So What: Local News, Notes & Links

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

* The Wee Trio, which includes St. Louis native Dan Loomis on bass, has launched a crowd-funding campaign raising money to record their fifth album. The recording, titled WEE + 3, will feature guest appearances from pianist Fabian Almazán, trumpeter Nicholas Payton, and guitarist Nir Felder.

* Jazz St. Louis' program last week pairing a performance of music from drummer Max Roach's We Insist! The Freedom Now Suite with a discussion of jazz, race, and social justice issues was the subject of a feature story by the St. Louis American's Kenya Vaughn.

* New Music Circle will promote their upcoming 58th season with "an evening of drinks and DJs" from 7:00 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. Wednesday, August 3 at the Tick Tock Tavern, 3459 Magnolia in the Tower Grove East neighborhood. The free event will feature Josh Weinstein and Jeremy Kannapell spinning records, plus raffles for various prizes including CDs, LPs, and tickets to upcoming NMC concerts. Proceeds from drinks purchased during the event will go to support NMC's various programs.

* Pianist Peter Martin's company Open Studio Network has started a new podcast, "The Process," which will feature "interviews with the best players in jazz and beyond." The first episode, with Martin and drummer Gregory Hutchinson (pictured), is online now.

* Saxophonist and educator Harvey Lockhart and the other winners of the 2017 St. Louis Arts Awards were profiled on the website of the Arts and Education Council of Greater St. Louis.

* Legendary singer, dancer and St. Louis native Josephine Baker's favorite places in France were the subject of an article in the New York Times travel section.

* The Regional Arts Commission is accepting applications for the next round of their $20,000 Artist Fellowships through Wednesday, August 10. A total of ten $20,000 fellowships will be awarded to individual St. Louis artists in any discipline as selected by an advisory committee of arts professionals, peers and RAC commissioners. RAC also is offering a workshop on how to apply for the fellowships on Tuesday, August 2 at the Vaughn Cultural Center.

Music Education Monday: Drum clinics with Greg Hutchinson and Ralph Humphrey

As one of the top schools for jazz, Berklee College of Music in Boston benefits from a a steady supply of working professional musicians visiting campus to augment the instruction provided by permanent faculty.

For this week's Music Education Monday,  you can check out some of that extra instruction provided to Berklee percussion students, as we look in via video on drum clinics presented there by the well-known drummers Gregory Hutchinson and Ralph Humphrey (pictured).

A native New Yorker, Hutchinson emerged on the national jazz scene in the early 1990s and rapidly became a first-call drummer working with a wide variety of musicians, including Betty Carter, Ray Brown, Red Rodney, Joe Henderson and Charles Lloyd as well as Joshua Redman, Dianne Reeves, Wynton Marsalis, John Scofield, Roy Hargrove, Diana Krall, Harry Connick Jr, Joshua Redman, Christian McBride, Maria Schneider, the collective band James Farm, and many more. Hutchinson will be back in St. Louis next month to perform with an all-star band at Jazz at the Bistro as part of the venue's 20th anniversary celebration.

Humphrey is based in Los Angeles, with a recording and touring career spanning more than five decades. He's perhaps best known for his work in the 1970s with trumpeter Don Ellis' big band and Frank Zappa, but he's also done thousands of sessions for TV and movie soundtracks, and gigged or recorded with notables including Wayne Shorter, Al Jarreau, Toshiko Akiyoshi and Lou Tabackin, Manhattan Transfer, Natalie Cole, Joe Farrell, Tierney Sutton, Alphonso Johnson, and many others. Humphrey also has been seriously involved in music education, designing the drum program for the Percussion Institute of Technology, where he taught for 16 years, and heading the drum department at the Los Angeles Music Academy.

You can see the videos of both of their Berklee drum clinics after the jump...

StlJN Saturday Video Showcase: Fall 2015 jazz preview, part 1

As the start of the fall presenting season approaches, it's time once again for a video preview of the touring jazz and creative musicians and bands who will be visiting St. Louis in the next few months. Here's a look at who's coming to town during the fall of 2015, presented in chronological order.

Jazz at the Bistro's first touring attraction of the season will be the Dave King Trucking Company, who will perform there on Friday, September 4 and Saturday, September 5.

Although bandleader and drummer King has played the Bistro many times with The Bad Plus, this will be the Trucking Company's debut at the venue. You can hear them in the first video clip up top, playing a piece called "Blue Candy" that was recorded in June, 2010 at the Artists Quarter in St. Paul, MN with King on drums, Erik Fratkze on guitar, Brandon Wozniak on sax, and Adam Linz on bass.

The following week, pianist Monty Alexander will return to the Bistro for the first time to perform with his trio on Wednesday, September 9 and Thursday, September 10. After the jump, you can see a clip of Alexander, bassist John Clayton and drummer Jeff Hamilton playing "Mojo" back in 2013 at the studios of radio station KPLU in Seattle.

A couple of days after that, trumpeter Bobby Shew will be in the area to take part in the festivities surrounding the unveiling of the Miles Davis commemorative statue in Alton, IL. Shew will play with drummer Montez Coleman's band after the ceremony on Saturday, September 12 at Elijah P's in Alton. In today's third video, he can be seen performing his own composition "The Red Snapper" earlier this summer with the Airmen of Note big band.

Next up, Jazz St. Louis will celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Bistro from Wednesday, September 23 through Saturday, September 26 with a band assembled especially for the occasion, featuring musicians who have been frequent visitors to the Bistro over the years as bandleader or co-leaders - specifically, bassist Christian McBride, pianist Cyrus Chestnut, drummer Gregory Hutchinson, guitarist Russell Malone, trumpeter Terell Stafford, and saxophonist Tim Warfield.

Since the band has been put together just for this occasion, for purposes of this preview you'll have to settle for seeing clips of the musicians individually (with one exception). So, today's fourth video shows McBride's trio with pianist Christian Sands and drummer Ulysses Owens, Jr. playing - "Fried Pies" earlier this year, also at KPLU.

That's followed by Chestnut's trio playing Charlie Parker's "What Price Love," recorded earlier this year at Shanghai Jazz in Madison, NJ; and then a clip of a drum solo by Greg Hutchinson, recorded last year at the Drum Daze expo in Columbus, OH.

The seventh video shows Russell Malone fronting his own quartet at the 2009 Jazz at Marciac festival in France, playing the Duke Ellington standard "Caravan."

Last but not least, Stafford and Warfield - old friends who grew up near each other in Pennsylvania, and frequently share the same bandstand - can be heard in the final clip performing "The Touch of Your Lips" at the 2006 Jazz Baltica festival in Salzau, Germany, assisted by Matt Wilson on drums, Martin Wind on bass, and the late pianist Mulgrew Miller.

Look for part 2 of the Fall 2015 jazz preview in this space next week. You can see the rest of today's videos after the jump...

StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: Paying tribute to Ray Brown

This week, let's take a look at some videos previewing the tribute to bassist Ray Brown that will play at Jazz at the Bistro starting next Wednesday, March 16 through Saturday, March 19. The band is led by bassist Christian McBride, who was a protege of Brown's, and includes pianist Benny Green and drummer Greg Hutchinson, who both worked with Brown as up-and-coming musicians during the 1990s.

Unfortunately, there don't seem to be any readily available clips online of the McBride-Green-Hutchinson troika, so instead, we've got four videos of McBride, Green and drummer Karriem Riggins doing a tribute to Brown last September at the Detroit Jazz Festival. These were all shot by an audience member with a camcorder, so they're not broadcast quality, but the audio is more than adequate to convey the trio's sound and overall approach.

Up above, you can see and hear them play "Captain Bill," a blues written by Brown as a tribute to Count Basie. Below, there's a version "Li'l Darlin," which was made famous initially by Basie and later recorded by Brown, and renditions of two more Brown compositions, "Gumbo Hump," which evokes a New Orleans vibe, and "Bass Face," the title track to a 1993 CD of Brown's.

As for the subject of the tribute, though Ray Brown may not be as well known outside the jazz world as seemingly ubiquitous tribute subjects such as Miles Davis, John Coltrane or Thelonious Monk, his stellar career and lasting influence on generations of bassists certainly are worth celebrating.

Ray Brown was born in 1926 in Pittsburgh, and made his first major breakthrough at age 20 when he got a job playing with Dizzy Gillespie. He spent five years with Gillespie during the height of the bebop era, during which time he also met and married Ella Fitzgerald, though the union lasted only until 1952. Brown also appeared during those years in Jazz at the Philharmonic concerts, through which he met pianist Oscar Peterson, with whom he would go on to play from 1951 to 1966.

After leaving Peterson, Brown moved to Los Angeles, where he became a manager and promoter as well as a performer. He worked with singers including Frank Sinatra, Billy Eckstine, Tony Bennett, Sarah Vaughan, and Nancy Wilson, and composed music and played in orchestras for TV and movies. Brown also managed artists such as the Modern Jazz Quartet and Quincy Jones; produced concerts at the Hollywood Bowl; and wrote jazz bass instruction books, some of which still are used today.

Later in his career, Brown performed and recorded with the The L.A. Four, vibraphonist Milt Jackson, pianist Gene Harris and others as well as with and his own trios. Brown died in 2002, but his big tone, musical versatility, and always-swinging support for his collaborators set a standard for mainstream jazz bassists that still applies today.

For more on Ray Brown, check out this article from a couple of years ago on Jazz.com, in which Christian McBride selects and comments on 12 of his favorite tracks featuring Brown on bass. Also, read this remembrance of a late career gig by the bassist; pore over transcripts of his solos on "Li'l Darlin," "Au Privave" and "Night Train"; or just check out some of the many videos of Brown's performances that have surfaced on YouTube.