Ozomatli reviewed, Jazz Education Network Conference previewed

For your Sunday night/Monday morning perusal, some links from over the weekend:

Ozomatli was in St. Louis on Friday night, performing at Blueberry Hill in place of their canceled date at Powell Symphony Hall. Ben McMahon was there to cover the show for the Riverfront Times, and you can read his review online here.

Meanwhile, on Thursday the Jazz Education Network will open its first-ever national conference at the University of Missouri St. Louis. The event runs through Saturday and will feature public concerts each night at the Touhill Performing Arts Center.

The Post-Dispatch's Calvin Wilson has a preview of the conference here, and Jon Poses, who runs the We Always Swing jazz series just down the road in Columbia, MO, writes about his plans to attend the JEN conference in a piece for the Columbia Tribune, available online here.

Jazz this week: James Carter Organ Trio, Ozomatli, TSIGOTI, Willerm Delisfort, Stephanie Trick, and more

Though the biggest jazz name in St. Louis this weekend is a saxophonist, it's also a good week to hear some piano players, with four different events featuring talented pianists working in styles ranging from ragtime and stride to swing, bop and blues to free-form and experimental. Let's go to the highlights:

Tonight, saxophonist James Carter's Organ Trio begins a four-night run at Jazz at the Bistro. A versatile performer with a wide stylistic range and serious chops on a half-dozen different horns, Carter (pictured) also will give a free clinic/masterclass this Saturday at Saxquest. For more about Carter and some video of his organ trio in action, see this post from last Saturday.

Also tonight, the experimentally minded pianist Thollem McDonas will do a solo concert at Luminary Center for the Arts, 4900 Reber Place on the south side. This show was a late addition for McDonas, who's back in town primarily for a performance Thursday with the band TSIGOTI at the Schlafly Tap Room downtown. Described by their label ESP-Disk as "an international band combining revolutionary politics and intelligent semi-acoustic avant-punk," TSIGOTI are touring in support of their latest CD, Private Poverty Speaks to the People of the Party.

On Friday, the Latin/funk/jazz/hip-hop band Ozomatli plays at Blueberry Hill. Originally scheduled for Powell Symphony Hall as a collaboration with the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, the show last week was moved to Blueberry Hill for reasons that still are unexplained. The performance was announced as a sellout earlier today - no big surprise considering the relative capacities of the two venues - but it's possible some ticket brokers may still have seats, or you can always try your luck at the venue right before the gig me and hope for a cancellation, no-show, or to run across someone with extra tickets for sale.

Elsewhere on Friday, pianist Willerm Delisfort will play at Robbie's House of Jazz. A native of Miami, FL, Delisfort studied at Northern Illinois University, where the much-esteemed educator Ronald Carter heads the jazz program, and also is a protege of the fine Chicago pianist Willie Pickens. (Warning: Delisfort's website has one of those annoying Flash interfaces that launches another window and autoplays music as soon as it loads. Fortunately, the music sounds pretty good, but those with finicky browsers should be wary.)

On Sunday afternoon, the husband-and-wife team of pianist Reggie Thomas and singer Mardra Thomas will do a free concert titled "Your Blues Ain't Like Mine" at the Scott Joplin House State Historic Site.

Looking beyond the weekend, on Tuesday pianist Stephanie Trick will perform in a "Notes From Home" event at the Sheldon Concert Hall. A 2009 graduate of the University of Chicago, Trick specializes in ragtime and pre-WWII jazz piano styles, and the examples of her playing available online show some impressive technique. Jazz broadcaster Don Wolff, who will MC Tuesday's concert, recently recorded an interview with Trick for his radio show, and you can hear it online here.

Also on Tuesday, the Eugene B. Redmond Writers Club presents “Da-Dum-Dun,” a event honoring three world-class artists associated with East St. Louis. The tribute to jazz trumpeter Miles Davis, writer Henry Lee Dumas and dancer Katherine Dunham will include live jazz from saxophonist Kendrick Smith and pianist Brian Harrison; poetry from Redmond, Michael Castro, Roscoe Crenshaw, Byron Lee, Susan Lively, Patricia Merritt, Darlene Roy, Lena Weathers, Treasure Williams and Jaye Willis; dance from students at the SIUE-ESL Center for the Performing Arts; and what's being called a "multimodal exhibit." It starts at 6:00 p.m. in Room 2083 of Bldg. B on the SIUE-East St. Louis Higher Education Campus, 601 J.R. Thompson Dr.

For more jazz-related events in St. Louis this weekend and beyond, 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.)

Ozomatli concert on Friday, May 14 moved from Powell Hall to Blueberry Hill

The collaborative concert featuring the Latin/funk/jazz/hip-hop group Ozomatli (pictured) and the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, announced earlier this year and originally scheduled for next Friday, May 14 at Powell Symphony Hall, is off.

Instead, Ozomatli will perform on their own, without any members of the SLSO, at 8 p.m. on May 14 at Blueberry Hill's Duck Room. (The band also will do an in-store appearance down the street at Vintage Vinyl at 5:30 p.m. that day.)

According to the minimal information posted on the SLSO website, tickets purchased for the Powell Hall performance cannot be used at Blueberry Hill; for a refund, call 314-534-1700. Tickets for the Blueberry Hill performance are on sale now for $15 via Ticketmaster.

Ticketing arrangements aside, the interesting question is: What happened? This sort of relatively last-minute change is not uncommon in popular music, but most major orchestras, including the SLSO, plan their season schedules well in advance and generally tend to stick to them, unless a featured performer becomes ill, injured or otherwise suddenly unavailable.

In this case, that doesn't seem to be what happened, since Ozomatli is still coming to St. Louis to perform. And it's unlikely that money was a sticking point, since they're going ahead with the show at a venue that has a mere fraction of Powell Hall's seating capacity, and therefore, offers commensurately smaller earning potential. That in turn suggests that the SLSO were the ones who may have pulled the plug on the collaboration.

So what would cause them to cancel just nine days before the concert was scheduled to happen? No one's talking, but an educated guess would be that something went wrong with regard to the orchestral arrangements - the parts didn't arrive on time, weren't notated in the expected manner, were arranged for the wrong instrumentation, or were otherwise found by someone in authority at the SLSO to be unplayable, given the allocated amount of rehearsal time.

This is speculation, of course, and unless someone from Ozomatli or the SLSO provides an explanation, we may never know the real story, or whether there's any chance the event might be rescheduled at a later date. Too bad, because the notion of the two groups playing together certainly presented some interesting sonic possibilities...

SLSO to perform with Chris Botti, Ozomatli

The Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra has announced its 2010-2011 schedule, and the slate of upcoming concerts includes some events of interest to fans of jazz and creative music.

For starters, the Orchestra has added some dates to its "SLSO Presents" series this spring, among them the Ozomatli concert on Friday, May 14 that was first mentioned here on StLJN earlier this week. The big additional news is that Ozomatli won't just be playing their regular show - they'll actually be performing with the SLSO, and it should be very interesting to hear what sort of orchestral arrangements are deployed for the occasion.

Additionally, next season's "SLSO Presents" series will include a concert featuring popular trumpeter Chris Botti playing with the Orchestra on February 19, 2011. Given that Botti has a strong following in St. Louis, ticket sales for this concert should be quite brisk.

The SLSO's 2010-2011 season also will feature an ongoing year-long festival of Russian composers; a special commemoration of the 100th birthday of Gustav Mahler; performances of works by Copland, Ives, and Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue for the citywide American Arts Experience-St. Louis; and a number of contemporary works by Ligeti, Pärt, Steven Mackey, Christopher Rouse, and others. You can get all the details on the entire schedule plus ticket information at the SLSO's website.

Pollstar: Jeff Beck, Ozomatli coming to St. Louis

The online touring information service Pollstar has just added a listing for a St. Louis show by guitarist Jeff Beck (pictured) on Thursday, April 29 at the Fox Theatre.

It's one of seven new U.S. dates just added to the schedule for Beck, who doesn't tour all that often. (Perhaps some astute reader will chime in via the comments with info on when he last played St. Louis.)

Beck's got a large and diverse fan base, from rock lovers who have been with him since the Yardbirds days to jazz and blues enthusiasts who appreciate his more recent all-instrumental excursions, so this show should be a hot ticket when it goes on sale.

UPDATE - 1/28/10, 4:45 p.m.: Beck's website now has more info about his spring tour, including the news that his band will include Narada Michael Walden on drums, Rhonda Smith on bass and Jason Rebello on keyboards.

UPDATE - 2/2/10, 11:30 a.m.: Confirming the report from Pollstar, the Jeff Beck concert on April 29 is now listed on the Fox Theatre's website, with ticket prices and on-sale date showing as "TBA."

Pollstar also has added a listing showing the Latin/funk/hip-hop group Ozomatli performing at Powell Symphony Hall on Friday, May 14. While the notion of this particular band at this particular venue may seem a bit incongruous at first, it's not completely implausible, given the existence of the "SLSO Presents" series and/or the rental availability of Powell Hall. Guess we'll just have to wait for a bit to see what it's all about...

UPDATE - 1/28/10, 4:45 p.m.: The Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra has confirmed that Ozomatli will be performing at Powell Hall with the SLSO on May 14. See this post for more.

In any event, remember that listings on Pollstar should be treated as unconfirmed until officially announced by the venue and/or presenter. When there's an official announcement on either of these concerts, we'll have more details for you right here. In the meantime, you can check out sounds from both Beck and Ozomatli in the embedded video windows below.