For your Sunday reading, here are some interesting music-related items that have hit StLJN's inbox over the past week:
* A Radical Plan to Save the Big Music Labels: Shrink the Big Music Labels (ReCode)
* A Classic 1970s Synthesizer Is Reborn for the 21st Century (Wired)
* The Quest for Fire Music: Documenting the Free Jazz Revolution (New York Observer)
* The wonders of the internet – listen to John Cage and Morton Feldman in conversation (The Guardian UK)
* The 100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time (Rolling Stone)
* Does ‘Rolling Stone’ Know It Declared Songwriting Dead? (FlavorWire)
* Review: Diana Krall aces jazz, struggles with pop in Oakland (Contra Costa Times)
* The Least Historically Accurate Music Biopics Ever Made (Vulture)
* Gene Kelly as jazz icon: Widow’s program celebrates his art (SF Gate)
* Curtis Institute and the case of Nina Simone (Philadelphia Inquirer)
* Jazz Heavyweight Terence Blanchard Won't Turn a Blind Eye (Mother Jones)
* Spirit Of Protest Spun From Blues And Avant-garde (Classical Voice America)
* TO IRONY AND BEYOND (MoreIntelligentLife.com)
* 'We’ll retire at 106. What else can we do?' The rockers who won't call it a day (The Guardian UK)
* Organized chaos - A Q&A with Alvin Fielder (Arkansas Times)
* Hurricane Katrina and the Healing Power of Jazz (Time)
* 10 Years After Katrina, New Orleans' Brass Bands March On (NPR)
* The 250 Best-Selling Musicians of All Time (Digital Music News)
* How 'Playola' Is Infiltrating Streaming Services: Pay for Play Is 'Definitely Happening' (Billboard)
* A Rational Conversation: Does Anybody Even Have Time For An 80-Minute Album? (NPR)
* Studies Show that the Brains of Jazz, Folk and Classical Musicians Are Not Equal (Mic.com)
* From Nation Time to management time (The Wire UK)
* Javon Jackson Still Learns from the Masters (DownBeat)
* How Widespread Is Ghostwriting in Music and How OK With It Should You Be? (Vice.com)
* How John Birch helped inspire a Dizzy Gillespie presidential run (Boston Globe)
This weekend's schedule of jazz and creative music in St. Louis isn't as jam-packed as the last two, but there still are a number of noteworthy performances happening over the next few days. Let's go the highlights...
As it happens, the best-known musicians in town this week are performing under the somewhat generic-sounding name The Jazz Collective on Friday and Saturday at Jazz at the Bistro.
The all-star band includes drummer Jimmy Cobb, pianist Cedar Walton and bassist Buster Williams, three veteran sidemen who have worked with some of the most important jazz musicians of the past 50 years, and saxophonist Javon Jackson, who, though a generation younger than his bandmates, has some impressive credits of his own, including a partnership with keyboardist Les McCann and time in Cobb's Miles Davis tribute, the So What band. Given that Williams also was part of So What, don't be surprised if the group does some songs associated with Davis, along with original material and perhaps some favorites from the hard-bop repertoire.
You can read more about Jimmy Cobb and see videos of all four Jazz Collective members here. Also, Jazz St. Louis is running a two-for-one special on tickets, and you can get the details on that offer here.
Update - 5:20 p.m., 4/21/11: The Funky Butt Brass Band has just posted a message to their Facebook page saying that the Brandt's gig has been canceled by the venue.
On Saturday afternoon, The Sound Clinic will play the music of Ornette Coleman for the Nu-Art Series at Metropolitan Gallery. The group is co-led by trumpeter and Nu-Art Series director George Sams and Bay Area saxophonist Lewis Jordan, with Chicago's Yosef Ben Israel and St. Louisan Charles "Bobo" Shaw on drums.
On Saturday night, saxophonist and St. Louis native Eric Person returns home to front a trio with bassist Willem von Hombracht and drummer Demarius Hicks at Robbie's House of Jazz. Person's most recent CD The Grand Illusion was released in the fall of 2010, and his last performance here in St. Louis was back in 2009 at the Ambassador Events Center.
For more jazz-related events in St. Louis this weekend and beyond, 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.)
The advertised ticket price is $35 each, but with the discount, buyers get two tickets for $35. The discount is available for both the 8:30 p.m. and 10:15 p.m. sets. Ticket buyers will get the best seats available at time of purchase. To take advantage of the offer, call Jazz St. Louis at 314-289-4030 and use the coupon code FC422.
This week, we train our video spotlight on the veteran drummer Jimmy Cobb, who will be in St. Louis next week to perform on Friday and Saturday at Jazz at the Bistro. He'll be playing with saxophonist Javon Jackson, pianist Cedar Walton and bassist Buster Williams in a group billed as the Jazz Collective.
Cobb, who turned 82 in January, has been the subject of renewed public attention the past couple of years as the only surviving participant of the band that recorded Miles Davis' historic album Kind of Blue. For the 50th anniversary of the album's release in 2009, Cobb assembled the So What Band, which included Jackson and Williams as well as trumpeter Wallace Roney, alto saxophonist Vincent Herring and pianist Larry Willis, to perform Davis' music.
However, playing with Davis is far from Cobb's only claim to fame. The Washington DC native has performed with many other jazz greats in his 60+ year career, notably John Coltrane, Wes Montgomery, Cannonball Adderly, Wynton Kelly, Stan Getz, and Joe Henderson, plus dozens more. Though Cobb rarely plays anything particularly loud, fast or flashy, he's always been greatly appreciated by fellow musicians and fans alike for for his steady time-keeping, swinging feel and encyclopedic knowledge.
Today's first clip features the So What band in 2009 at the Bridgestone Music Festival in Sao Paulo, Brazil, performing the first part of "All Blues"; you'll find part two down below. Below that, you can see Cobb, Walton and bassist David Williams doing "Body and Soul" with a brisk Latin feel, recorded in 2005 at the JazzAldia Festival in Spain.
After that, there are two very short videos of Cobb demonstrating his concise and decidedly unfussy style of soloing; an interview with Cobb, which seems to have been recorded last year and runs about 15 minutes long; and a short clip of Cobb and fellow drummer Butch Miles hanging out a drum shop in NYC and talking music.
Proving that you can't keep a good recurring feature down, we once again bring you Notes from the Net, a compilation of short news bits related to musicians from St. Louis, musicians who will soon visit (or have recently visited) the Gateway City; and assorted other items of interest. The plan this time is to try to make NFTN a more-or-less regular Sunday feature, providing material suitable for perusal during either idle weekend hours or Monday morning's coffee break. And so, without further ado:
* We start this installment, as is the tradition, with a Miles Davis-related item, as the NPR show Morning Edition recently ran a story called "Between Takes: The Kind Of Blue Sessions" featuring excerpts from Ashley Khan's liner notes for the album's 50th anniversary reissue. Listen to the mix of in-studio dialog from the musicians, Khan's commentary, and musical examples here.
* On Thursday, February 26, Philadelphia's Ars Nova Workshopseries will present a Composer Portrait concert at the city's World Cafe featuring the music of former St. Louisan Julius Hemphill (pictured) as performed by the Warriors of the Wonderful Sound, an 18-member big band led by multi-instrumentalist and St. Louis native Marty Ehrlich. Ehrlich also was part of last week's Oliver Lake big band gig at NYC's Jazz Gallery.
* Turning to news from the "coming attractions" file, in April bassist Victor Wooten is openingWooten Woods, a new 150 acre site on the Duck River near Nashville, TN for the "bass/nature camp" he and his family have been running since the year 2000. Wooten will be in St. Louis to play The Pageant on Friday, March 13.
* No doubt hoping for a taste of some of that sweet, sweet cash that gets spent every year for Valentine's Day, Boney James is releasing a new CD, Send One Your Love, on February 3. The smooth jazz saxophonist formerly known as James Oppenheim will play The Pageant on Thursday, March 25.
* Al Jarreau will be in St. Louis to sing at the Touhill Performing Arts Center on Friday, February 13, but this past weekend, he, Kevin Mahogany and The Godfathers of Groove, the Cyrus Chestnut Trio, and St. Louis area native Bonnie Bramlett were among the performers at the seventeenth annual "All That Jazz" weekend held at The Grove Park Inn Resort and Spa in Asheville, NC.
* Saxophonist and composer Benny Golson, another recent visitor to the Bistro, celebrated his 80th birthday this past week with a new album on Concord Jazz. For more Golson, check out this interview and excerpts from the CD via NPR's Weekend Edition; this post at WFIU's Night Lights blog, with an archive of the program's Golson tribute plus related info and links; and Doug Ramsey's appreciation of Golson, with videos.
* Saxophonist Dave Liebman, who played Washington University's Jazz at Holmes series in November, was interviewed before a recent performance in New Hampshire. Also, the New York Timesreviewed a recent Liebman NYC performance at NYC's Birdland with a quintet that included Randy Brecker on trumpet, Billy Hart on drums and Marc Copland on piano. (Copland will be in St. Louis on Friday, February 13 to play a trio concert at the 560 Music Center.)
* Last but not least, following up on a previous post here about adding support for the arts to the stimulus bill currently being considered by Congrees, via New Music ReBlog: The Performing Arts Alliance is alerting everyone that Congress is still debating whether or not to include the National Endowment for the Arts in the stimulus bill, officially known as the American Reinvestment Recovery Act of 2009.
Under the House of Representatives plan, the NEA will receive a $50 million supplement to further the arts, but under the Senate’s plan, the NEA is not included. The Performing Arts Alliance has sent out mass emails encouraging everyone to write their Senator, and have even set up a way to do it electronically. "In a time when the world’s view of the United States is less than favorable, we need artists now more than ever to contribute to the world’s culture as a whole," says the PAA. "Submitting the electronic letter takes about five minutes to complete and is very user friendly, so please take action today and help further the good in American culture."
On the same subject, while noting in his monthly big band report that the Toledo Jazz Orchestra recently suspended all concert activities, AllAboutJazz.com's Jack Bowers makes the case for increased support of the arts :
"In times of economic stress, the arts (excepting perhaps the cinema) are among the first things to be sacrificed on the altar of belt-tightening. Those who rely on the arts to help maintain some semblance of sanity in otherwise troubled times know the opposite should be true, but their voices are weak and ineffectual in the face of fiscal disarray. And so there will be less music (of substance), less dance, less theatre (some Broadway shows already are closing the doors while others are barely alive and kicking). Unless people have discretionary money to spend on such pursuits, many are doomed to failure, especially as philanthropic grants are also drying up.
Let us hope the situation is temporary, and that the arts will someday soon regain their lost footing and flourish again. It is something to look forward to."
(Edited 2/11/09 to correct the venue for the Al Jarreau concert.)
There's lots going on in jazz and creative music this week in St. Louis, and so we bring you StLJN's weekly highlights post slightly earlier than usual to perhaps better help facilitate some advance planning.
One of the week's major attractions is the team-up of pianist and singer Les McCann (pictured) and saxophonist Javon Jackson, who will perform Wednesday through Saturday at Jazz at the Bistro. Both men previously have led their own bands at the Bistro, but their current collaboration, dubbed "Swiss Movement Revisited" in honor of McCann's famed partnership with the late saxophonist Eddie Harris, will be making its St. Louis debut.
Though McCann, who turned 73 last month, and Jackson, who's 43, are from different generations, they seem like a natural musical match - both men have made a lot of groove-oriented music over the course of their respective careers, but both also have shown a proclivity for occasional detours into more adventurous and/or eccentric territory. For some video of McCann and Jackson together, see this post from last Saturday. You may also enjoy perusing this interview Jackson did with StLJN back in 2005.
Also returning to St. Louis this week for a four-night stand is songwriter and poet Fran Landesman, who's performing a cabaret show called "The Gaslight Square Years" beginning Wednesday and running through Saturday at the Gaslight Theater, 356 N. Boyle in the Central West End. Landesman is something of a St. Louis legend, having (with her husband Jay) operated the Crystal Palace nightclub, one of the key venues during Gaslight Square's heyday in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Landesman also co-wrote (with pianist Tommy Wolf) the musical The Nervous Set, which ran briefly on Broadway and yielded the frequently recorded tune "Spring Can Really Hang You Up The Most." The St. Louis Beacon's Bob Duffy, a former Post-Dispatch writer who knew her way back in the day, has a feature story about Landesman and her show here.
UPDATE, 11:35 p.m., 10/23/08 - 52nd City's Thomas Crone blogs his impressions of Landesman's opening night performance here.
Elsewhere in town, NYC-based multi-intrumentalist Cooper-Moore, who plays original jazz- and blues-influenced music on both conventional and self-invented instruments, will perform Saturday at Joe's Cafe and Sunday at the Scott Joplin House State Historic Site's Rosebud Cafe. Cooper-Moore has roots in the 1970s avant garde and loft jazz scene, but since then he's forged his own distinctive musical path. For more on Cooper-Moore's performances, see these twoposts. You also can see an excerpt from a Cooper-Moore improv with bassist William Parker in the embedded video window below.
In addition to these distinguished visitors, St. Louis' local musicians also have much to offer this week, starting on Thursday when saxophonist Dave Stone and pianist Adam Maness (of Erin Bode's group and Orange) perform a free concert for the Jazz at Holmes series at Washington University. If you're still in the mood for more music after Stone and Maness, you can head over to Brandt's in the nearby Delmar Loop and catch the gypsy jazz stylings of Sandy Weltman and Hot Club Caravan.
On Friday, the Legacy Jazz Quintet, led by pianist Phil Dunlap and trumpeter Anthony Wiggins, will do a free performance in the St. Louis Art Museum's Griggs Gallery, while singer, pianist and saxophonist Hugh "Peanuts" Whalum plays at Brandt's.
Then on Saturday, guitarist William Lenihan's quartet will do a free concert at the Kemper Museum on the Wash U. campus as part of the ongoing series accompanying the museum's current "Birth of the Cool" exhibit.
Sunday evening brings two more events of interest, starting with a performance by guitarist Matthew Von Doran's trio, featuring Nick Jost on bass and Miles Vandiver on drums, at Music Folk in Webster Groves. (UPDATE - 11:50 p.m., 10/22/08: Von Doren emailed to say that his show Sunday at Music Folk has been canceled, but will be rescheduled at a later date.)
That same night, the 45th Oliver Sain Soul Reunion will take place at the Sheldon Concert Hall, featuring blues and soul from singers Renee Smith, Roland Johnson, Mae Wheeler, Skeet Rogers, Uvee Hayes and Beau Shelby as well as a goodly helping of Sain's funky instrumental compositions as played by the current Oliver Sain Revue. Dan Durchholz has more on Sain's legacy and this year's show in an article for the St. Louis Beacon, found here. (Full disclosure: Yr. humble editor is a member of said Revue, and will be at the keyboards Sunday night at the Sheldon.)
On Monday morning, Red Lehr and the Old St. Louis Levee Band, featuring pianist Pat Joyce, will do a "Coffee Concert" of traditional jazz at the Sheldon. (They'll repeat the program at another performance on Tuesday morning.)
On Monday evening, the annual TKT Memorial Scholarship Concert takes place at Webster University's Winifred Moore Auditorium. This year's event pays tribute to the musical legacies of Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, and Billy Eckstine, with featured performers including singers Jeanne Trevor, Sherri Drake, and Eddie Eaton; pianists Marion Miller, Carolbeth True, and Kim Portnoy; guitarists Steve Schenkel and Tom Byrne; Paul DeMarinis on tenor sax; and the rhythm section of Willem von Hombracht on bass and Kevin Gianino on drums. Also on Monday evening, the Sessions Big Band continues their ongoing series of gigs at BB's Jazz, Blues and Soups downtown.
(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.)
This week's videos feature keyboardist Les McCann and saxophonist Javon Jackson, who will be in St. Louis next week to perform Wednesday, October 22 through Saturday, October 25 at Jazz at the Bistro. Their team-up is billed as "Swiss Movement Revisited," a reference to McCann's collaboration with the late saxophonist Eddie Harris and the famous live album the two recorded in 1969 at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland.
In part because their collaboration is relatively recent, there's not a whole lot of footage online showing Jackson and McCann playing together, but let's take a look at what is out there. First up is an excerpt from a recent performance at the Deer Valley Jazz Festival in Park City, Utah (also the home of the Sundance Film Festival). This clip apparently comes from some sort of promo for the Deer Valley fest, so there's also some interview footage with an audience member before the music starts.
The second clip features Jackson and McCann playing a tune called "Fun Time", composed by bassist Kenny Davis, at a show in May at the Dakota Jazz Club in Minneapolis. The video quality is rough, as it's from a cellphone camera. The third clip was shot around the same time, and shows McCann and Jackson on a visit to the High School for the Performing Arts in St. Paul, MN, where they interact with and listen to some student performers and then play a bit themselves. And finally, as a reminder of the collaboration that helped inspire the McCann/Jackson pairing, the fourth video is a vintage clip showing McCann and Eddie Harris performing the most famous song they recorded together, "Compared to What".
Jazz St. Louis has made available two more podcasts in their ongoing series.
The third installment in the series features an interview with JSL director of education Phil Dunlap, and can be heard here. The fourth and latest podcast interview to go online features saxophonist Javon Jackson, who will be in St. Louis next week to perform with pianist Les McCann at Jazz at the Bistro. That podcast can be heard here.
JSL Web guru Adam Roach reports that the organization's site now has a new community section that will serve as a library for the series of podcasts, a soon-to-be-added set of photo galleries, and other materials. You can go directly to the list of available podcasts here. (As a result of the site remodeling, the links previously provided here to past interviews with Tony DeSare and Cedar Walton have changed. You now can find the DeSare podcast here, and the Walton podcast here.)
Users can also subscribe to the Jazz St. Louis podcast feed using iTunes or any podcast software using this link, and the JSL podcasts also are available now through the Apple iTunes store.
It's now officially summer time, and the linkin' is easy...to yet another collection of news bits about jazz musicians with a St. Louis connection, recent visitors and coming attractions, pus assorted other items of interest:
* First up, some links related to the Miles Davis-inspired project Miles From India, starting with another review of the two-CD set, written by ContemporaryJazz.com's John Luciano. The CDs have also spawned a limited series of concerts, including one in Los Angeles, reviewed here, and one in San Francisco that inspired an article about how the jazz now is incorporating musical influences from all over the world, Last but not least, AllAboutJazz.com has an interview about the project with former Davis sideman, guitarist Pete Cosey (pictured).
* The film blog Cinema Styles recently had a nice appreciation of saxophonist and St. Louis native Oliver Nelson's film and TV scoring, with an accompanying .mp3 of his composition "A Typical Day in New York."
* Saxophonist Oliver Lake is featured in Breakin' Glass, a new book in the Photonality Jazz Series
* Composer, sound artist and St. Louis native Ben Manley is taking part in NYC performance space Roulette's annual Mixology Festival, which focuses on new and unusual uses of technology in music.
* Here's a review of No Strangers Here, bassist Ben Wolfe's new CD from the St. Louis-based MAXJAZZ label, and a review of Wolfe's recent gig at NYC's Jazz Standard.
* Check out these two interviews with saxophonist John Ellis, who guests on the new Erin Bode CD The Little Garden - one in print from AllAboutJazz.com, the other on radio with blogger and DJ LeRoy "The Jazzcat" Downs.
* The Return to Forever reunion tour, which came through St. Louis last week for a date at the Fox Theatre, is getting lots of press, starting with news that group's two-CD Anthology has been released; the collection gets an AllAboutJazz.com "extended analysis" here. Also, check out reviews of the band's shows in Denver, Salt Lake City, and Los Angeles, and this interview with drummer Lenny White in Drum Magazine
* Since playing at Jazz at the Bistro last October, bassist and singer Esperanza Spalding's star has contined to rise. She recently was interviewed on NPR's All Things Considered, and the New York Times has reviewed her new CD.
* Guitarist and singer John Pizzarelli, who's performed in St. Louis at both the Bistro and the Sheldon Concert Hall , has released a new CD devoted to the songs of Richard Rodgers
* Singer Paula West will perform at the Sheldon next season; here's a review of her recent gig in Charleston, SC.
* Trumpeter Rick Braun and saxophonist Richard Elliot have been added to the lineup of this fall's Dave Koz Cruise, produced by St. Louis-based Jazz Cruises LLC. Braun, Elliot and Koz all will perform at The Pageant this summer.
* Pianist Les McCann and saxophonist Javon Jackson, who will team up for a four-night stand at Jazz at the Bistro in October, were a last-minute replacement for pianist McCoy Tyner at the jazz festival earlier this month in Telluride, CO.
* The National Endowment for the Arts has announced its 2009 Jazz Masters honorees, including guitarist and singer George Benson, drummer Jimmy Cobb, alto saxophonist Lee Konitz, guitarist and harmonica player Toots Thielemans and trumpeter Snooky Young. Recording engineer Rudy Van Gelder will receive the 2009 A.B. Spellman NEA Jazz Masters Award for Jazz Advocacy.
* Last but not least, composer and blogger Darcy James Argue recently had a couple of insightful and amusingposts about the phenomenon of "fan service," which he defines as "a marker or signifier that serves no legitimate aesthetic purpose, but is there to stroke those in the in-crowd while simultaneously alienating even the most sophisticated and open-minded newbies."
After a couple of relatively slow weeks to start the new year, this week's musical offerings include several touring jazz performers playing on St. Louis stages. Let's go to the highlights:
Saxophonist Javon Jackson's Superband, featuring former Miles Davis sideman Jimmy Cobb on drums and Ronnie Matthews on piano, performs at Jazz at the Bistro starting tonight and continuing through Saturday. Jackson's recent recordings have been compared by some critics to the 1970s CTI releases from players such as Stanley Turrentine and Grover Washington Jr., and while Jackson (pictured) definitely can bring the funk when the situation calls for it, he also can play modern, hard bop and straight-ahead swinging jazz very well. This week's engagement likely will include some of all those styles, perhaps with a bit more straight-ahead playing than on some gigs due to the most welcome presence of Cobb, who was the drummer on Miles Davis' landmark Kind of Blue.
On Friday and Saturday, trumpeter Chris Botti plays the Touhill Performing Arts Center. I wrote a Critic's Pick about Botti for this week's Riverfront Times, and you can read it online here.
Also on Friday, the Pablo Ziegler Quintet for New Tango with special guest singer Claudia Acuna performs at the Edison Theatre on the Washington University campus. It's not clear from the publicity just how large a role Acuna has in this production, but from what I can tell, Ziegler, who worked with tango legend Astor Piazzolla, certainly seems worth hearing in his own right.
UPDATE - 11:55 p.m., 1/16/08 - Terry Perkins interviewed Ziegler for an article in Thursday's Post-Dispatch, elucidating the pianist's connection with Piazzolla and answering my question about Acuna: she'll sing seven songs with Ziegler's group. Read the whole article here.
On Sunday, BAG returns to the Scott Joplin House State Historic Site to pay tribute to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. with a program called "One for King," featuring performances from the BAG Trio, poet Michael Castro, and more. Admission is free, and the concert is billed as being "family friendly."
For more local jazz-related events, please see 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.)
Saxophonist Javon Jackson, who's performing next week at Jazz at the Bistro with a band that includes former Miles Davis drummer Jimmy Cobb, was interviewed by Terry Perkins for an article in Thursday's Post-Dispatch. You can read the story online here.
This week's videos were found while searching for some footage of tenor saxophonist Javon Jackson, who will appear at Jazz at the Bistro from January 16 through January 19. As it turns out, there's not much video of Jackson as a leader available online, but these two clips feature him as part of the Blue Note All-Stars, a short-lived group that did one CD and a couple of tours together together in the late 1990s.
The idea, which came from a record company executive, was to bring together some of the young musicians associated at the time with the Blue Note label, and so Jackson was teamed with St. Louis native Greg Osby on alto sax, Bill Stewart on drums, pianist Kevin Hays, trumpeter Tim Hagans and the marvelously named Essiet Okun Essiet on bass.
While their name might suggest some sort of hard bop or soul/jazz repertory group, the All-Stars actually did original music composed by the various members of the band, and in these two cuts, "Our Trip" and "Twist and Out," you can hear some interesting contrasts in approach between Jackson and Osby, as well as some very capable playing from the rest of the musicians.
Once again, it's been a while since our last compilation of St. Louis jazz-related news and assorted musical items of interest from all over the Internet. So, let's not waste any time...
* And via eMusic, here's a review/essay by Kevin Whitehead about Miles' early 1960s quintet and the recently issued recording Live at Monterey Jazz Festival 1963 .
* In other Miles-related news, Toronto trumpeter Nick "Brownman" Ali recently produced a five-week series of Miles Davis tribute concerts exploring music from different periods of Miles' career.
* Another St. Louis trumpet great, the venerable Clark Terry(pictured), recently performed with the Jim Cullum Jazz Band on public radio's "Riverwalk" program as part of a Thanksgiving special.
* Pianist and composer Linda Presgrave, another St. Louisan turned New Yorker, was back in the Gateway City earlier this month to play at Cookie's Jazz and More, and she's now giving NYC audiences a preview of the same material, which she'll perform on an upcoming tour through Italy.
* Former Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra "creative conductor" Marin Alsop continues to make news as the new musical director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, with a feature in the New York Times and one in Baltimore's City Paper.
* Turning to coming attractions, the Bad Plus, who will be in St. Louis at Jazz at the Bistro during the first week of January2008, are pretty newsworthy themselves, with an interview and performance on NPR affiliate WBGO in Boston; from be.jazz, a review of a gig last month in Belgium; and, from Blogcritics, a review of the latest CD from side project Happy Apple.
* Saxophonist Javon Jacksonrecently played at NYC's Iridium with a band co-led by pianist Benny Green. Jackson is set to return to the Bistro in January with what's being billed as the "Superband," originally set to feature drummer Jimmy Cobb and pianist George Cables. However, it looks like Jackson, Cobb et al will have to find a replacement for Cables, who's just had double transplant surgery, getting a new liver and kidney. The good news is that the surgery went well and Cables is expected to recover; the bad news is that he'll be laid up for at least six months, whcih means no trip to St. Louis.
* Trumpeter Chris Botti is also due in St. Louis early in 2008, with two performances scheduled in January at the Touhill Performing Arts Center. Botti recently did an interview with About.com hyping his new CD Italia, and also was the subject of a recent feature story in the Boston Herald.
* Pianist Michael Wolff, who's playing the Sheldon in February, recently did an interview with AllAboutJazz.com
* Pianist Cyrus Chestnut recently cut a CD of songs associated with Elvis Presley - reveiwed here by Bagatellen - and is doing a show based on the CD at Iridium. Chestnut returns to Jazz at the Bistro on March 7 and 8.
* Catching up with some recent visitors, we find that pianist Mulgrew Miller, who's played the Bistro several times and has recorded for the St. Louis based label MAXJAZZ, recently played Dizzy's Club Coca Cola in NYC and got a very nice review from the New York Sun.
* Saxophonist Josh Redman, who's played St. Louis with his trio and mosre recently with the SF JAZZ Collective, is now working in a trio format and has a new CD, Back East, featuring some of the last recorded performances from his dad, the late tenor saxophonist Dewey Redman.
* And, in a technological development that could cast many song titles and/or lyrical metaphors in a completely new light, Japanese engineers have come up with a way to build roads that play music as you drive over them. Maybe they can devise one to play Wes Montgomery's "Road Song," or Willie Nelson's "On The Road Again," or (fill in the road-related song title of your choice.)
