Kemper Museum announces fall concert series

As mentioned here back in June, this fall the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum is presenting an exhibition entitled Birth of the Cool: California Art, Design, and Culture at Midcentury, accompanied by a series of free jazz concerts.

Now the Kemper Museum has announced the lineup for the concert series, which will begin on Saturday, September 27 with the BAG Trio, led by bassist Zimbabwe Nkenya (pictured). Guitarist William Lenihan and his Quartet will perform on Saturday, October 25, followed by singer/guitarist Teddy Presberg and the Red Note Revivalists on Saturday, November 22. The series concludess with trumpeter Randy Holmes' Trio on Saturday, December 27.

Each of the participating groups will present a program ostensibly inspired by a musician from the era of "cool jazz," with the BAG Trio drawing on the work of Miles Davis, Lenihan looking to Wes Montgomery, and Holmes basing his show on Chet Baker. However, the concept seems to break down a bit with Presberg's show, which supposedly will be inspired by "the Birth of the Cool era" rather than by a specific musician. (This sounds like a rather awkward attempt to shoehorn Presberg into the pre-existing concept. Will his guitar-bass-drums trio be offering compressed arrangements of the harmonically complex scores of, say, "Jeru" or "Darn That Dream"? I think not; a 15-minute funk vamp on the two chords of "So What" seems much more likely...)

All the concerts are free and open to the public, and will take place from 4:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, located on the Washington University main campus near the northwest corner of the intersection of Forsyth and Skinker.

Jazz this week: Legacy Jazz Quintet, BAG Trio, Erin Bode, and more

With no touring jazz acts in St. Louis this week, it's an opportune time for St. Louis listeners to check out some of our homegrown talent. Fortunately, there's a good bit of activity this weekend, starting tonight with a couple of educational events, namely New Music Circle's analog synthesis workshop at the Carpenter branch of the St. Louis Public Library and Jazz St. Louis' initial "Jazz 101" class at Jazz at the Bistro. Post-Dispatch pop critic Kevin Johnson has a bit more about the latter event in his column today.

Also tonight, the BAG Trio with Zimbabwe Nkenya, Mike Nelson and Gary Sykes will do a free concert as part of Washington University's Jazz at Holmes series, and multi-instrumentalist Sandy Weltman's new group Hot Club Caravan performs at Brandt's.

Speaking of new bands, this Friday and Saturday also marks the debut of the Legacy Jazz Quintet, led by pianist and Jazz St. Louis education director Phil Dunlap, at Jazz at the Bistro. Described as being "in the mold of the classic quintets of Miles Davis, Art Blakey and Horace Silver from the 1950s and 1960s," the group includes saxophonist Jason Swagler, trumpeter Tony Wiggins, bassist Nick Jost and drummer Marty Morrison.

Also on Friday, the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis opens its musical play Ella, based on the life of singer Ella Fitzgerald; Trio Tres Bien performs at Brandt's; and singer Erin Bode (pictured) performs with her group at Revival, the swanky new restaurant in Midtown in the space formerly occupied by King Louie's. Bode is also in action on Saturday night, headlining a show at the Lucas School House concert club.

Looking beyond the weekend, on Tuesday Jazz St. Louis will present another of its "Jazz Perspectives" discussions at the Centene Center for Arts and Education, 3547 Olive Blvd, this time featuring the Heath Brothers, who will be in town next week to play the Bistro.

For more local jazz-related events, please visit the St. Louis Jazz Notes Calendar.

(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.)

(Edited after posting to fix typos)

Jazz this week: Terell Stafford, Michael Wolff, a tribute to Ella Fitzgerald and Joe Pass, and more

This week brings another diverse selection of jazz and creative music concerts to St. Louis stages, starting with trumpeter Terell Stafford, who performs at Jazz at the Bistro on Friday and Saturday.

Stafford has worked as a sideman with McCoy Tyner, Christian McBride, John Clayton, Steve Turre, Dave Valentin, and Russell Malone as well as being a member of Matt Wilson's critically acclaimed band Arts and Crafts. He also has recorded as a leader for the locally based MAXJAZZ label, and is spending this week doing an educational residency for Jazz St. Louis, playing school concerts and working with student musicians. To see a couple of videos featuring Stafford in action, check out this previous post.

The other touring act in town this week is pianist Michael Wolff, who's playing at the Sheldon Concert Hall on Saturday. Wolff may be best remembered as the leader of the house band on Arsenio Hall's talk show, but he also had plenty of serious jazz credits in his pre-Posse days, including work with Cannonball Adderley, Nancy Wilson, the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra, Sonny Rollins, Airto Moriera and Flora Purim’s Fingers band, and Cal Tjader. As a bandleader, Wolff has concentrated on small ensembles, as on his most recent CD Jazz, Jazz, Jazz, a collection of standards performed by a trio that also includes electric bassist John B. Williams and drummer Victor Jones. For his St. Louis concert, Wolff's group also will feature tabla player Badal Roy, who worked with Miles Davis back in the day.

This week's free Jazz at Holmes concert on Thursday night at Washington University features a tribute to Ella Fitzgerald and Joe Pass from singer Jan Shapiro, a former St. Louisan who now teaches at Berklee College of Music in Boston, along with guitarist William Lenihan and pianist Kara Baldus.

Another free show happens at Washington University on Friday, when the group Mmmelt, described as a mix of "ambient, punk, world beat, jazz, electronics, avant-garde and spoken word," kicks off the concert series at the new Kemper Art Museum. For more experimental improv, post-rock and other genre-defying sounds, you also can check out Tony Renner's trio learn, artist! and Eric Hall's band Peanuts on Friday at the Schlafly Brewery and Tap Room downtown.

On Sunday, the BAG Trio commemorates Black History Month with a free concert called "From Ragtime to No Time" at the Scott Joplin House State Historic Site. And looking beyond the weekend, on Monday night the Webster University Big Band and the Genesis Jazz Project will team up at Webster's Winifred Moore Auditorium for a program called "The St. Louis Blues & All That Jazz."

As always, these highlights are just some of what's happening around town; for more local jazz-related events this weekend and beyond, please visit the St. Louis Jazz Notes Calendar

(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.)

(Edited 2/21/08 to correct the day of the Michael Wolff show.)

BAG to present "From Ragtime to No Time" this Sunday, February 24

This just in: BAG has announced a performance coming up at 7 p.m. this Sunday, February 24 at the Scott Joplin House State Historic Site.

The BAG Trio, which includes Gary Sykes on drums, Zimbabwe Nkenya on bass and Mike "Baba" Nelson on trumpet and percussion, will present "From Ragtime to No Time," a concert that "will take listeners through a musical excursion in rhythm from the Ragtime sounds that make the Scott Joplin State Historic Site famous, to the innovations of the musicians of the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s who changed the way we hear and think of the creative music today."

Admission to the event is free. For more information, you can call the Scott
Joplin House at 314-340-5790.

Jazz this week: Javon Jackson, Chris Botti, Pablo Ziegler & Claudia Acuna, BAG honors MLK, and more

After a couple of relatively slow weeks to start the new year, this week's musical offerings include several touring jazz performers playing on St. Louis stages. Let's go to the highlights:

Saxophonist Javon Jackson's Superband, featuring former Miles Davis sideman Jimmy Cobb on drums and Ronnie Matthews on piano, performs at Jazz at the Bistro starting tonight and continuing through Saturday. Jackson's recent recordings have been compared by some critics to the 1970s CTI releases from players such as Stanley Turrentine and Grover Washington Jr., and while Jackson (pictured) definitely can bring the funk when the situation calls for it, he also can play modern, hard bop and straight-ahead swinging jazz very well. This week's engagement likely will include some of all those styles, perhaps with a bit more straight-ahead playing than on some gigs due to the most welcome presence of Cobb, who was the drummer on Miles Davis' landmark Kind of Blue.

On Friday and Saturday, trumpeter Chris Botti plays the Touhill Performing Arts Center. I wrote a Critic's Pick about Botti for this week's Riverfront Times, and you can read it online here.

Also on Friday, the Pablo Ziegler Quintet for New Tango with special guest singer Claudia Acuna performs at the Edison Theatre on the Washington University campus. It's not clear from the publicity just how large a role Acuna has in this production, but from what I can tell, Ziegler, who worked with tango legend Astor Piazzolla, certainly seems worth hearing in his own right.

UPDATE - 11:55 p.m., 1/16/08 - Terry Perkins interviewed Ziegler for an article in Thursday's Post-Dispatch, elucidating the pianist's connection with Piazzolla and answering my question about Acuna: she'll sing seven songs with Ziegler's group. Read the whole article here.

On Sunday, BAG returns to the Scott Joplin House State Historic Site to pay tribute to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. with a program called "One for King," featuring performances from the BAG Trio, poet Michael Castro, and more. Admission is free, and the concert is billed as being "family friendly."

Some other local gigs of note: Brandt's has the Richard Fuller Quartet on Thursday, Trio Tres Bien on Friday and Mo & Dawn on Saturday, while Cookie's Jazz and More will present Kim Massie on Friday and the Carolbeth True Trio on Saturday. Looking beyond the weekend, the Sessions Big Band performs at BB's Jazz, Blues and Soups on Monday night.

For more local jazz-related events, please see the St. Louis Jazz Notes Calendar.

(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.)

BAG to present "One For King" on Sunday, January 20

Via email, BAG has announced that they'll present a program called "One For King" this Sunday, January 20 at the Scott Joplin House State Historic Site's Rosebud Cafe. The event is, as the name suggests, dedicated to the memory and message of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and will feature a lineup of poets, musicians and artists including Michael Castro and the BAG Trio ("Baba" Mike Nelson on trumpet and percussion, Zimbabwe Nkenya on bass and mbira, and the great Gary Sykes on drums and percussion).

The program will include several group improvisations as well as individual performances. Sykes will be featured on a solo drum composition "in remembrance of the struggle" and Nkenya will offer a piece based on "Dr. King, The Peaceful Warrior," a Cal Massey composition featured on the Archie Shepp album Things Have Got to Change. Nelson and Castro also will perform original solo pieces honoring the Rev. Dr. King.

"One For King" takes place from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m., and admission is free. For more information, call the Scott Joplin House State Historic Site at 314-340-5790 or send email to bag_blackartistgroup@yahoo.com.