So What: Local News, Notes & Links

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

* The Bosman Twins and their new album When Lions Roar were the subjects of a feature story airing on the jointly produced local newscasts of both KPLR (Channel 11) and KTVI (Channel 2).

* KDHX has posted on their website a photo set from last Friday's New Music Circle concert by On Fillmore.

* The late trumpeter Clark Terry's 1958 album In Orbit is being reissued on vinyl by Original Jazz Classics on May 5. The album (pictured) is the only session originally recorded for the historic Riverside label to feature pianist Thelonious Monk as a sideman.

* Guitarist Vincent Varvel's song "The Plaza After Rain" from his album Third Person recently was featured on AllAboutJazz.com's "Download of the Day."

* Noting that he's the first Wash U student to headline a concert for the Jazz at Holmes series, Washington University's news service published online a brief profile of saxophonist Adam Schefkind.

* St. Louis Volunteer Lawyers and Accountants For The Arts' next "Business Edge" workshop, "Ask The Entertainment Lawyer," will take place at 7:00 p.m., Monday, April 20 at the Regional Arts Commission, 6128 Delmar. The presentation will feature a panel discussion with local entertainment attorneys Barbara Graham, Eric Kayira, Jeff Michelman and Gary Pierson. The cost is $10 in advance, $15 at the door, and you can register by email by sending your name and phone number to vlaa@stlrac.org.

* Calvin Wilson's latest article in the Post-Dispatch reviews new releases from pianist Myra Melford and Sound Prints, the quintet led by trumpeter Dave Douglas and saxophonist Joe Lovano that also features St. Louis native Lawrence Fields on piano. 

* Jazz radio update: And speaking of Lovano and Wilson, the music of the former will be featured by the latter this Saturday's episode of his program  “Somethin’ Else” on Radio Arts Foundation - St. Louis. Wilson will spin samples of Lovano's work as a bandleader and as a sideman for the likes of John Scofield and Paul Motian.

Following that, "The Jazz Collective" host Jason Church will play something from the new David Sanborn album, as well as music from Eric Darius, Byron Miller, Jonathan Butler, Boz Scaggs, Lee Ritenour, Grover Washington, Jr., David Benoit, Wilton Felder, Lettuce, Farshid Etniko, Jeanne Trevor, Al Hammerman, and the Funky Butt Brass Band.

"Somethin' Else" can be heard at 8:00 p.m. Saturdays, followed by "The Jazz Collective" at 9:00 p.m. on 107.3 FM, 96.3 HD-2, and online at http://www.rafstl.org/listen.

Jazz this week: Freddy Cole & Harry Allen, Eric Person, On Fillmore, John Abercrombie, and more

The first week of April brings a nice selection of jazz and creative music headliners to St. Louis, and that's no foolin'. Let's go to the highlights...

Wednesday, April 1
Pianist and singer Freddy Cole (pictured, top left) and his quintet featuring guest saxophonist Harry Allen will begin a four-night engagement at Jazz at the Bistro.

Cole and Allen worked together here previously in May 2013 at the Bistro, and though they are of different generations - Allen's in his late 40s, while Cole is 83 - both are on the same musical wavelength, emphasizing straight-ahead swing, jazz standards, and vintage repertoire from the Great American Songbook. Both men also previously have been the subjects of StLJN's Saturday video posts, so you can check out some samples of Cole in action here, and see and hear Allen performing here.

Thursday, April 2
Saxophonist and St. Louis native Eric Person (pictured, center left) returns home to lead a trio with bassist Bob Deboo and drummer DeMarius Hicks in a free show for the Jazz at Holmes series at Washington University. It's Person's first St. Louis performance in five years, and you can catch up on some of what he's been doing in the interim via this video post from last Saturday.

Elsewhere around town, guitarist Stuart Johnson returns to Thurman Grill. 

(Update, 4/2/15: The original version of this post had mentioned a Thursday night show at The Dark Room, but despite announcing last week on social media that they'd feature live music five nights a week starting in April, now it turns out that the Thursday gigs don't actually start until April 23. As Daffy Duck once said, "Thanks for the sour persimmons, cousin."  Yr. humble editor will regard any such reports in the future with a greater degree of skepticism.)

Friday, April 3
New Music Circle presents On Fillmore, the duo project of percussionist Glenn Kotche and bassist Darin Gray, at The Stage at KDHX. While both men (pictured, lower left) share an association with singer-songwriter Jeff Tweedy and his alt-rock band Wilco, On Fillmore is something very different musically, described by NMC as "stretching the very definition of the term “rhythm section” by their use of upright bass, exotic percussion, vibraphone, various small instruments and the superimposition of field recordings."

Also on Friday, saxophonist Freddie Washington leads a trio at Cigar Inn; saxophonist Tim Cunningham returns to Troy's Jazz Gallery; and Sarah Jane and the Blue Notes will be playing swing and hot jazz at Thurman Grill.

Saturday, April 4
Singer Erin Bode will perform in concert at Jacoby Arts Center in Alton; singer Joe Mancuso and guitarist Dave Black will duet at Chaser's Lounge in the Chase Park Plaza Hotel; and pianist Matt Villinger leads a trio at Thurman Grill.

Sunday, April 5
Good 4 The Soul will play their monthly gig at BB's Jazz, Blues and Soups.

Monday, April 6
Webster University's student jazz combos will perform at the Community Music School on the Webster campus; and singer Erika Johnson and guitarist Tom Byrne are at BB's.

Tuesday, April 7
Guitarist John Abercrombie (pictured, lower left) will make a rare St. Louis appearance to lead a quartet in a special ticketed show for the Jazz at Holmes series at Washington University. One of the most distinctive guitarists to arise in the 1970s, Abercrombie has been a key artist on the ECM label for 40 years, recording more than 30 albums for them as a leader over that time.

While he incorporates aspects of fusion and free improv into his playing, ultimately Abercrombie's sound is hard to pigeonhole, and that somewhat elusive quality has served him well in his work with iconic musicians including Jack DeJohnnette, Dave Holland, Charles Lloyd, the Brecker Brothers, and many others. For this date, Abercrombie's group will include his longtime collaborator, pianist Marc Copeland, along with bassist Drew Gress and the outstanding Joey Baron on drums.

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.)

New Music Circle reschedules On Fillmore, adds concerts from Shipp & Bisio, Black Host

New Music Circle has rescheduled one of their previously announced concerts this spring and also added two more concerts, both co-presented with KDHX at The Stage at KDHX.

The performance by bassist Darin Gray and percussionist Glenn Kotche, aka On Fillmore, which had been scheduled for Saturday, March 14 at The Stage at KDHX, has been moved to Friday, April 3 at the same venue. (Presumably, tickets purchased for the original date will be transferable to the new one, but we're waiting for someone from NMC to confirm that and will update this post when they do.)

The first of the additional concerts will feature pianist Matthew Shipp and bassist Michael Bisio at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, March 28 at The Stage at KDHX. Shipp played here most recently in October 2011 at 560 Music Center with his trio, which includes Bisio and drummer Whit Dickey. Shipp and Bisio released a duo album, Floating Ice, back in 2012.

The second added concert will present the St. Louis debut of Black Host, a quintet led by drummer Gerald Cleaver, at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, April 25, also at The Stage at KDHX. Cleaver, in addition to leading his own groups, is known for his work with Roscoe Mitchell, William Parker, Joe Morris, and other significant improvising musicians. He played here a couple of years ago in another NMC concert with saxophonist Lotte Anker and keyboardist Craig Taborn.

Black Host (pictured) also includes pianist Cooper-Moore, alto saxophonist Darius Jones, bassist Pascal Niggenkemper and guitarist Brandon Seabrook. Their first recording, Life in the Sugar Candle Mines, was released last year on the Northern Spy label. It features original music described as combining "modern jazz, free music, psych, post-punk and electrified noise with painstaking detail and heady abandon."

Tickets for both Shipp & Bisio and Black Host are priced at $20 for general admission, $10 for students and "struggling music lovers," and are on sale now via Brown Paper Tickets.

(Edited after posting.)

StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: Winter/spring 2015 jazz preview, part 3

Today, it's part three of StLJN's preview of touring jazz and creative music performers who will be coming to St. Louis in the first part of 2015. (You can see parts one and two, covering January and the first part of February, here and here.)

Our first two clips feature cellist Okkyung Lee and saxophonist Lotte Anker, who will be performing separate sets in a concert presented by New Music Circle on Saturday, February 21 at Joe’s Cafe, 6014 Kingsbury Ave.

The video up above is from Lee's performance at the High Zero 2014 festival, held in September at a venue called Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood in Baltimore. After the jump, you can see Anker perform a rather unusual piece for saxophone and bow, recorded October 21, 2014 at Jazzhouse in Copenhagen, Denmark. (For lots more of Anker, see this previous video showcase posted before her appearance here in St. Louis in March, 2013.)

After the edgy improvisations of Lee and Anker, you can enjoy some more traditional sounds courtesy of trumpeter Byron Stripling, who will perform for one night only on Saturday, February 28 at Jazz at the Bistro. Stripling played here in St. Louis most recently in May 2014, doing his "Gospel According to Swing" show with the St. Louis Symphony. 

In this clip from 2013, he's fronting the Naples Jazz Orchestra in a version of the standard "Bourbon Street Parade." For more of Stripling, see this post, which ran before last appearance at the Bistro in 2012.

The next video features singer Rene Marie, who was a familiar face in St. Louis in the early 2000s. She made a number of live appearances here while signed to the locally based label MAXJAZZ, for whom she recorded five albums between 1999 and 2004. She'll return for the first time in a decade to perform Wednesday, March 4 through Saturday, March 7 at Jazz at the Bistro.

Those gigs likely will feature some material from I Wanna Be Evil (With Love to Eartha Kitt), her most recent recording released in 2013 on the Motema Music label. This live-in-the-studio clip of "I'd Rather Be Burned As a Witch" from that album features a band including trombonist Wycliffe Gordon and trumpeter Etienne Charles.

The following week, New Music Circle will present On Fillmore, aka percussionist Glenn Kotche and bassist and Belleville, IL native Darin Gray, in a concert on Saturday, March 14 at The Stage at KDHX.

The duo have made four albums and a couple of soundtracks together since first joining forces in 2000, and gained additional notice in 2013 when they toured with "Apocalyptical," a live show produced by the makers of public radio program "Radiolab." In this clip, recorded in 2013 at Audio Rebel in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, they're playing a piece called "Complications."

Today's sixth clip features Kneebody, who will be making their St. Louis debut with performances from Wednesday, March 18 through Saturday, March 21 at Jazz at the Bistro. Band members Adam Benjamin (keyboards), Shane Endsley (trumpet), Ben Wendel (tenor sax) and Kaveh Rastegar (bass) first met in the late 1990s while they all were students at the Eastman Conservatory.

With drummer Nate Wood, they formed Kneebody in 2000 and since then have recorded nine albums of eclectic instrumental music that touches on styles from jazz to punk rock to the compositions of Charles Ives. In this clip, they're playing "Cha Cha" from their 2013 album The Line in a gig at the Blue Whale in Los Angeles.

Today's seventh and final video features the Dizzy Gillespie Afro-Cuban Experience, who will be in St. Louis to perform on Saturday, March 21 at the Sheldon Concert Hall. The tribute group is led by bassist John Lee, who played with Gillespie for many years, and also includes percussionist Mario Grillo, aka "Machito Jr," son of the famed Latin bandleader Frank "Machito" Grillo.

The band's front line features trumpeter Freddie Hendrix, who's played frequently with former St. Louisan Oliver Lake, and saxophonist Sharel Cassity, with guitarist Yotam Silberstein and drummer Robby Ameen completing the lineup. They're seen here in an excerpt from a show in 2013 in Sofia, Bulgaria, playing "Manteca," the seminal Latin-jazz number composed in 1947 by Gillespie, percussionist Chano Pozo, and Gil Fuller.

Look for part four of StLJN's winter/spring 2015 jazz preview in this space next week. You can see the rest of today's videos after the jump.

New Music Circle 2014-15 season to include Roscoe Mitchell & Craig Taborn, Tim Berne, Thumbscrew, and more

New Music Circle has announced their 2014-15 season, with seven concerts featuring what looks to be an intriguing mix of edgy jazz and improvised music, electronics, and contemporary composition.

The schedule kicks off with a concert by Thumbscrew, featuring guitarist Mary Halvorson, bassist Michael Formanek and drummer Tomas Fujiwara, on Friday, September 12 at Joe's Cafe, the "house concert" venue at 6014 Kingsbury Ave in the Central West End.

All NYC-based, Thumbscrew's members first worked together as the rhythm section for trumpeter Taylor Ho Bynum's sextet, and decided to continue performing together as a trio, with the group serving as an outlet for each member's original compositions as well as improvisation.

The Bynum sextet played St. Louis in an NMC-sponsored show in November 2012, but that date included Ken Filiano on bass rather than Formanek. So, along with the welcome return of Halvorson, one of the more original guitarists to emerge in the last decade, this will be the first chance local listeners will have to hear the three of them together.

They'll be followed a double bill featuring separate sets by another NYC-based musician, drummer and sound artist Eli Keszler, and Berlin electronic musician Rashad Becker on Saturday, November 8 at the new location of The Luminary at 2701 Cherokee St.

Keszler's solo music and installations are said to draw inspiration from sources including free-jazz drummer Han Bennik and composer Conlon Nancarrow, while Becker, known for his work as a recording and mastering engineer as well as his own music, "utilizes realtime synthesis and sampling techniques that set into motion intricate sonic worlds that recall the complexities of human speech and various exotic aural phenomena."

Next up, multi-instrumentalist Roscoe Mitchell (pictured, top left) and keyboardist Craig Taborn will team up for a duo performance on Friday, December 5 at The Stage at KDHX, which is part of the station's new HQ at 3524 Washington Ave. in Grand Center.

Mitchell, a founding member of the Art Ensemble of Chicago and the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), is considered one of the cornerstone players of the 1960s free-jazz movement. His highly influential 1966 album Sound was one of the first records to showcase the mix of composition and collective improvisation, on both traditional and non-traditional instruments, found in much of the subsequent work by the Art Ensemble and other AACM-affiliated groups.

Mitchell subsequently has led other bands including the Creative Arts Collective, the Sound Ensemble, and Note Factory; and also began teaching, most recently at Mills College in Oakland, where he's been the Darius Milhaud Chair of Composition since 2007.

Meanwhile, Taborn (pictured, center left) has gained a reputation as one of the more versatile keyboardists of his generation, playing piano, electric piano and organ with jazz artists including Chris Potter, Dave Holland, and James Carter as well as with Mitchell's Note Factory and other experimentally inclined players such as saxophonists Lotte Anker, David Binney, and Tim Berne; drummers Gerald Cleaver and Susie Ibarra; and many others.

After the holidays, the schedule resumes in January with the annual "NMC Showcase," which at this point is mostly TBA, though NMC's Jeremy Kannapell tells StLJN that St. Louis pianist Johanna Ballou, a graduate of the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama who specializes in music by contemporary composers, will be one of the featured performers.

The following month, Lotte Anker, who played with Taborn and Cleaver in an NMC-presented concert here in February 2013, will return to perform on a split bill with cellist Okkyung Lee on Saturday, February 21 at Joe's Cafe.

Lee has collaborated frequently with visual artists and choreographers, as well as with musicians including Christian Marclay, Thurston Moore, Laurie Anderson, Ikue Mori, Jim O'Rourke, John Zorn, Chris Corsano, Leo Wadada Smith and Vijay Iyer. For more about Anker, check out this video showcase post that ran before her 2013 gig here.

St. Louis' own Darin Gray will be featured in the next concert, as the bassist, known for many years as a prolific and peripatetic improviser and more recently as sideman to alt-rocker Jeff Tweedy, will team with drummer Glenn Kotche in their duo project On Fillmore to play Saturday, March 14 at The Stage at KDHX.

The final concert of the 2014-15 season will feature saxophonist Tim Berne's quartet Snakeoil on Friday, May 8, also at The Stage at KDHX.

Known early in his career for drawing significant compositional and improvisational inspiration from former St. Louisan, Black Artists Group and World Saxophone Quartet co-founder Julius Hemphill, Berne has continued to champion Hemphill's legacy while carving out a musical identity of his own via his label Screwgun Records.

Snakeoil (pictured, lower left) which also includes Oscar Noriega (clarinet, bass clarinet), Matt Mitchell (piano), and Ches Smith (drums, percussion), serves as a vehicle for Berne's original compositions, and has released two albums on the ECM label.

In addition to their concert performances, Keszler, Becker, Mitchell and Taborn, and Gray and Kotche all will take part in some sort of workshop or educational program while they're here, though the details on those events have yet to be finalized.

So what's the takeaway here? As with any season schedule, one can quibble with individual selections, but as a fan of Halvorson and Taborn - neither of whom can be said to be exactly over-exposed - I'm happy to have them back, even if they did play here relatively recently. As for Mitchell, as best I can tell, the last time he performed in St. Louis was in the mid-1980s with the Art Ensemble, so his return is long overdue.

Add in the local debuts of the others and the return Berne - who's been a noteworthy presence on the music scene for decades now but hasn't played here since a 1990s gig at Wash U's notoriously atrocious sounding room, the Gargoyle - and all in all, it's shaping up to be the sort of season that induced Calvin Wilson of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch to name New Music Circle as the "Best Place to Hear Jazz" in the paper's recent "Go! List" issue. While other local presenters may have considerably more resources to work with, NMC continues to offer fans of adventurous music one of the best bangs for the buck in St. Louis.

All performances are scheduled to start at 7:30 p.m.. Single tickets are $20 for general admission, $10 students, for all shows except Mitchell and Taborn, which has a ticket price TBA.

(Edited after posting to correct the date on the Keszler/Becker concert, and to note Tim Berne's previous St. Louis appearance.)