So What: Local News, Notes & Links

Here's the latest wrap-up of assorted links and short local news items of interest:

* Music for Lifelong Achievement's recently concluded musical instrument drive was the subject of a feature story this week on local Fox affiliate KTVI.

* The new cabaret ensemble Women Under the Influence is profiled by the St. Louis Beacon's Terry Perkins. The group will make their performing debut Saturday night in a sold-out gig at Joe Buck's restaurant downtown.

* And speaking of cabaret, Post-Dispatch theater critic Judith Newmark reports that producer/director Tim Schall is convening a town hall meeting of "stakeholders" in the local cabaret scene at 2:00 p.m. this Saturday, November 17 at the Regional Arts Commission building, 6128 Delmar Boulevard.

* Jazz on Broadway has posted to their Facebook page photo albums of recent performance by funk/fusion band Soul Cafe and singer Joe Mancuso.

* Jazz Times has put online an excerpt from the new autobiography by saxophonist Dave Liebman, in which Liebman talks about his experiences joining Miles Davis' band in the early 1970s.

* Also at Jazz Times, they've collected online several videos of saxophonist David Sanborn (pictured) talking about how he selected the tunes and assembled his new retrospective CD set Then Again.

* The blog Destination: Out this week featured a vintage downloadable track from St. Louis' Human Arts Ensemble.

StLJN jazz site of the week: Destination: Out

Welcome, if you will, a new feature here at St. Louis Jazz Notes: the StLJN jazz site of the week. It's a simple premise - there are lots of informative and entertaining jazz sites on the Web, and each week we'll provide a link to one of them, along with a bit of background on what makes it noteworthy. My hope is that this will help stir up some additional cross-traffic and conversation, and also that you'll like some of these sites enough to add them to your regular media diet.

And so, without further ado, let it be known that the very first StLJN jazz site of the week is the music-sharing blog Destination: Out. D:O is devoted primarily to avant-garde, experimental and free jazz, with a special emphasis on overlooked and/or out-of-print recordings from the 1970s and 1980s. Proprietors Prof. Drew LeDrew and Chilly Jay Chill display unfailingly good taste in sounds, and their recent post paying tribute to the late producer Teo Macero is a typically illuminating example of the D:O methodology, with some excellent music to download, pithy commentary and relevant links.

Destination: Out usually has new posts twice a week, and if you have any interest in the musical styles they cover, it's a must read. Watch this space next Monday for another StLJN jazz site of the week.

Destination: Out celebrates anniversary with Lester Bowie download

The cool cats who run the avant-jazz music sharing blog Destination: Out are celebrating their first blogiversary this week. To commemorate the occasion, they've reposted the very first piece of music put up on the site a year ago, an early track from the Art Ensemble (before they added "of Chicago" to their name) called "Warm Up" that features St. Louis native Lester Bowie - not on trumpet, but on kelp horn.

Now, I'm sure what a kelp horn is, but the track is an interesting listen. You can download it here, and while you're at it, you may also want to leave a comment congratulating the proprietors and urging them to keep up the good work. D:O has posted a lot of St. Louis-related music in the last year; here's hoping for much more to come.

St. Louis Creative Ensemble tracks available as free downloads

The avant-garde audionauts who run the music sharing blog Destination: Out have featured a number of St. Louis artists in their quest to bring attention to underappreciated, adventurous jazz of the last three decades or so, and they've done it again with today's post, which features free downloads of two tracks from a 1979 Moers Music release by the St. Louis Creative Ensemble (as well as a nice shoutout and link to StLJN, for which I'm most grateful).

The personnel on "I Can't Figure Out (Whatcha Doin' To Me)" and ".38 Special" includes Luther Thomas (alto sax), Joseph Bowie (pictured, trombone, vocals), Rasul Siddik (trumpet), Darrell Mixon (bass) and Charles “Bobo” Shaw, drums. Read about them and download the music here. Please note that though the text portion of the post may be online indefinitely, the audio files are available for a limited time only, so act quickly if you want copies.