Jazz this week: Claire Chase, Tyshawn Sorey & Cory Smythe; Jazz at Lincoln Center Group; The Sextet; Marcus Lewis; and more

This week's lineup of jazz and creative music in St. Louis features a couple of Kansas City acts making their first trips here, a couple of small groups comprised of musicians drawn from larger, well-known ensembles, and more. Let's go to the highlights...

Wednesday, January 10
This week's "Grand Center Jazz Crawl" features cornetist and banjo player T.J Müller 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, January 11
The Kansas City-based band The Sextet will make their St. Louis debut at The Dark Room. Incorporating "soulful grooves and elements of funk" into their sound (per Bill Brownlee of the Kansas City jazz blog Plastic Sax), the up-and-coming group is supporting their recently released second album Blob Castle.

Also on Thursday, Miss Jubilee will perform at the Chase Club at the Chase Park Plaza, which apparently now is including occasional jazz in their revamped live music offerings.

Friday, January 12
Billed as the Jazz at Lincoln Center Group, trombonist James Burton III, trumpeter Tatum Greenblatt, drummer Jerome Jennings, and bassist Ben Wolfe (pictured, bottom left) will cap off a week-long educational residency for Jazz St. Louis with the first of two nights of performances at Jazz at the Bistro.

Although all four are associated with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, the group was assembled specifically for these dates, and so it's hard to know specifically what they'll be doing at the Bistro, Still, you can get a look at all of the players in action individually in part one of StLJN's winter/spring 2018 jazz preview.

Also on Friday, singer Anita Jackson returns to The Dark Room, and guitarist Tom Byrne leads a trio at Cigar Inn.

Saturday, January 13
Depending on the project, the International Contemporary Ensemble can grow to the size of a chamber orchestra, but for their St. Louis date on Saturday presented by New Music Circle at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, they'll be a trio, featuring founder, leader and flute player Claire Chase, the much-talked-about multi-instrumentalist and composer Tyshawn Sorey, and pianist Cory Smythe (pictured, top left).

They'll perform three compositions by Sorey, and two by the late composer and experimental music pioneer Pauline Oliveros. You can see one of Sorey's pieces, plus additional videos featuring Chase and Smith, in this post.

Also on Saturday, guitarist Dave Black leads a trio at the house concert venue The Judson House in Grand Center.

Sunday, January 14
The St. Louis Jazz Club presents trumpeter Randy Holmes' Satchmo Six in a matinee performance at the Moolah Shrine Center.

Tuesday, January 16
The St. Louis Low Brass Collective will present their annual gala at the Sheldon Concert Hall featuring special guest trombonist and composer Marcus Lewis, who's based in Kansas City when he's not on the road with R&B singer Janelle Monae.

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.)

Jazz this week: Cyrus Chestnut & Russell Malone, Claire Chase & ICE, St. Louis Stompers, and more

This week's jam-packed calendar of jazz and creative music in St. Louis offers something for listeners of just about any stylistic preference, from ragtime and traditional New Orleans style to straight-ahead modern jazz to free improvisation and contemporary chamber music. Let's go to the highlights...

Tonight, pianist Cyrus Chestnut and his trio will team up with guitarist Russell Malone for the first of four nights at Jazz at the Bistro. Revisiting an alliance forged a couple of years ago at the Bistro, Chestnut and Malone both are technically accomplished musicians who also swing hard and usually manage to incorporate elements of blues and/or gospel into their playing. For some video samples and interviews with both men, see this post from last Saturday.

Tomorrow night, Claire Chase - flute player, founder of the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), and recipient of a MacArthur Foundation "genius grant" - will give a talk and take questions in an early evening event presented by New Music Circle at the Regional Arts Commission, 6128 Delmar Blvd.

Chase (pictured) and ICE then will perform in an NMC-sponsored concert on Friday at the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts. For more about her and ICE, see this video showcase post from a couple of weeks ago. 

After Chase's talk, you should be able to get to the Washington University campus in time to hear trumpeter Anthony Wiggins lead a quartet in a free concert for the Jazz at Holmes series entitled "Mandela: Improvisation & The Music of Social Justice."

Also tomorrow night, the Gaslight Cabaret Festival resumes with Morgan A. Faulkner performing her show "I Got It All From My Mother" at the Gaslight Theater; and guitarist Dave Black and singer Feyza Eren will play at Nathalie's.

On Friday, after the Claire Chase and ICE concert, cornetist Rob Mazurek of the Chicago Underground Duo/Trio/Quartet and/or Orchestra will join bassist Darin Gray for a late set of improvised music at the Tavern of Fine Arts.

Also on Friday: For those in the mood to hear a vocalist, Katie McGrath will be performing her show "Love in the Desert: Romance in an Age of Scarcity" for the Gaslight Cabaret Festival; Tony Viviano will return to Talayna's of Chesterfield; and Wendy Gordon will be back at DeLeo's Cafe & Deli.

Meanwhile, swing dancers can check out Miss Jubilee at Lindy Hop St. Louis' monthly "West End Stomp" at the Mahler Ballroom, or the Knights of Swing at Casa Loma Ballroom, while those looking for some straight-ahead jazz may enjoy saxophonist Kendrick Smith's trio at Cigar Inn or pianist Brad Ellebrecht "Little Quartet" at Robbie's House of Jazz.

On Saturday evening, trumpeter Scott Vignassi's big band will perform at Robbie's; the Coleman Hughes Project will play smooth jazz and R&B at Troy's Jazz Gallery; Sarah Jane and the Blue Notes will swing the Venice Cafe; and the Funky Butt Brass Band returns to the Broadway Oyster Bar.

Sunday afternoon potentially has a bit of a throwback feel, as the Metro South Arts Council will showcase the young winners of their 14th Annual Scott Joplin Ragtime Competition in a performance at Robbie's House of Jazz, while the St. Louis Jazz Club will present the traditional jazz sound of the St. Louis Stompers at the Doubletree Hotel in Westport.

Looking beyond the weekend, on Monday pianist Jim Hegarty and bassist Paul Steinbeck will play improvised music at the Tavern of Fine Arts; Webster University's student jazz combos will give a free performance at the Community Music School on the Webster campus; and guitarist Tom Byrne plays at BB's Jazz, Blues & Soups.

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: Claire Chase and ICE

This week, let's check out some videos of flute player Claire Chase and the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), who are coming to St. Louis to perform in a concert presented by New Music Circle at 7:00 p.m. Friday, April 4, at the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts.

Chase, who's 36 and based in Chicago, has premiered more than 100 new works for flute, many of which were composed specifically for her. A California native who attended Oberlin College, she founded the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) in 2001 after graduating from Oberlin, and has been its executive and artistic director ever since.

As much a presenting organization as a group with fixed membership and instrumentation, ICE has premiered more than 500 compositions in venues ranging from alternative spaces to concert halls around the world. Chase has released eight albums under her own name, and in 2012, she became a MacArthur Fellow - popularly known as "the genius grant" - and is using the $500,000 prize to continue and expand her work commissioning and performing new compositions.

At the Pulitzer, she and ICE will be performing works selected in response to the venue's current exhibition "Art of Its Own Making." While we can't tell you much more today about the specifics of the program, here are a few clips that at least suggest the range of capabilities of Chase and her colleagues.

The first clip is an excerpt of a performance by Chase and ICE in January 2012 at (Le) Poisson Rouge in NYC, and in the second, she performs Edgard Varèse's "Density 21.5" on a platinum flute.

The third video features Chase and two other members of ICE, cellist Katinka Kleijn and pianist Jacob Greenberg, performing George Crumb's 1971 work "Vox Balaenae (Voice of the Whale)" in October 2013 for the Chicago Humanities Festival.

The fourth video is another full performance featuring Chase as a soloist, playing Kaija Saariaho's Flute Concerto (2003) with the New Millennium Orchestra in February 2012 at the Harris Theater in Chicago.

In the fifth clip, Chase and fellow ICE member Eric Lamb perform Phillippe Hurel's "Loops III" and Mario Diza de Leon's "Altar of Two Serpents" during an appearance on "Real Flutists," an online video series hosted by Nathalie Joachim and Allison Loggins-Hull (aka Flutronix) at The Flute Center of New York. (You can see the interview in two parts here and here.)

The final clip is a short interview with Chase recorded in 2012, in which she talks about her work in the context of just having received the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. For more about her and ICE, check out this 2011 feature about her from NPR's "The Record" and these 2013 interviews with Bloomberg News and The Street.

StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: Winter/spring 2014 jazz preview, part 4

This week, we continue with part four of StLJN's winter/spring 2014 jazz preview, featuring bands and musicians who will be coming to our town in the first few months of this year. (Here are part one, part two and part three.)

Today's first clip features guitarist Pat Metheny and his Unity Band, with saxophonist Chris Potter, bassist Ben Williams and drummer Antonio Sanchez, performing "Breakdealer" at a show in July 2012 in Rome, Italy. Metheny and the ensemble, now known as the Unity Group with the addition of multi-instrumentalist Giulio Carmassi, will be touring in support of a new album this year and will play St. Louis on Sunday, March 9 at The Pageant.

Down below, you can see pianist Cyrus Chestnut who will be here with his trio and special guest guitarist Russell Malone to perform Wednesday, April 2 through Saturday, April 5 at Jazz at the Bistro.

In this clip, Chestnut, bassist Darryl Hall and drummer Willie Jones III are playing his adaptation of Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake," recorded in 2011 for his album Moonlight Sonata, an import-only release from Japan. Below that, you can see a video of Malone playing "There Will Never Be Another You" with pianist Billy Taylor's trio.

The fourth clip shows flute player and composer Claire Chase, who will perform here in a concert presented by New Music Circle on Friday, April 4 at the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts. This video is an excerpt from a performance by Chase and her ensemble last January at Le Poisson Rouge in NYC.

Next up are The Wee Trio, featuring St. Louis native Dan Loomis on bass, who will be returning to St. Louis to perform on Friday, April 11 and Saturday, April 12 at Jazz at the Bistro. In this clip, you can see them in a 2012 show at MiraCosta College in California, performing the arrangement of "Queen Bitch" originally conceived for Ashes to Ashes, their album of David Bowie music, and then revisited on Live at the Bistro, recorded here in St. Louis last February.

The sixth clip features singer Storm Large, who's performing Friday, April 11 and Saturday, April 12 at the Gaslight Theater as part of the Gaslight Cabaret Festival. Large, whose career in entertainment has ranged from rock singer to reality TV to cabaret, is heard here in a 2011 recording singing the standard "Brasil" with Pink Martini, the retro-style dance band for which she is co-lead vocalist.

Today's seventh video features percussionist Poncho Sanchez, who was here in 2012 to perform at the Greater St. Louis Jazz Festival and will return this year to play Wednesday, April 16 through Saturday, April 19 at the Bistro. Sanchez and his band are seen here performing their complete set from the 2012 Montreux Jazz Festival.

Look for the fifth part of the winter/spring 2014 jazz preview next week.

Marty Ehrlich, William Parker to be featured in New Music Circle's 2013-14 season

In the spring, the thoughts of performing arts presenters often turn to the announcement of the next season's schedule. Here in St. Louis, the Sheldon Concert Hall already has announced their various 2013-14 season series, and Jazz St. Louis is set to release next year's schedule for Jazz at the Bistro and the Touhill before the end of the month.

Meanwhile, although New Music Circle isn't quite ready yet to make a formal announcement of their own, NMC administrator Jeremy Kannapell was kind enough to share with StLJN a "sneak peek" at what the organization has planned for 2013-14.

The venues and exact dates are yet to be determined, but NMC's season once again will feature a mix of improvised and composed music and multimedia performances, this year with a bit of a Chicago accent thanks to two shows featuring artists from the Windy City.

First, though, NMC will begin their season in October with a performance from University City's own Marty Ehrlich (pictured). A multi-instrumentalist and composer who plays alto sax, clarinets and flutes, Ehrlich, who turns 58 this month, was influenced early in his career by St. Louis' Black Artists Group and was mentored by saxophonists Oliver Lake and Julius Hemphill.

After attending the New England Conservatory, in 1978 he moved moved to New York, where he's become part of the national and international music scene as both an in-demand sideman and soloist and a bandleader exploring different ways of blending composition and free improvisation. Ehrlich's St. Louis appearances in recent years have been too few and far between, so his visit home will be especially welcome.

Later on in October, NMC will present a concert by bassist William Parker's quartet. Considered to be one of the most important bassists in free jazz, Parker is highly regarded for his work with major musicians including Cecil Taylor, David S. Ware, Peter Brötzmann, Matthew Shipp and many others, as well as for being the organizer of the annual Vision Festival in New York City.

In November, Chicago electronic musician and sound artist Olivia Block, who appeared here in May 2012 as part of an NMC group showcase, will return to do a full length performance. Originally a rock guitarist and vocalist in Austin, TX, Block relocated to Chicago in 1996 and began composing music that incorporates a variety of electronic elements, from drones and glitches to computer-manipulated field recordings, as well as occasional acoustic instruments, too.

Block will be joined by her frequent collaborators, filmmakers/performers Luis Recoder and Sandra Gibson. The three have have been working together since 2007, and their best known piece "Untitled" has been performed at the Sundance Film Festival and in London, Los Angeles, Texas, and Naples, Italy. Gibson and Recoder employ a variety of live performance techniques, including some - film loops, spray bottles, colored gels, unfocused lenses and hand-shadows - that evoke memories of late 1960s psychedelic light shows, though they're used in different ways and for different ends. For more about Recoder, Gibson and "Untitled," check out this video interview.

After a break for the holidays, NMC will resume in February with a concert from bassist Joshua Abrams, who has worked with various groups in Chicago's improvised music scene. His credits include the band Town and Country, Nicole Mitchell's Black Earth Ensemble, Jeb Bishop, and Hamid Drake, as well as leading a quartet with Guillermo Gregorio, Axel Dorner, and Jeff Parker, and the trio Sticks and Stones with Matana Roberts and Chad Taylor.

In March, NMC will present its annual showcase of St. Louis musicians, with the lineup still TBA at this point.

The season will conclude in April 2014 with a performance from the Claire Chase Quintet. Chase, 35, is a California native who studied music at Oberlin College before founding the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) in 2001. She has premiered over 100 new solo works for the flute incorporating extended techniques and electro-acoustic elements, and has played in diverse venues around the world as a soloist and chamber musician.

When New Music Circle releases their full season schedule complete with dates, venues and ticket prices, StLJN will have details for you right here.