Jazz this week: "Double Vision Revisited," Emily Wallace & Adam Maness Trio, and more

This week's calendar of live jazz and creative music in St. Louis features a homecoming gig for one of the most famous jazz musicians ever to come from this area, plus a number of noteworthy performances from local players and singers. Let's go to the highlights...

Wednesday, August 7
Singer and multi-instrumentalist Tonina Saputo performs in a free concert to close out this year's Whitaker Music Festival at the Missouri Botanical Garden, making up for her date that was rained out earlier this summer.

Also on Wednesday, the weekly "Grand Center Jazz Crawl" includes trumpeter TJ Muller and friends at The Stage at KDHX, the jam session led by bassist Bob Deboo at the Kranzberg Arts Center, and Farshid Etniko at The Dark Room.

Thursday, August 8
Singer Cheri Evans and CEEJazzSoul return to the Chase Club in the Chase Park Plaza Hotel, and saxophonist Kendrick Smith brings his trio to The Dark Room.

Friday, August 9
Singer Emily Wallace (pictured, bottom left) teams up with pianist Adam Maness' trio for the first of two nights at Jazz St. Louis; the Midwest Jazz-tette plays West Coast-style "cool" jazz at Evangeline's; and drummer Steve Davis' band, featuring singer Feyza Eren, performs at the Ozark Theatre.

Elsewhere around town, percussionist Herman Semidey and Son Montuno play salsa, Latin jazz and more at The Dark Room; and the Schlafly Tap Room presents a three-band bill of improvising musicians, featuring the duo of guitarists Shane Parish and Wendy Eisenberg, Apathist! with guitarist Chris Trull and violinist Alex Cunningham, and bassist Darin Gray.

Saturday, August 10
The St. Louis Jazz Club presents their monthly jam session matinee, hosted by pianist Bob Row and drummer John Gillick at J P's Corner; singer Wendy Gordon and friends will perform in a matinee at Hwy 67 BBQ; and keyboardist Andrew Stephen's Texturz will play the late show at The Dark Room.

Sunday, August 11
Music choices with brunch this Sunday include Miss Jubilee at Evangeline's and Janet Evra at The Dark Room. Later that afternoon, guitarist and singer Tommy Halloran plays at Alpha Brewing Company, and singer Chuck Flowers returns to BB's Jazz, Blues and Soups.

Monday, August 12
Dizzy Atmosphere plays vintage swing and Gypsy jazz at The Shaved Duck, and singer-impressionist Dean Christopher and his "Rat Pack and More" show return to One 19 North Tapas & Wine Bar.

Tuesday, August 13
The "Double Vision Revisited" tour, featuring saxophonist and former St. Louisan David Sanborn, pianist Bob James and bassist Marcus Miller (pictured, top left), comes to the Sheldon Concert Hall.

For more about Sanborn, who just celebrated his 74th birthday last week, plus some videos of live performances of music from the Double Vision album,  check out this post from last Saturday.

Also on Tuesday, mandolinist Knez Jakovac and his quartet plus guest vocalist Janet Evra will perform 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: Celebrating David Sanborn

This week, our video spotlight shines on alto saxophonist and former St. Louisan David Sanborn, who celebrated his 74th birthday this past Tuesday, July 30 and will be coming back home to perform on Tuesday, August 13 at the Sheldon Concert Hall.

The date is part of the "Double Vision Revisited" tour, for which Sanborn is being joined by keyboardist Bob James and bassist Marcus Miller, his two collaborators on the 1986 album of the same name, for a series of gigs performing Double Vision in its entirety. (Drummer Billy Kilson and guest vocalist Larry Braggs will complete the ensemble.)

And so, to celebrate both Sanborn's birthday and his upcoming visit, this post collects live versions of some of the music from Double Vision, starting up above with "Maputo," the Marcus Miller song that leads off the album and has been a staple of Sanborn's live sets ever since.

This version was recorded in 2013 at the North Sea Jazz Festival in Netherlands, when Sanborn and James were touring in support of their Quartette Humaine album with bassist James Genus and drummer Steve Gadd.

After the jump, you can see a version of "More Than Friends," another Marcus Miller tune that's the second track on Double Vision, recorded during another Quartette Humaine show in 2013, with Scott Colley subbing on bass for Genus.

Next, you can see Sanborn and the late Al Jarreau performing the standard "Since I Fell For You," using what's basically the Double Vision arrangement, on an episode of Showtime at the Apollo that looks to be from the mid-80s around the time the album was released.

That's followed by a version of Sanborn's tune "It's You," recorded in the late '80s at the Soul Train Awards Show by an all-star band featuring Sanborn, James, George Duke, and George Benson.

Then it's back to the current century for "You Don't Know Me," the last track on Double Vision, seen here in a version recorded at the 2008 Tokyo Jazz Festival by a band including Sanborn, James, Harvey Mason on drums, Ricky Peterson on keyboards, Larry Carlton on guitarm and Nathan East on bass.

Lastly, since there seem to be no videos of live versions of "Moon Tune" and "Never Enough" - the remaining two tracks on Double Vision - available online, today's sixth and final video is a complete Sanborn show recorded in April, 2015 in Budapest, with a band including Peterson, guitarist Nicky Moroch, bassist Andre Berry, drummer Chris Coleman, and guest saxophonist Jan Prax.

You can hear Sanborn talking about the "Double Vision Revisited" tour in this interview broadcast last week on Los Angeles radio station 94.7 The Wave, and you can see the rest of today's videos after the jump...

David Sanborn, Bob James and Marcus Miller to perform Tuesday, August 13 at The Sheldon

Saxophonist and former St. Louisan David Sanborn, keyboardist Bob James and bassist/multi-instrumentalist Marcus Miller (pictured) are joining forces for a summer tour that will include a stop on Tuesday, August 13 at the Sheldon Concert Hall.

The "Double Vision Revisited" tour is named after Sanborn and James' 1986 album Double Vision, which also featured Miller on bass. The album sold more than a million copies and won the 1987 Grammy Award for "Best Jazz Fusion Performance, Vocal or Instrumental," with the performance of "Since I Fell for You" also earning a nomination for guest vocalist Al Jarreau in the category "Best R&B Vocal Performance, Male."

On the "Revisited" tour, Sanborn, James and Miller will perform the Double Vision album in its entirety, with former Tower of Power singer Larry Braggs on hand to do the vocals and drummer Billy Kilson completing the ensemble.

Tickets for "Double Vision Revisited" at The Sheldon will be priced from $44 to $80 and will go on sale this Friday, May 17 via Metrotix and the Sheldon box office.

Edited 5/9/19 to correct the ticket on-sale date.

Sunday Session: February 3, 2019

Lionel Loueke

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 most sampled drum loop in history (Boing Boing)
* New Sounds (London Review of Books)
* Spotify Is Hosting a High-Priced Executive Retreat In Cancun (DigitalMusicNews.com)
* Antonio Sanchez's 'Lines In The Sand' Is Inspired By Migrants' Stories (NPR)
* Underrated Blue Note Musicians: 12 Artists Worth Rediscovering (UDiscoverMusic.com)
* Not just a 'glass ceiling' but 'cement': Female film composers struggle to be heard (CBC)
* Think David Crosby Is Too Gruff? “Tough Shit” (Vanity Fair)* Photos: Roy Hargrove Musical Celebration (Jazz Times)
* For Betty Carter, 'The Music Never Stops' — Even 27 Years Later (NPR)
* Dave Liebman: Archives and Improvisations - The Past and the Now of a Life in Jazz (AllAboutJazz.com)
* The mystery tracks being 'forced' on Spotify users (BBC)
* David Gilmour on Why He’s Selling 120 Guitars: ‘Everything Has Got to Go’ (Rolling Stone)
* These might be the 5 most powerful people in the music business – despite none of them working in the music business (MusicBusinessWorldwide.com)
* Gonzalo Rubalcaba Discusses Chucho Valdés, creativity, and the SFJAZZ Lifetime Achievement Award (SFJAZZ.org)
* Peter Jackson to Direct New Beatles Documentary Film (Pitchfork.com)
* Brian Eno: ‘I’ve spent longer in Ireland than I have almost anywhere else’ (Irish Times)
* Big Ears Festival Will Pay Tribute to 50 Years of ECM Records (Jazz Times)
* Vintage piano turned into analog hybrid of 20 instruments controlled by piano keys (DesignBoom.com)
* New Collection Spans Gary Burton’s Boundless Career (DownBeat)
* Bob James Looks Back (Jazz Times)
* Young people are turning to classical music to escape ‘noise of modern life’ (The Guardian)
* John Coltrane 1958 Vinyl Box Set Announced (Pitchfork.com)
* 2019 Grammys: Breaking Down the Jazz Category Nominees (Billboard)
* Stewart Copeland on his Police career: "We fought like cat and dog over the f**king hi-hat" (MusicRadar.com)
* How gospel music gave birth to rock and soul (UPenn.edu)
* Lionel Loueke’s Journey of Empathy (DownBeat)
* Aretha’s Grace (New York Review of Books)

Sunday Session: November 4, 2018

Roy Hargrove

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:

* Sonny Fortune, Stalwart Saxophonist Of New York, Dies At 79 (NPR)
* Open Land: Meeting John Abercrombie (ECM) - The late guitarist's gentle spirit is captured in a moving documentary (Jazz Times)
* Nate Wooley: Plays Whole With Others (NationalSawdust.org)
* Big in Japan: A History of Jazz in the Land of the Rising Sun, Part 1 (AllAboutJazz.com)
* This Danish Band Plays Music Underwater. The Results Are Eerily Spectacular (Time)
* REPORT: 35th Conference of the Radio Jazz Research Group, Salzburg. – " Improvisation: New Perspectives (London Jazz News)
* Guitarist Jimmy Page looks back at 50 years of Led Zeppelin (Associated Press)
* Even Classical Music Is Getting Faster These Days (Rolling Stone)
* Did the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame wait too long on Bob Marley? (Cleveland Plain Dealer)
* The Residents’ Co-Founder Hardy Fox Dead at 73 (Rolling Stone)
* Meet The Women Pushing UK Jazz Forward (ClashMusic.com)
* Festival Jazz International Rotterdam 2018 (AllAboutJazz.com)
* Jason Moran: The Harlem Hellfighters review – the soldiers who brought jazz to Europe (The Guardian)
* Is Christone ‘Kingfish’ Ingram the Future of the Blues? (Rolling Stone)
* The Secret Jewish History Of Queen (The Forward)
* Bluesman Chris Thomas King says he’s been banned by the GRAMMYs (Offbeat)
* Adam O’Farrill Does Not Play Latin Jazz (Jazz Times)
* Resonance Records Marks 10-Year Anniversary at Birdland (DownBeat)
* Tuba in the House (Jazz Times)
* An Indie Music Expert Explains Why Artists Are Turning Away From Record Deals (Rolling Stone)
* Bob James Returns with Acoustic Trio Disc (DownBeat)
* Andrew Cyrille, Lifetime Achievement Honoree at the Vision Fest, Isn't Resting on His Laurels (WBGO)
* These Duck-Billed Dinosaurs Wore Their Instruments on Their Heads (LiveScience.com)
* What is All the Fuss About? Kenny Barron Takes Years of Experience and Plays in the Moment (VoiceOfOC.org)
* Life In Frank Zappa's Pad, 1968 (PleaseKillMe.com)
* Too much Christmas music can mentally harm you (BigThink.com)
* “The tyranny of collecting” – why I gave away my entire record collection (GetIntoThis.co.uk)
* Roy Hargrove, Grammy-Winning Jazz Trumpeter, Dies At 49 (NPR)
* Inside the Secretly Lucrative World of Solo Piano Music (Rolling Stone)

Sunday Session: December 13, 2015

George Duke

For your Sunday reading, some interesting music-related items that have turned up recently in StlJN's inbox:

* Oscar Peterson To Be Honored with New Box Set, Concert, Reproducing Piano (Down Beat)
* Need Music For A Video? Jukedeck’s AI Composer Makes Cheap, Custom Soundtracks (TechCrunch.com)
* Bagels And Bongos: The Jewish-Latin Music Connection (Houston Public Media)
* A Photojournalist’s Most Prolific Period, Set to Jazz (Newsweek)
* Four Women: The Enduring Influence of Nina Simone (Jazz Times)
* Ringo Starr's Personal 'White Album' Sells for World Record $790,000 (Rolling Stone)
* Ten things I learned as a tour manager (London Jazz News)
* What Data Tells us about the 2015-16 Orchestra Season (Baltimore Symphony Orchestra)
* Turmoil in the Weird Karaoke Market (Priceonomics.com)
* How Casio accidentally started reggae's digital revolution (Engadget.com)
* The Velvet Underground in California (The New Yorker)
* The man behind the “Hamilton” sound: Hidden Beatles references, the “hip-hop horse” sample and why if “it’s all computerized, there’s no heart to it” (Salon.com)
* Scofield, Schneider, Alexander Nominated for Grammy Awards (Down Beat)
* It’s Jazz, Charlie Brown: The Vince Guaraldi Story (WFIU)
* 'A Charlie Brown Christmas' at 50: The Making of a Classic Soundtrack (Rolling Stone)
* Box Set Review: George Duke — The Era Will Prevail (Part One) (Musoscribe.com)
* The business of the blues isn't what it once was (Marketplace.org)
* Fourplay Celebrates Twenty-Five Years Together (DownBeat)
* 10 ways that Frank Sinatra changed the world (USA Today)
* Walk-Up Revolution: Royce Clayton's Pitch to Change MLB At-Bat Music (Rolling Stone)
* When Are People Going To Stop Proclaiming The Death of the CD? (FutureOfMusic.org)

StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: David Sanborn & Bob James team up again for Quartette Humaine

With a paucity of touring jazz musicians coming to St. Louis for the next couple of weeks, and thus no upcoming shows to preview in this space, this seems like an opportune time to take a closer look at Quartette Humaine, the latest album from saxophonist and St. Louis native David Sanborn.

The collaborative effort with keyboardist Bob James (who grew up in the northwest Missouri town of Marshall) is the first time the two have recorded together since their multi-platinum-selling 1986 album Double Vision, and also features James Genus on bass and Steve Gadd on drums.

Interestingly, the series of live dates underway right now is the first time Sanborn and James have toured together. Given that, plus the fact that the tour only has been going on for a couple of weeks, there's not a huge amount of video documentation online of their collaboration. Nevertheless, we've managed to find a few clips that should provide a taste of Quartette Humaine and the live shows supporting it.

The first clip up above is a music video for "Deep In The Weeds," recorded in the studio during sessions for the album. Down below is a "making of" promotional video includes some of the same track along with comments from Sanborn and James.

Below that, we've got two clips recorded earlier this year during the Smooth Jazz Cruise, in which bassist Marcus Miller hosts a discussion with James and Sanborn.

In the number five slot, there's a live version of James' instantly recognizable tune "Westchester Lady," recorded just last week by an audience member at a show in Orlando, FL. While there are some issues with the clip - the video quality is what you'd expect from a consumer-level, hand-held camera, and the audio mix loses a lot of Genus' bass - it's just about the only live recording of the group playing a full-length song that seems to have surfaced so far.

The final video is an outtake from Sanborn and James' recent appearance on NBC's Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, and shows them playing James' tune "Nautilus" with the show's house band The Roots.

You can hear short excerpts of all the tunes on Quartette Humaine at the SoundCloud page set up for the album by OKeh Records. The album also has been reviewed by, among others, Blogcritics' Jack Goodstein; AllAboutJazz.com's Dan Bilewsky; and Something Else's Nick DeRiso.

Will the Sanborn and James tour come to St. Louis? Nothing's scheduled right now, but given that both men have a connection to the state, a swing through Missouri certainly would seem to be a logical step.

So could a proposed Sanborn-fronted jazz festival in St. Louis - a concept teased in one newspaper story last year, but unmentioned since then - serve as a vehicle for their show? In the linked story, the festival was proposed for September, 2013; the schedule for the Sanborn/James tour currently shows no gigs at all, and therefore no conflicts, for that entire month. But if a Sanborn festival in St. Louis actually is going to happen around then, organizers would need some lead time to promote it, which in turn suggests that an announcement would have to be forthcoming quite soon. Stay tuned...

So What: Local News, Notes & Links

Here's the latest wrap-up of assorted links and short local news items of interest:

* Quartette Humaine, the new album from St. Louis' own David Sanborn and keyboardist Bob James, was officially released this week. Sanborn and James start their tour in support of the album (pictured) in a couple of weeks at NYC's Town Hall, but first, James did manage to make it back home to Marshall, Missouri this month for the annual jazz festival bearing his name.

* Also officially released this week is saxophonist Oliver Lake's new big band album Wheels. You can hear a sample track, a big band version of Outkast's "The Whole World," here, and purchase the album as either a CD or digital download here.

* Calvin Wilson of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and Radio Arts Foundation-St. Louis has a brand new website for his program "Somethin' Else."  Wilson can be heard at 8:00 p.m. Saturdays on 107.3 FM, 96.3 HD-2, and online at http://www.rafstl.org/listen.

* This Sunday's "Jazz Unlimited" program on KWMU (90.7) will feature the eighth part of Dennis Owsley's documentary on the jazz history of St. Louis. This segment covers the 1990s, and will include music from Joe Charles, Herb Drury, Carolbeth True, the Kim Portnoy Big Band, Reggie and Mardra Thomas, Jean Kittrell and the Dixie Stompers, Christine Hitt, Asa Harris, and Denise Thimes, plus an interview with drummer Gary Sykes.

* Jefferson Barracks Park will be the site of a musicians swap meet to be held from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Saturday, June 8 and Sunday, June 9 at Jefferson Barracks Visitors Center. Tables are $10 and must be reserved by May 31. Admission is $1, which lets you enter the show and bring any instrument or music-related item to sell or trade. For more information or to reserve a space, call 314-544-5714 or email mkladky@stlouisco.com.

* While singer Bobby McFerrin was in town to perform at the Sheldon Concert Hall earlier this month, he was interviewed by the PBS program Religion and Ethics Newsweekly. You can see both McFerrin and the Sheldon in the episode which airs at 10:30 a.m. this Sunday, May 26 on local PBS affiliate KETC (Channel 9) and also can be seen online.

* A new music store, Dead Wax Records, has opened on Cherokee St.

* Trumpeter and composer Terence Blanchard, whose opera Champion will get its world premiere next month here at Opera Theatre St. Louis, also has a new jazz album, Magnetic, coming out next week. You can hear a preview of the album here. Blanchard also appeared this week on PBS' Tavis Smiley Show to talk about the album and the opera, and you can see that interview online here.

* And speaking of TV interviews, here's one that HEC-TV did recently with St. Louis Tap Festival founder Robert Reed. The annual festival, which each year features performances from some of the world's most accomplished tap dancers accompanied by live jazz music, takes place in July, with the grand finale on July 27 at the Touhill Performing Arts Center.