Jazz this week: Jazz Edge Big Band with Russell Gunn & Keyon Harrold, Byron Stripling, Chicago Afrobeat Project, Alarm Will Sound, and more

Yes, St. Louis jazz fans, Jazz at the Bistro is closed for the next four months, but don't despair; while we wait with bated breath for the newly expanded and swankified Bistro to reopen in the fall, there's still a good deal of jazz and creative music to be heard around town, and StLJN will help you find it. Let's go to this week's highlights...

On Thursday night, the 13th annual John L Baker Memorial Concert, featuring a big band made up of Parkway West HS faculty, friends and alumni, will take place at Sky Music Lounge. Proceeds benefit a scholarship fund named after Baker, who was band director at Parkway West from 1978 to 1994.

Also on Thursday, the Tavern of Fine Arts presents their monthly "Experimental Arts Open Improv Night" with live improvised music; and guitarist Tom Byrne brings his Pat Metheny-inspired project Have U Heard to the house concert venue Joe's Cafe.

Friday offers several intriguing possibilities in widely disparate styles, starting with the Jazz Edge Big Band's "Tribute to St. Louis Trumpeters" at the Touhill Performing Arts Center, for which they've assembled a constellation of guest performers including trumpeters Russell Gunn and Keyon Harrold (pictured), pianist Danny Mixon and singer Denise Thimes. 

Also on Friday, trumpeter Byron Stripling is back in town, this time to perform his show "The Gospel According to Swing" with the St. Louis Symphony at Powell Hall; the Chicago Afrobeat Project returns to 2720 Cherokee; and the Original Knights of Swing play for dancers at the Casa Loma Ballroom.

And if all that weren't enough, Friday also is when the new music chamber orchestra Alarm Will Sound* closes out their second St. Louis season at the Sheldon Concert Hall  with a performance including some of their students from Webster University's Community Music School. You can read more about that in two preview stories, one by Terry Perkins for St. Louis Public Radio, and one by Stef Russell for St. Louis magazine. 

On Saturday afternoon, woodwind mouthpiece guru Mike Lomax will give a free workshop and clinic at Saxquest. (The event originally was scheduled last month, but was canceled at the last minute due to illness.)

Also starting on Saturday afternoon and continuing through the evening, Thurman Grill will present their annual "Loopfest" event, with music from The Freedom, Sarah Jane and the Blue Notes, trumpeter Keith Moyer's quartet, and more

Elsewhere on Saturday evening, saxophonist Jason Swagler leads a quartet at the Kranzberg Arts Center, and Miss Jubilee will perform at BB's Jazz, Blues & Soups.

On Sunday, the Friends of Scott Joplin will present their monthly "Ragtime Rendezvous" at the Scott Joplin House State Historic Site; and Sound Unlimited will welcome a variety of guest players for a mini "jazz fest" at Vito's in the Valley.

Looking beyond the weekend, on Tuesday singers Joe Mancuso and Charles Glenn will host up-and-coming vocalists Michelle Knollhoff, Andrew Patrick, Jeanitta Perkins and Paige Alyssa in a show they're calling "The Voices of St. Louis" at the Sheldon.

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.)

*Disclaimer: As mentioned here before, yr. humble editor is retained by the local public relations firm Slay & Associates, with duties including helping Alarm Will Sound with promotional activities in St. Louis and Columbia. As also mentioned here before, I'd still recommend this concert to StLJN readers even if I weren't working with the band.

Coming soon: Adam Larson, Chicago Afrobeat Project, "A Midsummer Night's Dream" Jazz Festival, and more

The start of the month usually brings a flurry of gig announcements, and in recent days StLJN's inbox has been hit by news of several shows of interest:

* NYC free-jazz saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock and drummer Tom Rainey, who both will be in town for New Music Circle's season-ending showcase on Tuesday, May 20, also will take part in an event NMC has added to the schedule at 7:00 p.m. Monday, May 19 at Blank Space, 2847 Cherokee.

Laubrock and Rainey will perform separate sets of improvised music and collaborate with local players including Mabel Suen (sax/guitar), Alex Cunningham (violin), Dave Stone (saxophone), and Joshua Weinstein (upright bass). The performance is free and open to the public.

* Steel pan player Jonathan Scales and his band Fourchestra will bring their jazz fusion sound back to the Kranzberg Arts Center at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, May 24. Tickets are $10, $5 for students with ID.

* NYC-based sax phenom Adam Larson returns to St. Louis to perform at 8:00 p.m., Saturday, May 24 at Robbie's House of Jazz, with support from Peter Schlamb (vibraphone), Nathan Pence (bass) and Joe Hibbs (drums). Admission is $10, $5 for students with ID, in advance via the club's website or at the door.

* The Chicago Afrobeat Project (pictured) returns to 2720 Cherokee at 9:00 p.m. Friday, May 30. Tickets for the 18+ show are $10, with a $3 surcharge for minors, and are on sale now.

* Singer Sarah Ulrich of Sarah Jane and the Blue Notes has gathered four local "vintage jazz" groups to perform in "A Midsummer Night's Dream Jazz Festival," which will take place starting at 6:00 p.m., Saturday, June 7 on the rooftop of the Deco Fortress, 3622 S. Broadway (across from the Lemp Brewery complex).

In addition to the Blue Notes, the lineup of bands includes Coco Rico, Tommy Halloran's Guerrilla Swing, and Wack-A-Doo. Tickets are $20 and are on sale now, but as of this writing, only 35 spots remain.

Notes from the Net: Miles on MySpace; Zorn bio analyzed; the wages of swing; plus news, reviews and more

Here's the latest compilation of assorted news briefs and links related to jazz, improvisation, and creative music in St. Louis, including news of musicians originally from the Gateway City, recent visitors, and coming attractions, plus assorted other items of interest:

* In keeping with this feature's tradition of starting with a Miles Davis-related item or two, it seems there's now a page for the trumpeter on MySpace. This in itself is no big deal - lots of celebs, dead and alive, seem to be represented by pages they didn't personally put up - but the interesting part is that since it apparently is authorized by Sony, visitors with sufficient bandwidth can stream dozens of Miles' albums and compilations directly from the page.

For as long as it lasts, it would seem to be a very handy, low-cost way to investigate Davis' extensive catalog, or to turn a new fan on to some of your favorite Miles moments.

Also, Marc Myers' JazzWax blog also recently had a Miles-related entry in his new Photo Story series. (For more frequently updated Miles-related content, StLJN heartily recommends Jeffrey Hyatt's fine site Miles Davis Online.)

* Here's a review by Tom Greenland for AllAboutJazz.com of John Brackett's new book John Zorn: Tradition and Transgression. (Zorn studied at our town's Webster University in the 1970s.)

* Zorn also will be one of the featured performers at this year's Warsaw Summer Jazz Days in July, along with the World Saxophone Quartet, featuring St. Louis' own Hamiet Bluiett and former St. Louisan Oliver Lake (pictured).

* Turning to news of coming attractions, here's a feature from Pittsburgh City Paper on saxophonist Peter Brötzmann, who will be in St. Louis this Friday to perform at Lemp Neighborhood Arts Center.

* And here's a review for AAJ.com by Andrew Velez of Pizzarelli Party, a new CD release featuring the whole Pizzarelli clan, including guitarist and singer John Pizzarelli; his dad Bucky on guitar, brother Martin on bass, and his wife Jessica Molasky on vocals, plus pianist Larry Fuller and others. John Pizzarelli has been a frequent visitor to St. Louis in recent years, and the online tour information service Pollstar currently shows him returning again in 2010 to play Jazz at the Bistro.

* Latin/jazz group Tiempo Libre, who will perform next year at the Edison Theatre in St. Louis, this week are playing Dizzy's at Lincoln Center in NYC.

* The Chicago Afrobeat Project, who played The Gramophone at the end of May, will be touring extensively from the end of June through September. (There's no return St. Louis date on the schedule, but there are some spaces in the tour into which one conceivably could fit.)

* A look at the "recent visitors" file shows that guitarist John Jorgenson, who wrapped up the Sheldon Concert Hall's jazz series this year, is back home in California for a concert at a community college in Riverside.

* Lastly, a couple of items of general interest: National Public Radio's Web site is sporting a brand new jazz blog and it's a good one, with daily entries plus centralized, convenient access to NPR's various jazz programs, online streams, etc. Check out the modestly named A Blog Supreme here.

* Canadian jazz journalist Peter Ham asked the working musicians among his readers how much they make for a gig. The results - while somewhat depressing overall, as they show working musicians' wages generally remaining flat for years or even decades - reveal that St. Louis seems about on a par with cities of similar size. Read the whole thing here.

Jazz this week: "Jazz Cavalcade" with Kirk Whalum, Chicago Afrobeat Project, Javier Mendoza, Cornet Chop Suey, and more

From African and Latin rhythms to traditional jazz and swing to a free concert featuring a well-known smooth jazz saxophonist, here's a look at what's going on over the next few days with jazz and creative music in St. Louis.

The polyrhythmic portion of the weekend gets underway on Friday night, when the Chicago Afrobeat Project performs at The Gramophone. The CAB can include from seven to 14 musicians, and draws on influences such as juju, highlife, American funk, and afro-Cuban music as well as the experimental jazz and rock of the Chicago music scene.

Also on Friday, Latin/pop/rock singer-songwriter Javier Mendoza will start a two-night stand at Jazz at the Bistro, trying his hand at some Latin jazz with an assist from special guest guitarist Dave Black (pictured). Since this is something of a first-time experiment, I don't think anyone quite knows what to expect, but given Mendoza's apparently substantial fan base, it could be a good draw for the Bistro - and if not, well, at least they're trying something a little different, something yr. humble editor generally encourages.

Also on Saturday, there's a benefit at the White Flag Projects art gallery for electronic musician Joe Raglani, who recently had a van-full of equipment stolen while on tour. See this post for details.

On Sunday, the St. Louis Jazz Club presents a concert of traditional jazz and swing from Cornet Chop Suey at Bel-Air Bowl in Belleville. And elsewhere around town, Brandt's has singer Kim Massie on Friday, and the St. Louis Jazz Cafe will feature the Neal Connors Quartet on Thursday, singer Diane Vaughn on Friday, and saxophonist Rod Tate and guitarist Gregg Haynes, aka 2Smooth, on Saturday.

Looking beyond the weekend, the next event in the Twilight Tuesdays series of free concerts at the Missouri History Museum will be "Jazz Cavalcade" featuring saxophonist Kirk Whalum. The Twilight Tuesdays shows generally feature local acts, so the presence of an internationally known, Grammy nominated headliner like Whalum is especially noteworthy.

Of course, the fact that the Memphis native is the nephew of our town's Hugh "Peanuts" Whalum likely played a role in getting him here, and the show will still have a strong local flavor, as he'll be accompanied by what should be a first-rate band of St. Louis musicians, including his uncle "Peanuts" plus Jeff Anderson, Reggie Thomas, Marty Morrison, Eric Slaughter and Danny Campbell. The Twilight Tuesdays shows usually draw a crowd, and as long as the weather is agreeable, look for a big turnout for the Whalums and company.

Also on Tuesday, after things wind down at the History Museum, you've still got time to get over to The Gramophone to hear the band Utter Chaos in another of the club's no-cover-charge shows co-sponsored with Jazz St. Louis.

For more jazz-related events in St. Louis this weekend and beyond, please visit the St. Louis Jazz Notes Calendar.

(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.)

Chicago Afrobeat Project playing Friday, May 29 at The Gramophone

The Chicago Afrobeat Project (pictured) is returning to St. Louis on Friday, May 29 to perform at The Gramophone. The CAbP's high-energy, percussive mix of funk, rock, jazz, Afro-Cuban, high life and juju music was heard most recently in these parts last fall at the now-closed Lucas School House.

The Gramophone will open the doors for the Chicago Afrobeat Project's May 29 performance at 8:00 p.m., with show time at 10:00 p.m. Admission is $10, age 21 and over only, and advance tickets are available here.

Stanton Moore Trio, Chicago Afrobeat Project to perform in September at Lucas School House

Lucas School House has scheduled two shows in September that may be of interest of St. Louis area jazz fans. Drummer Stanton Moore (pictured), best known as a founding member of the New Orleans funk/jam band Galactic, will bring his Trio to the venue for a concert on Wednesday, September 3, followed by the Chicago Afrobeat Project on Saturday, September 6.

Moore's recent trio CD Emphasis (on parenthesis), which features guitarist Will Bernard and keyboard player Robert Walter, has received good notices from the New York Times, AllAboutJazz.com, JazzReview.com and other media outlets. Moore has done a number of tour dates with the Trio this year in between gigs with Galactic, and the St. Louis show comes at the end of a string of dates for the group, so they should be well in the groove by the time they get to the Gateway City.

The Chicago Afrobeat Project is a nine-piece band that "keeps true to the mix of respect to the tradition and forward-thinking experimentation," incorporating influences from funk, rock, jazz, afro-cuban, highlife and juju music. Group members include Graham Czach (bass), Kevin Ford (keyboards), Angelo Garcia (tenor sax), David Glines (guitar), Marshall Greenhouse (drum set), Garrick Smith (baritone sax), Mark Thomson (trombone) and Danjuma Gaskin (percussion). You can see and hear a sample of their work in the embedded video window below, which has a rough-but-watchable clip of them performing Fela Kuti's "Palmwine Sound," recorded just a couple of weeks ago on June 25 at a show in Boise, Idaho.