Sunday Session: February 7, 2021

Femi Kuti

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

* The Autobiography of Phil Woods: April in Paris 1968 (Jazz Times)
* Spotify’s latest invention monitors your speech, determines your emotional state… and suggests music based on it (MusicBusinessWorldwide.com)
* YouTube says music artists' income could fall if it must pay more for streams (The Guardian)
* Tony Bennett's Battle With Alzheimer's (AARP.org)
* Mississippi Delta: The root of the blues in photos (Nashville Tennessean)
* Playlist: Haitian Rhythms And The Music Of New Orleans (NPR)
* The Velvet Mafia: the gay men who helped shape music in the 60s (The Guardian)
* Different beat: how Fela Kuti’s son and grandson are modernising the dynasty (The Guardian)
* A Time For The Blues (DownBeat)
* The Greatest and Yacht-iest of the Doobie Brothers, According to Michael McDonald (Vulture.com)
* Got the blues? Listen to these 25 essential Mississippi Delta blues songs (Beauregard Daily News)
* Revisiting the Tender Sounds of Dusty Springfield (The New Yorker)
* Mozart did not consider himself a tortured genius (Christian Science Monitor)
* Ben Sidran: The Ballad of Tommy LiPuma (Nardis) (Jazz Times)
* Here’s Where You Can Donate to Help Struggling Music Industry Workers (Rolling Stone)
* How pianist Jason Moran is exploring art and Black influences to get through the pandemic (NBC News)
* The Last Remaining Juke Joints in America (SPIN)
* Planning for the Future of Van Gelder Studio (Jazz Times)
* Danny Ray, James Brown’s Longtime ‘Cape Man’ and Emcee, Dead at 85 (Rolling Stone)
* STEAL THIS PLAN (AntiGravityMagazine.com)
* Ma Rainey’s Blues Power (Tidal.com)
* Hermosa Beach’s Lighthouse Cafe plans to reopen in March under new ownership (Hermosa Beach Daily Breeze)
* Music Venue Owners And Artists Reflect On How The Pandemic Changed Their Industry (NPR)
* How Black Composers Shaped the Sound of American Classical Music (NPR)
* You might know the Bakersfield Sound, but how well do you know the Lakeview Sound? (KGET)
* Béla Fleck’s Journey To Find Truth In Origins Of The Banjo (WBUR)
* How the US Civil War Influenced Music (History.com)
* While Hollywood Had the Sunset Strip, East L.A. Had the ‘Latin Strip’ (LATaco.com)

Sunday Session: August 16, 2020

Nubya Garcia

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

* Billy Childs Reveals the Influences on His Album Acceptance (Jazz Times)
* Orchestras are totally safe. Just stay away from the flute player (Wired)
* Ben Sidran: The Ballad of Tommy LiPuma (Nardis) (Jazz Times)
* Jazz Showcase founder Joe Segal dies: Chicago’s longest-running jazz impresario presented Charlie Parker and other greats (Chicago Tribune)
* 2020 NEA Jazz Masters: A Q&A with Dorthaan Kirk (SFJAZZ.org)
* David Crosby Remembers Jerry Garcia: ‘He Did Not Play for Money — He Was Chasing the Notes’ (Variety)
* The Alchemical Brothers: Brian Eno & Roger Eno Interviewed (TheQuietus.com)
* Bill Frisell On His New Trio Album, Missing Hal Willner & How COVID-19 Robbed Jazz Of Its Rapport (Grammy.com)
* Is Singing Together Safe In The Era Of Coronavirus? Not Really, Experts Say (NPR)
* Nubya Garcia On Identity, Accessibility And Independence (DownBeat)
* The Radical Legacy of Erroll Garner (Jazz Times)
* Austin leads the way to policies for reopening music venues (Offbeat)
* Venues and crew signal 'red alert' for live music and theatre (BBC)
* The Road to Dollywood (Jezebel.com)
* Sun Ra Shines Over Cafe Nine (New Haven Independent)
* Could Aloha be the low-latency app that finally makes virtual band rehearsals a reality? (MusicRadar.com)
* Ranking the best and worst years in music history (NewsChannelNebraska.com)
* Artists Clobbered By COVID-19, With 2.7 Million Creative Job Losses In The United States, Study Finds (Forbes.com)
* Fridays at Five A Talk with Snarky Puppy's Michael League (SFJAZZ.org)
* Craig Taborn by Camille Norment (BombMagazine.org)
* Film Review: “Jazz on a Summer’s Day” — A Contrarian View (ArtsFuse.org)
* RZA Wrote a New Jingle for Ice Cream Trucks to Replace ‘Turkey in the Straw’ (Rolling Stone)
* Dolly Parton Steers Her Empire Through the Pandemic — and Keeps It Growing (Billboard)
* Joey DeFrancesco Expands His Skill Set (DownBeat)
* Are Livestreams Now Music’s Primary Format and Artist Revenue Stream? (Hypebot.com)
* Joe Segal, Owner Of Chicago’s Jazz Showcase, Dies At 94 (DownBeat)
* Sonic Politics - Sound is Power (TheBattleground.eu)
* A Guide to the Music of Cecil Taylor, the Pianist Who Helped Invent Avant-Garde Jazz (Bandcamp.com)
* The year the music might die: British clubs face closure (Associated Press)
* Remembering Helen Jones Woods (1923–2020) (Jazz Times)
* How a Movie Score Is Really Made — According to a Top Hollywood Director (DigitalMusicNews.com)
* 'I feel like I'm failing at life': the terrible plight of music event staff (The Guardian)
* Kamasi Washington Breaks Down His Process to Score ‘Becoming’ (Variety)

Sunday Session: February 24, 2019

Billie Holiday

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:

* Ken Nordine, Chicago creator of 'word jazz' who had a voice that 'could give you the chills,' dies at 98 (Chicago Tribune)
* What happens when you create a fake music record label and upload bad music to Spotify (Salon.com)
* Jazz Musician And Subject Of Iconic Photo Revisits 'A Great Day In Harlem' (NPR)
* Italian town takes vow of silence for digital recording of centuries-old violins (The Telegraph)
* Cultural evolution of music (Nature)
* How streaming music could be harming the planet (BBC)
* Mandatory Music Surcharges Could Pay Musicians More (Offbeat)
* PBS to Air Nat ‘King’ Cole Special, Marking Centennial (DownBeat)
* PledgeMusic's Failed Promise Leaves Artists in Limbo and the Future of Music Crowdfunding in Jeopardy (Billboard)
* Judge Rules Against Both Parties In Lawsuit Over Kansas City's Mutual Musicians Foundation (KCUR)
* Ryan Adams and the Perils of the Rock-Genius Myth (The New Yorker)
* Ethel Ennis, Sophisticated Singer Who Reigned As Baltimore's First Lady of Jazz, Dies at 86 (WBGO)
* Whither “Musicologist”? (MusicologyNow.AMS.net)
* Rough Around the Edges: The Raw Yet Refined Art of Myra Melford (Jazziz)
* For Promotional Use Only (RockAndRollGlobe.com)
* More Than 50 Years In, Mavis Staples Is Still Delivering Messages Of Hope And Justice (NPR)
* Fans of Max Roach drumming up support to rename Bed-Stuy street after genre-busting jazz great (New York Daily News)
* Billie Holiday Documentary in the Works Featuring New Interviews With Contemporaries (Hollywood Reporter)
* McVouty! (Chisler.org)
* “Hearing” the Hammond Organ (New Music Box)
* Folk and Blues: The Tribulations of The Old Town School (NewCity.com)
* Monkees Singer and Bassist Peter Tork Dead at 77 (Rolling Stone)
* Bill Frisell: The ‘favourite guitarist of many people who agree on little else’ (Irish Times)
*''We Need a Jazz Band, but They All Have to Be Foreigners": The Discrimination Faced by Asian Musicians (The Beijinger.com)
* Peter Erskine: Up Front, In Time, and On Call (AllAboutJazz.com)
* Three-Disc Set Documents Ben Sidran’s Voyage (DownBeat)
* The strange truth behind the Amy Winehouse hologram tour (GQ)
* Debunking Green Book: Jazz Greats on What It Was Really Like to Tour During Jim Crow (Pitchfork.com)
* The Uncertain Future of KMHD and Jazz Radio in Portland (Portland Mercury)
* Save JAZZ.FM91 May Just Do It! (FYIMusicNews.ca)
* The Man Who Wasn’t Gershwin (Commentary)
* Jazz City (KCET)
* The Invisible Village - Sasha Frere-Jones on the Music of John Zorn (Art Forum)
* Ray Charles and Country’s Color Barrier (Rolling Stone)
* On the Road with Esperanza Spalding (Mother Jones)

Sunday Session: March 11, 2018

Herbie Hancock

Here's the 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:

* Ben Sidran Remembers Tommy LiPuma (Jazz Times)
* An ‘Astral Weeks’ origin story, told 50 years after Van Morrison fled to Boston (Boston Globe)
* Big Ears 2018 – Q&A With Milford Graves (ArtsKnoxville.com)
* McCoy Tyner In The ’70s: Part 1 (BurningAmbulance.com)
* Herbie Hancock 'still learning,' as eclectic music icon works on new album with Kendrick Lamar, Wayne Shorter and more (San Diego Union Tribune)
* Why are concert tickets going on sale so early? And where does all that cash go? (Kansas City Star)
* 7 Candid Photos of Jazz Legends (BBC)
* Like A Cosmic Newspaper: Val Wilmer On Sun Ra (TheQuietus.com)
* How the classical took control of the jazz in ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ (San Francisco Chronicle)
* Mere Virtuosity - Variations on a Slippery Idea (VQROnline.org)
* Inside the Bizarre, Booming Business of Turning Hit Songs into Baby Lullabies (Thrillist.com)
* Q&A with Steven Bernstein: On Respectability (DownBeat)
* Founder of Tower Records dies at 92 while drinking whiskey and watching the Oscars (Sacramento Bee)
* Herbie Hancock Taps Kendrick Lamar, Thundercat for New Album (Rolling Stone)
* NPR’s Tiny Desk Is Actually Not Tiny at All (Vice.com)
* NME to close print edition after 66 years (The Guardian)
* Big Ears Announces Full 2018 Lineup (DownBeat)
* An Impressive Audio Archive of John Cage Lectures & Interviews: Hear Recordings from 1963-1991 (OpenCulture.com)
* There’s a Tuba Crime Wave Sweeping America (Wall Street Journal)
* The Many Dimensions of Drummer, Composer and Bandleader Allison Miller (WBGO)
* Van Morrison teams up with Hammond hero Joey DeFrancesco on new album You’re Driving Me Crazy (Jazzwise)
* A Cherished BBC Radio Show Asks Celebrities to Pick a Desert Island Survival Kit (AtlasObscura.com)
* For iconic jazz club Village Vanguard, music rather than food is its main gig (New York Business Journal)
* Taylor Ho Bynum Presents New Suite in Hartford (DownBeat)
* Linda Ronstadt: From Tucson to Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, her lifetime love affair with music (AZCentral.com)
* The Original Noise Artist: Hear the Strange Experimental Sounds & Instruments of Italian Futurist, Luigi Russolo (1913) (OpenCulture.com)
* An Interview with Billy Cobham, Genius Drummer with Mahavishnu Orchestra, Miles Davis, Peter Gabriel, Etc. Etc. (The Stranger)
* Kobalt invests $150m in independent artists to challenge ‘stupidity’ of traditional major label deals (MusicBusinessWorldwide.com)
* Her Tiny Apartment is New York’s Most Secret Jazz Club (MessyNessyChic.com)

Sunday Session: December 31, 2017

Donny Hathaway

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

* Jazz trumpeter Irvin Mayfield keeps on making music, despite federal indictment (New Orleans Advocate)
* Is Music Getting Shorter? How Hot 100 Hits Downsized In 2017 (Billboard)
* Holiday travel woes? Try flying with a tuba (Cincinnati Enquirer)
* 'This Christmas': How a Chicago postal worker and Donny Hathaway created a holiday classic (Chicago Tribune)
* The Bad Plus Interviews 2017: Introduction (Bebopified.com)
* Interview: Jamie Saft (Burning Ambulance)
* This Is The Odd Writing Technique Used by David Bowie, Kurt Cobain, and Bob Dylan (Curiosity.com)
* Streaming Services and the End of Music Collection (Variety)
* Brian Eno Presents a Crash Course on How the Recording Studio Radically Changed Music: Hear His Influential Lecture “The Recording Studio as a Compositional Tool” (1979) (OpenCulture.com)
* Hackers Can Rickroll Thousands of Sonos and Bose Speakers Over the Internet (Wired)
* Paul McCartney's One on One Tour Earns $132 Million in 2017 (Billboard)
* Jazz Master Eddie Palmieri Doesn't Miss A Beat at 81 (NPR)
* Sidran, Willis Deliver Intense Sets in Paris (DownBeat)
* In A New Book, A Musician And A Scientist Describe Their Lives At the South Pole (KUT)
* Five visions for the future of music (BBC)
* Deluxe Reissue of Sonny Rollins’ “Way Out West” Out Feb. 16 (Jazz Times)
* 'The Coolest Job In The World': Fenway's Organist Talks Music And Baseball (WBUR)
* Tropicalia Music Still Speaks To Young Marginalized Urban Brazilians (NPR)
* Not dead yet: Record executives fight for compact disc's future (CBC)
* The explosive influence of Chicago’s AACM and the records it created (TheVinylFactory.com)
* A bluesy winter night in New York with Slim Harpo (Salon.com)

Jazz this week: Christian McBride & Peter Martin, Hamiet Bluiett, The Cunninghams, Garage A Trois, Ben Sidran, and more

The fall presenting season of jazz and creative music in St. Louis gets off to a fast start this week, with season openers from three different concert series; homecoming visits from some St. Louis natives; and two local musicians with international reputations playing on local stages. Let's go to the highlights:

Tonight, Cabaret St. Louis opens its season with actress and singer Linda Purl's show "Come Rain or Come Shine," which runs through Saturday at the Kranzberg Arts Center.

Then on Thursday, the jazz vocal duo The Cunninghams, featuring St. Louis native, multi-instrumentalist and Gaslight Square veteran Don Cunningham, make their way from their current home in Las Vegas back to the Gateway City for a concert at the Sheldon Concert Hall. For more about them and Don Cunningham's history in St. Louis, see this post.

Also on Thursday, the Jazz at Holmes series at Washington University begins its fall schedule with a free outdoor concert on Brookings Quadrangle featuring the St. Louis Nu-Jazz Quintet.

On Friday, guitarist Eric Slaughter and his trio begin a two-night stand to open the fall season at Jazz at the Bistro; and the jazz-influenced experimental rock band Ahleuchatistas plays at Lemp Neighborhood Arts Center.

Also on Friday, Robbie's House of Jazz will kick off their first-anniversary weekend with guitarist Daryl Darden, a St. Louis native who's back from California for a visit. Then on Saturday, the club presents baritone sax giant Hamiet Bluiett (pictured), who played for their opening weekend a year ago, with keyboardist Reggie Thomas. Bluiett is unquestionably one of the all-time great baritone saxophonists in jazz history, and any opportunity to hear him play, especially in an intimate venue like Robbie's, is worth seizing. It's a bit problematic this weekend, though, because Bluiett isn't the only internationally known St. Louis musician gigging locally on Saturday.

That same evening, pianist Peter Martin will continue his eponymous series at the Sheldon Concert Hall via a duo performance with bassist Christian McBride. McBride is one of the most in-demand bassists on the music scene, and you can read more about him (and see and hear samples of his playing) here and here. To make this performance extra-special, Martin says they're planning on doing it without microphones - something possible only in an acoustically superior venue like the Sheldon, which was designed before mics and PA systems were even invented.

UPDATE, 10:00 a.m., 9/10/10: Martin talked to the Post-Dispatch's Calvin Wilson for a short feature about his duo concert with McBride, and you can read it online here. Also, Metrotix is offering a last-minute "buy one, get one free" deal on tickets for the concert. To access the offer, go online here and use promo code PM2010.

Choosing between the two aforementioned shows is tough, but I suppose one could always catch Martin and McBride, then hustle out to Webster Groves for Bluiett's second set, and in any event, there are worse problems to have. And as if that weren't enough for one evening, Saturday is also the night singer Denise Thimes headlines a benefit for the United Way at the Foundry Art Centre in St. Charles.

On Sunday afternoon, the St. Louis Jazz Club holds its annual picnic at the Concord Farmer's Club, 10140 Concord School Rd, with traditional jazz, swing and ragtime music from the Big Little Big Band, the St. Louis Banjo Club, and Bud Schulz and the You Can't Beat Experience Jazz Band with Polly Waddell.

That evening, pianist and singer Ben Sidran comes to town to talk and play at Kol Am Temple, 1023 Chesterfield Parkway in Chesterfield, with a CD and book signing to follow and KWMU's Dennis Owsley as MC.

Then on Monday, guitarist Steve Schenkel and friends perform at Webster University's Winifred Moore Auditorium, and on Tuesday, the jam/funk/fusion band Garage A Trois takes the stage at the Old Rock House. (You can see some videos of Garage A Trois here.)

For more jazz-related events in St. Louis this weekend and beyond, 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.)

Ben Sidran to perform Sunday, September 12 at Kol Am Temple

Keyboard player, singer, composer, author and broadcaster Ben Sidran (pictured) is coming to St. Louis for a performance at 6:00 p.m. Sunday, September 12 at Kol Am Temple, 1023 Chesterfield Parkway.

KWMU’s Dennis Owsley will serve as host as Sidran performs and shares "his insights on Jews, Music, and the American Dream." Sidran first gained fame working with the Steve Miller Band, and has gone on to perform and record with musicians and singers including Eric Clapton, the Rolling Stones, Peter Frampton, Diana Ross, Van Morrison, Mose Allison and Rickie Lee Jones.

He has hosted numerous programs for TV and radio, including NPR’s award-winning "Jazz Alive" and "Sidran on the Record" and VH1′s New Visions. His written works include the book Black Talk, about the sociology of black music in America; the memoir A Life in the Music; and Talking Jazz, a collection of interviews with jazz musicians.

Tickets for Ben Sidran are $12 and are available in advance online or by calling the Kol Am office at 636-519-0082. A reception and book/CD signing will follow the performance.