So What: Local News, Notes & Links

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

* Trumpeter Keyon Harrold was the featured guest on this past Tuesday's episode of musician and producer Adrian Younge's “Invisible Blackness” podcast. (You may need an Amazon Music ID or Amazon Prime account to listen.)

* In tribute to the late pianist and composer Chick Corea, pianist Dred Scott has recorded and released on SoundCloud a one-man-band version of Corea's tune "Captain Marvel."

* A feature story from the San Jose Mercury News' Andrew Gilbert looks at how Miles Davis helped pianist and singer Shirley Horn achieve late-career stardom.

* Also on the Miles Davis beat, some previously unheard excerpts from a 1978 recording session of his surfaced this week on YouTube. Coming right in the middle of the trumpeter's five-year hiatus from music in the late 70s, the session at Columbia Studio in NYC was set up initially at the urging of guitarist Larry Coryell, who plays on the tracks along with drummer Al Foster, bassist T.M. Stevens, and keyboardists George Pavlis and Masabumi Kikuchi.

Significantly, Davis does not perform on trumpet during the session, choosing instead to play Pavlis' ARP Odyssey keyboard. You can listen to nearly 35 minutes of the group's takes on "Miss Last Summer" here. (An interview with Pavlis, done for the 2005 book The Last Miles, provides more perspective on the session and can be read here.)

* Saxophonist Eric Person has teamed with keyboardist Neil Alexander to create a new online performance series called "Night Flight Music Live." Taking place on the last Friday of every month, the series will feature performers from New York's Hudson Valley and is donation-driven, with 100% of the proceeds going to the artists after operating costs.

Person, Alexander and drummer Jeff Siegel will perform at 7:30 p.m. tonight from Cassandra Studios in Beacon, NY, and can be seen on the series' YouTube channel.

* St. Louis artist and musician Damon Davis (pictured) is one of three recipients of 2021 grants from Alarm Will Sound's Matt Marks Impact Fund, which was started by members of the new music ensemble to honor a founding member who passed away in 2018. You can find out more about Davis' project with AWS, a science-fiction opera called Ligeia Mare, in his interview with the web publication I Care If You Listen.

* Funky Butt Brass Band drummer Ron Sikes has started "The Jazz Chat Podcast" and his guest on the first episode released this week is saxophonist Joel Vanderheyden.

*"Keep Live Alive Saint Louis" is a 90-minute online video special produced locally to raise money for workers here in the music and events industries - ushers, ticket takers, bartenders, wait staff, sound & lighting technicians, stagehands, backstage crews, and more - who have lost income and jobs because of the pandemic.

Scheduled for 7:00 p.m. Friday, March 12, the special will include appearances from some well-known classic rock musicians and comedians, as well as St. Louis performers and radio personalities. Find out more or tune in via the group's Facebook page.

So What: Local News, Notes & Links

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

* Bernie Hayes wrote a column for the St. Louis American about the recent demolition of Archway Studios, which was the professional home to saxophonist and producer Oliver Sain and significant in jazz history as the place where saxophonist Julius Hemphill recorded his landmark album Dogon A.D.

* Trumpeter Russell Gunn is set to release Pyramids, a new album by his Royal Krunk Jazz Orkestra, on Friday, August 30.

* Guitarist Todd Mosby promoted the release of his new album Open Waters with a performance last week on KTVI - Fox 2's 9:00 am newscast.

* A recent show by singer Alicia Olatuja (pictured) at Dazzle in Denver, CO was reviewed by AllAboutJazz.com's Geoff Anderson.

* The Lab, a new educational program for high school music students being run by multi-instrumentalist Lamar Harris, was the subject of a feature in St. Louis magazine.

* Pianist Dred Scott's latest album Rides Alone was reviewed by the website PartTimeAudiophile.com.

* Singer and multi-instrumentalist Tonina Saputo was a guest on a recent episode of the podcast "Nina Talks!"

* The Miles Davis official merchandise store is offering fans a chance to win a $100 shopping spree in exchange for an email address. You can enter the drawing here.

So What: Local News, Notes & Links

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

* Singer Jan Shapiro's performance tonight at the Ozark Theatre features a reunion more than 40 years in the making, as drummer, former St. Louisan, and Wash U alumnus Henry Ettman will join Shapiro (plus pianist Dave Venn and bassist Ben Wheeler) on a local bandstand for the first time since the mid-1970s.

As Shapiro tells the tale in an email to StLJN:

"Henry Ettman was one of the drummers that played all around the St. Louis area in the 1970s. He played with jazz pianist Eddie Fritz, Dave Venn and other jazz musicians.

In 1975 Henry joined up with me and pianist Eddie Plitt. At that time, Eddie Plitt played the Hammond B3, piano (when there was one present) and electronic keyboards. Eddie often played bass using his feet to play the Hammond B3 bass pedals - while at the same time playing chord changes and soloing on the keys! So in those days we did not use a bass player very often. So during 1975 Henry Ettman played with us in St. Louis and traveled on the road with us. I recall we spent about 6 months in Florida during the ‘winter season.’"

After leaving St. Louis, Ettman has lived in Nevada, Oregon and Florida, working in education and continuing his involvement with jazz. "I have continued to keep in touch with Henry and am delighted that after so many years we will share the stage once again on June 7," said Shapiro, seen in the photo above with Ettman, who's holding a promotional pic of the two of them and Eddie Plitt from "back in the day."

* What happened to the trumpet that Miles Davis played on the sessions for his landmark album Kind of Blue? A story last week in the Greensboro, NC newspaper YES Weekly traces the horn's path from Davis to his friend, Arthur "Buddy" Gist, to its current home on display in the music building at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro.

* Elsewhere on the Miles Davis beat, the new biographical documentary Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool was screened at the Sydney Film Festival in Australia, and the new box set documenting the Complete Birth of the Cool Sessions is out today.

* Sherry Jones, author of the historical novel Josephine Baker’s Last Dance, was in town for a signing and was interviewed about the book and Baker's life on St. Louis Public Radio's "St. Louis on the Air."

* Pianist and St. Louis native Dred Scott's latest album Rides Alone was reviewed by Glide magazine.

* The Riverfront Times' Daniel Hill offers a look at the St. Louis area's newest vendor of vinyl, the SOHO Record Shop, which opened recently in the Manhattan Antique Marketplace in St. Ann.

* In other record-retail news, Euclid Records recently acquired and is preparing for sale an 8,000-piece collection of jazz vinyl, including rare 1950s and '60s LPs from Blue Note, Prestige and other iconic labels. You can see a video "flip-through" of part of the collection with narration by Euclid's head honcho Joe Schwab here.

* Pianist Tom McDermott's latest album, which feature him performing a collection of Scott Joplin compositions, is the subject of a feature story by the New Orleans Advocate's Kieth Spera.

So What: Local News, Notes & Links

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

* The Sheldon Concert Hall and Art Galleries has named Peter Palermo as its new executive director, replacing Paul Reuter, who retires next year. Palermo comes to the Sheldon from the Hettenhausen Center for the Arts at McKendree University in Lebanon, IL.

* Author, poet and Miles Davis biographer Quincy Troupe will speak and sign copies of his new book Miles & Me (pictured) on Sunday, November 4 at Left Bank Books.

* Pianist and St. Louis native Dred Scott's new album Rides Alone was reviewed by LucidCulture.com.

* As part of the BRIC Jazz Festival in NYC, trumpeter Keyon Harrold this week took part in a panel discussion about the evolution of jazz with trumpeter Terence Blanchard, guitarist and singer Camila Meza, and journalist Nate Chinen. Video of the discussion is said to be forthcoming...

* And speaking of panel discussions, on Wednesday, November 7 the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles will host "a special listening experience and discussion of the new box set Miles Davis & John Coltrane—the Final Tour: The Bootleg Series, Vol. 6." The panel will include Coltrane's daughter Miki Coltrane, Miles' son Erin Davis and nephew Vince Wilburn, Jr, and Steve Berkowitz, who produced the box set.

* Radio station WSIE and Trusty Chords Record Shop in Edwardsville are teaming up to put together an endcap display in the store featuring local and regional music played on the station. If you're a musician or indie label with a recent or upcoming release and would like to be considered for inclusion, contact WSIE general manager Jason Church at jaschur@siue.edu.

* Lastly, if you've ever wondered what the various venues in the Grand Center Arts District would look like if they were recorded on video in a time-lapse style, with the resulting footage then set to an EDM soundtrack to make a two-and-a-half minute music video, wonder no more.

So What: Local News, Notes & Links

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

* Following the last-minute cancellation of this weekend's LouFest music festival, a number of acts scheduled to play the event have managed to book replacement shows at various venues around town.

Most of the bands and musicians that were scheduled to perform on LouFest's jazz stage, plus some other local performers, now will be playing "The Sound of St. Louis" Showcase, a free event taking place from 2:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. on Sunday, September 9 at the Grandel Theatre and The Dark Room.

The event will feature music from Ben Reece's Unity Quartet, Bob DeBoo, Jesse Gannon, Kasimu Taylor (pictured), Kevin Bowers' Nova, Mo Egeston, Owen Ragland, Ptah Williams Trio, and Tonina Saputo, as well as sets from The Burney Sisters, Dracla, Grace Basement, The Knuckles, The River Kittens, and Scrub & Ace Ha.

* Though local media outlets had to scrap many of their LouFest previews, the re-scheduling of many of the fest's jazz acts for the above-mentioned Sunday showcase did allow for the publication as originally planned of Kevin Johnson's Post-Dispatch feature on keyboardist Owen Ragland (link to Google cache).

* Also rescued from the LouFest-preview kill file, a feature story about drummer Kevin Bowers from the Riverfront Times' Christian Schaeffer.

* The late pianist and singer Jean Kittrell was the subject of a remembrance in the Edwardsville Intelligencer.

* Also in the Intelligencer, a brief preview of Saturday's Alton Jazz and Wine Festival, which has been moved indoors to Argosy Casino's music hall due to a forecast of heavy rain for Saturday.

* Trumpeter Keyon Harrold's recent performance for the Charlie Parker Jazz Festival at Marcus Garvey Park in Harlem, NYC, was recorded for broadcast (and archived online) by radio station WBGO.

* Pianist Dred Scott, born here in St. Louis as Joseph Patrick Scott and now based in NYC, has a new album coming out on September 21. Titled Rides Alone, it features Scott playing solo on eight tracks of original music, and will be available as a CD or download from BandCamp.

* Thurman's in Shaw's new Sunday brunch was the subject of a brief feature by the Riverfront Times' Sarah Penske.

* The Davenport Lounge at the New Orleans Ritz Carlton hotel, which features music four nights a week from trumpeter, singer and U City native Jeremy Davenport, was mentioned in a CNN feature about celebrity chef Emeril Lagasse's list of New Orleans "must-dos."

* Bach to the Future's concert tonight at the Miller Performing Arts Center in Jefferson City was previewed in the Jefferson City News-Tribune.