So What: Local News, Notes & Links

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

* Tom "Papa" Ray, proprietor of Vintage Vinyl and presenter of the "Soul Selector" program airing Monday afternoons on KDHX (88.1 FM), is hosting a new program on local PBS affiliate Nine Network.

According to a report from the Riverfront Times' Daniel Hill, Papa Ray's Vintage Vinyl Roadshow is "envisioned as a documentary focused on the independent record store as a cultural entity." The show's pilot episode will air on the Nine Network a total of three times starting Thursday, September 3, with the possibility of becoming an ongoing series "if all goes well with the premiere."

* David Sanborn has a new release of old music, a 3-CD set (pictured) titled Anything You Want – The Warner, Reprise, Elektra Years 1975-1999, that compiles favorite material from early in the saxophonist's career.

* From the latest issue of trumpeter Nate Wooley's Sound American magazine, writer Chris Pitsiokos offers "Four Thoughts About Miles Davis's On the Corner."

* Also on the Miles Davis beat, writer Richard Williams of The Blue Moment reviews The Gil Evans Project's recent rerecording of music that Evans arranged for Davis' Sketches of Spain.

So What: Local News, Notes & Links

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

* Saxophonist David Sanborn's new video series "Sanborn Sessions," inspired in part by his turn-of-the-90s NBC show Night Music, is set to debut on the web next week.

Each episode will feature Sanborn (pictured) with a different musical guest or guests, starting on Tuesday, December 3 with singer and keyboardist Kandace Springs.

* The Gil Evans score of "Porgy and Bess" originally recorded in 1959 by Miles Davis was revisited on the final night of the recent EFG London Jazz Festival by a 21-piece band directed by Nick Smart, head of the jazz program at the Royal Academy of Music.

* The story of what singer Jenna Bauer did with the 7,000 piece collection of vinyl records she inherited from her late father is recounted by the Riverfront Times' Christian Schaeffer.

* Singer and pianist Katarra Parson's album-release show tonight at The Dark Room is the subject of feature stories from the St. Louis American's Kenya Vaughn and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's Kevin Johnson. 

Sunday Session: May 12, 2019

Pharoah Sanders

Here's this week's roundup of various music-related items of interest, drawn from StLJN's inboxes, newsfeeds, and assorted other sources:

* The Resurrection of Buddy Bolden (DownBeat)
* Music Sermon: The Quiet Storm Is Still Brewing (Vibe.com)
* Frank Zappa: making a jazz noise (Jazz Journal)
* Bill Frisell is on the hunt for the next musical epiphany (Guitar.com)
* Preserving The House Of A Pioneering Musician — Who We Will Never Hear (NPR)
* The Blues Trail Is A Soulful Sojourn Into Mississippi’s Past (Uproxx.com)
* Wynton Marsalis Chooses His Top 50 Essential Jazz Recordings (Jazz.org)
* ‘New Bottle Old Wine’: The Gil Evans Classic That Gets Better With Age (UDiscoverMusic.com)
* There’s a Musician’s Union. Many Musicians Are Unaware — or Unable to Join (Rolling Stone)
* Herbie Hancock Aims Jazz Day All-Star Concert Towards A World In 'Turmoil' (NPR)
* David Crosby Doubles Down (Shepherd Express)
* Sly and The Family Stone’s ‘Stand!’ Turns 50 | Anniversary Retrospective (Albumism.com)
* Tucked away in Southwest Baltimore: The low-key cool jazz club of your dreams (BaltimoreBrew.com)
* Drummer Terri Lyne Carrington Talks Berklee Institute of Jazz, Gender Justice: 'Gender Equity Is Everybody's Work' (Billboard)
* Barkan, Wiedmaier Team for Keystone Korner Baltimore (DownBeat)
* Joey DeFrancesco and Pharoah Sanders: Meeting of the Spirits (Jazz Times)
* After 50 Years, Inclusive, Locally Focused Spirit of NOLA Festival Persists (DownBeat)
* New Study Finds 73% of Independent Musicians Suffer From Symptoms of Mental Illness (Billboard)
* Before & After: Lewis Porter (Jazz Times)
* Hearing the “Bo Diddley Beat” in Everything (Soundfly.com)
* 50 Years of Jazz Fest: Mickey Hart’s Ghosts of Congo Square (Relix)
* My father recorded young Bob Dylan: How the historic "Minneapolis Party Tape" was made (Salon.com)

Sunday Session: June 10, 2018

John Coltrane

Here's a roundup of various music-related items of interest that have shown up in one of StLJN's various inboxes or feeds over the past week:

* The 21 Best Concert Films of All Time (Paste)
* REVIEW: Art Ensemble of Chicago at Primavera Sound Festival in Barcelona (London Jazz News)
* Kurt Elling: Living the Questions (Jazz Times)
* 'Still A Lot Of Love': Arturo O'Farrill On Cuba-U.S. Artistic Relations (NPR)
* This legendary Utah saxophonist just turned 99 and you can hear him play tonight (Deseret News)
* Truesdell’s Gil Evans Project Recasts Classics at Jazz Standard (DownBeat)
* The chords of the universe (Aeon.co)
* Discover Weakly (TheBaffler.com)
* “Sun Ra Radio” Premieres Online (Jazz Times)
* Vision Festival Offers Bracing Sounds and a Space for Creativity (DownBeat)
* Q&A with Ambrose Akinmusire: Geographies of Influence (Jazziz)
* The club night making classical music dance to a new beat (The Telegraph)
* 20 essential fusion records that have never been more influential (TheVinylFactory.com)
* Bobby Bradford: Musician, Educator, Survivor (AllAboutJazz.com)
* What Was the Point of Elevator Music? (AtlasObscura.com)
* There’s an “Inverse Piano” in Your Head (Scientific American)
* What was the loudest rock band ever? And how loud was that? This infographic explains everything (AJournalOfMusicalThings.com)
* Shemekia Copeland: A Humble 'Queen Of The Blues' (WGLT)
* Motéma Music Fosters Intense Creativity (DownBeat)
* Byrds Co-Founders Plan 'Sweetheart of the Rodeo' 50th Anniversary Tour (Rolling Stone)
* Coltrane’s ‘Lost’ Studio Album Found (DownBeat)
* Hear Woody Shaw and Dexter Gordon On Tour, and On Fire, In Newly Discovered Recordings (WBGO)
* Jalal Mansur Nuriddin: Bidding Farewell To The Schoolyard Bard (NPR)
* Ticketfly Confirms Hack Exposed Personal Information of 27 Million Accounts (Gizmodo)
* Jazz in the Age of Trump: A Roundtable Discussion (Jazziz)
* Spotify Offers Managers, Artists Advances to License Music Directly to Its Streaming Service: Exclusive (Billboard)
* Happy Birthday Prince: A Look At His Legacy, Progressiveness And Royal Badness (Vibe)
* Eddie Henderson’s Cool Collective (DownBeat)
* On 10 Years of the New New-Music Scene, and 30 Years of My Own (Vulture.com)
* Jazz Meets Hip Hop: Soweto Kinch's Singular Path (SFJAZZ.org)
* BBC to Close Iconic Maida Vale Studios (Pro Sound News)
* The Aural Magic of Stanford's Laptop Orchestra (Wired)
* Why repeating words sound like music to your brain (TheVerge.com)
* ‘We Out Here’ Documentary on London Jazz Scene Now Streaming (DownBeat)
* Lorraine Gordon, Guardian Of Legendary Jazz Club, Dies At 95 (NPR)

Miles on Monday: The Sound of Miles Davis

For this week's "Miles on Monday," we reach back all the way to April, 1959 for some truly historic footage of the Miles Davis Quintet (with John Coltrane, Wynton Kelly, Paul Chambers and Jimmy Cobb) augmented by an big band arranged by Gil Evans performing for a TV special called The Sound of Miles Davis.

Recorded the same year Davis released Kind of Blue, this is some of the only footage of the core group of musicians (less Bill Evans and Cannonball Adderley) featured on that landmark album. As such, it's the sort of thing that really should be seen by pretty much anyone claiming to be a Miles Davis fan. The four tunes in the half-hour special are "So What," "The Duke," "Blues for Pablo," and "New Rhumba."

Musicians in addition to Davis and the quintet are Ernie Royal, Clyde Reasinger, Louis Mucci, Johnny Coles, and Emmett Berry (trumpets); Frank Rehak, Jimmy Cleveland, Bill Elton, and Rod Levitt (trombones); Julius Watkins and Bob Northern (French horns); Bill Barber (tuba); Danny Bank (bass clarinet); and Romeo Penque and Eddie Caine (woodwinds).

StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: Summer 2014 jazz film festival, part three

The original plan for this week to post some videos of Spyro Gyra and Mindi Abair, the headliners of the Eco Music Festival that had been scheduled for next Saturday at the Chesterfield Amphitheater.

But since that show was canceled a couple of days ago under somewhat mysterious circumstances, and the first of this year's "fall jazz preview" posts isn't ready yet, we're going to extend our summer jazz film festival for one more week, starting with a thorough look at one of Miles Davis' most important collaborators, the composer, arranger and pianist Gil Evans.

The first video up above is a 1997 documentary film about Evans, who arranged the music for Davis' Sketches of Spain, Miles Ahead, Porgy and Bess, and other recordings in the late 1950s and early '60s.

After the jump, you can see two full shows of Evans' own orchestra. The first is from 1976 in Barcelona, Spain, and featuring Evans on electric piano with a band including Jon Faddis and Lew Soloff (trumpets), Janice Robinson (trombone), Bob Stewart (tuba), George Adams (tenor sax), John Clark (French horn), Pete Levin (synthesizer), Van Manakas (guitar), Mike Richmond (bass) and Sue Evans (drums).

The second was recorded just a couple of month before Evans' death in 1988 at the NYC club Sweet Basil, where the orchestra held forth every Monday night for more than five yeas in the 1980s.

Along with Evans himself, this expanded version of the band including his son Miles Evans, Lew Soloff and Shinzo Ono on trumpets; Dave Taylor and Dave Bargeron (trombones); Alex Foster (tenor sax); Chris Hunter (alto sax), John Clark (French horn), Tom "Bones" Malone (baritone sax, tuba), Gil Goldstein and Pete Levin (synthesizers); Hiram Bullock (guitar); Mark Egan (bass); and Danny Gottlieb (drums).

After that, it's Different Drummer, a brief 1979 documentary about drummer Elvin Jones that was produced and directed by filmmaker Edward Gray; and Earl Hines, a biographical look at the classic jazz pianist from 1975 that was directed by the Scottish TV documentarian Charlie Nairn and photographed by two-time Oscar winner Chris Menges.

We wrap up today's collection of clips with The Sound of Jazz, which was recorded in 1957 for the CBS television series Seven Lively Arts and was one of the first major programs featuring jazz to air on American network television.

The film features a veritable galaxy of jazz stars of the time, including Count Basie, Lester Young, Ben Webster, Billie Holiday, Jo Jones, Coleman Hawkins, Henry "Red" Allen, Vic Dickenson, Pee Wee Russell, Gerry Mulligan, Thelonious Monk, Jimmy Giuffre, and more.

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

StLJN Saturday at the Movies: Miles Davis with the Gil Evans Orchestra playing "Blues for Pablo" and "The Duke"

Our final installment of Saturday videos for 2007 features a couple of vintage clips from perennial StLJN favorite Miles Davis.

Both videos are from the same session in 1959, and feature Davis accompanied by saxophonist John Coltrane, bassist Paul Chambers, drummer Jimmy Cobb, and a fifteen-piece band arranged and conducted by Miles' famed collaborator Gil Evans. The first clip is "Blues for Pablo," an Evans composition, and the second is "The Duke," which was written by pianist Dave Brubeck but here receives a distinctive interpretation from Davis and Evans.