Music Education Monday: Aebersold's "Jazz Handbook," plus Latin percussion classes with Dafnis Prieto

This week for "Music Education Monday," we've got a primer for aspiring jazz players that also may be of interest to non-playing fans, plus a master class in Latin percussion techniques:

* Known throughout the jazz world as a leading purveyor of jazz education materials and proprietor of summer jazz camps, saxophonist and educator Jamey Aebersold for years also has given away for free a 56-page tome called simply Jazz Handbook.

While aimed primarily at beginning and intermediate musicians, the collection of exercises, lists, short articles, and more also conceivably may be of interest to more advanced musicians, and even to fans looking for some basic "Jazz 101" type knowledge.

You can download a free copy of the Jazz Handbook in PDF format here.

* In addition to being a busy working musician, Cuban-born percussionist Dafnis Prieto also is a professor at NYU’s Steinhardt School, a frequent clinician at other colleges and universities, and a 2011 winner of a Macarthur Fellowship, aka "the genius grant." (St. Louis jazz fans also may recall Prieto from when his trio played at Jazz at the Bistro back in 2012.)

In the video windows below, you can check out two lessons from Prieto. The first is a playlist of excerpts from a master class he did a few years ago at Loyola University in New Orleans, in which he offers an overview of various Latin percussion styles and how to play them. In the second, Prieto gives a full lesson specifically on "rhythmic independence within Latin drumming" and plays a solo demonstrating some of his concepts.

Jazz this week: Dafnis Prieto, Bobby Watson, New Music Circle showcase, Denise Thimes with Tom Braxton, and more

There are several noteworthy jazz and creative music shows happening this weekend in St. Louis, and for once, the schedule lays out so that it's possible to hear all the touring musicians coming through town, provided you've got the stamina and the necessary funds to go out five nights this week. Let's go to the highlights...

Tonight, drummer Dafnis Prieto (pictured) makes his St. Louis debut and opens a four-night engagement continuing through Saturday at Jazz at the Bistro. Prieto certainly is one of the more talked-about jazz drummers of recent years, enjoying a rapid rise in fortune since coming to the USA from his native Cuba in 1999. In 2011, he won one of the coveted "genius grants" from the MacArthur Foundation, which, aside from serving as a pretty convincing refutation of all those old jokes about drummers being dumb, also helped him gain wider recognition among the general public.

Genius grant notwithstanding, there's no question that Prieto is both a very impressive drummer and a thoughtful composer, bandleader and teacher of jazz and Latin music, as you can hear for yourself in the performance video clips and interviews included in this post from last Saturday.

Also tonight, saxophonist Jim Stevens will play at the Cigar Inn; and on Thursday, Good 4 The Soul, which includes several of Stevens' frequent collaborators, will perform an early evening show at BB's Jazz, Blues and Soups.

Then on Friday, New Music Circle wraps up their 2011-12 season with a showcase of regional and local performers including Olivia Block, Joseph Raglani, Kevin Harris, Pat Boland, and Jeremy Kannapell at the William A. Kerr Foundation, 21 O'Fallon St. on Laclede's Landing.

Following the showcase, NMC will host an end-of-the-season celebration and fund raiser, with food, beer, DJs and video, plus a raffle of prizes and gift certificates to local businesses. Admission is a suggested $10 donation in addition to the ticket price of the concert, and includes food, drink and one raffle ticket. Additional raffle tickets also will be available for sale, giving you more chances to win the stuff donated by Vintage Vinyl, Euclid Records, Apop Records, St. Louis Tap Room, Tivoli Theatre, Dierberg's, Local Harvest Market, Left Bank Books, and numerous others.

While NMC certainly is deserving of your support - without them, St. Louis audiences would not have had a chance this year to hear musicians like Joe McPhee, Matthew Shipp, and the Claudia Quintet - they do have some tough competition on Friday in addition to Prieto.

That's because alto saxophonist Bobby Watson is coming in from Kansas City on Friday to play the first of two nights at Robbie's House of Jazz. Though perhaps still best known for his stint with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, Watson is a true master of the hard bop idiom who's played with dozens of other jazz greats over the course of his long and distinguished career. If you've heard Watson play before, you're probably already making plans to be there. If you haven't heard him, and you have any interest in jazz saxophone, he's definitely worth the trip to Webster Groves.

Watson now teaches at the University of Missouri-Kansas City's conservatory of music, and though he's based just a couple of hundred miles away, doesn't make it to St. Louis all that often. Fortunately, he'll be sticking around to perform again on Saturday at Robbie's, so if you're doing something else Friday, like checking out Prieto or the NMC event, you'll still have another chance to hear Watson.

And as if those weren't enough options for Friday, you can always head east of the Mississippi to catch guitarist Dave Black with bassist Willem von Hombracht and drummer Kevin Gianino at the Cigar Inn in Belleville, or saxophonist Tim Cunningham at Jazz on Broadway in Alton.

On Saturday, Tim Cunningham will be back at Jazz on Broadway, along with singers Anita Jackson and Theo Peoples, the St. Louisan who's worked with both the Temptations and the Four Tops, for a special Mother's Day show. Also on Saturday, singer Joe Mancuso and his quartet with special guest saxophonist Christopher Braig will play at Johnny Gitto's.

On Sunday afternoon, singer Denise Thimes will present her annual Mothers Day performance at the Sheldon Concert Hall, featuring saxophonist Tom Braxton as his year's special guest. There's also a dinner at the Sheldon before the show; check out the show page on Sheldon's site for times and details.

And speaking of the Sheldon Concert Hall and special guests, on Monday night the East St. Louis High School jazz band and their special guest, trumpeter and ESLHS alumnus Russell Gunn, will perform at the Sheldon in an event raising funds to provide band camp scholarships for kids from the ESLHS music program.

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: Spotlight on Dafnis Prieto

This week, our video spotlight shines on drummer Dafnis Prieto, who will be in St. Louis to perform next Wednesday, May 9 through Saturday, May 12 at Jazz at the Bistro. This will be Prieto's debut as a bandleader at the Bistro, but you may recognize his name as a recipient of one of the 2011 MacArthur Fellowships, often referred to colloquially as "genius grants."

Prieto, who's 37 and was born in Cuba, has seen his star rise quickly since coming to the USA in 1999. He has made four recordings as a leader, and has performed and/or recorded Henry Threadgill, Steve Coleman, Eddie Palmieri, Chico and Arturo O'Farrill, Dave Samuels and the Caribbean Jazz Project, Jane Bunnett, D.D. Jackson, Edward Simon, Michel Camilo, Chucho Valdez, Giovanni Hidalgo, Claudia Acuña, Roy Hargrove, Don Byron, and Andrew Hill. Since 2005, Prieto also has been a member of the music faculty at New York University.

According to this brief interview with Prieto by the Post-Dispatch's Calvin Wilson, for his St. Louis gig the drummer will be joined by bassist Johannes Weidenmueller and saxophonist Roman Filiu. While there doesn't seem to be any video online that documents this particular ensemble, there's a wealth of other material featuring Prieto, which we've mined to bring you today's offerings.

Up top, you can see Prieto and his Si O Si Quartet with guest violinist Christian Howes performing a complete set at the Library of Congress' Atlas Performing Arts Center. Down below, there are three solo performances by Prieto. The first is from the MacArthur Fellows ceremony in 2011, and the next two are from the Percussive Arts Society's Weekend of Percussion 2011.

To close out, we've got two extended video interviews with the drummer. The first is from a masterclass at Loyola University in New Orleans; the second features Prieto being interviewed by Larry Appelbaum of the Library of Congress' Music Division as part of series of discussions and performances called "Music and the Brain."

For more about Dafnis Prieto, see this overview of his recordings as a leader, from the Latin Jazz Corner blog via AllAboutJazz.com; this interview and performance from just a couple of weeks ago on Minnesota Public Radio; and this 2008 interview Prieto did with Leroy "The Jazzcat" Downs.