Freedonia Music releases three new albums

The St. Louis-based indie label Freedonia Music, which documents free improv, experimental, and creative music from the city's past and present, has three new releases out this month, all featuring pianist Greg Mills.

Mosaique is a solo effort from Mills described as "improvised classical music" that was "created in the spirit and practice of free improv utilizing a language of musical possibilities based in Modern Classical," with each of the nine improvised compositions dedicated to a different 20th century composer.

Duets features the pianist in a series of improvised partnerships with musicians including cellist Tracy Andreotti, saxophonist/clarinetist Dave Stone, percussionist Henry Claude, and flute player Fred Tompkins.

Circle pairs Mills once again with multi-instrumentalist and Freedonia Music proprietor Jay Zelenka. The two worked together in the 1980s as the duo Exiles, and this album features studio recordings from that period, originally released on various cassette projects and now remastered for CD, plus an unreleased live performance from a 1997 New Music Circle concert featuring Mills, Zelenka, Dave Stone, and bassist Eric Markowitz.

All three albums are available now from download and streaming sites, and in CD format from the Freedonia Music website.

Freedonia Music issues three new albums; CD release event set for Tuesday, December 20

Freedonia Music, the St. Louis based independent label specializing in adventurous jazz, free improv, and related sounds, has released three new albums this month:

Described as "a celebratory cycle of free improvisations deriving and departing from the euro-classical avant-garde," A Day at the Circus! is the new release from pianist Greg Mills' Perhelion Quartet, which also includes cellist Tracy Andreotti, percussionist Henry Claude, and saxophonist Dave Stone.

Mills and the group will celebrate the release of the CD (pictured) with a performance and "avant garde holiday party" starting at 8:00 p.m. this Tuesday, December 20 at Jackson Pianos. The event is free and open to the public.

The Free Jazz Posse's CONSPIRE features saxophonist and label founder Jay Zelenka, trombonist Jeremy Melsha, and saxophonist Dave Stone, plus "a changing line-up of guitar and synth players" and wordless vocals on three tunes by singer Lika Shubitidze.

Illumination by the James Marshall Human Arts Trio is a remastered recording from 1980 now including an additional, never-before-released 18-minute bonus track. Marshall, a co-founder of the Human Arts Ensemble who died last winter, is featured on alto, tenor and soprano saxophones with drum set and percussion accompaniment. Marshall also was a visual artist, cartoonist and poet, and his artwork is used on the covers of both CONSPIRE and Illumination.

You can hear sample tracks from all three albums and purchase them directly from Freedonia Music's website.

Freedonia Music returns with new album from Tracy Andreotti, Greg Mills & Dave Stone

Freedonia Music, the St. Louis-based label run by multi-instrumentalist Jay Zelenka and devoted to free jazz and improvised music, is back in action with a new release.

Triopolis features cellist Tracy Andreotti, pianist Greg Mills, and saxophonist Dave Stone performing "on the edge, where the euro-classical avant-garde meets free improv."

The album (pictured) includes 13 tracks and was recorded last March at Clayton Studios in St. Louis. You can hear excerpts by clicking on the individual track titles on Freedonia's home page, and copies also are available for purchase through the website.

Andreotti, Mills and Stone also are gigging together now under the name Perihelion Trio, and they'll be performing to celebrate the release of the new CD on Tuesday, January 26 at the Tavern of Fine Arts.

The trio is a subset of the larger Perihelion Ensemble, which also includes percussionist Henry Claude (Andreotti's husband) and flute player Fred Tompkins, sometimes augmented by trombonist Jeremy Melsha and Zelenka himself. Most of the other Perihelion Ensemble members will be sitting in for the second set on January 26, Zelenka said.

Founded in 2007, Freedonia Music's last releases before this were back in March 2013, when Zelenka put out albums featuring Squid Choir Orkestra; the Human Arts Ensemble; and a series of improv duets and trios featuring himself, Stone, and vocalist Lika Shubitidze; plus Ghost Machines, a sampler album including tracks from a number of the label's releases. In total, Freedonia's catalog includes seventeen albums of improvised music made in St. Louis going back to the 1970s. All remain in print and available via the label's website.

As for the nearly three-year hiatus between releases, chalk it up mostly to the financial vagaries of running a small niche record label in the age of free streaming and downloading, though Zelenka said he's also had to deal in recent years with some personal health issues that now, thankfully, are resolved. Given his distinctive work in documenting the sounds of St. Louis, fans of free improv and avant jazz should be glad to have him and Freedonia Music back in the record-biz game.

Greg Mills' Esfoma to perform Wednesday, October 22 at Tavern of Fine Arts

From the late 1970s through the 1990s, pianist Greg Mills was a frequent public participant in the St. Louis creative music scene, performing and recording as a solo artist and as part of the duo Exiles with multi-instrumentalist Jay Zelenka.

More recently, Mills has been much less visible, but now he's scheduled a return to the stage as a leader with a gig at 7:30 p.m. next Wednesday, October 22 at the Tavern of Fine Arts.

Performing under the name Esfoma (after his 1984 solo release of the same name), Mills will be joined by saxophonist Dave Stone, cellist Tracy Andreotti, percussionist Henry Claude, poet Michael Castro, and fellow pianist David Parker.

You can hear samples from the album Esfoma and from Mills' other recordings, both solo and with Exiles, via the website of Zelenka's label Freedonia Music.

Admission to the performance on October 22 at Tavern of Fine Arts is free.

Freedonia Music releases four new CDs

Freedonia Music, the St. Louis-based independent label run by multi-instrumentalist Jay Zelenka, has released four new CDs from local/regional jazz and creative music performers:

Ghost Machines (pictured) is a sampler album showcasing the label's various recordings of "avant-garde, free jazz & free improv artists from St. Louis USA," including the Human Arts Ensemble, EXILES, The Free Jazz Posse, Squid Choir Orkestra, J.D. Parran, Michael Castro, Greg Mills, and Dave Stone.

Needle of Light is a previously unissued recording of vintage performances featuring saxophonist James Marshall's iteration of the Human Arts Ensemble teamed with poet Michael Castro for "old school free jazz avant-blues & theatrical constructions...deep roots performance poetry 30 years before it became a fashion & acquired a name."

Infinite Circus is the latest release from Squid Choir Orkestra, an electronic free-improv ensemble that includes Zelenka, Jeremy Melsha, Dave Stone, Ajay Khanna, Aaron Smith, and Derek Leu.

Zelenka and Stone also figure in the fourth new release, Lifeline, a series of improv duets and trios for voice, baritone sax and electronic alto sax that also features vocalist Lika Shubitidze.

StLJN will have some impressions of these recordings in a future post, but you can hear extensive audio excerpts from all four albums, and/or purchase your very own copies, right now at the Freedonia Music website.

Freedonia Music releases Exiles KalimbaMania CD

Multi-instrumentalist and Freedonia Music proprietor Jay Zelenka emails with word of the St. Louis-based label's first release of 2009: KalimbaMania, a CD reissue of a 1989 session by Exiles, Zelenka's long-running duo with keyboardist Greg Mills.

KalimbaMania was issued originally on LP by Esfoma Music; this new version is digitally remastered from the original studio tapes and includes 21 minutes of additional recording from the same time period. In all, the session features 10 duet improvisations, with both Zelenka and Mills on kalimbas and electronics, and Mills playing piano and organ as well. Electronic pitch transform programs from a Yamaha SPX-90 are used to alter the sounds in several pieces.

Restoring the material from the 20-year-old studio masters was "a challenge," said Zelenka. "We had to start by "baking the tapes" to re-adhere the magnetic coating to the acetate before repairing and re-mastering the audio." You can hear audio samples of a number of KalimbaMania tracks and/or purchase the CD via the Freedonia Music Web site.

Free Improv Orchestra to perform Wednesday, January 21 at the Way Out Club

Saxophonist and Freedonia Music proprietor Jay Zelenka emails with word of a special event next week:

"On Wednesday, January 21, The Way Out Club will host a unique musical event featuring the Stone-Zelenka-Ota Free Improv Orchestra. The one-time performance of this 15-man big band presents some of St. Louis' premier improvising musicians in a concert of St. Louis' own home grown Free Jazz.

This show honors the visit of noted Japanese bass clarinet & alto sax player, composer and electronic musician Takanori Ota. A former St. Louisan, Takanori now resides in his native Japan."

Participating musicians will include Jeremy Brantlinger (drum set), Bob Galloway (trumpet), Eric Hall (electronics), Andrew Heffner (upright bass), Sadeeq Holmes (digital piano), Derick Leu (electric guitar), Jeremy Melsha (trombone), Takanori Ota (bass clarinet), Chris Smetowski (electric guitar), Dave Stone (saxophones), Aaron Smith (synthesizer), Scott Tallent (drum set), Josh Weinstein (upright bass), Rick Wilson (electric guitar) and Jay Zelenka (alto sax).

The Way Out Club is located at 2525 S. Jefferson (at Gravois). Doors open at 9:00 p.m., and admission to Stone-Zelenka-Ota Free Improv Orchestra show is $5.

Jazz this week: Notes from the dog days

It's still the dog days of August in St. Louis, and thus still one of the slower times of the year for jazz in our town, but if you're in the mood to hear some music over the next few days, here are a few possibilities you may want to consider:

On Friday, popular singer Erin Bode and her band return to The Gramophone, while Gaslight Square veterans Trio Tres Bien (pictured) with singer Danita Mumphard are at Cookie's Jazz and More, and the Second Generation Swing Band plays for dancers at Casa Loma Ballroom. On Saturday, tenor saxophonist Willie Akins performs his weekly early evening gig at Spruill's, and on Sunday, the New St. Louis Jazz Xtet do their regular thing at Riddle's.

Looking beyond the weekend, on Monday the Sessions Big Band is back at BB's Jazz Blues and Soups. On Tuesday, you can check out singer Jeanne Trevor at Brandt's, or head to The Gramophone for their free Tuesday night jazz series, which this week features a new band called Utter Chaos.

Utter Chaos are not, as the name might suggest, some sort of free-improv group, but rather are, according to The Gramophone's promotional email, "dedicated to recreating the unique sounds of the Gerry Mulligan/Bob Brookmeyer piano-less quartets of the mid 1950s. Baritone saxophonist Andy Ament is joined by Cody Henry on trombone, Chris Turnbaugh on bass and Jerry Mazzuca on drums. All members of the quartet are graduates of the SIUE jazz department."

To get your dose of free improv this week, you'll have to amble on down Wednesday to Apop Records, 2831 Cherokee St, , for the electric free jazz band Squid Choir Orkestra's concert in the store's Camp Concentration performance space. You can hear some samples of the SCO over on bandleader Jay Zelenka's Freedonia Music site.

For more St. Louis 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.

Jazz this week: Dave Koz, Randy Holmes Sextet, Orange, Squid Choir Orkestra, and more

Here in these hot-and-humid dog days of August, the overall activity level of the St. Louis music scene may be down a bit, but there's still a good variety of jazz styles in the offing over the next few days.

This week's biggest show happens on Friday, when smooth jazz saxophonist and multimedia personality Dave Koz (pictured) performs at The Pageant. Koz may not be the most adventurous player around, but he's a capable melodist with good taste in sidemen and a showman's flair who has worked diligently to cultivate a loyal fan base, one that surely will be out in force on Friday.

Still, If Koz' mix of romanticism and polite funk isn't your cup of tea, you can also check out the Randy Holmes Sextet on Friday, as they'll be doing a free concert for Washington University's Jazz at Holmes summer series. There's no indication yet what's on the program, but Holmes' various ensembles typically range over fairly wide terrain encompassing bop, hard bop and 1960s modern jazz, and the musicianship is top notch. Afterwards, you can head over to the Delmar Loop and catch pianist, saxophonist and singer Hugh "Peanuts" Whalum performing standards and the Great American Songbook at Brandt's, or take in the Latin jazz sounds of Banda Caribe at Riddle's.

On Saturday, the explosive pianist Ptah Williams and his group will perform a free concert as part of the "Art & Soul Cafe" at Portfolio Gallery, 3514 Delmar (between Grand and Theresa). The free, family-friendly event runs from noon to 8:00 p.m. and also will feature African music, dance, hip-hop and poetry performances, plus vendors selling handcrafted art. You can see more details at www.betterfamilylife.org. Also on Saturday, multi-instrumentalist Sandy Weltman and Hot Club Caravan, his new band paying tribute to the "Gypsy jazz" style of Django Reinhardt, will play at Brandt's.

Looking beyond the weekend, on Monday the Sessions Big Band continues their long-running series of gigs at BB's Jazz Blues and Soups. On Tuesday, there are several worthy choices, starting with traditional jazz and swing band Cornet Chop Suey, who are doing a free concert at Faust Park in Chesterfield. Also on Tuesday, the Erin Bode Group's Adam Maness and Syd Rodway bring their band Orange, with drummer Miles Vandiver and vibist Peter Schramb, to the Sheldon Concert Hall; the David Wiatrolik Trio plays at The Gramophone; and singer and actor Roland "Bob" Harris, who mixes blues and jazz with a bit of comedy and some show business stories, performs at Brandt's.

On Wednesday, Jay Zelenka, the improvising saxophonist/flutist/percussionist and mastermind of the Freedonia Music label, brings his electric ensemble Squid Choir Orkestra to south side rock venue the Way Out Club, 2525 S. Jefferson. Zelenka and bandmates Dave Stone and Aaron Smith (saxophones and clarinets), Jeremy Melsha (electronics and trombone) and Ajay Khanna (laptop computer) play what they call "a unique blend of power electronics and free jazz," and if that description sounds like your cup o' tea, the SCO definitely are worth a listen.

Also on Wednesday, saxophonist and former St. Louisan Ed Doney will be back in town to play with Park Avenue Jazz at Hammerstone's. Doney, a graduate of the Webster University music program, now lives at Lake of The Ozarks, where he works with keyboardist Mike Vyrostek. During his years in St. Louis, Doney played with a number of familiar musicians and groups, including Jules Blattner, Ralph Butler, the Sessions Big Band, Carol Beth True and Hard Bop Heritage.

For more St. Louis 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.

Freedonia Music releases five new CDs

The St. Louis-based label Freedonia Music, which specializes in free jazz and improvisation, has just added five new CD titles to its catalog. The new releases are:

* Autonomous Oblast from The James Marshall Human Arts Ensemble, which originally was recorded in 1975 and has been digitally remastered from the original studio tapes. The CD (pictured) is described as "big band old school free-blown' free jazz. Featuring rare performances by Maurice Malik King, James Marshall, Luther Thomas, Thurman Thomas, Jim Miller, Carl Arzinia Richards, Papa Glen Wright, and others."

* Esfoma, a 1984 set of solo improvisations by pianist Greg Mills, also digitally remastered.

* Dave Stone Solo, featuring newly recorded improvisations from Stone on tenor, soprano and baritone saxes and alto, soprano and bass clarinets.

* Kokopilau, from poet Michael Castro and multi-reedman J.D. Parran, described as "a ceremony of the ancient future celebrating a 30 year collaboration...Retelling mythic tales of life, death & rebirth with voice, tenor sax, indigenous hand crafted instruments and postmodern techniques."

* Endless Root, a 1996 live recording of performance poetry with music, from Michael Castro and multi-instrumentalist Joe Catalano.

The label, which is headed by saxophonist/multi-instrumentalist Jay Zelenka, also has a revamped Web site with a new look, improved functionality and more information about the various products and artists. Listeners can hear numerous short excerpts from each CD on the home page, and download full length MP3s of selected tunes. All Freedonia Music releases are available from the site for $10 each, which includes shipping in the USA and Canada.

Local labels featured in RFT

From the Department of Shameless Self-Promotion: I've got a feature story in this week's Riverfront Times that takes a look at two St. Louisans who operate small independent record labels - specifically, Jay Zelenka, proprietor of the free improv and avant jazz label Freedonia Music, and Jeff Konkel of Broke & Hungry Records, which specializes in recording little-known Mississippi blues performers. You can read it online here. Go check it out, look at Mark Gilliland's nice pix of Jay and Jeff, and then come back here for a bit of the story behind the story.

Read it? OK, then: Given the usual constraints of the form, the available word count and so on, I'm 98% happy with how the story came it out. But I'd like to address that 2%, because there's one sentence in the published version that's bugging me, a sentence that conveys an inaccurate impression, something that wound up being phrased in a way that was not what the subject said, nor what I originally wrote.

That sentence, in a paragraph about the early musical efforts of Jay Zelenka, said:
"Already a talented percussionist, he later added saxophone and flute to his arsenal."

Here's where perhaps some insight can be gained into the sausage factory that we call "journalism." What happened during our interview was that Jay told me how he had started performing with the Human Arts Ensemble as a poet, and gradually started picking up various hand percussion instruments and playing them. Eventually, he stopped doing poetry and began performing strictly as an instrumentalist, learning saxophone and flute along the way.

This was related in a somewhat discursive conversation that didn't lend itself to a direct quote. So I paraphrased, writing in the original draft that Zelenka "put down his manuscripts to play percussion, later adding saxophone and flute to his arsenal."

Now, one might say that's not all that different from what eventually wound up running in the paper, and, in a sense, that's correct - the edit, likely done in an effort to make the story a bit more concise, is only three words shorter.

Unfortunately, the introduction of the adjective "talented," unused by either the interviewer or interviewee, also distorts the meaning of the passage a little bit more than the original paraphrase did. In our interview, Jay made it clear that learning different instruments was an exploratory process for him; saying that he "was already a talented percussionist" could be interpreted to mean that he was some sort of highly skilled and/or trained percussion player, which was definitely not the case.

None of this is meant to excoriate or reflect poorly upon RFT music editor Annie Z., who approved the idea for the story in the first place and had several helpful suggestions along the way, nor the RFT's copy desk, who realistically can't be expected to divine every little nuance any given writer may be intending on any given day. And, as I said, I'm actually pretty happy with how the piece turned out.

Unlike blogging, which for better or worse is very much a one-person kind of thing, newspaper journalism is a collaborative effort, and these sorts of small edits to compress things happen every day, at every newspaper, everywhere. So I bring this up for two reasons: to apologize publicly to Jay Zelenka for not conveying his back story quite as clearly as I would have liked, and to give you, dear reader, some small insight into how a story progresses from an interview through writing and several stages of editing before it finally shows up in your local fishwrap. As hard as we try to get things right - and we do try hard - there's always room for improvement.