Jazz this week: "Such Sweet Thunder," Ben Lamar Gay, Cécile McLorin Salvant, and more

This week's calendar of live jazz and creative music in St. Louis includes visits from a Grammy Award winning singer and an intriguing, genre-busting musician making his debut here, plus a multi-media event bringing together the words of Shakespeare and the music of Duke Ellington, and more.

Let's go to the highlights...


Wednesday, October 2
Pianists Adam Maness and Peter Martin will team up for the first of two evenings of duets (plus a Thursday matinee) at Jazz St. Louis.

Also on Wednesday, the Route 66 Jazz Orchestra returns for a "Notes From Home" performance at the Sheldon Concert Hall.

Thursday, October 3
"Such Sweet Thunder," a collaboration among Shakespeare Festival St. Louis, Big Muddy Dance Company, and Jazz St. Louis, will be presented for the first of three nights at the Public Media Commons in Grand Center.

The event, which is free and open to the public but requires a ticket, will feature the Jazz St. Louis Big Band playing Duke Ellington's score along with the actors, dancers, and big-screen video supplied by Nine Network.

Also on Thursday, singer and bassist Janet Evra and her quartet play at Joe's Cafe; singer Cheri Evans and CEEJazzSoul return to the Chase Club; and Kansas City jump blues band Grand Marquis will take the stage at BB's Jazz, Blues & Soups.

Friday, October 4
Jazz St. Louis will present the first of two nights of "Abbey Road at 50," with the Beatles' penultimate release re-imagined as jazz by keyboardist Ryan Marquez, The People's Key, and guest vocalist Lola.

Also on Friday, vibraphonist Tom Rickard leads a trio at Cigar Inn, and multi-instrumentalist Lamar Harris will be in his not-so-secret identity as DJ Nune for late night sets at The Dark Room.

Saturday, October 5
Multi-instrumentalist Ben Lamar Gay (pictured, top left) and his quartet will make their St. Louis debut in a performance presented by New Music Circle at Off Broadway.

The Chicago native's sound is a bit hard to pin down, involving disparate elements including free jazz, Brazilian music, electronics, and more, but you can get some idea of his musical range by perusing the videos collected in this post from Saturday before last.

Also on Saturday, three-time Grammy Award winning vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant (pictured, bottom left) returns with pianist Aaron Diehl's trio for a performance at the Sheldon Concert Hall.

For a look at what Salvant has been up to since her last appearance here in 2017 (besides snagging that third Grammy for her most recent album The Window), check out this post from last Saturday featuring video from several recent performances.

Sunday, October 6
Dizzy Atmosphere plays swing and Gypsy jazz for brunch at The Dark Room, and the Jazz Troubadours play their monthly first-Sunday gig at Evangeline's.

Monday, October 7
Pianist Carol Schmidt and saxophonist Paul DeMarinis will play a concert of duets at the Thompson Music Building Recital Hall on the Webster University campus.

Tuesday, October 8
Former St. Louisan Mark Deutsch, who's been living in California for much of the last two decades, returns home to perform on his self-invented instrument, the Bazantar, at the Sheldon Concert Hall;  and the Glen Smith/Eric Slaughter Quartet will play a concert at the Gaslight Theater.

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: Spotlight on Ben LaMar Gay

This week, let's take a look at some videos featuring Chicago-based multi-instrumentalist Ben LaMar Gay, who's coming to St. Louis to perform in a concert presented by New Music Circle on Saturday, October 5 at Off Broadway.

While Gay has been working in Chicago's busy improvised music scene for a while, he gained a new level of national recognition in 2018 with the release of Downtown Castles Can Never Block the Sun, his first "official" album as a solo artist.

Drawing on a catalog of material recorded over seven years but previously unreleased, the album incorporates influences from Chicago's free-jazz tradition, Brazilian music, and much more, moving "from fuzz-caked weirdo-psych to mutant synth-funk to giddy electronics to progressive jazz at a seamless, whiplash-free warp speed," according to NPR.

Gay, who sings as well as playing cornet, electronics, percussion, and more, has deployed his eclectic approach to music in a variety of projects, and today's collection of videos documents a few of them, starting up above with a video of his performance of "Lamps," recorded in January of this year at DJ Gilles Peterson's Worldwide Awards in London.

After the jump, you can see an excerpt from a performance by Gay's quartet Satchel Monarchs in August 2019 at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, followed by a short snippet from his solo performance last January at Nublu in New York City during NYC's annual Winter Jazz Festival.

Next is a video of "Creeks," an improv theatrical piece by Gay and filmmaker Ben Kolak that was performed and recorded in 2016 at Constellation in Chicago, IL.

That's followed by "Muhal," a short film created in 2018 by Gay (who contributed to the visuals as well as composing the music) and filmmaker/animator Maren Celest. The film pays tribute to Chicago pianist and composer Muhal Richard Abrams and to saxophonist Fred Anderson, whose club, the Velvet Lounge, was located in the Bronzeville neighborhood where much of the footage was shot.

The last two videos feature Gay doing improvised duets with two different musicians. The penultimate clip shows him and cellist/composer Lilianna Zofia Wosko performing in September 2018 at Experimental Sound Studio in Chicago.

Then the final clip captures Gay and multi-instrumentalist Jayve John Montgomery in aperformance for the August 2017 solar eclipse, presented in a barn in Perry County, MO.

For more about Ben LaMar Gay, read his May 2018 interview with Bandcamp Daily; the feature about him published in March 2018 in the Chicago Reader; and Pitchfork's review of Downtown Castles Can Never Block the Sun.

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

StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: Fall 2019 jazz preview, part two

Today, it's time for part two of StLJN's Fall 2019 jazz preview, presenting videos of the jazz and creative music artists who will be coming here to perform for the next four months. (You can see part one here.)

The chronology of upcoming shows resumes with Paa Kow and his Afro-Fusion Orchestra, who will be in St. Louis on Friday, September 6 for a performance at BB's Jazz, Blues & Soups. The group, including St. Louis' own Weedie Braimah on percussion, can be seen in the first video up above, which is an excerpt from their performance in 2018 at the Jazz Aspen Snowmass Festival.

After the jump, you can see a video of singer Cyrille Aimee, who will perform on Wednesday, September 18 and Thursday, September 19 at Jazz St. Louis. The clip shows Aimee singing "Down" in February of this year at the studios of WBGO radio in Newark, NJ.

Next up, it's saxophonist Joshua Redman, who's bringing his quartet for shows starting Wednesday, September 25 and continuing through Sunday, September 29 at Jazz St. Louis.The video shows a full set of music from Redman, bassist Reuben Rogers, drummer Greg Hutchinson, and pianist Aaron Goldberg recorded in 2013 at the Jazz sous les Pommiers festival in France.

The following week, St. Louis will get a return visit from singer Cécile McLorin Salvant with pianist Aaron Diehl's trio, as they perform on Saturday, October 5 at the Sheldon Concert Hall. They can be seen in the next video, a full set recorded in 2016 at the Festival de Jazz de Vitoria-Gasteiz in Spain.

Today's penultimate video features Chicago-based cornetist, composer, and vocalist Ben Lamar Gay, who will open New Music Circle's 61st season with a performance on Saturday, October 5 at Off Broadway. He's seen here with his quartet performing "More" at DJ Gilles Peterson's Worldwide Awards ceremony this past January in London.

The final clip features members of Artemis, the all-star, all-woman ensemble who will perform Wednesday, October 9 through Sunday, October 13 at Jazz St. Louis.

Since literally all the members of the group are busy bandleaders in their own right, Artemis hasn't done much extended touring. The only live videos of them online so far seem to be some shaky footage shot at last year's Newport Jazz Festival and posted online in two-minute chunks, which don't serve the music or musicians particularly well.

Fortunately, there is some good-quality video of a gig in July 2017 at New Morning in Paris, nominally billed as "Woman To Woman," but featuring all the members of Artemis except for drummer Allison Miller, and so, it's an extended excerpt from that show that is posted here for your viewing and listening enjoyment.

Look for part three of StLJN's Fall 2019 jazz preview next week in this space. You can see the rest of today's videos after the jump...