Jazz this week: Poncho Sanchez, Charlemagne Palestine, Ramsey Lewis, Nevermore Jazz Ball, Storm Large, and more

It's an extremely busy week for jazz and creative music in and around St. Louis, with major touring musicians in town offering Latin jazz, cabaret, soul jazz, and experimental music, plus a big event drawing swing dancers from around the country, and a varied assortment of shows from local musicians.

Here's a brief look at some of the most notable performances coming up:

Wednesday, November 4
Percussionist Poncho Sanchez and his Latin jazz band return to open a four-night stand at Jazz at the Bistro.

The popular conguero and his cohorts are one the busiest and best groups in the genre, performing here most recently in April of last year at the Bistro. You can see some video samples of Sanchez (pictured, top left) and the band in concert in this post published before that 2014 appearance.

As part of Jazz St. Louis' education and community outreach efforts, Sanchez also will present a free percussion workshop at 1:00 p.m. Saturday afternoon at the Bistro. There's no advance reservation required, and it's open to the general public. 

Thursday, November 5
The biggest swing dance event of the year in St. Louis, the weekend-long Nevermore Jazz Ball, gets underway with a "welcome party" featuring music from the the Sidney Street Shakers at the Mahler Ballroom.

The festival continues through Sunday night, and though all-event passes have been sold out for a number of weeks, there may be tickets available for some of the shows. Those will include dances featuring Miss Jubilee on Friday night and bassist Michael Gamble’s Rhythm Serenaders, from Asheville, NC, on Saturday and Sunday nights, plus after-parties on Friday and Saturday. For the latest on ticket availability, check the event website and/or Facebook page.

Also, Saturday's Cherokee Street Jazz Crawl has been expanded this year, and remains free and open to the public. The event starts at lunchtime and continues through the afternoon with 10 different acts performing at various venues and businesses starting in the 1900 block of Cherokee and going west to the 2700 block. For a complete list of performers and venues, check the link above.

Elsewhere on Thursday, the Gaslight Cabaret Festival's fall series resumes with a performance from indie rock duo Sleepy Kitty, aka singers and multi-instrumentalists Paige Brubeck and Evan Sult, at the Gaslight Theater. Brubeck and Sult also will repeat the show a week from Thursday at the same venue.

Friday, November 6
During the day on Friday, musician, composer and sound artist Charlemagne Palestine (pictured, center left), here under the auspices of New Music Circle for performances on Saturday and Sunday nights, will preface those shows with free, public artist's talks at Webster University and Washington University.

Elsewhere around town, the Gaslight Cabaret Festival continues with singer Storm Large in the first of two performances at the Gaslight Theater. Large played St. Louis most recently last September for the 2014 edition of the festival; for more about what she's been up to since then, check out check out this brief interview she did with Alive magazine.

Also on Friday, the experimental/noise duo Ahleuchatistas are back to headline a three-act bill at Foam; and the Genesis Jazz Project will be at St. Louis Union Station for "Fall In Love at Grand Hall - An Evening of Jazz, Comedy & Dancing" featuring a number of guest singers and performers including Dawn Weber and Anita Jackson.

Saturday, November 7
The veteran pianist Ramsey Lewis, celebrating 50 years since "The In Crowd" made his reputation as a popular crossover artist, returns to perform for the annual ArtSounds! benefit at the Sheldon Concert Hall.

Lewis (pictured, lower left) has made a couple of St. Louis appearances in recent years, but his last stop in 2014 included just one public show at the Bistro, so look for his fans to turn out in force for this one. As of this writing, some concert-only tickets remain, but you should contact the Sheldon box office for the latest on what's available. For more about Lewis, see this video showcase post from Saturday before last, and this week's Music Education Monday post featuring a master class with him.

Meanwhile, just down the street in Grand Center, Charlemagne Palestine will perform on piano at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation. You can see performances from Palestine on both piano and organ and learn more about him in this video showcase post from last Saturday.

Elsewhere around town, The Wire Pilots will play original fusion music at the Tavern of Fine Arts.

Sunday, November 8
The fall edition of the St. Louis Record Collector and CD Show begins bright and early in the morning at the American Czech Hall, and later that afternoon, pianist Carol Schmidt and friends from the Webster University faculty will present a concert with the theme of "Music and Humor" at Winifred Moore Auditorium on the Webster campus.

Sunday evening, singers Joe Mancuso and Charles Glenn will headline "Voices for the MS Cure," a benefit raising money for the fight against multiple sclerosis, at the Ferring Jazz Bistro; and Charlemagne Palestine will perform on the organ at Trinity Lutheran Church in Soulard.

Monday, November 9
"A Celebration of Gene Lynn," organized by the late singer's longtime companion Maria Vera, will begin mid-afternoon and continue through the evening at Bar Italia.

The event will feature performances from a long list of St. Louis singers and "more than 20" musicians who played with Lynn over the years, with proceeds benefiting a fund to be managed by the National Blues Museum "ensuring that students from public schools in underserved communities across the St Louis region continue to learn about Gene Lynn's life and songs."

Also on Monday, Webster University's Student Jazz Combos will perform at Webster's Community Music School.

Tuesday, November 10
The STL Free Jazz Collective will perform for the "Notes From Home" series at the Sheldon, while a couple of blocks away, the SIUE Concert & Alumni Jazz Bands will return to Jazz at the Bistro.

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: The sound art of Charlemagne Palestine

This week, our video lens is trained on Charlemagne Palestine, who will be in St. Louis next weekend to play two concerts presented by New Music Circle. Palestine will perform solo in both shows, playing piano on Saturday, November 8 at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation in Grand Center, and then performing on the organ on Sunday, November 9 at Trinity Lutheran Church in Soulard.

Born Chaim Moshe Tzadik Palestine in 1945 in Brooklyn, New York, Palestine studied at New York University, Columbia University, Mannes College of Music and California Institute of the Arts. A contemporary of Steve Reich, Philip Glass and Terry Riley, he often is identified with them as a "minimalist" composer, and like them, many of his works rely in part on effects accrued through the repetition of short musical phrases.

However, he has publicly rejected the label of minimalism, saying in interviews that he prefers to be called a "sound artist" rather than a musician, and has used the term "gesamtkunst" - a 19th century German expression meaning "total art" - to describe his works that combine live performance with installations.

And indeed, while Palestine has released more than twenty solo albums and has performed in music festivals around the world, his work also has been exhibited frequently at major visual arts festivals and institutions, including the Venice Biennale in Italy, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Modern Art in NYC, Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Art Institute of Chicago, and many more. That work also frequently incorporates certain emblematic objects, such as stuffed animals, which serve as what Palestine calls "symbols of identification."

You can hear some of his music (and see examples of some of those totemic symbols) in today's videos, starting up top with some excerpts from a solo piano performance that Palestine did in November 2006 in Oslo, Norway.

After the jump, there are some excerpts from his show at the 2010 All Tomorrow's Parties festival in Minehead, England. Then, there's a performance on church organ, recorded in April, 2012 at the Cathédrale de Nantes in Nantes, France, and seen here in three parts.

In the sixth and final video, you can see and hear a complete piano performance from last year at the Kunsthalle Wien in Vienna.

For more about Charlemagne Palestine, read this 1996 article from Hyperreal.org; Palestine's 2002 interview with Perfect Sound Forever; his 2013 interview with The Quietus; and the interview he did in the summer of 2014 with Bomb magazine.

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

StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: Fall 2015 jazz preview, part 4

We continue this week with part four of StLJN's video preview of jazz and creative music performers who are coming to St. Louis this fall. (You can see part one here, part two here, and part three here.)

Our first video today features percussionist Poncho Sanchez, who will be back in town to play Wednesday, November 4 through Saturday, November 7 at Jazz at the Bistro. The clip up top is an excerpt from an outdoor show Sanchez played in July of this year for the "Hollywood And Highland" series in Los Angeles.

The same week Sanchez hits town, singer Storm Large also will return to St. Louis to headline performances for the Gaslight Cabaret Festival on Friday, November 6 and Saturday, November 7 at the Gaslight Theater. Large can be seen in the first video after the jump performing "I've Got You Under My Skin" at a gig last year at the Triple Door in Seattle.

Also on Saturday, November 7, New Music Circle will present minimalist composer Charlemagne Palestine in a performance at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation in Grand Center. Palestine is featured in the second video after the jump, giving a solo concert on piano and organ in March of this year at The Lab performance space in San Francisco.

And if all that weren't enough for one week, pianist Ramsey Lewis also will me making a return appearance here that same Saturday, November 7, headlining the annual "ArtSounds!" benefit at the Sheldon Concert Hall. You can catch Lewis in the third clip after the jump, playing "The In Crowd" this past May at Daley Plaza in Chicago during a TV appearance promoting his 80th birthday celebration.

Next up is singer Karrin Allyson, who's coming to St. Louis to perform Wednesday, November 11 and Thursday, November 12 at Jazz at the Bistro. Allyson will be presenting music from her latest album, Many A New Day: Karrin Allyson Sings Rodgers & Hammerstein, and the fourth video after the jump is the electronic press kit (EPK) for that album.

Today's final video features singer Karen Oberlin, who will perform her show "His Aim Is True - The Songs of Elvis Costello" for the Gaslight Cabaret Festival on Friday, November 13 and Saturday, November 14 at the Gaslight Theater. Oberlin is seen here with her frequent collaborator, guitarist Sean Harkness, singing "More Than You Know" at the Broadway World Cabaret Awards Show in February 2015 at Joe's Pub in NYC.

Look for the fifth and final part of StLJN's Fall 2015 jazz preview, covering the rest of November and December, next week. You can see the rest of today's videos after the jump...