Here's StLJN's latest wrap-up of assorted links and short news items of local interest:
* The Regional Arts Commission, nearly 20 local performing arts organizations including Jazz St. Louis and The Sheldon, and HEC TV are teaming up for "Arts United STL," a virtual benefit to support the RAC Artist Relief Fund that will take place starting at 7:00 p.m. this coming Sunday, May 31.
The free online event aims to raise more than $250,000 through sponsorships and 1,000 individual donations to provide emergency aid to St. Louis working artists whose livelihoods have been critically interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. You can watch on HEC-TV (see your TV provider's channel guide for info) or online at https://www.opera-stl.org/explore-and-learn/for-everyone/arts-united-stl.
* The early Sixties transitional period between trumpeter Miles Davis' two "great quintets" was the topic of "Miles Between: Miles Davis 1961-1963," this week's episode of Indiana public radio station WFIU's "Night Lights" program.
* In honor of the 94th anniversary of Davis' birth, SiriusXM's "Real Jazz" channel last week aired "A Miles Davis Birthday Celebration" featuring three hours of the trumpeter's music. Edited after posting to fix a typo.
This week's calendar of live jazz and creative music in St. Louis features the return of a rising star vocalist, a free, day-long festival, and more. Let's go to this highlights...
Wednesday, September 18
Singer Cyrille Aimée(pictured, top left) returns to perform for the first of two nights at Jazz St. Louis as part of the series they're co-presenting with Cabaret Project of St. Louis.
Aimée, who first performed in St. Louis in 2016 at the Bistro, released her ninth album Move On: A Sondheim Adventure in February of this year. (For more about her, check out this video showcase post from her previous appearance here.)
Also on Wednesday, NYC-based singer Miss Maybelland pianist Charlie Judkins continue their mini-tour of local nightspots with a show at Evangeline's; and this week's "Wednesday Night Jazz Crawl" in Grand Center features pianist Ethan Leinwand at The Stage at KDHX, the jam session hosted by bassist Bob DeBoo at the Kranzberg Arts Center, and trumpeter Kasimu Taylor's band at The Dark Room.
Saturday, September 21
The annual Old Webster Jazz & Blues Festival starts at mid-day and continues through the evening with two stages in the Old Webster Business District, near the intersection of Lockwood & Gore Aves.
The free, family-friendly event will feature sets from the Webster University Faculty Jazz Ensemble, Bach to the Future, Dizzy Atmosphere (pictured, center left), Webster Groves High School Jazz Band, and trumpeter Jim Manley, plus blues performers including David Dee, Marquise Knox, Jeremiah Johnson, and more.
Also on Saturday, Miss Maybell wraps up her visit here with a performance at the Frisco Barroom (just down the road from the festival site); and Chicago-based guitarist, composer and improviser Daniel Wyche performs at Flood Plain gallery, with St. Louis' JoAnn McNeil and Michael Williams offering an opening set of electronics, found-sound manipulation, and guitar.
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.)
Today, it's time for part two of StLJN's Fall 2019 jazz preview, presenting videos of the jazz and creative music artists who will be coming here to perform for the next four months. (You can see part one here.)
The chronology of upcoming shows resumes with Paa Kow and his Afro-Fusion Orchestra, who will be in St. Louis on Friday, September 6 for a performance at BB's Jazz, Blues & Soups. The group, including St. Louis' own Weedie Braimah on percussion, can be seen in the first video up above, which is an excerpt from their performance in 2018 at the Jazz Aspen Snowmass Festival.
After the jump, you can see a video of singer Cyrille Aimee, who will perform on Wednesday, September 18 and Thursday, September 19 at Jazz St. Louis. The clip shows Aimee singing "Down" in February of this year at the studios of WBGO radio in Newark, NJ.
Next up, it's saxophonist Joshua Redman, who's bringing his quartet for shows starting Wednesday, September 25 and continuing through Sunday, September 29 at Jazz St. Louis.The video shows a full set of music from Redman, bassist Reuben Rogers, drummer Greg Hutchinson, and pianist Aaron Goldberg recorded in 2013 at the Jazz sous les Pommiers festival in France.
The following week, St. Louis will get a return visit from singer Cécile McLorin Salvant with pianist Aaron Diehl's trio, as they perform on Saturday, October 5 at the Sheldon Concert Hall. They can be seen in the next video, a full set recorded in 2016 at the Festival de Jazz de Vitoria-Gasteiz in Spain.
Today's penultimate video features Chicago-based cornetist, composer, and vocalist Ben Lamar Gay, who will open New Music Circle's 61st season with a performance on Saturday, October 5 at Off Broadway. He's seen here with his quartet performing "More" at DJ Gilles Peterson's Worldwide Awards ceremony this past January in London.
The final clip features members of Artemis, the all-star, all-woman ensemble who will perform Wednesday, October 9 through Sunday, October 13 at Jazz St. Louis.
Since literally all the members of the group are busy bandleaders in their own right, Artemis hasn't done much extended touring. The only live videos of them online so far seem to be some shaky footage shot at last year's Newport Jazz Festival and posted online in two-minute chunks, which don't serve the music or musicians particularly well.
Fortunately, there is some good-quality video of a gig in July 2017 at New Morning in Paris, nominally billed as "Woman To Woman," but featuring all the members of Artemis except for drummer Allison Miller, and so, it's an extended excerpt from that show that is posted here for your viewing and listening enjoyment.
Look for part three of StLJN's Fall 2019 jazz preview next week in this space. You can see the rest of today's videos after the jump...
That would be saxophonist Frankie Trumbauer(pictured) who, while born in Carbondale, IL, grew up in St. Louis and did his first professional work as a musician here. He's joined in the class of 2019 by saxophonist Julian "Cannonball" Adderley, singer Dinah Washington, and drummer Chick Webb.
Responding to the cancellation announcement in a Facebook post, U City Jazz Fest organizer Michael Silverman said he's now looking for an alternate location to stage the event on Saturday, June 8. Watch this space for more as this story develops...
JSL will supply the sounds, Big Muddy Dance Company will create the choreography, and Shakespeare Festival St. Louis will "weave the pieces together with Shakespearean scenes and sonnets." The fourth partner, Nine Network, will host three free performances of the work on October 3, 4 and 5 at its Public Media Commons.
* The final performance of the 2019 Vision Festival, set for June 9-16 at Roulette in Brooklyn, NY, will be a tribute to the late saxophonist Hamiet Bluiett, led by his friend and collaborator, pianist D.D. Jackson, and featuring U City native and drummer Ronnie Burrage, saxophonists James Carter and Darius Jones, bassist William Parker, and percussionist Juma Sultan.
As regular readers know, this space frequently is used to preview shows from touring jazz and creative music performers coming to St. Louis. But with a relative paucity of acts visiting here in the next several weeks, today's video showcase offers something a little different: a look back at some of jazz performers who have been making news during the first half of 2016, starting with trumpeter and St. Louis native Keyon Harrold.
Harrold has gotten good notices and a lotofpublicity this year for his work on the soundtrack of Miles Ahead, actor/director Don Cheadle's film about Miles Davis that was released in April. The first video up above features a full set of Harrold's own music, as performed at Revive Music's recent tenth anniversary celebration in NYC and captured on video by Boiler Room.
After the jump, the first video features pianist Robert Glasper, who's also been in the news a lot this year thanks to his involvement in Miles Ahead. Glasper wrote five new compositions for the film's soundtrack, and last month also released Everything's Beautiful, a tribute/remix album using samples from the Miles Davis catalog. The clip is an interview with Glasper, in which he talks about his work on Miles Ahead, his musical relationships with hip-hop performers such as The Roots and the late J Dilla, and more.
The first video of Threadgill features a brief interview with him conducted in January by Frank Oteri of New Music USA. That's followed by a full 75-minute Zooid performance, recorded in October 2013 at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC.
Although Bridgewater, Smith, and the other winners won't actually receive their awards until 2017, you can celebrate now by enjoying a full set of Bridgewater, recorded live at the 2013 Jazzaldia festival in San Sebastian, Spain, followed by the good Doctor's version of Paul Simon's "50 Ways To Leave Your Lover," as performed earlier this year with guitarist Jonathan Kreisberg and drummer Kendrick Scott at Kente Arts Alliance in Pittsburgh, PA.
(If you'd like to hear more, both Bridgewater and Smith have been the subjects of previous Saturday video posts. StLJN looked at Bridgewater's current collaboration with trumpeter Irvin Mayfield in this post from March of this year, and paid visits to Dr. Smith in 2009, 2012, 2013, and 2015.)
Smith's latest album Evolution was released by Blue Note in January, and based on thecriticalreception, seems likely to end up on a fair number of year-end "best of" lists. Two other performers who released muc-talked-about albums in the first half of 2016 were bassist and singer Esperanza Spalding and singer Cyrille Aimée.
Spalding picked up an electric bass, a new look and a new theatrical persona for her album Emily's D+Evolution, which went in what NPR Music called "a louder, proggier, weirder funk-rock direction." You can see and hear that direction in today's seventh clip, a full performance recorded by NPR and WFUV in March of this year at BRIC in NYC.
For those who tastes run more toward the traditional, that's followed by a clip of Spalding's appearance at this year's International Jazz Day celebration held on April 30 at the White House, in which she performed a swinging version of "On The Sunny Side Of The Street" for the President, First Lady, and assembled guests.
As for Aimée, her album Let's Get Lost was released in February to goodnotices, and audiences around the country seem to be responding enthusiastically to her updated take on Gypsy jazz You can see her singing much of the material from that album in today's penultimate clip, recorded in February at WNYC in New York.
Last, but certainly not least, you can check out some music from saxophonist Kamasi Washington, whose sprawling three-CD debut album The Epic was one of the best-reviewed records of last year.
Washington's star has continued to rise quickly in 2016, as he's gotten major press coverage from the New York Times, Rolling Stone, GQ, and many other mainstream media outlets, and has been touring to enthusiastic and often sold-out houses.. Today's final clip is a concert version of The Epic, recorded last August for NPR's "Jazz Night In America".
You can see the rest of today's videos after the jump...
* Saxophonist Jim Stevens(pictured) announced this week via Facebook that he, drummer James Jackson and bassist John King will go to Jakarta, Indonesia the first week of March to perform with guitarist Larry Coryell and keyboardist and former St. Louisan David Garfield at the Java Jazz Festival.
Described as "one of the largest jazz festivals in the world and arguably the biggest in the Southern Hemisphere," the event also will feature performances this year from Chris Botti with Sting, the jazz-fusion band Yellowjackets, singers Patti Austin and Kurt Elling, saxophonist Candy Dulfer, and more.
* Multi-instrumentalist Adam Maness of The 442s (and several other bands) has joined pianist Peter Martin's company Open Studio Network as "creative content manager." The firm produces and sells online video music lessons featuring Martin, drummer Gregory Hutchinson, guitarist Romero Lubambo, and others.
* In an interview with San Francisco Classical Voice, trumpeter and composer Terence Blanchard talked about developing and premiering his opera Champion in St Louis with support from Opera Theatre St. Louis and Jazz St. Louis. A new production of Champion being mounted this month by SFJAZZ and Opera Parallèle features a revised orchestration for fewer musicians.
* St. Louis Volunteer Lawyers and Accountants for the Arts will present a workshop on crowdfunding for artists at 7:00 p.m. this coming Monday, February 15 at the Regional Arts Commission. Attendees will hear from the author of a book on crowdfunding, a panel of artists who have used crowdfunding, and an attorney who will talk about related legal issues. Admission is $10 in advance; $15 at the door.
* Singer Cyrille Aimée is featured in a photo set shot by Valerie Tichacek and posted to KDHX's website. Aimée continues at Jazz at the Bistro through Saturday night.
* St. Louis Public Radio's Dennis Owsley is devoting his "Jazz Unlimited" programs this month to a series called "Jazz Families-Blood Relatives." Owsley, who wrote City of Gabriels: The History of Jazz in St. Louis, 1895-1973, researched the subject and found "around 175 jazz musicians who have fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters and cousins who are also performing musicians," making up "sort of a genetic map of jazz."
That cohort includes some St. Louis musicians, such as Arville Harris, Leroy Harris Sr. and Jr., Asa Harris, her father Ace Harris, and her uncle Erskine Hawkins; and Lloyd Smith and the Bosman Twins, as well as well-known clans like the Adderley family, the Jones family, the Heath family, and others.
Using the space next to The Pageant occupied until recently by Big Shark Bicycle Company, the venue is intended to "fill the gap in The Loop’s current concert offerings with a capacity of 800, between Blueberry Hill’s 340-person Duck Room to the 2,000 capacity of The Pageant - and hosting a similarly wide range of music styles, comedy, events and private parties."
* Stringed-instrument repair shop, studio, and manufacturer Tritone Guitars will present their second annual "Tritone Expo" on Saturday, April 2 and Sunday, April 3 at the @4240 building on the Cortex campus in the Central West End.
Although the official celebrations during Mardi Gras week in St. Louis typically don't offer much for jazz fans, leaning heavily on rock cover/tribute bands and DJs, this year the concert calendar countdown to Fat Tuesday just happens to feature several noteworthy touring jazz headliners, plus an assortment of shows from local performers. Let's go to the highlights...
Wednesday, February 3
Singer Cyrille Aimée makes her St. Louis debut in the first of four nights continuing through Saturday at Jazz at the Bistro.
Born in France and working in the US for much of the last decade, the 31-year old Aimée (pictured, top left) has musical roots in Gypsy jazz and swing, but also deploys some very non-traditional techniques, like using a looping pedal to create one-woman acapella arrangements in real time.
Thursday, February 4
The Funky Butt Brass Band, one of the few jazz or jazz-related local acts that does get extra work at Carnival time, will play an early evening "Mardi Gras Party" at the Blues City Deli.
Saturday, February 6
To hear some jazz, funk and/or R&B after the big parade on Saturday, your best bet downtown may be the Old Rock House's Mardi Gras Parade Day celebration featuring the Funky Butt Brass Band and Al Holliday & the East Side Rhythm Band.
However, the most-anticipated local jazz event on Saturday would have to be the return to St. Louis of singer Gregory Porter for the first time in three years for a concert at the Touhill Performing Arts Center.
When Porter (pictured, center left) was here last back in 2013, he was just starting to enjoy some crossover success. Since then, he's released a Grammy winning album and, as his audience has continued to grow, moved up to headline at bigger venues and major festivals.
He's also now employing two St. Louis musicians - drummer Emanuel Harrold (brother of trumpeter Keyon Harrold) and bassist Jahmal Nichols - in his band, which should make for a lively homecoming feel at the Touhill. You can read more about Porter's successes, and see some of his recent performances, in last week's Saturday video post.
Monday, February 8
While a three-night, Monday-through-Wednesday booking isn't the usual for Jazz at the Bistro, Jazz St. Louis understandably was willing to change things up a bit to secure the services of saxophonist Branford Marsalis and his quartet, who have proven to be both a good draw and of high musical quality for years now.
Marsalis (pictured, lower left) and pianist Joey Calderazzo played a duo show at the Sheldon back in January 2012, but given that it's been even longer since the saxophonist did a full-band show here, demand for tickets should be substantial. The good news is that while seats for Marsalis' 7:30 sets may be hard to come by at this point, tickets for the 9:30 performances may be more available for shows early in the week than they would be on a weekend. Regardless, advance reservations are recommended.
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.)
Today's showcase features some videos starring Cyrille Aimée, who will be making her St. Louis debut with performances starting Wednesday, February 3 through Saturday, February 6 at Jazz at the Bistro
Though Aimée is just now performing in St. Louis for the first time, the 31-year-old singer, whose name is pronounced SUR-real M-A, has been plying her trade professionally for almost a decade.
The daughter of a French father and Dominican mother who grew up in the small town of Samois-sur-Seine in north-central France, Aiméee first attracted wide public attention in 2007 when she won the Montreux Jazz Festival Competition. She later was a finalist in the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition in 2010, and the winner of the Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Competition in 2012.
After relocating to NYC and self-releasing several albums beginning in the mid-2000s, in 2013 Aimée signed with Mack Avenue Records. She put out her debut on the label, It's a Good Day, the next year, and currently is touring in support of her second, brand-new release on Mack Avenue, Let's Get Lost, which officially came out yesterday.
You can hear Aimée sing "It's A Good Day" from that first Mack Avenue album in the first video up above. It was recorded in June 2013 at Smalls Jazz Club in NYC with a band including acoustic guitarist Adrien Moignard, electric guitarist Michael Valeanu, bassist Sam Anning, and drummer Rajiv Jayaweera. After the jump, there's another clip from the same gig, in which Aimée and Anning offer a duo performance of "Mean to Me."
Next, you can see Aimée's sing her arrangement of the 1960s pop hit "Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You," recorded at a show with guitarist Denis Chang's Manouche Project in 2010 in Montreal.
The fourth video shows Aimée singing her version of "Summertime" at a gig in May, 2013 in Israel. The clip looks like it was shot by an audience member, so the video quality is no-frills, but the audio is good, and the performance has a nice example of Aimée scat singing.
Her use of a more modern vocal effect - the electronic looping of parts to provide self-accompaniment - is on display in the next video, a version of Bob Marley's "Waiting in Vain" recorded live to video in February 2015 that was created by singing through a loop pedal, with no overdubs or additional effects.
Last but not least, you can hear Aimée sing in her native language via a clip of a performance of "Nuit Blanche" recorded in July 2015 at the Jazz à Vienne festival.
