So What: Local News, Notes & Links

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

* Jazz St. Louis has extended the application period for their 2020-21 JazzU program, and the new deadline for middle school and high school students to apply is Friday, May 29. Auditions that had been scheduled for early June now will be held July 20-23. For more information, visit the Jazz St. Louis website.

* The Sheldon this week debuted a new look for their website, and to commemorate the occasion, they got pianist Peter Martin (pictured) to do a special solo performance on video.

* Jazz St. Louis and The Sheldon are among the local arts institutions taking part in "Arts United STL" a virtual benefit for local working artists that will take place at 7:00 p.m. on Sunday, May 31.

* Music venue The Ready Room has permanently closed their space in the Grove neighborhood, but according to the report from the Riverfront Times' Daniel Hill, the club's owners are seeking a new location to reopen once live shows can resume.

* Singer and pianist Kandace Springs was the featured guest last week on an episode of the KTRS program "In the Know with Ray Hartmann."

* The Kranzberg Arts Foundation, which operates The Dark Room, Kranzberg Arts Center, Grandel Theater and other local venues, has surveyed the public asking what respondents would need to feel safe returning to the Foundation's spaces following the COVID-19 pandemic. Top replies include "A vaccine," "Limited venue capacity," "being able to avoid lines," "outdoor performance opportunities" and "availability of hand sanitizer."

StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: Introducing Kandace Springs

(Editor's note: Though many events in St. Louis next week have been canceled due to concerns about COVID-19, as of this writing Jazz St. Louis has not announced any cancellations, so this article is written with the assumption that next week's shows will proceed as scheduled. If that changes, this post will be updated, and info will be posted on StLJN's Twitter feed and Facebook page.)

This week, let's take a look at some videos featuring singer, songwriter and keyboardist Kandace Springs, who will be making her St. Louis debut with performances starting Wednesday, March 18 and continuing through Sunday, March 22 at Jazz St. Louis.

Springs, 31, grew up in a musical family in Nashville, and first came to wide attention after moving to New York City and signing with Blue Note Records in 2014. After releasing a self-titled EP that year, she subsequently has put out two studio albums on Blue Note, Soul Eyes (2016) and Indigo (2018), and comes to St. Louis right before the release of her third, The Women Who Raised Me, on Friday, March 27.

The Women Who Raised Me features Springs performing her versions of songs associated with well-known singers including Ella Fitzgerald, Roberta Flack, Astrud Gilberto, Lauryn Hill, Billie Holiday, Diana Krall, Carmen McRae, Bonnie Raitt, Sade, Nina Simone, and Dusty Springfield.

With that in mind, today's collection of videos consists mostly of Springs interpreting familiar songs, starting up above with her version of "People Make The World Go Round," taken from the first episode of saxophonist David Sanborn's online series "Sanborn Sessions" released in January of this year.

After the jump, you can see Springs singing "As Time Goes By" at a gig last August at the Nashville Jazz Workshop, sitting in with saxophonist Kirk Whalum and pianist Lori Mechem's trio.

Next, there are two videos from 2017, a version of "At Last" recorded at the Cheltenham Jazz Festival in the UK, and a performance of "First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" for the French TV program Le Grand Studio RTL.

Those are followed by a direct-to-camera performance of "Autumn Leaves," recorded in 2016, and a full set of Springs fronting Germany's WDR Big Band in 2018 at the Leverkusener Jazztage festival.

For more about Kandace Springs and The Women Who Raised Me, read her interview in the January 2020 issue of DownBeat.

You can see the rest of today's videos after the jump...

Sunday Session: February 2. 2020

Kris Davis

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

* Underground Railroad: A Conductor And Passengers Documented In Music (NPR)
* Kandace Springs Honors History and Personal Growth on ‘The Women Who Raised Me’ (DownBeat)
* The Flute of Shame: Discover the Instrument/Device Used to Publicly Humiliate Bad Musicians During the Medieval Period (OpenCulture.com)
* Pete Brown: White Rooms & Imaginary Westerns, Part 2 (AllAboutJazz.com)
* Best Music Arrangers: 20 Artists You’ve Heard But Not Seen (UDiscoverMusic.com)
* Chick Corea, Brad Mehldau, Esperanza Spalding Among the Winners at 62nd Grammy Awards (WBGO)
* Bob Porter's Portraits In Soul Jazz (IndianaPublicMedia.org)
* UK industry reacts to venues business rates cut (IQ-Mag.net)
* Don’t leave jazz to the jazz guys (TheOutline.com)
* The Unsung Black Musician Who Changed Country Music (Narratively.com)
* Nightmares on wax: the environmental impact of the vinyl revival (The Guardian)
* In conversation: When Elvis Costello met Tom Waits (FarOutMagazine.co.uk)
* Violinist Regina Carter in full swing for the Charleston Jazz Festival (Charleston Post and Courier)
* Jeff Parker’s Shifting Mentality (DownBeat)
* Singing Songs to Fix the World: A Q&A with Mavis Staples (SFJAZZ.org)
* Eight Artists Fusing Traditional Arabic Music With Jazz (Bandcamp.com)
* Gordon Goodwin’s Total Devotion (DownBeat)
* From Skepta’s dystopia to Travis Scott’s fairground: are immersive shows the future of live music? (The Guardian)
* BMG responds to artist streaming revolt in Germany: ‘It is time for record companies to change.’ (MusicBusinessWorldwide.com)
* ‘Always finding nice things in a tragic situation’ - Robert Wyatt at 75 (MorningStarOnline.co.uk)
* Innovation is Kris Davis’ Motivation (DownBeat)
* Watch the Residents Perform ‘God in Three Persons’ Live for the First Time (Rolling Stone)
* Rachmaninov is the most innovative composer in 200 years, researchers reveal (ClassicFM.com)
* ‘Are you sure it’s Sun Ra?’: Rare recording by the Philly jazz giant at Haverford College finally sees the light of day (Philadelphia Inquirer)
* How a lost recording became a Philadelphia soul classic (PBS)
* Swinging Modern Sounds #101: A Really Big Band (TheRumpus.net)
* An update to a 37-year-old digital protocol could profoundly change the way music sounds (QZ.com)
* Kris Davis: Ribbons in Rhythm (Jazz Times)
* The electronic genius of Karlheinz Stockhausen (HappyMag.tv)
* Bedroom Music Wars (UndergroundPress.co.za)

Sunday Session: October 28, 2018

Melvin "Wah Wah Watson" Ragin

Here's a roundup of various music-related items of interest that have shown up in one of StLJN's various inboxes or feeds over the past week:

* When David Bowie Became a Superstar: ‘It Was the Happiest I’d Ever Seen Him’ (The Daily Beast)
* Is your business streaming music for customers? That's breaking the law (The Guardian)
* Kandace Springs Motors Forward (DownBeat)
* Reconsidering Composer Raymond Scott, From Cartoons to the Cutting Edge, in Deep Dive (WBGO)
* Live Review: 2nd October Revolution in Philadelphia (Jazz Times)
* The Velvet Revolution of Claude Debussy (The New Yorker)
* Did Muddy Waters’ First UK Tour Launch The British Blues Boom? (UDiscoverMusic.com)
* Here’s how horror film scores have evolved to scare us over the years (AV Club)
* City Hall lets KC’s American Jazz Museum languish with no permanent director or board (Kansas City Star)
* The Top 100 Albums Of The Quietus' Existence, As Picked By tQ's Writers (TheQuietus.com)
* The Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition Returns (NPR)
* The Strange World Of... Awesome Tapes From Africa (TheQuietus.com)
* My Teenage Son and I Went to the Same Music Festival. Our Experiences Were Totally Different (Observer.com)
* What crisis? Why music journalism is actually healthier than ever (The Guardian)
* The Music of “Doctor Who” Makes a Glorious Return to Form (The New Yorker)
* Wah Wah Watson, Guitarist for Marvin Gaye and Michael Jackson, Dead at 67 (Rolling Stone)
* Randy Weston 1926–2018 (The Wire)
* Makaya McCraven Isn’t Interested in Saving Jazz (Rolling Stone)
* Opinion: Apple Music’s human curation falls apart when it comes to less mainstream tastes (9To5Mac.com)
* In Ann Arbor, Edgefest Showcases Chicago Avant-Garde (DownBeat)
* Monk Institute Piano Competition Set for Dec. 2 and 3 (Jazz Times)
* Photos: 2018 BRIC JazzFest (Jazz Times)
* David Bowie: the day I pulled the plug on his Glastonbury comeback (The Guardian)