (AllAboutJazz.com)
* Vince Gill: "I reached the point where I said, ‘I’m just going to play what’s necessary’" (Guitar World)
* Artistry, Inc.: Jazzmeia Horn’s Personal Creativity Corporation (Jazz Times)
* The Jazz Magi of Carnegie Hall (The-American-Interest.com)
* Fifty Years of Worship at the Church of John Coltrane (The New Yorker)
* Local Drummer ‘Stateside Mouthpiece’ for New Buddy Rich Bio (Jewish Exponent)
* 'Jazz Night In America' Remembers Artists We Lost In 2019 (NPR)
* Arturo O’Farrill – Family, Jazz and the Music of Cuba, Revisited (JazzWithAnAccent.com)
* The Banjo: An unusual voice in the story of New Orleans music (Offbeat)
* James Carter, Dave Liebman and The Westerlies on Uncommon Ensembles (DownBeat)
* 'An Einstein among Neanderthals': the tragic prince of LA counterculture (The Guardian)
* Red Garland: Graceful and Bluesy (Jazz Profiles)
* To everything there is a season (8tracks.com)
* What Makes a Junius Paul-ism? (Chicago)
* Music City DC- Remembering ‘Jazz Samba’: The birth of the Brazilian cool (Fairfax County Times)

Jazz this week: Arturo O'Farrill, a tribute to Stevie Wonder, Alexis Lombre, and more

This week's calendar of live jazz and creative music in St. Louis includes pianists visiting from New York City and Chicago, a tribute to the music of a legendary singer/songwriter of soul, a benefit raising scholarship money for local music students, and more.

Let's go to the highlights...

Wednesday, May 1
Pianist Arturo O'Farrill performs for the first of two nights at Jazz St. Louis.

O'Farrill (pictured, top left) is something of a living repository of Latin-jazz lore, but he's also a forward-looking musician whose own artistic output is hard to pigeonhole. He recently completed a four-month residency at NYC's Greene Space that let him show off some different aspects of his musical personality. For some videos of performances from that residency, and more about Arturo O'Farrill, check out this post from last Saturday.

Thursday, May 2
Jazz-fusion trio Tracer returns to The Dark Room, and saxophonist Vince Sala leads a trio at The Pat Connolly Tavern.

Friday, May 3
Singer Brian Owens, pianist Adam Maness' trio and Good 4 The Soul keyboardist Adaron “Pops” Jackson will join forces for the first of two nights of "The Book of Wonder: Celebrating Stevie Wonder" at Jazz St. Louis.

Also on Friday, Chicago-based pianist Alexis Lombre (pictured, bottom left) plays an early evening set at BB's Jazz, Blues & Soups, and the Funky Butt Brass Band performs outdoors at The Bootleg at Atomic Cowboy.

Saturday, May 4
The Coleman Hughes Project heads out to Mount Pleasant Estates in Augusta for a matinee presentation of "Jazz & Jokes," also featuring comedian Lady Re.

Then on Saturday evening, the Joe Bozzi Band returns to Evangeline's, and Dizzy Atmosphere plays swing and Gypsy jazz at Urban Chestnut Midtown Brewery and Biergarten.

Sunday, May 5
The spring edition of the St. Louis Record Show takes place at the American Czech Center, and later that afternoon, the Genesis Jazz Project returns to BB's Jazz, Blues & Soups.

Sunday evening, the Jazz Troubadours play their monthly gig at Evangeline's; and Jazz St. Louis will raise money for local music students with “Swing For The Scholars,” a benefit featuring music from the Adam Maness Trio, Route 66 Alumni Band, Good 4 The Soul, Anita Jackson, and student ensembles from JSL's JazzUprogram.

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.)

StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: Arturo O'Farrill's Afro-Cuban jazz legacy

Today, our video spotlight shines on pianist, composer and bandleader Arturo O'Farrill, who's coming to town to perform this coming Wednesday, May 1 and Thursday, May 2 at Jazz St. Louis.

The son of famed musician, arranger, bandleader and Afro-Cuban jazz pioneer Chico O'Farrill, Arturo O'Farrill was born in 1960 in Mexico City and moved with his family in 1965 to New York. He first gained wide exposure at age 19 as part of pianist and composer Carla Bley's band, and subsequently went on to work with musicians including Dizzy Gillespie, Howard Johnson, Steve Turre, and St. Louis' own Lester Bowie before landing a gig in 1987 as music director for Harry Belafonte.

O'Farrill got more involved in Latin and Afro-Cuban jazz in the 1990s, working as a substitute pianist Andy and Jerry Gonzalez's Fort Apache Band and with his father to revive the elder O'Farrill's career. Ultimately, after his father's death in 2001, Arturo wound up as the pianist and sole bandleader for what has come to be known as the Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra.

During the 2000s, the group spent six years in residency at Jazz at Lincoln Center, which helped them reach larger audiences, get a recording contract, and begin touring to major jazz festivals and venues around the world. One of those stops in 2004 was at the long-defunct St. Louis Jazz & Heritage Festival in Clayton. Although that has been the orchestra's only local appearance here to date, O'Farrill also played here with his sextet for a week in January 2015 at Jazz St. Louis.

In all, Arturo O'Farrill has released more a dozen albums as a bandleader, earning a couple of Grammy Awards (plus four additional nominations) along the way. His most recent recording Fandango At The Wall came out in 2018, but even more recently, O'Farrill has just wrapped up a four-month residency at The Greene Space, the performance venue operated by radio stations WNYC and WQXR in New York.

The residency featured him performing in variety of contexts, both solo and with different ensembles, and it appears that many of the performances were recorded on video. That's provided a trove of recent material featuring O'Farrill, some of which you can see right now in this post, starting up above with "Invitation to Dance," a solo piano piece recorded at Greene Space in February 2019.

After the jump, you can see a couple of Afrobeat-influenced performances from January 2019 featuring O'Farrill and an expanded version of the Afro Latin Jazz Ensemble, with guest stars including singer and percussionist Tosin and guitarists Lionel Loueke and Bryan Vargas. Tosin takes the lead vocal on his composition "The Big Illusion," which is followed by another piece from the same performance, "Strugglettes And Struggles."

Next are two more performances from the residency, one featuring a smaller version of the Afro-Latin jazz ensemble, and the other marking the premiere of a new big band piece called "Gulab Jamon."

The final video, from October 2015, was produced by NPR in conjunction with the release of O'Farrill's then-new album Cuba: The Conversation Continues, and includes an interview with O'Farrill as well as live performances of music from the recording.

For more about Arturo O'Farrill, check out his interviews from 2018 with radio station KQED in San Francisco, NPR, and DownBeat.

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

Sunday Session: April 21, 2019

Branford Marsalis

Here's a roundup of various music-related items of interest that have shown up in one of StLJN's various inboxes or feeds over the past week:

* Arturo O’Farrill’s ‘Fandango at the Wall’ Transcends Borders (LatinoUSA.org)
* 'People who sing it want the world to know they exist': 50 years of My Way (The Guardian)
* New Orleans trumpeter celebrates personal rebirth at French Quarter Festival (New Orleans Advocate)
* Best Jazz Albums: 50 Essentials You Need To Hear (UDiscoverMusic.com)
* Louis Armstrong: ‘more important than Picasso’ (Jazz Journal)
* Gerald Clayton Talks About Jazz and the Creative Process (San Francisco Classical Voice)
* Home Taping Is Killing Music: When the Music Industry Waged War on the Cassette Tape in the 1980s, and Punk Bands Fought Back (OpenCulture.com)
* The Shape-Shifting Music of Tyshawn Sorey (The New Yorker)
* Icons: Michael Beinhorn is Preventing Bad Music by Promoting Pre-Production (SonicScoop.com)
* A Visit to John Cage’s 639-Year Organ Composition (RedBullMusicAcademy.com)
* Chris Potter Has His ‘Circuits’ Rewired (DownBeat)
* Concord Jazz Festival Returns for 50th Anniversary (Jazz Times)
* The Crimson King Seeks a New Court (Rolling Stone)
* Stanley Crouch, Bob Dorough, Abdullah Ibrahim, Maria Schneider Honored at NEA Jazz Masters Tribute (DownBeat)
* How a world-renowned cellist used Bach to blast Trump (RawStory.com)
* Branford Marsalis Discusses the Genre, Teaching Music and Getting Up Early (DownBeat)
* Why is jazz unpopular? The musicians 'suck', says Branford Marsalis (Sydney Morning Herald)
* Unplugged: Is the Guitar Solo Finished? (Rolling Stone)
* Impulse For Change: The Story Of Impulse! Records (UDiscoverMusic.com)
* Integral to Over a Century of Piano Culture, Steinway & Sons Looks to the Future (Billboard)
* 12 Women Influencing the Future of Jazz (Paste)
* Iyer, Taborn Build Something Majestic on New ECM Album (DownBeat)
* Space is the Place: an introduction to the music of jazz visionary Sun Ra (List.co.uk)
* the musical genre is dead, gen z killed it (Vice.com)
* The All-Female Big Bands That Made History During World War II (NPR)

Sunday Session: December 2, 2018

Arturo O'Farrill

Here's a roundup of various music-related items of interest that have shown up in one of StLJN's various inboxes or feeds over the past week:

* Grammy Winning Saxophonist Frank Catalano On Alternative Revenue Streams And Trio Of New Live Albums (Forbes)
* When you're smiling: Louis Armstrong museum shares digitized pictures of jazz legend (New York Daily News)
* How The 'New World' Symphony Introduced American Music To Itself (NPR)
* One-Hit Wonders Who Deserve a Second Chance (MelMagazine.com)
* William Hooker Interview (InTheTrove.com)
* Green Book: The Real-Life Story of Dr. Don Shirley (Vanity Fair)
* Arturo O’Farrill’s ‘Fandango’ Spans Border to Unify Cultures, Musics (DownBeat)
* Tony Williams Gets the Deluxe Treatment in 'Blue Note Review: Volume Two – Spirit & Time' (WBGO)
* Singer-songwriter John Prine: Still alive and kickin' (CBS News)
* Beneath the Surface of Bruce Springsteen (Esquire)
* The rise of Africa’s most exciting new dance music scenes (DazedDigital.com)
* A Burst of Reissues from the Catalog of Frank Zappa (DownBeat)
* Art Ensemble Chronicled in Massive ECM Box Set (DownBeat)
* Local archaeologist shares discovery about early music (Left Hand Valley Courier)
* Everything on Social Media Is for Sale (The Atlantic)
* Mick Jagger Talks New Rolling Stones Tour, Aretha Franklin and Grammys (Billboard)
* Nina Is Everywhere I Go (Oxford American)
* A Moment in Time - An Interview with Terence Blanchard (ScoreIt.org)
* 'Conserve the Sound' hopes to save sounds of old tech before they're gone (CBC)
* Cyrille Aimée Pushes Herself into New Terrain with 'Move On: A Sondheim Adventure' (WBGO)
* Keith Richards on Rolling Stones’ Stadium Tour: ‘Maybe This Will Be the Last One’ (Rolling Stone)
* Iconic 1958 photo - which featured the biggest names in jazz - is brought to life by never-before-seen frames from legendary photographer Art Kane's shoot (Daily Mail)
* The Place of the Drum Solo in Jazz (Jazz Times)
* Farewell Mary Jane: Grieving for a lost jazz hideout (Japan Times)
* If you think you know who Philip Glass is, you probably don’t (Washington Post)
* Meet Skull Snaps, a Forgotten Funk Band That Soundtracked Hip-Hop (Bandcamp.com)
* Library of Congress Acquires Billy Strayhorn Archive (Jazz Times)
* Jazz icon Wayne Shorter can play anything. He’s still trying to say everything (Washington Post)
* Funk was the black answer to “Star Wars”: Take the trip with “Tales From the Tour Bus” (Salon.com)
* "For the sake of a couple of bucks, they deserted us": Vancouver's last classical record store to close (CBC)
* Expansive Martinelli Book Examines European Jazz History (DownBeat)

Sunday Session: June 10, 2018

John Coltrane

Here's a roundup of various music-related items of interest that have shown up in one of StLJN's various inboxes or feeds over the past week:

* The 21 Best Concert Films of All Time (Paste)
* REVIEW: Art Ensemble of Chicago at Primavera Sound Festival in Barcelona (London Jazz News)
* Kurt Elling: Living the Questions (Jazz Times)
* 'Still A Lot Of Love': Arturo O'Farrill On Cuba-U.S. Artistic Relations (NPR)
* This legendary Utah saxophonist just turned 99 and you can hear him play tonight (Deseret News)
* Truesdell’s Gil Evans Project Recasts Classics at Jazz Standard (DownBeat)
* The chords of the universe (Aeon.co)
* Discover Weakly (TheBaffler.com)
* “Sun Ra Radio” Premieres Online (Jazz Times)
* Vision Festival Offers Bracing Sounds and a Space for Creativity (DownBeat)
* Q&A with Ambrose Akinmusire: Geographies of Influence (Jazziz)
* The club night making classical music dance to a new beat (The Telegraph)
* 20 essential fusion records that have never been more influential (TheVinylFactory.com)
* Bobby Bradford: Musician, Educator, Survivor (AllAboutJazz.com)
* What Was the Point of Elevator Music? (AtlasObscura.com)
* There’s an “Inverse Piano” in Your Head (Scientific American)
* What was the loudest rock band ever? And how loud was that? This infographic explains everything (AJournalOfMusicalThings.com)
* Shemekia Copeland: A Humble 'Queen Of The Blues' (WGLT)
* Motéma Music Fosters Intense Creativity (DownBeat)
* Byrds Co-Founders Plan 'Sweetheart of the Rodeo' 50th Anniversary Tour (Rolling Stone)
* Coltrane’s ‘Lost’ Studio Album Found (DownBeat)
* Hear Woody Shaw and Dexter Gordon On Tour, and On Fire, In Newly Discovered Recordings (WBGO)
* Jalal Mansur Nuriddin: Bidding Farewell To The Schoolyard Bard (NPR)
* Ticketfly Confirms Hack Exposed Personal Information of 27 Million Accounts (Gizmodo)
* Jazz in the Age of Trump: A Roundtable Discussion (Jazziz)
* Spotify Offers Managers, Artists Advances to License Music Directly to Its Streaming Service: Exclusive (Billboard)
* Happy Birthday Prince: A Look At His Legacy, Progressiveness And Royal Badness (Vibe)
* Eddie Henderson’s Cool Collective (DownBeat)
* On 10 Years of the New New-Music Scene, and 30 Years of My Own (Vulture.com)
* Jazz Meets Hip Hop: Soweto Kinch's Singular Path (SFJAZZ.org)
* BBC to Close Iconic Maida Vale Studios (Pro Sound News)
* The Aural Magic of Stanford's Laptop Orchestra (Wired)
* Why repeating words sound like music to your brain (TheVerge.com)
* ‘We Out Here’ Documentary on London Jazz Scene Now Streaming (DownBeat)
* Lorraine Gordon, Guardian Of Legendary Jazz Club, Dies At 95 (NPR)

Sunday Session: May 22, 2016

Dr. Lonnie Smith

Some interesting music-related items that have landed in StLJN's inbox over the past week:

* He's got four million doo-wop 45s for sale, but browsers beware (Philadelphia Inquirer)
* The Current's 893 Essential Albums (Minnesota Public Radio)
* Just How Good a Singer Was Dean Martin? (The Daily Beast)
* I’ve sold all my CDs. Can I live without those cracked plastic cases of magic and memories? (The Guardian UK)
* Our Hero and His Blues: Celebrating Albert Murray (Los Angeles Review of Books)
* The Taboo of Injury and Disability in Music (Van-Magazine.com)
* Tape recording was introduced 70 years ago today (Recode.net)
* Listen up: James West forever changed the way we hear the world (ArsTechnica.com)
* This Legendary Composer Writes Music for 100-Guitar Ensembles (Esquire)
* Library Of Congress Opens 'Jazz Singers' Exhibition (NPR)
* The Music Industry Buried More Than 150 Startups. Now They Are Left To Dance With The Giants (Medium.com)
* Overdue Ovation for George Lewis - An artistic academic, a soulful technologist (Jazz Times)
* Why a newspaper trashed its own opera review (Washington Post)
* Without Jazz and Blues, There's No Americana (The Atlantic)
* A Blues for Albert Murray (The Nation)
* Interview: Organist & Musician Dr. Lonnie Smith (PBS/The Tavis Smiley Show)
* Rahsaan Roland Kirk Documentary To Be Released May 31 (DownBeat)
* Exclusive Interview: Eddie Palmieri Discusses ‘Harlem River Drive’ + Forthcoming Record (Revive-Music.com)
* Moral Rights for Musicians: A Primer (FutureOfMusic.org)
* Glenn Branca's Really Experimental Music: Why the Composer Is Still Punk After All These Years (Vice.com)
* Theo Croker Brings the Funk to NYC’s Samsung 837 (DownBeat)
* House of Cards - Why Alaskan musicians are singing the blues (Anchorage Press)
* At 80, Carla Bley Keeps Looking Towards The Next Composition (NPR)
* Tony Bennett’s son is new US head of Universal classics and jazz (SlippedDisc.com)
* Miller, Bunnett, Carrington Bring Flair to Mary Lou Williams Festival (DownBeat)
* A Five-Time Grammy Winner Explains Why YouTube are Total Scumbags (DigitalMusicNews.com)
* The inside story of when Run‑DMC met Aerosmith and changed music forever (Washington Post)
* Thirteen Prayers: Kamasi Washington's Favourite Albums (The Quietus)
* Interview: Dr. Cornel West & Afro-Cuban Jazz Musician Arturo O’Farrill Explore Music & Activism (Vibe)
* A Hidden Times Square Sound Installation Returns to Full Hum (Hyperallergic.com)
* How Bugs Bunny and ‘Kill the Wabbit’ Inspired a Generation of Opera Stars (Wall Street Journal)

Sunday Session: March 27, 2016

Arturo O'Farrill

Some interesting music-related items that have landed in StLJN's inbox over the past week:

* Malcolm McLaren's son to burn £5m of punk memorabilia (The Guardian UK)
* Vijay Iyer/Wadada Leo Smith: A Cosmic Rhythm With Each Stroke (The Quietus)
* What Happens When Pop/Alternative Radio Runs Out of Alternatives? (Billboard)
* Coltrane Church to vacate Western Addition at end of April (San Francisco Chronicle)
* Ray Davies: The Lonely Kink (Rolling Stone)
* Historic days for US and Cuba, accompanied by jazz (Jazz Beyond Jazz)
* How we made Motown (The Guardian UK)
* Paul McCartney strikes out to gain control of his share of the Beatles catalogue (The Guardian UK)
* Concord to Release Lee Ritenour Vinyl Box Set (Jazz Times)
* 10 Records You Might Have Owned That Are Now Worth a Fortune (MentalFloss.com)
* Vinyl sales in 2015 worth more than Spotify Free and YouTube combined (FactMag.com)
* Verve to Release “Jazz at the Philharmonic: The Ella Fitzgerald Set” (Jazz Times)
* Cosmic Slop: Pedro Bell’s fantastic, far-out and funky Funkadelic album art (DangerousMinds.net)
* Jazz Record Mart collection is now in distinguished company (Medill Reports Chicago)
* For jazz pianist, Obama's trip to Cuba 'beyond what I'd ever thought I'd see' (PRI)
* Born To Be Blue: Chet Baker In 5 Songs (NPR)
* Uri Caine: In dialogue with music history (Stuff.co.nz)
* Blue Note Becomes Apple Music Curator, Reissues Gems on Vinyl (DownBeat)
* Award-winning Composer David Baker Dies At 84 (Indiana Public Media)

Sunday Session: March 22, 2015

Roy Haynes

For your Sunday reading, some interesting music-related items that have hit StLJN's inbox over the past week:

* We Speak African: Arturo O'Farrill on U.S./Cuba Exchange - Why diplomatic relations will change everything (Jazz Times)
* Five Decades, Six Galaxies, and Counting: The AACM at 50 (Walker Art)
* The Inside Story of How Vegas Changed Elvis Presley: Drugs, Debauchery & Superstitions (Billboard)
* Albert 'Tootie' Heath, Drummer Extraordinaire, Turns The Tables (NPR)
* Wynton Marsalis cancels Venezuela shows (USA Today)
* Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi's Widow Launch Blues Brothers Label (Rolling Stone)
* Could monitor engineers soon be a thing of the past? (Audio Media International)
* Behind The SFJAZZ Collective's Original Approach To Joe Henderson (NPR)
* Flashes of Quincy - The Quincy Jones Interview (Vice.com)
* Record Store Day: Indie labels say majors have ruined the big event (Independent UK)
* Chicago Jazz Festival To Celebrate AACM, Strayhorn, Lady Day with Special Concerts (DownBeat)
* Field Notes: Charles Lloyd at the Village Vanguard - A cause for celebration as the iconic venue turns 80 (Jazz Times)
* Haynes Celebrates 90th with Star-Studded Residency at New York’s Blue Note (DownBeat)
* Streaming Revenue Is Catching Up to Digital Download Revenue (Digital Music News)
* The Unlikely Story of “A Change Is Gonna Come” (The New Yorker)

Jazz this week: Arturo O'Farrill Sextet, Fidel Morales Trio, and more

This week's menu of live jazz and creative music in St. Louis has a bit of what Jelly Roll Morton once called "the Latin tinge," with two different touring Latin-jazz performers passing through town, plus the usual variety of local sounds, from Gypsy jazz and big band swing to funkified Beatles and New Orleans-style brass.

Let's go to the highlights...

Wednesday, January 21
Tonight, pianist Arturo O’Farrill (pictured, top left) and his sextet will make their debut at Jazz at the Bistro, continuing with two sets nightly through Saturday.

O'Farrill, the son of legendary Latin bandleader Chico O'Farrill, is a fine pianist with an encyclopedic knowledge of the Latin-jazz idiom, and his big band put on a powerful show when they performed at the now-defunct St. Louis Jazz and Heritage Festival back in the mid-2000s. Though this ensemble may be smaller, the energy level and musicianship should be equally high.

Also tonight, Cabaret Project St. Louis presents their monthly "open mic" night at the Tavern of Fine Arts; and Sarah Jane and the Blue Notes trio will perform at The Feasting Fox .

Thursday, January 22
This semester's Jazz at Holmes series at Washington University begins with a free concert from bassist Eric Warren and his quartet; and pianists David Parker and Greg Mills will play at the Tavern of Fine Arts.

Friday, January 23
The Funky Butt Brass Band return for their monthly performance at the Broadway Oyster Bar, while the Webster Groves HS Jazz Band, Hixson MS Jazz Band and WGHS Alumni Jazz Band will play their annual concert at The Pageant.

Elsewhere around town, Second Generation Swing will play for dancers at the Casa Loma Ballroom, and singer Joe Mancuso leads a quartet at Nathalie's.

Saturday January 24
Percussionist Fidel Morales (pictured, below left), who teaches at the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music and has performed with well-known musicians including Danilo Pérez, Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Eddie Gómez, and Jon Faddis, brings his Afro Cuban Jazz Trio to Voce.

Also on Saturday, The People's Key interpret the Beatles in their show "Sgt. Pepper's Jazzy Hearts Club Band" at the Kranzberg Arts Center;  trumpeter Jim Manley will be back at One 19 North Tapas & Wine Bar; Wack-A-Doo performs at Evangeline's ; and singer Feyza Eren and pianist Curt Landes will be at The Wine Press

Sunday, January 25
Gypsy-jazz group Franglais plays for brunch at Evangeline's.

Monday, January 26
Jazz-fusion quartet Common Time will play at Winifred Moore Auditorium on the campus of Webster University; and saxophonist "Blind" Willie Dineen and the Broadway Collective return to BB's Jazz, Blues & 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.)

StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: Winter/spring 2015 jazz preview

Today, it's the first part of StLJN's winter/spring 2015 jazz preview, in which we bring you music videos from jazz and creative music performers who will be visiting our city in the first part of next year.

First up are The Bad Plus, who will be back in St. Louis from Wednesday, January 7 through Saturday, January 10 to play at Jazz at the Bistro. The group has been visiting the Bistro early in January for nearly a decade now, and since their last trip here, they've put out a new recording of all original music, Inevitable Western. In the video up above, you can see them playing a song from that album, "Gold Prisms Incorporated," during a gig in September at the Blue Note in Milano, Italy.

After the jump, you'll see the Stooges Brass Band playing "Hot." They'll be in town on Thursday, January 15 at the Broadway Oyster Bar; the video was recorded in July of this year in New Orleans for the web series "Jam in the Van."

Below that you can see their fellow New Orleanians Bonerama, who will be here the very next night, Friday, January 16, also at the Broadway Oyster Bar. The clip is an audience-shot video of them performing "Hey, Hey, What Can I Do" last month at the Cutting Room in NYC.

That same weekend, the Bistro will feature a band being billed as the Jazz at Lincoln Center Group, an ad hoc assemblage made up of musicians doing week-long educational residencies for Jazz St. Louis that will culminate in public performances on Friday, January 16 and Saturday, January 17. The front line features two familiar faces, trumpeter Terell Stafford and saxophonist/clarinetist Victor Goines - both of whom have fronted their own bands here - along with trombonist Chris Crenshaw, with Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra drummer Alvin Atkinson quarterbacking the rhythm section with a bassist and pianist TBA.

In the fourth clip, you can see Stafford performing a very nice version of Billy Strayhorn's "Day Dream" at the 2013 International Trumpet Guild convention, backed by pianist Bruce Barth. Below that, there's a clip of Goines working out on his composition "Turning Points" during a 2011 gig with pianist Aaron Diehl, bassist Phillip Kuehn, and drummer Marion Felder. Crenshaw is represented by a clip compiling excerpts from a concert for a Smithsonian traveling exhibit that the trombonist played in March 2013 in his hometown of Thomson, GA; the rhythm section is Josef Patchen (keyboard), Travis Shaw (bass), and Edwin G. Hamilton (drums).

Today's final video features the Arturo O'Farrill Sextet, who will visit St. Louis Wednesday, January 21 through Saturday, January 24 to play at Jazz at the Bistro. O'Farrill, a pianist, composer/arranger and son of the famous bandleader Chico O'Farrill, was here a decade ago with his Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra to play the long-defunct St. Louis Jazz Festival in Clayton, but this will be his first visit here since. To get an idea of what to expect, check out the video of O'Farrill's octet recorded in September 2013 for an NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert.

Look for the second part of StLJN's winter/spring 2015 jazz preview in this space next week. You can see the rest of today's videos after the jump...