Jazz this week: Adam Larson, Dirty Dozen Brass Band, Summerset festival, and more

It's a busy week for jazz and creative music in St. Louis, with festivals presenting smooth jazz and swing dance; New Orleans music from one of that city's classic bands and from a St. Louis expat; and more.

Let's go to the highlights...

Wednesday, July 11
Saxophonist Adam Larson is in town and will present a free public performance/workshop at Saxquest.

Larson is an up-and-coming young musician who already has headlined and co-headlined shows at Jazz St. Louis' Bistro and other top venues, so the chance to see him for free makes this gig one of the week's top picks.

Also on Wednesday, the free "Grand Center Jazz Crawl" resumes after an Independence Day break with the Jazz Troubadours at The Stage at KDHX, the jam session led by bassist Bob DeBoo at the Kranzberg Arts Center, and trumpeter Kasimu Taylor and band at The Dark Room.

Thursday, July 12
Having celebrated four decades together in 2017,  the Dirty Dozen Brass Band (pictured, top left) will be back in St. Louis for the first time in several years for a show at the Old Rock House. You can see and hear some recent DDBB performances in this post from last Saturday.

Also on Thursday, the Summerset smooth jazz festival presents the first of three concerts this weekend, kicking off with a show from saxophonists Paul Taylor and Pamela Williams at the World's Fair Pavilion in Forest Park. You can find out more and see videos of all the various musicians who will playing the fest in this post from a couple of weeks ago.

Elsewhere around town, pianist and St. Louis native Tom McDermott is back from New Orleans for a visit and a show at Joe's Cafe; and vocal group Java Jived will perform in a free concert for the Jazz at Holmes series at Washington University.

Friday, July 13
The Summerset festival continues with a show featuring keyboardist Jeff Lorber, saxophonist Everette Harp and guitarist Paul Jackson Jr; and the annual River City Mess Around, the mid-summer swing dance weekend presented by STL Jitterbugs, officially begins with a dance at City Museum featuring music from singer/guitarist Tommy Halloran and band.

Also on Friday, multi-instrumentalist Lamar Harris presents "Headnotic," described as "his newest project, focusing on brand new, original compositions," for the first of two nights at Jazz St. Louis; the Ambassadors of Swing play for dancers at the Casa Loma Ballroom; and singer Anita Jackson returns to The Dark Room.

Saturday, July 14
The Summerset festival concludes with a performance by singer and St. Louis native Lynne Fiddmont (pictured, bottom left) and singer Howard Hewitt; and the River City Mess Around continues with a dance featuring Miss Jubilee at the Webster Groves Masonic Lodge No 84.

Also on Saturday, The WirePilots play original jazz fusion in a free concert at Kirkwood Park Amphitheatre; The People's Key will perform at The Stage at KDHX; and trumpeter Jim Manley and his band return to Evangeline's.

Sunday, July 15
Singer Jan Shapiro, former head of the vocal department at Berklee College of Music who recently retired and moved back home to St. Louis, will team up with guitarist Tom Byrne for a matinee tribute to Ella Fitzgerald and Joe Pass at the Webster Groves Concert Hall.

Then on Sunday night, the River City Mess Around concludes with a performance by the Arcadia Dance Orchestra at Off Broadway.

Monday, July 16
"Blind" Willie Dineen and the Broadway Collective return to BB's Jazz, Blues and Soups.

Tuesday, July 17
Multi-instrumentalist Tonina Saputo and her band host "The Tuesday Night Hit" at The Dark Room.

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: Summerset brings smooth jazz to Forest Park

When smooth jazz faded as a radio format a few years back, the listeners of those station and the bands and musicians whose works were played on those stations didn't just disappear.

The ability to hear those artists play live, however, varies widely from city to city. Here in St. Louis, The Pageant used to present two or three shows a year featuring touring smooth jazz musicians, which more recently has tapered off to just an occasional production, as when multi-instrumentalist Brian Culbertson played the venue earlier this year. Similarly, the local casinos, which collectively used to add a few more shows to each year's total, these days for the most part seem to be eschewing smooth jazz concerts.

That's left recent local presentations of touring smooth jazz performers mostly to one-off events and festivals, like Summerset, a three-night event taking place Thursday, July 12 through Saturday, July 14 at the World's Fair Pavilion in Forest Park.

Though this may seem an unlikely venue at first take, this is the event's fourth year there and the dwindling amount of seating shown as "available" on the ticketing website suggests sales have been relatively brisk. So, we're taking this opportunity to share videos of some of the musicians who will be appearing while there may still be a chance to score some seats.

On Thursday, July 12, the performers will be saxophonist Paul Taylor (who headlined the Chesterfield Jazz Festival here back in 2013) and saxophonist Pamela Williams.

You can see Taylor in the first video up above, performing "Awakening" at a gig last August in Columbus, OH. After the jump, you can see a full set by Williams and her band, exact date and location unknown, but seemingly recent.

Then on Friday, July 13, keyboardist Jeff Lorber, saxophonist Everette Harp, and guitarist Paul Jackson Jr. will be the featured performers.

You can see Lorber in the third video, playing "Test Drive" with his trio in April 2018 at a show in Cleveland, and again in the fourth clip, backing up Harp as the saxophonist covers Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On" at a show recorded in 2015 at the Augsburg Smooth Jazz Festival in Germany.

That's followed by a video of Jackson performing "Bayshore Drive" at last year's Algarve Smooth Jazz Festival in Portugal.

The finale show on Saturday, July 14 puts the emphasis on vocals, and will feature St. Louis native Lynne Fiddmont along with R&B crooner Howard Hewett.

Fiddmont can been seen in the sixth clip, performing Stevie Wonder's "All I Do" at a gig in 2012 at Spaghettinis in Seal Beach, CA. (Alas, more recent live video of her seems to be rather scarce online.)

Lastly, you can see two clips of Hewitt. In the first, recorded in 2011 at the Musician's Institute in Los Angeles, he teams up with a band led by Stanley Clarke to perform "I'm For Real," which Hewett and Clarke co-wrote.

Finding more recent video of Hewett with a live band proved to be a challenge, but you can get an idea of what he looks and sounds like these days in the final clip, in which he performs to prerecorded tracks a medley of hits from his former group Shalamar - "Second Time Around" "Make That Move," "There's A Love For Me," and "A Night To Remember" - recorded in January of this year in Little Rock, AR.

Also on Saturday, a separately ticketed after-party will feature a set from St. Louis-born R&B singer Truth Hurts and music from DJ Prince Halim. For more information about Summerset, follow the links for individual dates above or visit their website.

You can see the rest of today's videos after the jump...