Sunday Session: June 14, 2020

Sonny Rollins

Here's this week's roundup of various music-related items of interest:

* Jazz centenarians who should be celebrated ... even amid a pandemic (Chicago Tribune)
* Chronology: Wynton Kelly Trio at the Left Bank with Three Star Tenor Saxophonists (Jazz Times)
* Tineke Postma: Living in the Maternal World (Jazz Times)
* Bonnie Pointer of The Pointer Sisters Dies at 69 (Billboard)
* In Jazz-Movie Endings, Some Story Elements Just Keep Bouncing Back (WVXU)
* Prestige Records: An Alternative Top 20 Albums (AllAboutJazz.com)
* How Streaming Platforms Are Helping Musicians Navigate The Pandemic (DownBeat.com)
* Woody Herman's Trip To Mars (WFIU)
* John Medeski Demonstrates Startling Adaptability (DownBeat)
* America's Independent Music Venues Could Close Soon Due To Coronavirus (NPR)
* Murder, mystery and a hit record: the unbelievable story of Ike White (The Guardian)
* Bob “Brother Ah” Northern 1934–2020 (Jazz Times)
* NIVA Estimates That 90 Percent Of Its Member Venues Could Close (DownBeat)
* A New Phase For the Phrase "Live at The Village Vanguard," As the Club Joins the Streaming Era (WBGO)
* Shelly Manne, Remembering A Jazz Drumming Giant (UDiscoverMusic.com)
* Measuring the heart (TheBlueMoment.com)
* Festivals Search For Upside To Shutdown (DownBeat)
* John McLaughlin’s ‘Lockdown Blues’ Raises Funds For Jazz Foundation Of America (DownBeat)
* Sonny Rollins on the Pandemic, Protests, and Music (The New Yorker)
* Top 8 Guitar Tech Myths Debunked (Ultimate Guitar)
* Reviving Detroit’s Historic Blue Bird Inn (BeltMag.com)
* BMG pledges to review historical record contracts ‘mindful of the music industry’s shameful treatment of black artists’ (MusicBusinessWorldwide.com)
* If Country Music Wants to Reckon With Its Racism, Look Deeper Than the Bad Names (Vulture.com)
* The Immediate Family Epitomizes the Essence of a Super Group Set-Up (American Songwriter)

Sunday Session: May 31, 2020

Jimmy Cobb

Here's this week's roundup of various music-related items of interest:

* Jimmy Cobb, The Pulse Of 'Kind Of Blue,' Dies At 91 (NPR)
* Drummer Jimmy Cobb Dies at 91 (DownBeat)
* Anthony Davis’s Revolutionary Opera: “X” (The New Yorker)
* Superb-Lee: A JazzTimes Tribute to Lee Konitz (1927–2020) (Jazz Times)
* From Germany to Detroit and back: how Kraftwerk forged an industrial exchange (The Guardian)
* Little Richard statue to be built outside musician’s childhood home (NME.com)
* 'Like a tap being turned off': music magazines fight for survival in UK (The Guardian)
* The Many Faces Of Housekeeping: How Wealth & Privilege Are Distorting Underground Music (TheQuietus.com)
* 'Milli Violini': I was a fake violinist in a world-class miming orchestra (The Guardian)
* A Guide to the Mind-Bending Jazz of François Tusques (Bandcamp.com)
* Add some township jive! How London's jazz scene set itself apart (The Guardian)
* John Medeski Demonstrates Startling Adaptability (DownBeat)
* How Rahsaan Roland Kirk Modified Jazz (Jazz Times)
* Covid Confidential: Ben Goldberg’s Notes From a Pandemic (San Francisco Classical Voice)
* Amazon, Facebook, and Instagram Are Each Launching Music-Tech Projects (Rolling Stone)
* Premiere: Watch A Video For ‘Desert Song,’ The Debut Single By Vocal Group säje (DownBeat)
* ‘Those Were Memorable Times. But I Don’t Want to Live There.’ Reggie Workman played with John Coltrane, won a Guggenheim at 82, and is tired of Zoom (Vulture.com)
* CM von Hausswolff curates seven sound installations for the web (The Wire)
* Why Public Musicology Matters (21cm.org)
* Michael McDonald: A Conversation in Lockdown Times (American Songwriter)
* Utility player (Rochester City Paper)
* The fast life of Buddy Featherstonhaugh (TheBlueMoment.com)
* Jimmy Cobb 1929–2020 (Jazz Times)

Jazz this week: Matt Wilson Quartet with John Medeski, Bonerama, Dave Easley, and more

While winter weather has delayed one of this week's headliners for a day, there's still plenty of live jazz and creative music happening in and around St. Louis for those willing to get out and brave the cold. Let's go to the highlights...

If it weren't for the big snowstorm hitting the East Coast, tonight would have been the first of four nights featuring drummer Matt Wilson's quartet with special guest pianist John Medeski at Jazz at the Bistro. However, because of the inclement weather, Wilson (pictured) and company couldn't get a flight that would arrive in St. Louis in time to play tonight's shows.

So, they'll open at the Bistro tomorrow and continue through Saturday; go to Columbia on Sunday for a show there; and then return to St. Louis on Monday to perform one more night at the Bistro in lieu of tonight's postponed sets. The shows here will be the group's first in support of a new album, Gathering Call, that was released just this week. For more about Wilson, including some video samples of his playing and links to several reviews of Gathering Call, go here. 

Elsewhere around town tonight, Dizzy Atmosphere will play at The Shaved Duck, and drummer Montez Coleman will lead a jam session at Nathalie's.

On Thursday, in addition to the delayed opening for Wilson and Medeski, singer Feyza Eren will begin this semester's Jazz at Holmes series of free concerts at Washington University, and Sarah Jane and the Blue Notes will play at Schlafly Bottleworks.

Then on Friday, multi-instrumentalist Lamar Harris will team up with The People's Key to present "The Shawn Carter Jazz Suite," featuring interpretations of the music of Jay-Z, at Kranzberg Arts Center. Also on Friday, saxophonist Kendrick Smith performs at Robbie's House of Jazz; Second Generation Swing plays for dancers at the Casa Loma Ballroom; keyboardist and singer Jesse Gannon will be at the Engine Room; and pianist Ptah Williams leads a trio at Cigar Inn.

On Saturday night, New Orleans' Bonerama will be back in town to perform at the Broadway Oyster Bar; saxophonist Jason Swagler, pianist Adaron Jackson and guitarist Rick Haydon will play a trio show at Jacoby Arts Center in Alton; and singer-guitarist Tommy Halloran will promote the release of a new album with his band Guerrilla Swing via a show at Mad Art Gallery.

On Sunday afternoon, the Funky Butt Brass Band will be the featured entertainment for a first look at the new Urban Chestnut Grove Brewery and Bierhall on Manchester, and the Dave Dickey Big Band will celebrate two years of monthly gigs at Kirkwood Station Brewing Company.

Looking beyond the weekend, on Monday Webster University will present its first jazz faculty concert of the year in Winifred Moore Auditorium, a "Basses Only" performance featuring Jay Hungerford, Ben Wheeler, Ric Vice and Willem von Hombracht.

Also on Monday, steel guitarist Dave Easley, who's played with drummer Brian Blade's Fellowship and several other jazz acts, will be in town to perform a duo set with guitarist Dave Black at BB's Jazz, Blues and Soups. If you can't make it to BB's, Easley and Black also will play on Tuesday night at the Tavern of Fine Arts.

For more jazz-related events in and around St. Louis, 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.)

StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: Spotlight on Matt Wilson

Today, let's spend some time with drummer and bandleader Matt Wilson, who will be in St. Louis with his quartet and special guest pianist John Medeski to perform next Wednesday, January 22 through Saturday, January 25 at Jazz at the Bistro.

Wilson, who grew up in Knoxville, IL, has played in St. Louis a number of times in recent years, including last year at the Bistro with clarinetist Anat Cohen to kick off the 2013 Greater St. Louis Jazz Festival. Before that, he played at the Bistro with his band Arts and Crafts in 2012, and - in part because his brother Mark teaches at St. Louis University - he's performed at various other local venues, too, including SLU, the now-shuttered Black Cat Theatre in Maplewood, and Hixson Middle School in Webster Groves.

In addition to the quartet, the versatile Wilson leads the band Arts and Crafts as well as the seasonal project Christmas Tree-O. He's released 16 albums as a leader or co-leader, and has appeared on more than 250 CDs as a sideman. In addition to directing his own groups, Wilson has worked regularly as part of bands led by Joe Lovano, John Scofield, Charlie Haden, Lee Konitz, Bob Stewart, Denny Zeitlin, Ron Miles, Marty Ehrlich, Ted Nash, Jane Ira Bloom and Dena DeRose among others.

This time around in St. Louis, Wilson and his quartet - bassist Chris Lightcap, trumpeter Kirk Knuffke, and the man Wilson calls his "alter ego," saxophonist Jeff Lederer - will be celebrating the release of a new CD, Gathering Call, recorded with Medeski on piano. The album officially drops this Tuesday, January 21, and the quartet and Medeski will be doing a total of ten dates together to promote it over the next couple of weeks.

The relationship between Medeski and Wilson dates back to the 1980s, when the two played together in Boston's Either/Orchestra, but this marks the first time they've recorded together since then. You can read reviews of the album here,  here and here, and listen to the brief (1:47) title track here. Unfortunately, since the lineup of Wilson's quartet plus Medeski is specific to Gathering Call, there's no video of them all playing together to show you. So instead, today we've got several clips featuring Wilson in different contexts, both musical and philosophical.

The first video up above, recorded in 2011, features the quartet (plus a small string ensemble from Kent University) performing "If I Were A Boy, " which a pop hit for singer Beyonce. It's a fairly straightforward rendering that demonstrates nicely the drummer/leader's capacity to look for material beyond the standard jazz repertory.

Down below, you can see Arts & Crafts playing Wilson's composition "Bubbles," first recorded on the album An Attitude for Gratitude, in a performance at Jazz at Lincoln Center Doha in Qatar. Along with Wilson on drums, that's Gary Versace on piano and Martin Wind on bass, with Ron Miles in place of the group's regular trumpeter Terell Stafford.

Below that, you can see Wilson in a couple of improvised drum duets recorded last year. In the third clip, recorded at a jazz festival in Port Townsend, WA, he and Jeff Hamilton trade licks on "A Night In Tunisia." The fourth clip features Wilson and Steve Williams playing together in a show at SUNY New Paltz, NY behind a band that also includes John Menegon (bass), St. Louis' own Greg Osby (alto sax), Tineke Postma (alto sax, soprano sax), and Frank Kimbrough (piano).

You can get a more in-depth look at Wilson's concepts and style in the fifth video, an hour-long master class recorded last year at the jazz camp associated with the Litchfield Jazz Festival in Connecticut. The sixth and final clip is from Wilson's talk at the 2013 JEN Conference, in which he talks about how jazz musicians can further develop their audiences through presentation, involvement, and entertainment (PIE).

For more about Matt Wilson, check out this extended interview published in 2012 on AllAboutJazz.com, and this one from Omaha public radio station KIOS; this audio feature, also from 2012, from NPR's "Weekend Edition"; and Nate Chinen's cover story about Wilson from the November 2009 issue of Jazz Times.

StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: Winter/spring 2014 jazz preview, part 1

As 2013 draws to a close, this week we're looking ahead to 2014 with the initial installment of a series previewing some of the touring jazz musicians who will be coming to St. Louis during the first part of next year.

Once again in 2014, The Bad Plus will return to our town to be the first touring act of the year at Jazz at the Bistro, performing there starting Wednesday, January 8 and continuing through Saturday, January 11. Given their many appearances in St. Louis in recent years, including a performance of their version of Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" this October at Chaminade College Prep, it's likely that most StLJN readers are familiar with them - but if not, you can catch up on our previous coverage of them here. For today, there's a video of them playing "Re-Elect That" from their most recent album Made Possible, recorded in May 2013 at a venue called Porgy & Bess in Vienna. 

The following week, up-and-coming New Orleans pianist Jon Batiste and his band Stay Human will play on Saturday, January 18 at the Sheldon Concert Hall. Batiste and the band, including saxophonist Eddie Barnash, drummer Joe Saylor and tuba player Ibanda Ruhumbika, can be seen in the video immediately below the text playing "St. James Infirmary" at the Sundance ASCAP Music Café during the 2013 Sundance Film Festival.

The week after that, drummer Matt Wilson will return to perform on Wednesday, January 22 through Saturday, July 25 at the Bistro, this time bringing his eponymous quartet plus a special guest, pianist John Medeski of Medeski, Martin and Wood fame.

Today's third clip shows Wilson's quartet, with Jeff Lederer, saxophone; Kirk Knuffke, cornet; and Chris Lightcap, bass; playing the rocking "Schoolboy Thug" to close out the band's 15th anniversary show last year in NYC. (The other two saxophonists are former members Andrew D’Angelo and Joel Frahm.) Medeski, who in April of this year released his first-ever solo piano album, "A Different Time," can be seen in the fourth video, playing the title track from the record at a gig in August at Jazzfestival Saalfelden in Germany. 

At the end of January, four members of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra will be in town for a week of workshops, master classes and performances at local schools under the auspices of Jazz St. Louis' education programs. Then to close out their week in St. Louis, trombonist Vincent Gardner, tenor saxophonist Walter Blanding, trumpeter Kenny Rampton and drummer Herlin Riley will team up to play on Friday, January 31 and Saturday, February 1 at Jazz at the Bistro.

You can see Gardner in today's fifth video, which was recorded in 2011 and shows him performing "Just In Time" with a quintet including Ali Jackson (drums), Mark Groos (alto sax), Joris Teepe (bass), and Lewis Porter (piano). Below that, you can see Blanding fronting a quartet at Duc des Lombards in Paris, featuring Jackson, Dan Nimmer (piano), and Carlos Henriquez (bass).

As for Rampton, though he's had plenty of high-profile gigs with the likes of Mingus Dynasty, the Mingus Big Band, Ray Charles and others, the best clip online of him by himself seems to be a short instructional video he made for JALC about the roles of trumpet players in big bands, so that's what you'll find in the seventh video embed. In today's final clip, Riley is seen leading his quartet in a gig this past April at Snug Harbor in New Orleans, playing a spiteited version of Randy Weston's "Hi-Fly." Along with the leader on drums, that's Derek Douget on tenor sax, Kyle Roussel on pianos, and Jasen Weaver on bass.

Look for part 2 of StLJN's winter/spring jazz preview next week.