The busy Memorial Day weekend schedule of live jazz and creative music in St. Louis includes the return of a leading light of Latin jazz; an all-star assembly of creative improvisors; a benefit raising funds for scholarships in the name of the late St. Louis saxophonist Willie Akins, and more.
Let's go the highlights....
Wednesday, May 23
Percussionist Poncho Sanchez(pictured, top left) and his band, who are pretty much the gold standard these days for small combo Latin jazz, perform for the first of four nights at Jazz St. Louis.
For some samples of what you might expect to hear, check out Sanchez and company in action via video in this post from 2014.
Also on Wednesday, this week's"Grand Center Jazz Crawl" features the St. Louis Steady Grinders 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.
Friday, May 25
The Glendale Jazzfest, now in its 19th year, has moved from City Hall to Glendale Lutheran Church, but still is free and open to the public. This year's fest will feature trumpeter Randy Holmes and his Hard Bop 7 playing music by Horace Silver, plus Chicago saxophonist Shawn Maxwell and singers Anita Rosamond and Coco Soul.
All three are veterans of the international creative music scene, performing together for the first time here in St. Louis. You can find out more about them and see videos of all three in action (albeit individually) in this post from last Saturday.
The event, which is raising money for scholarships in Akins' name at Webster University, will feature music from Ben Reece's Unity Quartet; trumpeter Danny Campbell's quartet; a specially assembled band fronted by saxophonists Freddie Washington, Paul DeMarinis, and Kendrick Smith; singers Erika Johnson and Joe Mancuso; and more.
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.)
All three are veterans of the international creative music scene who have performed in St. Louis previously in different ensembles.
Most recently, Drake played here with violinist Iva Bittová last year; with fellow percussionist Adam Rudolph in 2016; and, along with Cooper-Moore, as part of bassist William Parker's band In Order To Survive in 2013. For his part, Abrams - who, like Drake, is based in Chicago - played a show here for New Music Circle in 2014 with his band Natural Information Society.
NMC has brought them together specifically for this concert, so there's really no video available of the three of them as an ensemble. Instead, today's collection of clips features performances from each of them that may provide some insights into their individual styles and potential ways of interacting.
The first video up above features Cooper-Moore playing solo piano for just short of half an hour, recorded in December 2017 in NYC.
After the jump, you can see him speaking briefly and then playing balafon on a piece called "Emancipation," recorded in May 2017 in the studios of WBGO in Newark, NJ.
A larger version of the same instrument turns up in the third video, which features Hamid Drake on drums and percussion and Aly Keita on balafon in an excerpt from a set at the 2017 Sant'Anna Arresi Jazz Festival 2017.
Below that, you can see an entire solo set by Drake, recorded in September 2013 at the Festival Isole che Parlano in the island nation Palau.
The fifth video is a brief clip of Joshua Abrams recorded solo in 2012 on a Chicago rooftop, in which he's playing guimbri, a West African lute that's his go-to instrument when he's not playing bass.
The sixth and final video shows him playing both guimbri and bass in a scaled-down, touring version of Natural Information Society, with Lisa Alvarado on harmonium and Frank Rosaly on drums. It's a a full set of music, recorded in April 2015 at the Tarcento Jazz Festival in Italy.
New Music Circle has rescheduled one of their previously announced concerts this spring and also added two more concerts, both co-presented with KDHX at The Stage at KDHX.
The performance by bassist Darin Gray and percussionist Glenn Kotche, aka On Fillmore, which had been scheduled for Saturday, March 14 at The Stage at KDHX, has been moved to Friday, April 3 at the same venue. (Presumably, tickets purchased for the original date will be transferable to the new one, but we're waiting for someone from NMC to confirm that and will update this post when they do.)
The first of the additional concerts will feature pianist Matthew Shipp and bassist Michael Bisio at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, March 28 at The Stage at KDHX. Shipp played here most recently in October 2011 at 560 Music Center with his trio, which includes Bisio and drummer Whit Dickey. Shipp and Bisio released a duo album, Floating Ice, back in 2012.
The second added concert will present the St. Louis debut of Black Host, a quintet led by drummer Gerald Cleaver, at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, April 25, also at The Stage at KDHX. Cleaver, in addition to leading his own groups, is known for his work with Roscoe Mitchell, William Parker, Joe Morris, and other significant improvising musicians. He played here a couple of years ago in another NMC concert with saxophonist Lotte Anker and keyboardist Craig Taborn.
Black Host (pictured) also includes pianist Cooper-Moore, alto saxophonist Darius Jones, bassist Pascal Niggenkemper and guitarist Brandon Seabrook. Their first recording, Life in the Sugar Candle Mines, was released last year on the Northern Spy label. It features original music described as combining "modern jazz, free music, psych, post-punk and electrified noise with painstaking detail and heady abandon."
Tickets for both Shipp & Bisio and Black Host are priced at $20 for general admission, $10 for students and "struggling music lovers," and are on sale now via Brown Paper Tickets.
No doubt about it, St. Louis this week definitely is in the grip of World Series fever. And with the first game of the fall baseball classic tonight, StLJN is getting word of some gigs featuring local jazz musicians being canceled or postponed to avoid conflicts with either the televised games tonight and tomorrow or this weekend's home games at Busch Stadium.
Touring acts seem unaffected so far, and any cancellations we get here at StLJN HQ will be noted on the calendar. But if you're planning to go hear a local band this weekend at a time when the Series is happening, you may want to call ahead first. Let's go to the highlights...
Tonight, saxophonist Donald Harrison brings his "A Night In Treme" tour to Jazz at the Bistro for the first of four evenings, continuing through Saturday. Harrison, a New Orleans native who's a Big Chief for the Congo Square Nation of Mardi Gras "Indians," made his reputation playing more-or-less straight-up hard bop, first with Art Blakey and then with his own bands.
In recent years, however, he's incorporated a more direct influence from the traditional sounds of his hometown, resulting in his records being used by the HBO series Treme to represent the old-meets-new music of its fictional trumpeter Delmond Lambreaux, played by actor Rob Brown. While Harrison likely won't be busting out his Big Chief outfit, which customarily is seen only once a year at Carnival time, it seems a safe bet that he'll be playing some of his original numbers that have been featured on Treme as well as some traditional sounds.
Tomorrow night, the Jazz at Holmes series at Washington University presents a tribute to the late St. Louis drummer Joe Charles, featuring saxophonist Freddie Washington, bassist Bob DeBoo and drummer Maurice Carnes. The concert is free and open to the public.
Also on Thursday, New Music Circle will present two free events featuring multi-instrumentalist Cooper-Moore. He'll be at Northside Workshop, 1306 St. Louis Ave, from 5:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. to present a free community workshop about instrument-building, and then head south for an hour-long solo performance at Foam, 3359 S. Jefferson, starting at 7:30 p.m.. Both events are free and open to the public.
On Friday, New Music Circle will present bassist William Parker's In Order To Survive quintet, featuring Cooper-Moore on piano, at Mad Art Gallery. For more about Parker (pictured) and In Order To Survive, and some video samples of the band members in action, see this post from last Saturday. Also, Parker was interviewed for a preview story about the concert by the St. Louis American's Chris King.
Also Friday, singer Joe Mancuso's quintet, with special guests singer Sarah Jane and trumpeter Jim Manley will perform at The Deco Fortress, 3622 S. Broadway near the Lemp Brewery. Elsewhere around town, pianist Tony Suggs, back in town briefly after concluding a long stint as pianist with the Count Basie Orchestra, leads a trio at the Cigar Inn; and Miss Jubliee plays at the Wine Press.
Then on Sunday, singer and pianist Harry Connick Jr. returns to St. Louis for the first time since 2010 to perform at the Fox Theatre. Connick Jr., who's touring in support of his new album Every Man Should Know, did talk to the Post-Dispatch's Kevin Johnson for a story, which, unfortunately turns out to be more about his being a judge for the upcoming season of American Idol than his own music.
Looking beyond the weekend, on Monday the jazz department at Webster University will present their annual TKT Scholarship Benefit Concert, raising money for music scholarships in memory of Terry Jackson, Kirk Cappello and Tony Saputo, three former Webster students who in 1991 were killed in a plane crash while touring with country singer Reba McIntyre.
This year's theme is "Jazz Interpretations of the Music of Irving Berlin,” and the featured performers will include vocalists Erin Bode, Debby Lennon, Peter Ayres and the Webster University Jazz Singers; 2013 TKT Scholars Juan Acosta, Dre Concepcion and Jacob Stergos; and a backing band drawn from the Webster jazz faculty.
On Tuesday, The 442s will perform in a "Notes From Home" concert at the Sheldon. The concert also will begin the band's Kickstarter campaign to fund production of an album.
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.)
(Edited after posting to correct the information about The 442s' performance on Tuesday.)
This week we feature some video clips of bassist William Parker, who will be here with his In Order To Survive quintet to perform in a concert presented by New Music Circle next Friday, October 25 at Mad Art Gallery.
A 61-year-old native of the Bronx, NYC, Parker first gained wide attention in the 1980s with pianist Cecil Taylor, and has been a longtime band member for saxophonists David S. Ware and Peter Brötzmann. As organizer of the annual Vision Festival and a frequent collaborator with many different jazz and improvising musicians both in the USA and in Europe, Parker is considered an significant player in the NYC experimental music scene.
As a bandleader, Parker has been involved with many musical projects, and the In Order To Survive quintet is a direct outgrowth of his long-running quartet, adding pianist and multi-instrumentalist Cooper-Moore to that band's existing lineup of Parker, drummer Hamid Drake, alto saxophonist Rob Brown and trumpeter Lewis Barnes.
Unfortunately, there's not a lot of footage online of the In Order To Survive quintet, though we did include what seems to be the best clip, an excerpt from their set at the 2012 Vision Festival, here last month in part three of StLJN's fall jazz preview.
So today, as the next best thing, let's check out some videos featuring Parker in some other musical configurations that also include the members of In Order To Survive.
The first clip up top is from a gig in January 2008 in Moscow, Russia, and features the quartet of Parker, Drake, Brown and Barnes performing Parker's composition "Corn Meal Dance."
Down below, they're joined by vocalist and dancer Leena Conquest for a clip recorded in 2004 for the Hungarian public television network Duna, and another made by an audience member in June, 2005 at the Museum Of Art in Norrköping, Sweden.
The fourth and fifth videos take us back to Moscow, and feature excerpts from a duo performance in February 2012 by Parker and Drake. In clip #4, Drake plays frame drum and Parker plays a wood flute; in #5, they're working out on drum kit and bass, respectively.
The sixth and final video is an excerpt from a benefit concert for the NYC venue The Under_Line, recorded last December. It features Parker on bass and Cooper-Moore on drums, plus St. Louis Hamiet Bluiett on baritone sax, Charles Gayle on tenor sax, Jason Kao Hwang on violin, and, somewhat surprisingly, Christian McBride on a second bass.
Known variously in the creative music community as a composer, performer, instrument builder/designer, storyteller, teacher, mentor, and organizer, Cooper-Moore (pictured) will be in town to perform as pianist with bassist William Parker's In Order To Survive quintet in an NMC-sponsored concert at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, October 25 at Mad Art Gallery.
Before that, though, he'll be at Northside Workshop, 1306 St. Louis Ave, from 5:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. on Thursday, October 24 to present a free community workshop about instrument-building.
Then at 7:30 p.m. that same evening, Cooper-Moore will appear for a special hour-long solo performance at Foam, 3359 S. Jefferson.
Both events are free and open to the public, with no advance reservations needed.
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:
Meanwhile, the "Night Lights" program on Indiana public radio station WFIU recently devoted a broadcast to “The Birth of the Cool Songbook,” featuring recordings by other artists of the music used for Davis' historic Birth of the Cool album. The program features tracks from Charlie Parker, Claude Thornhill, Bud Powell, Red Norvo, Bill Evans, Mark Murphy, Ahmad Jamal, the Modern Jazz Quartet, Gerry Mulligan and others. Read more and access the archived audio stream here
For more Miles, check out AOL Radio's list of their top 10 Miles Davis songs, and this review of Gerry Gibbs and the Electric Thrasher Orchestra's new CD Play the Music of Miles Davis 1967-1975, written for AllAboutJazz.com by "Pico."
* Via Plastic Sax, Kansas City's American Jazz Museum later this month will pay tribute to the legacy of Duke Ellington while honoring Ellington alumni and St. Louis native Clark Terry and KC's Ahmad Alaadeen. Events will include panel discussions on Thursday, April 29 (the 111th anniversary of Ellington’s birth) and Friday, April 30; an open rehearsal of the Ellington Alumni All-Stars; and a concert featuring Terry, Alaadeen, the Ellington All-Star Big Band and several student ensembles from the KC area.
* After being pushed back a couple of weeks, trumpeter and East St. Louis native Russell Gunn's new CD Ethnomusicology Vol. 6: Return of Gunn Fu is scheduled to be released this Friday, April 16. Gunn (pictured) will be in St. Louis to perform on Sunday at the Sheldon Concert Hall as a guest artist with Ronald Carter and the NIU Jazz Ensemble.
* Here's another review of The Wee Trio's new CD Capitol Diner #2, written by J. Parker for AllAboutJazz.com. Former St. Louisan Dan Loomis plays bass for the Wee Trio.
* Opening the "coming attractions" file, here's a review of guitarist John McLaughlin and The 4th Dimension's new CD To The One, written by John Kelman for AllAboutJazz.com. McLaughlin and 4D will perform at the Sheldon on November 19.
* Via Doug Ramsey's Rifftides, the 2010 Brubeck Festival happened last weekend at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California, and Paul Conley of Capitol Public Radio in Sacramento interviewed Dave Brubeck and his wife Iola about the history of the institute. To hear the conversation, go here and click on "Listen." Brubeck is scheduled to return to St. Louis on October 17 to perform at the Sheldon.
* Guitarist Pat Metheny continues to tour with his Orchestrion project and is getting plenty of press coverage. Here's an interview he did with writer Philip Booth for the St. Petersburg Times (the link is to an extended version on Booth's blog) and another feature story about Metheny from Jordan Levin of the Miami Herald. Also, Metheny and speaker company Martin Logan are offering fans a chance to win a pair of Purity loudspeakers and an IPod filled with a collection of Metheny’s most popular tracks. The giveaway continues through April 30; for more information, go here. Metheny will be in St. Louis on May 8 at the Touhill Performing Arts Center.
* Turning to news of recent visitors, Galactic drummer Stanton Moore, who played here in St. Louis in February at The Pageant, has a new CD, DVD and instructional book on New Orleans-style grooves. Moore talked about the project with the Huffington Post's Sal Nunziatohere, and also recently did a podcast interview with The Jazz Session, which you can access here.
* Saxophonist Branford Marsalis, who played at the Touhill in February, has written the score for the first Broadway revival of Fences, the 1987 Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winning play by August Wilson. The production stars Denzel Washington and opens later this month at the Cort Theatre in New York.
* Dave Samuels of the Caribbean Jazz Project, who played in St. Louis last month at Jazz at the Bistro, was interviewed by the local paper before a concert in his hometown of Fairfield, CT.
* Pianist and singer Jamie Cullum, who played here last month at the Roberts Orpheum Theatre, now is touring on the other side of the world, with recent stops (and accompanying interviews) in Singapore and Sydney, Australia.
* Lastly, the eclectic multi-instrumentalist Cooper-Moore, who played a couple of St. Louis shows last year, now has several albums online as free downloads via the Free Music Archive. Read more about it here, and see listings of the available tracks here.
There's lots going on in jazz and creative music this week in St. Louis, and so we bring you StLJN's weekly highlights post slightly earlier than usual to perhaps better help facilitate some advance planning.
One of the week's major attractions is the team-up of pianist and singer Les McCann (pictured) and saxophonist Javon Jackson, who will perform Wednesday through Saturday at Jazz at the Bistro. Both men previously have led their own bands at the Bistro, but their current collaboration, dubbed "Swiss Movement Revisited" in honor of McCann's famed partnership with the late saxophonist Eddie Harris, will be making its St. Louis debut.
Though McCann, who turned 73 last month, and Jackson, who's 43, are from different generations, they seem like a natural musical match - both men have made a lot of groove-oriented music over the course of their respective careers, but both also have shown a proclivity for occasional detours into more adventurous and/or eccentric territory. For some video of McCann and Jackson together, see this post from last Saturday. You may also enjoy perusing this interview Jackson did with StLJN back in 2005.
Also returning to St. Louis this week for a four-night stand is songwriter and poet Fran Landesman, who's performing a cabaret show called "The Gaslight Square Years" beginning Wednesday and running through Saturday at the Gaslight Theater, 356 N. Boyle in the Central West End. Landesman is something of a St. Louis legend, having (with her husband Jay) operated the Crystal Palace nightclub, one of the key venues during Gaslight Square's heyday in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Landesman also co-wrote (with pianist Tommy Wolf) the musical The Nervous Set, which ran briefly on Broadway and yielded the frequently recorded tune "Spring Can Really Hang You Up The Most." The St. Louis Beacon's Bob Duffy, a former Post-Dispatch writer who knew her way back in the day, has a feature story about Landesman and her show here.
UPDATE, 11:35 p.m., 10/23/08 - 52nd City's Thomas Crone blogs his impressions of Landesman's opening night performance here.
Elsewhere in town, NYC-based multi-intrumentalist Cooper-Moore, who plays original jazz- and blues-influenced music on both conventional and self-invented instruments, will perform Saturday at Joe's Cafe and Sunday at the Scott Joplin House State Historic Site's Rosebud Cafe. Cooper-Moore has roots in the 1970s avant garde and loft jazz scene, but since then he's forged his own distinctive musical path. For more on Cooper-Moore's performances, see these twoposts. You also can see an excerpt from a Cooper-Moore improv with bassist William Parker in the embedded video window below.
In addition to these distinguished visitors, St. Louis' local musicians also have much to offer this week, starting on Thursday when saxophonist Dave Stone and pianist Adam Maness (of Erin Bode's group and Orange) perform a free concert for the Jazz at Holmes series at Washington University. If you're still in the mood for more music after Stone and Maness, you can head over to Brandt's in the nearby Delmar Loop and catch the gypsy jazz stylings of Sandy Weltman and Hot Club Caravan.
On Friday, the Legacy Jazz Quintet, led by pianist Phil Dunlap and trumpeter Anthony Wiggins, will do a free performance in the St. Louis Art Museum's Griggs Gallery, while singer, pianist and saxophonist Hugh "Peanuts" Whalum plays at Brandt's.
Then on Saturday, guitarist William Lenihan's quartet will do a free concert at the Kemper Museum on the Wash U. campus as part of the ongoing series accompanying the museum's current "Birth of the Cool" exhibit.
Sunday evening brings two more events of interest, starting with a performance by guitarist Matthew Von Doran's trio, featuring Nick Jost on bass and Miles Vandiver on drums, at Music Folk in Webster Groves. (UPDATE - 11:50 p.m., 10/22/08: Von Doren emailed to say that his show Sunday at Music Folk has been canceled, but will be rescheduled at a later date.)
That same night, the 45th Oliver Sain Soul Reunion will take place at the Sheldon Concert Hall, featuring blues and soul from singers Renee Smith, Roland Johnson, Mae Wheeler, Skeet Rogers, Uvee Hayes and Beau Shelby as well as a goodly helping of Sain's funky instrumental compositions as played by the current Oliver Sain Revue. Dan Durchholz has more on Sain's legacy and this year's show in an article for the St. Louis Beacon, found here. (Full disclosure: Yr. humble editor is a member of said Revue, and will be at the keyboards Sunday night at the Sheldon.)
On Monday morning, Red Lehr and the Old St. Louis Levee Band, featuring pianist Pat Joyce, will do a "Coffee Concert" of traditional jazz at the Sheldon. (They'll repeat the program at another performance on Tuesday morning.)
On Monday evening, the annual TKT Memorial Scholarship Concert takes place at Webster University's Winifred Moore Auditorium. This year's event pays tribute to the musical legacies of Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, and Billy Eckstine, with featured performers including singers Jeanne Trevor, Sherri Drake, and Eddie Eaton; pianists Marion Miller, Carolbeth True, and Kim Portnoy; guitarists Steve Schenkel and Tom Byrne; Paul DeMarinis on tenor sax; and the rhythm section of Willem von Hombracht on bass and Kevin Gianino on drums. Also on Monday evening, the Sessions Big Band continues their ongoing series of gigs at BB's Jazz, Blues and Soups downtown.
(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.)
While he's in town, Cooper-Moore also will play at 7:00 p.m. Sunday, October 26 at the Scott Joplin House State Historic Site's Rosebud Cafe. This concert is under the auspices of the Black Artists Group aka BAG II, and BAG II's Zimbabwe Nkenya will open the show with a solo performance of his own. For more on Cooper-Moore and the Joe's Cafe show, see this post.
Via poet, mixologist and man-about-town Brett Underwood, StLJN has learned that musician Cooper-Moore, who plays original jazz- and blues-influenced music on both conventional and self-built instruments, is coming to St. Louis on Saturday, October 25 to perform at Joe's Cafe.
Tickets are $10 in advance or $12 on the day of show, and can be purchased at Subterranean Books and Marbles Yoga Studio; by emailing Josh Weinstein at allsoul@gmail.com; or calling 314-664-6998. The concert begins at 8:00 p.m. at Joe's Cafe, which also is the studio of artist Bill Christman and is located at 6014 Kingsbury (just west of Des Peres) in St. Louis.
You can read more about Cooper-Moore here, here and here, and Weinstein also will be playing some of Moore's recordings on upcoming editions of his radio show "All Soul, No Borders," which airs at 10:30 p.m. Sundays on KDHX (FM 88.1). UPDATE - 9/23/08: Weinstein emailed to say that Cooper-Moore also will perform live in the KDHX studio on the Sunday, October 26 edition of "All Soul, No Borders."
(Edited 9/23/08 to correct the date and add info on where tickets can be purchased.)
