Sunday Session: February 25, 2018

Dave Burrell

Here's the 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:

* Jazz Icon Sonny Rollins on the Difference Between Knowing and Believing (RealClearLife.com)
* “Fascination and fear”: Rhythm and Reaction shows how Edwardian Britain responded to jazz (New Statesman)
* At Gala, SFJAZZ Connects with Preservation Hall (DownBeat)
* The Brian Eno Discography: Stream 29 Hours of Recordings by the Master of Ambient Music (OpenCulture.com)
* A Hall of Fame hitmaker finds happiness and harmony in Bellingham (Seattle Times)
* UK's first live music census warns of threats to small venues (Music Week)
* People find comfort listening to the same songs over and over, study finds (MedicalExpress.com)
* Didier Lockwood, French Jazz Violinist, Dies Suddenly at 62 (Billboard)
* Morton Subotnick Revivifies Silver Apples of The Moon for Its 50th Anniversary (San Francisco Classical Voice)
* How ‘Strange Fruit’ Killed Billie Holiday (Progressive.org)
* John McLaughlin on the Mystery of Creativity, Inspiration, & Music (AllAboutJazz.com)
* 'I didn't give a damn if it didn't sell': how Isaac Hayes helped create psychedelic soul (The Guardian)
* The 50 Best Jazz Guitarists Of All Time (UDiscoverMusic.com)
* The 2018 Vision Festival Will Honor Pianist Dave Burrell, and Feature Prime Younger Talent (WBGO)
* In Pursuit of a Streaming Jazz Utopia with Qwest TV, the New Service From Quincy Jones (WBGO)
* The Sound of Being (Opera News)
* Musical Revolutionary Ornette Coleman Unleashed Free Jazz in 1950s L.A. (LA Weekly)
* In Memoriam: Drummer Ndugu Chancler (DownBeat)
* Gibson Guitar Update: 150 days to save the brand (FarOutMagazine.co.uk)
* NOJO: A Second Chance to Swing (Jazz Times)
* How two GMU professors teamed up to create high-tech music (Washington Post)
* Charley Pride’s music taught listeners that country music was black music, too (Timeline.com)
* Tyshawn Sorey and Terrance Hayes Make a Poignant Statement with 'Cycles of My Being' (WBGO)
* When Sonny Rollins Rose in the West (Village Voice)
* The Last Word: George Clinton on Alien Encounters, Trump's Lack of Funk (Rolling Stone)
* The great big Spotify scam: Did a Bulgarian playlister swindle their way to a fortune on streaming service? (MusicBusinessWorldwide.com)
* Q&A with John Surman: Shared Experience (DownBeat)
* From Radiohead to the Oscar-Nominated ‘Phantom Thread’: Jonny Greenwood on His Musical Process (Variety)
* The Kid Who Recorded The First Punk Rock Record (And Invented Surf Guitar) (PleaseKillMe.com)
* Christian Scott: Building Bridges Across Cultures (NPR)
* The Prowess of Nina Simone’s Early Records (The Atlantic)
* Is the greatest hits album dying? (GetIntoThis.co.uk)
* An introduction to Don Cherry in 10 records (The VinylFactory.com)

Jazz this week: Poncho Sanchez, Paula West, Morton Subotnick, and more

There's lots going on this week with jazz and creative music in St. Louis, so let's get right to the highlights, starting with three touring performers who are playing in the Gateway City over the next few days.

Tonight, Latin-jazz percussionist Poncho Sanchez begins a four-night stand at Jazz at the Bistro. You can see a couple of videos featuring Sanchez and his band in this post from last Saturday, and Jazz St. Louis also has a podcast interview with Sanchez here.

On Saturday, singer Paula West performs at the Sheldon Concert Hall. You can see and hear West in a couple of video clips here; also, note that the Sheldon is offering online buyers a $10 discount on tickets to West's concert.

Also on Saturday, New Music Circle and St. Louis Community College-Forest Park will present pioneering electronic musician and composer Morton Subotnick (pictured) in concert at the college's Mildred E. Bastian Performing Arts Center. Subotnick will perform "Until Spring Revisited," a remaking of an electronic music/video composition originally created for solo synthesizer in 1975.

In addition to these three headliners, there are a number of other noteworthy shows this week. On Thursday, the mysterious FO(U)R PEACE BAND does a free show for the Jazz at Holmes series at Washington University. I call them "mysterious" because I haven't been able to find out anything about them on the 'Net, nor have Wash U or the Jazz at Holmes series released anything about who they are or what sort of music they play. Still, given the series' deserved reputation for presenting good stuff, the show seemed worth a mention here, but caveat lector.

Also on Thursday, world music fans may want to check out the UMSL University Percussion Ensemble and Afro-Cuban Ensemble and their special guest Adam Rugo, who will perform percussion music from Africa, Cuba, Japan and the United States in a free concert at the Touhill Performing Arts Center.

Moving on to Saturday, the Kemper Museum presents a free concert by guitarist Teddy Presberg and his band the Red Note Revivalists as part of the series of live performances accompanying the museum's current "Birth of the Cool" exhibit.

On Sunday, the Nu Art Series presents the Tayammum Falah Art Orchestra in concert at the Metropolitan Gallery, 2936 Locust St. The group features the leader on drums and percussion, plus bassist Raymond Eldridge, pianist Christopher Evans, and an intriguing front line of veterans Floyd LeFlore on trumpet and Willie Akins on saxophones.

That same afternoon, the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra presents its annual "Explosions" percussion concert at the TouPAC. And that evening, BAG II sponsors a free performance at the Scott Joplin House State Historic Site featuring poets Marsha Cann, Joyce Blue and Deborah Mashibini and music from bassist/mbira player Zimbabwe Nkenya.

Looking beyond the weekend, the first part of next week offers a couple of shows of particular interest to big band fans. On Monday, the Sessions Big Band continues its ongoing series of gigs at BB's Jazz Blues and Soups, and on Tuesday, the Genesis Jazz Project does one of its semi-annual free concerts at the TouPAC.

You can find more jazz-related events in St. Louis this weekend and beyond by visiting 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.)

New Music Circle 2008-09 season to include concerts by Vinny Golia Large Ensemble, Morton Subotnick

Concerts by the 27-piece Vinny Golia Large Ensemble and electronic music legend Morton Subotnick (pictured) will be among the highlights of New Music Circle's 2008-09 season, the fiftieth anniversary year for the venerable presenting organization.

Golia, who composes and improvises on multiple woodwind instruments, will kick off the NMC season with a performance on Saturday, September 27 at the Webster University Community Music School, 534 Garden Ave. NMC says they've "assembled a 27-piece group of top local and national talent for the concert. Large Ensemble compositions are based in the Jazz tradition and blend heavily notated contemporary chamber music with improvisation, and incorporate various extended instrumental techniques, 20th-century idioms, and world music concepts. Golia's music demands an exceptional group of dedicated musicians, adept at both reading and improvising, and at home in a wide variety of styles."

Subotnick comes to St. Louis on Saturday, November 22, when he'll perform "Until Spring Revisited," a composition involving electronic music and video, at the Mildred E. Bastian Performing Arts Center at St. Louis Community College-Forest Park, 5600 Oakland Ave. Subotnick, a pioneer in the development of electronic music and multimedia performance, first gained fame for his 1967 work "Silver Apples of the Moon" and has gone on to receive multiple Rockefeller Grants, the Guggenheim Grant, ASCAP’s John Cage Award, and many awards and accolades.

Also on NMC's season schedule:

* Percussionist/composer Rich O’Donnell, who will offer a multi-media performance called "WORDSDROW" on Saturday, October 18 at Satori, 3003 Locust.

* Electronic musician James Hegarty, who will present "Antithesis Reflex" on Friday, November 7 at Three Sinks Gallery, 8715 Big Bend Blvd.

* The twenty-second installment of "Circle/Cinema," which combines live improvised music with silent film, on Sunday, November 16 at the St. Louis Art Museum Auditorium. The screening will be presented in association with the Museum and the St. Louis International Film Festival, but there are no details yet on the specific film or musicians involved.

* Percussionist Gino Robair, who will perform "I, Norton" on Saturday, March 7, 2009 at the Mildred E. Bastian Performing Art Center. The piece "is based on the life of Joshua Norton, who on September 17, 1859 proclaimed, “at the request of the citizens of these United States, I declare myself Emperor,” and is described as "an improvised collage structure that combines conduction (using handcues), graphic scores, memory-based improvisational structures, and fully notated works.

* Video artist Van McElwee, who will collaborate with O'Donnell and others for a program on Saturday, April 18, 2009 at Webster University's Winifred Moore Auditorium.

* Electronic musician and former St. Louisan Tom Hamilton, who will perform Saturday, May 2, 2009 at the Kranzberg Arts Center, 501 N. Grand Blvd.

In addition, the NMC season will include four more events whose precise dates and, in some cases, locations, are yet to be announced. In May 2009, composer, pianist, and electronic musician Chris Brown and Guillermo Galindo will come to Laumeier Sculpture Park to perform "River of Voices," for which "the audience is instructed to bring portable radios to receive a live broadcast on one of four low-power FM frequencies. As participants move through the park, they become an animated sound system for the multichannel electronic music piece." The other three events will feature performance artist Kelsey LaPoint in December; Hegarty in February, 2009; and O’Donnell sometime in the spring of 2009.

Season tickets are $80 for general admission and $40 for students. For more information, visit New Music Circle's Web site.