Jazz this week: Sara Gazarek, Gino Robair, the St. Louis Stompers, and more

With warmer weather in the offing for St. Louis this weekend, it should be a good time to get out and hear some live music. Here's what's going on in jazz and creative music over the next few days in St. Louis:

We've got two touring artists of note in town this week, one of whom is the delightful singer Sara Gazarek (pictured), who's back to perform at Jazz at the Bistro through Saturday. Gazarek is a standout in the crowded field of young female jazz singers, an exemplary vocal technician who swings effortlessly and brings a fresh, unaffected approach to the tunes she chooses and/or co-writes with her pianist, Josh Nelson. For more on Gazarek, check out StLJN's past coverage here and here.

The other headliner is improvising percussionist and composer Gino Robair, who's in St. Louis under the auspices of New Music Circle for a couple of events at St. Louis Community College - Forest Park's Mildred E. Bastian Performing Arts Center. Robair will do a free percussion workshop on Friday afternoon, and then a performance of his improv opera "I, Norton" on Saturday night.

In addition to these two well-known visitors, we've got some noteworthy shows featuring local musicians, too. This evening, guitarist William Lenihan, pianist Kim Portnoy and drummer Roger Guth team up for a free concert at Washington University as part of the Jazz at Holmes series, while the Lemp Neighborhood Arts Center has a four-band bill of musicians working in various aspects of the free improv/electronics/ambient/noise genre with EXTRA LIFE, Ghost Ice, Exercise, and 7th epicycle.

On Friday, saxophonist Tim Cunningham brings his smooth jazz sound to Peppertini's in Chesterfield, and on Saturday, Jazz Renaissance does their monthly gig at Riddle's in University City.

Then on Sunday afternoon, the St. Louis Jazz Club will presents the St. Louis Stompers in a concert of traditional jazz at the Moolah Shrine Center, and a whole bunch of local blues and jazz musicians will put on a benefit for bassist Gus Thornton at BB's Jazz, Blues and Soups.

The Sessions Big Band is back at BB's on Monday for another of their recurring gigs there, and on Tuesday, the Jazz St. Louis CD Listening Club has its meeting at Borders in Brentwood, this month featuring the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra's Shawn Weil and Jazz St. Louis executive director Gene Dobbs Bradford discussing Charlie Parker With Strings. Afterwards, saxophonist Bennett Wood and his group will be playing at The Gramophone as part of the free Tuesday night jazz series the club co-sponsors with Jazz St. Louis.

For more jazz-related events this weekend and beyond, please visit the St. Louis Jazz Notes Calendar.

(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.)

Gino Robair presenting free workshop on Friday, March 6

While he's town to perform his improv opera "I, Norton" on Saturday night at St. Louis Community College - Forest Park, percussionist Gino Robair (pictured) also will lead a free workshop at the college from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. on Friday, March 6.

The workshop, like Saturday's concert, will take place in the theater at the Mildred E. Bastian Performing Arts Center, 5600 Oakland Ave on the SLCC-FP campus. Here's the description sent out by New Music Circle, which is co-sponsoring Robair's St. Louis sojourn:

"Join renowned percussionist Gino Robair for a unique and free workshop! Don’t miss this opportunity to learn about the use of extended percussion techniques and structured improvisation. Attendees will explore a variety of group improvisation strategies developed by John Zorn, Butch Morris, and the ROVA Saxophone Quartet including the use of hand cues, developing collage form, and creating/using graphic scores."

Robair also will appear live today on KDHX (88.1 FM) to do an interview and solo performance on bobEE sweet's program "Uncontrollable Urge," which is broadcast from 10:00 am to noon.

Last but not least, I see that the charming, urbane and perspicacious Stefene Russell of St. Louis magazine has done a Robair-related entry on her Look/Listen blog, which you can check out here.

Notes from the Net: Ian Carr mourned, Linda Presgrave reviewed, Eric Person on the road, plus news, reviews and more

Here's this week's compilation of news and links related to jazz, improvisation, and creative music in St. Louis, including musicians from the Gateway City, recent visitors, and coming attractions - now with even more boldfacing!

* Alas, the only significant Miles Davis-related link this week is to the sad news that the British jazz trumpeter and writer Ian Carr died this past Wednesday at age 75. Long considered one of the top trumpet players on the British scene, Carr wrote a well-regarded biography of Miles and was influenced significantly by Davis' music. His band Nucleus made some fine electric jazz/fusion recordings that still hold up well today. R.I.P., Mr. Carr.

* On a much happier note, here's a review of pianist and St. Louis expat Linda Presgrave's new CD Inspiration, via AllAboutJazz.com, which says, in part: "Whether performing original compositions or a cover, Presgrave and her accompanists are in top form...Inspiration doesn't just honor musicians "who happen to be women"; it is music for its own sake."

* Saxophonist and St. Louis native Eric Person (pictured) and his band Meta-Four will be in the Quad Cities on March 15 to play the Third Sunday Jazz Matinee & Workshop Series at the Redstone Room in Davenport, IA, and they got a nice writeup in the local paper, which you can see online here.

* The Ars Nova Workshop in Philadelphia just presented the second part of their tribute to alto saxophonist, composer and former St. Louisan Julius Hemphill at Philly's World Cafe. The concert featured Hemphill's music for big band and sax sextet, as performed by a big band including multi-reedman and St. Louis native Marty Ehrlich.

* DJ and blogger LeRoy "The JazzCat" Downs was one of the hosts of the recent Playboy Jazz Cruise, produced by St. Louis-based Jazz Cruises LLC. You can read his account of the voyage, which included St. Louis' own Peter Martin and Montez Coleman among the many musicians on board, and see lots of photos - all rated "SFW - Safe For Work," in case you were concerned about the potential presence of scantily clad Bunnies - here.

* Turning to the "coming attractions" file: Percussionist Gino Robair will be in St. Louis on Saturday to perform at Forest Park Community College - see this post for details - but before he gets here, he'll be visiting Detroit on Tuesday to play a gig with Marko Novachcoff, Joel Peterson, Piotr Michalowski, Mike Khoury and James Cornish at the Kerrytown Concert House.

* Guitarist Mike Stern, who will be in St. Louis from April 29 to May 2 with the Yellowjackets to play at Jazz at the Bistro, recently co-led a gig at NYC's Iridium with saxophonist Kenny Garrett, who, like Stern, worked with Miles Davis in the latter part of the trumpeter's career. You can read a review of the Stern/Garrett show here.

* Catching up with news of recent visitors, it seems that Martino Unstrung, the documentary about guitarist Pat Martino that was shown here in St. Louis last November during the St. Louis International Film Festival, is finally getting a New York premiere on March 15 at the Rubin Museum of Art, Martino himself was in St. Louis last month to play at Jazz at the Bistro.

* And while still on the subject of musicians that have recently played at the Bistro, veteran pianist Cedar Walton, who played the club last fall, just did a sextet concert at the Kumble Theater on Long Island University's Brooklyn campus, which was reviewed for the New York Times by Nate Chinen here.

* Chinen and the NYT this past week also did an article on pianist Jason Moran (who did a concert at the Missouri Museum here in St. Louis last October) and his participation in this weekend's 50th anniversary tribute to Thelonious Monk's landmark Town Hall concert. For more on the Monk tribute concert, see this post from Doug Ramsey's Rifftides.

* Last but not least, many of those who caught Return to Forever's reunion tour when they played the Fox Theatre last June may be glad to know many of the shows on the tour were recorded, resulting in a new RFT live album called Returns that will released on March 17.

StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: Improvisations from Gino Robair

This week, let's take a look at some video clips featuring percussionist, composer, conceptualist and record label operator Gino Robair, who's coming to St. Louis to perform under the auspices of New Music Circle next Saturday, March 7 on the main stage of the Mildred E. Bastian Center for the Performing Arts at St. Louis Community College-Forest Park.

Based in San Francisco, Robair has been a force on the international free improv scene since the 1980s, both for his own playing and composing and for his entrepreneurial work as head of Rastascan, a record label he formed to document his own music as well as that of other free improvising musicians.

For his St. Louis gig, Robair will be performing "I, Norton," which is described both as an "improv opera" and "an opera in real time" based on the eccentric story of Joshua Norton, a San Franciscan who in 1859 declared himself "Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico."

The piece uses a combination of conventional notation, a graphic score, and conducted and free improvisation, and the St. Louis performance will feature 20-piece ensemble of musicians, most recruited locally by NMC. There is a short video excerpt online from a performance last October of "I, Norton," which for some reason I can't seem to successfully embed here, but you can watch it by following this link.

Right here on this page, we've got some videos that showcase Robair's improvisational percussion skills in a couple of different contexts. The first clip features an improvised duet by Robair and tuba player Carl Ludwig Hubsch, while the next two document part of a performance by Robair and saxophonist John Butcher last November at the Vortex Jazz Club in London.

Last but not least is a quick taste of Robair playing solo (along with a brief bit of conversation) that's excerpted from Noisy People, a feature-length documentary about San Francisco area improvisational musicians.