Sunday Session: October 21, 2018

Maria Schneider

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:

* Pat Metheny, Bill Frisell and John Scofield, guitar greats all, discuss their mutual admiration society (San Diego Union-Tribune)
* Review: Dave Holland and Chris Potter (Jazz Journal)
* Paul Simon: Fathers, Sons, Troubled Water (New York Review of Books)
* Jaimie Branch on “Brass Chillers” (Jazz Times)
* Zorn to Secrecy (ArtAndMusicMagazine.com)
* Experts aim to finally solve plane war mystery of famed big band leader Glenn Miller (South China Morning Post)
* Maria Schneider: The star of the show (Irish Examiner)
* Alan Broadbent: Intimate Reflections on a Passion for Jazz (AllAboutJazz.com)
* Jazznojazz Fest Celebrates 20 Years (DownBeat)
* A Mingus discovery (TheBlueMoment.com)
* New Music by Five Composers Behind the Drums, From Tyshawn Sorey to Allison Miller (WBGO)
* Four Electronic Artists Reflect on the Influence of Composer Laurie Spiegel (Bandcamp.com)
* Ben Wendel Takes ‘The Seasons’ from Video Project to Album (DownBeat)
* Loss of small music venues is handing control of culture to robots, MPs told (ArtsProfessional.co.uk)
* Big Bands Reign Supreme at Angrajazz (DownBeat)
* Esperanza Spalding announces ’12 Little Spells’ tour, shares 10th track (Brooklyn Vegan)
* Copyright and the Jazz Musician (Jazz Times)
* New Stax Box Set Details a Fraught 1968 (DownBeat)
* To Hat and To Hold (ArtForum.com)
* The Horace Silver Quintet drummer Roger Humphries reflects on his storied life in jazz (WaxPoetics.com)
* Rubén Blades Swings Big Band Jazz And Rumba On New Album (NPR)
* Naxos Joins eMusic Exodus Over Non-Payment (Hypebot.com)
* Joshua Abrams Discusses Solo Bass and the Spirit of Music (DownBeat)
* What Small, Diverse Music Venues Mean to New York City (CityLab.com)
* Ambassadors for Motown sound seek more of it in hometown (Associated Press)
* Tiny Desk Concert: Alfredo Rodríguez (NPR)
* Is the Cover Making a Recovery? (Slate.com)
* The New American Songbook (Slate.com)
* Lou Reed's Archive Holds Six Hundred Hours Of Mostly Unreleased Audio, And Other Revelations From His Archivist (PleaseKillMe.com)
* Q&A with Ingrid Jensen: Leading from Within (Jazziz)

Sunday Session: October 14, 2018

Esperanza Spalding

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:

* BBC 'to make classical music archive available' (BBC)
* Quincy Jones, From A to Z (Rolling Stone)
* From Studio to Screen: Becoming a Composer (FactMag.com)
* Roy Orbison hologram concert in L.A. invites awe and debate (Los Angeles Times)
* Barcelona’s Jazz Festival Thrives at 50 (DownBeat)
* Visualizing 40 Years of Music Industry Sales (VisualCapitalist.com)
* Women Run the Show at Monterey Jazz Fest (San Francisco Classical Voice)
* Louis Armstrong's unseen artifacts almost ready for public view (AMNY.com)
* Radiohead, the Cure, Rage, Janet Jackson Nominated for Rock Hall of Fame 2019 (Pitchfork)
* Esperanza Spalding Casts First of “12 Little Spells” Online (Jazz Times)
* Shelved: Bill Evans’ Loose Blues (LongReads.com)
* “Automation Divine”: Early Computer Music and the Selling of the Cold War (New Music Box)
* Ahmad Jamal at 88: Still playing hard and on his way to Chicago (Chicago Tribune)
* A Labor of Love Supreme: Saving John Coltrane's Home Studio (Pro Sound News)
* Elvis Costello Explains His Great New Album, ‘Look Now’ (Rolling Stone)
* Into the Vault: Erroll Garner Uncovered (NPR)
* Key Music Modernization Act Proponents Disinvited to White House Signing Ceremony (Billboard)
* Marc Ribot Leads a Musical Army Protesting Against Trump (The Daily Beast)
* Lindsey Buckingham sues Fleetwood Mac for kicking him out (Associated Press)
* Famed jazz saxophonist accused of sexual misconduct by former protégé now suing for defamation (New York Daily News)
* Ben Wendel Takes ‘The Seasons’ from Video Project to Album (DownBeat)
* Tony Bennett & Diana Krall: They Like a Gershwin Tune (Jazz Times)
* Berklee to Launch Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice (Jazz Times)
* Maxine Gordon Ended Up Married to the Music (Publishers Weekly)
* The Unearthing of Thelonious Monk’s Lost Live Classic (Bandcamp.com)

Jazz this week: Melissa Aldana Quartet, Ben Wendel's "The Seasons," Galactic, and more

This week's calendar of live jazz and creative music in St. Louis features performances from two stellar saxophonists, one of New Orleans' favorite funk bands, and more.

Let's go to the highlights...

Wednesday, 
March 14
Saxophonist Melissa Aldana returns with her quartet for the first of four nights of performances at Jazz at the Bistro.

Aldana, who was born in Chile and educated at Berklee, has enjoyed a fast rise in the jazz world since becoming the first female instrumentalist and the first South American to win the annual Thelonious Monk competition in 2013, thanks to her distinctive tone on tenor sax and a musical approach influenced by players such as Sonny Rollins, Don Byas and Mark Turner.

For more about Aldana, you can see and hear some samples of her playing on video in this post, which dates from her St. Louis debut two years ago, and read an interview with her published a few weeks ago by the Chicago Tribune here.

Aldana's sets also will be simulcast on video to the first-floor lounge opposite the Bistro, where they can be viewed for free as part of the "Grand Center Jazz Crawl,"  which this week also includes Jacob Alspach and Friends at The Stage at KDHX, the jam session led by bassist Bob Deboo at the Kranzberg Arts Center, and trumpeter Kasimu Taylor's quartet at The Dark Room.

Thursday, March 15
Saxophonist Ben Wendel performs at The Ready Room. Wendel (pictured, top left), best known as a member of the cooperative band Kneebody, currently is touring with music from a project called "The Seasons," which featured 12 original compositions dedicated to musical friends and colleagues that were released as a series of duo performances on video over the course of a year.

You can find out more about Wendel and "The Seasons," and hear some of the compositions that have been expanded to full-band arrangements for the tour, in this post from a week ago Saturday.

Update: 1:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 14: StLJN has just gotten word from Ben Wendel's publicist that his St. Louis date has been cancelled. If you bought tickets, contact your point of purchase for refund details.

Also on Thursday, New Orleans funk/jazz band Galactic (pictured, bottom left) will be back for another visit to St. Louis, their destination this time being Delmar Hall; Cincinnati "garage jazz" band Animal Mother tops a bill that also includes Animal Children and saxophonist Dave Stone at Foam; and saxophonist Ben Reece's Unity Quartet returns to The Dark Room.

Friday, March 16
Catch some of St. Louis' own at one of several weekly residencies happening on Fridays, including pianist Ptah Williams' trio at The Dark Room; singer and guitarist Tommy Halloran at Das Bevo Underground, or saxophonist Tim Cunningham at Troy's Jazz Gallery.

Saturday, March 17
Pianist Christopher Parrish plays a matinee at the Scott Joplin House State Historic Site's Rosebud Cafe as part of a new monthly series presented by the Friends of Scott Joplin.

Then on Saturday night, singer Tony Viviano will be doing his thing at Table Three, while keyboardist Mo Egeston offers late night grooves at The Dark Room.

Sunday, March 18
The St. Louis Jazz Club presents Miss Jubilee in concert at the Moolah Shrine Temple in Maryland Heights.

Monday, March 19
Trumpeter Jim Manley will be back at Momo's Greek Restaurant, and pianist Carolbeth True and saxophonist Paul DeMarinis will perform a duo concert at Webster University's Winifred Moore Auditorium.

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: Ben Wendel's "The Seasons"

This week, the StLJN video spotlight shines on saxophonist Ben Wendel, who's coming to St. Louis for a performance on Thursday, March 15 at The Ready Room.

Born in Vancouver, CA, raised in Los Angeles, and educated at the Eastman School of Music, Wendel now lives in NYC and probably is best known as a member of the collective Kneebody. who have played here in St. Louis a couple of times at Jazz at the Bistro, most recently in March 2017.

On his own, Wendel has recorded three albums as a bandleader, the most recent being 2016's What We Bring, and has made dozens of recordings as a sideman and collaborator with musicians such as pianists Gerald Clayton and Taylor Eigsti, bassist Linda May Han Oh, percussionist Adam Rudolph, and numerous others.

On his tour this spring, Wendel will be performing music from "The Seasons," a project he launched in 2015 as a tribute to 12 musical collaborators and friends, releasing videos of 12 different duets on a monthly schedule over the course of the year.

The tour, which kicked off this week at NYC's Village Vanguard, will feature full-band arrangements of "The Seasons" material, performed by Wendel, pianist Aaron Parks, guitarist Gilad Hekselman, bassist Matt Brewer, and, depending on the date, either Eric Harland, Henry Cole or Kendrick Scott on drums.

You can see three of the "Seasons" compositions in this post, starting up above with "November," featuring Wendel and Parks, and continuing after the jump with "April," a duet with Eric Harland, and "October," which pairs the composer with Hekselman. (All of "The Seasons" videos still are available on Wendel's YouTube channel.)

After that, you can see Wendel playing with a full band in two clips - first, a song called "Unforeseeable," recorded in June 2017 at Ronnie Scott's in London with pianist Shai Maestro, bassist Harish Raghavan, and drummer Nate Wood, and then "Fall" from the What We Bring album, accompanied by Gerald Clayton, Henry Cole, and bassist Joe Sanders.

Finally, the last clip features Wendel showing off his multi-tracking chops with an arrangement of "Monk's Mood" for four overdubbed bassoons and tenor sax.

For more about Ben Wendel, read this interview in which he talks about the "Seasons" project, and this one in which he discusses composing, practice routines, and more.

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

StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: Winter/spring 2018 jazz preview, part 4

This week, StLJN's winter/spring 2018 jazz preview continues with part four of a series of posts featuring videos of the jazz and creative music performers who will be coming to St. Louis in the first few months of the new year. (If you missed the previous installments, you can see part one here, part two here, and part three here.)

Continuing in chronological order from where part three left off, today's first video features singer Marilyn Maye, the grande dame of cabaret who will perform Wednesday, March 7 and Thursday, March 8 at Jazz at the Bistro. She's seen here singing a medley of "Secret of Life" and "Here’s to Life," recorded June 5, 2017 at the fifth anniversary celebration of Feinstein's/54 Below in New York City.

After the jump, you can see a clip of Melissa Aldana, who will lead her quartet in shows starting Wednesday, March 14 continuing through Saturday, March 17 at the Bistro. The video shows the Chilean-born, Berklee-educated saxophonist with pianist Sam Harris, bassist Pablo Menares and drummer Craig Weinrib playing "Turning & Over There" in November 2017 at the venue musig im pflegidach in Muri, Switzerland.

That week also features two more concerts of interest to StLJN readers on Thursday, March 15, when New Orleans jazz/funk band Galactic will be playing at Delmar Hall while saxophonist Ben Wendel performs at The Ready Room.

Galactic can be seen in the second video after the jump, playing a full set recorded in February 2017 at the Music Box in San Diego, CA, followed by Wendel, a founding member of Kneebody, playing "Song Song" from his album What We Bring in a undated video with Gerald Clayton, Joe Sanders, and Henry Cole.

Next up, it's The Thing, the avant-jazz trio of saxophonist Mats Gustafsson, bassist Ingebrigt Haker Flaten, and drummer Paal Nilssen Love. They'll be in St. Louis on Thursday, March 22 for a concert presented by New Music Circle at Off Broadway, and can be seen here playing a full set recorded November 27, 2017 at Blue Tomato in Vienna, Austria.

the penultimate clip features bassist Victor Wooten's trio with drummer Dennis Chambers and saxophonist Bob Franceschini. They're set to perform on Tuesday, March 27 at the Old Rock House, and are seen here playing "Love is My Favourite Word" in February 2016 at the Blue Note in Milano, Italy.

Last, but certainly not least, it's The Baylor Project, fronted by the husband-and-wife team of drummer and St. Louis native Marcus Baylor and singer Jean Baylor, who are performing Wednesday, March 28 through Saturday, March 31 at the Bistro.

The Baylors, who are nominated in for 2018 Grammy Awards in both the "Best Traditional R&B Performance" and "Best Jazz Vocal Album" categories, can be seen in today's final video performing their Grammy-nominated song "Laugh and Move On," in a version recorded live last year at the studios of radio station WERS in Boston.

Look for part five of StLJN's winter/spring 2018 jazz preview next week in this space. You can see the rest of today's videos after the jump...