If you had a chance to hear guitarist Pat Martino when he performed in St. Louis a couple of weeks ago, you may have wondered how he does what he does.
Today for Music Education Monday, you may get at least a partial answer to that question, as you can see Martino (pictured) explaining some of his concepts and musical ideas via a series of video lessons.
Excerpted from an "interactive video master class" called The Nature of Guitar, the lessons total more than 70 minutes of material spread across 11 individual videos.
The first clip, "A Compositional Journey," is the longest of the set at nearly 25 minutes, followed by segments titled "The Utensil & The Experience," "Seven Primaries: Triangle," "Chromatic Scale: Octavistics," and "'Stairways' & Chromaticism."
Next up is "Parental Forms Revealed," followed by "G7 Improv: Minor Form," "Diminished Parental Form: Dom7," an overview and breakdown of Martino's original "Welcome to a Prayer," and a performance of an improvised blues.
All 11 clips have been compiled into a YouTube playlist, which you can see in the embedded window below.
This week's notable jazz and creative music shows in St. Louis include return appearances from a top guitarist and one of the hottest young bands in jazz, plus a rare visit from some prog-rock veterans and a tribute to a fondly remembered local vocalist and mentor. Let's go to the highlights...
Wednesday, May 11
Guitarist Pat Martino(pictured, top left) returns to St. Louis for the first of four nights continuing through Saturday at Jazz at the Bistro.
Martino's guitar/organ/drums trio continues to capture the classic sound and feel associated with that instrumentation, but the leader's harmonically adventurous playing also adds another dimension beyond the blues-based fare that's often a staple of the format. For some recent samples on video of Martino in action, see this post from last Saturday.
Friday, May 13
Pianist Carolbeth True's trio will team up with singer Kim Fuller to interpret material associated with Billie Holiday, Dinah Washington, Nancy Wilson, and more in "Songs from the Ladies," the first of two shows featuring True this weekend at the Ozark Theatre.
Now touring in support of the albums Family Dinner, Vol. II, which was released in February, and Culcha Vulcha, which came out a couple of weeks ago, Snarky Puppy (pictured, bottom left) has been moving up to larger venues in many cities they've played before, so this chance to see them here in a relatively small space may be the last for a while if their star continues to rise. In any event, even though the show is on a Monday, advance purchase of tickets is highly recommended.
Also on Monday, saxophonist Jerry Greene's Greene Jazz Project will play at BB's Jazz, Blues & Soups.
Tuesday, May 17
Singer Wendy Gordon has recruited an eclectic lineup of St. Louis vocalists including longtime local favorite Jeanne Trevor for "A Tribute to Mae Wheeler" at the Sheldon Concert Hall. Also joining Gordon and Trevor for the "Unforgettable Legends" show will be singers Linda Kennedy, Diane Vaughan, Mary Dyson, Marty Adbullah, Jeff Hardin, and more.
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.)
Today, let's get reacquainted via video with guitarist Pat Martino, who returns to St. Louis next week to play Wednesday, May 11 through Saturday, May 14 at Jazz at the Bistro.
Martino has been a fairly regular visitor to St. Louis in recent years, last performing here in December 2013 at the Bistro. That visit was preceded by a Saturday video post spotlighting the guitarist, as were previous gigs here in 2010 and 2009.
Martino's bio was summarized in a couple of those previous posts, or you can get the guitarist's full story via today's final video, an hour-long documentary titled Here and Now that shares its name with Martino's autobiography and offers "an in-depth look at some of his achievements, history, perseverance and philosophy."
Before that, though, you can check out videos of several Martino performances recorded since his last visit here, starting up top with "Sunny," a longtime staple of his live sets, seen here as played with organist Pat Bianchi and drummer Carmen Intorre in 2014 at the Festival Internacional Buenos Aires Jazz.
After the jump, there are two more numbers with Bianchi and Intorre that were recorded at the same gig: a version of Thelonious Monk's "Round Midnight," and Martino's take on Wayne Shorter's "Footprints."
After that, there's another clip from 2014, featuring Martino playing "Lean Years" backed by keyboardist Matt King, bassist Christian Diener, and drummer Wolfgang Haffner.
In the fifth spot, you can see a full set by Martino's trio from the 2014 Lotos Jazz Festival in Poland, with the previously mentioned documentary Here and Now in the final embedded window.
You can see the rest of today's videos after the jump...
This week, let's wrap up StLJN's winter/spring 2016 jazz preview, with the fifth and final post featuring videos of bands and musicians who will be performing here in the next few months. (If you came in late, or just want revisit the previous installments, here are links to part one, part two, part three, and part four.)
Picking up roughly when part four concluded, today's edition begins with saxophonist Melissa Aldana, who will be making her St. Louis debut with a four-night gig starting Wednesday, April 27 and continuing through Saturday, April 30 at Jazz at the Bistro.
Aldana, who's originally from Chile and now is based in NYC, is a 2009 graduate of Berklee College of Music whose career got a big boost when she won the 2013 Thelonious Monk International Jazz Saxophone Competition. In the first video up above, you can see Aldana, bassist Pablo Menares, and drummer Francisco Mela performing a full set in 2013 at Berklee.
After the jump, there's a full set from pianist Cyrus Chestnut, who should be familiar to local jazz fans from his numerous previous appearances here over the past decade. Chestnut will be returning to perform on Saturday, May 7 at the Sheldon Concert Hall, and today's video shows him with his trio at a concert in 2014 at Bowdoin College in Maine.
Next, it's guitarist Pat Martino, who will be back in St. Louis to play starting Wednesday, May 11 through Saturday, May 14 at the Bistro. Like Chestnut, Martino has been a fairly regular visitor here in recent years, performing most recently at the Bistro in December 2013. In the third video, you can see and hear his set from February 2014 at the Lotos Jazz Festival in Poland, accompanied by organist Pat Bianchi and drummer Carmen Intorre.
The final two videos feature pianist and singer Freddy Cole and saxophonist Harry Allen, who will revisit their team-up from 2013 and 2015 for a week of performances starting Wednesday, May 25 through Saturday, May 28 at the Bistro.
You can see Cole and his band performing a full set in 2014 at the Jazz San Javier festival in Spain and then, in the final video, Allen's first set from a gig in July 2015 at Dizzy's in Jazz at Lincoln Center, accompanied by pianist Ehud Asherie, bassist/vocalist Nicki Parrott, drummer and vibraphonist Chuck Redd, and percussionist Little Johnny Rivero.
In the coming weeks and months, some of the bands and musicians featured in this preview series will get a more extensive look, and of course, as additional jazz and creative music bookings for this year in St. Louis are announced, StLJN will have the news for you right here. In the meantime, you can see the rest of today's videos after the jump...
Whether you're looking for jazz explicitly flavored with a bit of holiday spirit, or not, there's plenty to choose from on this week's menu of jazz and creative music performances in St. Louis. Let's go to the highlights...
Tonight, guitarist Pat Martino(pictured) returns to St. Louis for the first time since 2010 to begin a four-night engagement at Jazz at the Bistro. Though he's worked in other contexts, Martino generally favors the organ trio format, and for this visit, he'll be accompanied by organist Pat Bianchi and drummer Carmen Intorre.
For much more about Martino, and some videos of him in action, please see this post from a couple of weeks ago.
Also tonight, singer and St. Louis native Lynne Fiddmont and her saxophonist brother Keith Fiddmont are back in town for a homecoming performance at the Sheldon Concert Hall; trombonist/singer Doug Burns and pianist Pauline Stark will play for diners at the Feasting Fox, 4200 S Grand; and singer Brian Owens will present his holiday show "Soul of the Season," with guest appearances from pianist Peter Martin and The 442s, at Centene Center for Arts and Education, 3547 Olive. (For an overview of all the holiday jazz shows this month in St. Louis, please see this post.)
Tomorrow night, the Jazz at Holmes series at Washington University presents a free concert of performances from Wash U jazz students at Ridgley Hall on campus; Miss Jubilee plays at Thaxton Speakeasy downtown; and trumpeter Jim Manley continues his weekly gig at Joyia Tapas, 4501 Manchester Ave in the Grove neighborhood.(Update - 4:00 p.m. 12/5/13: Jim Manley has posted on Facebook that tonight's gig at Joyia is canceled due to the possibility of a winter storm hitting St. Louis this evening.)
On Friday, Jazz at Holmes will wrap up their fall semester schedule with a ticketed concert featuring pianist Marc Copland, bassist Gary Peacock, and drummer Joey Baron at 560 Music Center. Though not a regular working unit as such, all three players have a stellar list of individual credits, and the result should be a superior evening of music. For more on that, please see this post.
Looking beyond the weekend, on Monday the Webster University Jazz Singers will present their semester-ending concert at Winifred Moore Auditorium on the Webster campus, and Latin jazz band Clave Sol plays at BB's Jazz, Blues & Soups.
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.)
This week, we spotlight the stylings of guitarist Pat Martino, who will be back in St. Louis next month to perform Wednesday, December 4 through Saturday, December 7 at Jazz at the Bistro.
The Philadelphia native, now 69 years old, has played here numerous times over the years, most recently in December 2010 at the Bistro. StLJN featured Martino in a video showcase post then, and also recounted some of his fascinating back story in another video post before he played here in 2009. So today, we're just going to check out a selection of video clips, featuring Martino with his usual organ trio and with a couple of special collaborators.
The first video up above was recorded in 2010 at New Morning in Paris, France, and shows Martino, organist Tony Monaco and drummer Shawn Hill playing the swinging blues-with-a-bridge "On The Midnight Special." Below, you can see another clip from the same gig of the trio playing the bossa nova "The Island."
Next, we've got two samples of Martino's occasional work with the talented young pianist Eldar Djangirov. Clip number three, recorded in 2009 at the Iridium in NYC, shows Martino and Eldar playing John Coltrane's "Impressions"; number four is a version of Wes Montgomery's "Four on Six" recorded in September of this year before a rather chatty audience at Chris' Jazz Cafe in Philadelphia.
The fifth video, recoded in October of this year at KPLU radio in Seattle, features Martino, organist Pat Bianchi, drummer Carmen Intorre and special guest saxophonist James Carter on a very uptempo version of "Seven Come Eleven," the venerable swing standard made famous by Benny Goodman and Charlie Christian.
And today's final clip is an interview with Martino from 2012, in which he discusses his appearance at the Berks Jazz Fest, his autobiographical book Here and Now, and various other topics.
For more about Martino and Here and Now, check out this interview he did with WHYY in Philadelphia. You might also be interested in this review of the Martino-Eldar gig at Chris' Jazz Cafe, and this interview from July of this year, published on the Philadelphia music website JUMPPhilly.com.
Today, it's part 4 of StLJN's Fall 2013 jazz preview, in which we offer video samples of the various jazz and creative musicians coming to our town before the end of the year. (Here's part one, part two, and part three.)
Our preview resumes at the beginning of November with guitarist Peter Bernstein, who will be appearing with pianist Peter Martin on Saturday, November 2 at the Sheldon Concert Hall as part of Martin's eponymous concert series there. Bernstein, whose notable credits include stints with Diana Krall, Lou Donaldson, the all-star Blue Note 7, and many others, is seen in the first clip up above playing "Penthouse Serenade" in June 2012 at Chicago's Old Town School of Folk Music.
Down below, the next clip offers a look at trumpeter and pianist Ben Polcer, who will be leading the band providing music for this year's Nevermore Jazz Ball Saturday night dance, also on November 2. Polcer, who lives in New Orleans, will assemble a group specifically for the St. Louis gig; he's seen here with the band known as His Swingin' Six, including vocalist Mischa Lake, performing "24 Robbers."
The following week, singer and pianist Ann Hampton Callaway returns to St. Louis to perform Wednesday, November 6 through Saturday, November 9 at Jazz at the Bistro. Callaway, who last played the Bistro in 2011, is seen here in the studios of KPLU radio in Seattle, improvising song lyrics based on words and phrases suggested by the audience, which on this occasion included "sunshine in Seattle," "home for wayward girls," "basketball" and "snuffleupagus."
A couple of days later, Trombone Shorty and his band Orleans Avenue return to St. Louis to play Monday, November 11 at the Old Rock House. Shorty, aka Troy Andrews, last played here for the Bluesweek festival in May; in this clip, you can see him performing "Big 12."
Next up, it's violinist Regina Carter, who's returning to play Wednesday, November 20 throguh Saturday November 23 at Jazz at the Bistro. When she was here to play the Bistro a couple of years ago, Carter performed with the the band from her album Reverse Thread, with whom she can be seen here playing “Zerapiky,” a folk song from Madagascar. The quartet for this fall tour includes the drummer from that band, Alvester Garnett, as well as pianist Xavier Davis and bassist Jesse Murphy, which, absent Reverse Thread's accordion and kora, suggests at least a partial return to a more straight-ahead sound.
The week after Carter is town, trumpeter, singer and U City native Jeremy Davenport will return home from new Orleans to play his annual post-Thanksgiving dates here on Friday November 29 and Saturday, November 30 at Jazz at the Bistro. In today's sixth clip, shot by an audience member at the French Quarter Festival in April of this year, Davenport offers his version of the standard "Bourbon Street Parade."
The following week, guitarist Pat Martino will play Wednesday, December 4 through Saturday, December 7 at the Bistro. Martino, who's been to St. Louis many times and last played the Bistro in 2010, is seen in the sixth clip performing Thelonious Monk's "Round Midnight" earlier this year at a jazz festival in Salerno, Italy.
The next show on the calendar is a bit harder to preview, as pianist Marc Copland, bassist Gary Peacock and drummer Joey Baron aren't really a regular working unit and thus there's no video online of them all playing together. So, to give you at least taste of what to expect when they join forces to play Friday, December 6 at 560 Music Center, we've got two clips. The first features Copland and guitarist John Abercrombie dueting on "Speak to Me" at a concert last year in Vienna; the second is a profile of Baron, produced for German television.
Today's final video features two more musicians who should be quite familiar to local audiences, singer/guitarist John Pizzarelli, who's done more gigs here in the last decade than just about any other touring jazz musician, and his dad, the legendary guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli. For this visit to our town, the Pizzarellis will team up for performances on Wednesday, December 18 through Saturday, December 21 at Jazz at the Bistro. The video is a short feature story about them, with musical excerpts, produced by a New Jersey public TV station and filmed at the Shanghai Jazz Club in Madison, NJ.
* A new high-end home audio store called St. Louis Stereo recently opened downtown, and the Riverfront Times' Roy Kasten has the story here.
* St. Louis drummer Andre Boyd just got a gig playing with one of the traveling troupes of the famed Cirque du Soleil, as reported here by the St. Louis American's Rebecca S. Rivas.
* According to a story by the Post-Dispatch's Tim Bryant published today, several real estate projects are about to come to fruition in midtown St. Louis' Grand Center arts district, home to music venues including Jazz at the Bistro, the Sheldon Concert Hall, the Fox Theatre and Powell Symphony Hall. The upcoming developments include new homes for radio stations KWMU and KDHX, both of which are relocating to the area; a hotel; more than 100 rental units; and a renovation of the Beaux Arts Building into the Grand Center Arts Academy, a visual and performing arts charter school.
It's a busy time for jazz and creative music over the next few days in St. Louis, with events in styles ranging from soulful mainstream swing to adventurous free improv, plus holiday music, a tribute to a fallen Beatle, and lots more besides. Let's go to the highlights:
Perhaps the best known musician visiting our town this week is guitarist Pat Martino, who plays tonight through Saturday at Jazz at the Bistro. Martino is an acknowledged master of the classic organ-trio style of jazz guitar playing, but he also incorporates more modern and/or outside concepts and tonalities into his solos, resulting in a sound that's reasonably familiar but never formulaic.
For more about Martino and some videos of him performing, see this post from last Saturday. (Martino also will be honored Thursday afternoon at a free, public symposium on the Washington University campus; for more about that event, see this post.)
Wednesday evening also marks the first performance in British singer Barb Jungr's four-night run at the Kranzberg Arts Center under the auspices of Cabaret St. Louis. Jungr's show "The Men I Love: The New American Songbook" emphasizes work from contemporary songwriters such as Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Bruce Springsteen, Paul Simon, David Byrne and others, as arranged by Jungr and her pianist Simon Wallace.
Also on Wednesday, Robbie's House of Jazz will present the first in a series of concerts by local collegiate jazz ensembles, with the Meramec Jazz Band getting the honor of batting lead-off.
On Thursday evening, saxophonist Willie Akins will play a free concert to wrap up this semester's Jazz at Holmes series at Washington University, and the Lindenwood University Jazz Ensemble takes the stage at Robbie's.
Friday evening offers some potentially intriguing musical variety, as the Japanese-born improvising percussionist Tatsuya Nakatanireturns to the the Lemp Neighborhood Arts Center; and the AWA Jazz String Trio, featuring violinists Alyssa Avery and Justin Branum and bassist Willem von Hombracht, will perform a mix of standards, covers and original material at Robbie's.
On Saturday, Brazilian guitarist Romero Lubambo(pictured) will join pianist Peter Martin for a performance at the Sheldon Concert Hall. The concert also will feature singer Erin Bode as special guest and Martin's fellow U. City native Chris Thomas on bass. To hear some samples of Lubambo's playing, check out the video showcase post from last Saturday. In a nice added touch, the Lubambo/Martin concert also will be webcast live by The Global Loop.
Also on Saturday, New Music Circle will present what's being billed as a showcase for St. Louis-based performers at Steinberg Auditorium on the Washington University campus. The event will feature short sets from five artists, including trumpeter/percussionist "Baba" Mike Nelson; electronic musician Eric Hall; video artist and musician Zlatko Cosic; percussionist, synthesist and instrument builder Ron Coulter; and musique concrête sound designer Lauri des Marais.
On Sunday, the UMSL music department is putting on its annual holiday show at the Touhill Performing Arts Center. The free event will feature the University Jazz Ensemble, Vocal Point, and the University String Orchestra under the direction of Jim Widner and Jim Henry. Also on Sunday, singer Wendy Gordon will present a reprise of her cabaret-style musical "A Jazz Heaven," featuring fellow singer Jeanne Trevor and a three-piece band, at Klub Klymaxx in the Ambassador Events Center.
Looking beyond the weekend, on Monday the Webster University jazz singers will perform a a free concert at Winifred Moore Auditorium on campus; and drummer Joe Pastor's trio plays at BB's Jazz Blues & Soups.
Then on Tuesday, guitarist Steve Schenkel will lead a group of Webster University music faculty and students in a jazz-flavored tribute to the songs of the late John Lennon at Webster's Community Music School, 535 Garden Ave. in Webster.
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.)
The Jazz at Holmes series and the Washington University Department of Music will present guitarist Pat Martino(pictured) in a public symposium honoring his work from 12:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. this Thursday, December 2, at Graham Chapel on the Wash U campus.
Martino will be in St. Louis to perform Wednesday, December 1 through Saturday, December 4 at Jazz at the Bistro. He will be joined at Thursday's symposium by music professors William Lenihan of Wash U and Steve Schenkel of Webster University, who are both working jazz guitarists, and Patrick Burke, director of undergraduate studies and professor of musicology for Wash U.
The symposium is free and open to the public, with no tickets or advance reservations required. For more about Pat Martino, see this post.
With Russell Malone playing at Jazz at the Bistro last month and both Mike Stern and John McLaughlin in town this week, St. Louis audiences have had opportunities to hear some outstanding guitarists this fall. There's one more yet to come before winter officially arrives, as Pat Martino will be back here from Wednesday, December 1 through Saturday, December 4 to perform at the Bistro.
Martino's most recent appearance in St. Louis was in February of last year at the Bistro, and we covered his inspiring back story in a Video Showcase post then. Today, let's just look and listen to some clips of him as he does his thing.
The first video shows off something a bit different for Martino, as he's playing with a quintet, rather than his usual trio. The song is called "Boundary," and the rest of the band includes Delmar Brown on keyboards, Kenwood Dennard on drums, James Genus on bass and Eric Alexander on tenor sax.
Below that, you can see a clip from earlier this year of Martino playing with his current trio, featuring organist Tony Monaco and drummer Jason Brown, at the Zagreb Jazz Festival. The visuals on this-audience-shot video aren't great, but the audio is a more-than-adequate representation of the band's sound. The third clip was shot in June 2010 in Philadelphia at a benefit for Jazz Bridge, a charity that assists jazz musicians in that area, and features Martino talking briefly about his musical influences, and then playing "Lean Years."
The last video is one that's been making the rounds on the Internet since the dawn of YouTube, but since it's quite a nice clip and has never been featured here, it seems worth sharing. It features Martino performing the 1960s soul/pop hit "Sunny" in 2002 at the Umbria Jazz Festival in Italy with fellow guitarist John Scofield and his then-regular accompanists, organist Joey DeFrancesco and drummer Byron Landham. Martino goes first, then Sco and Joey get their licks in, and a good time apparently is had by all.
Here's our weekly compilation of news and links related to jazz, improvisation, and creative music in St. Louis, including news of musicians originally from the Gateway City, recent visitors, and coming attractions, plus assorted other items of interest:
* It's something of a tradition here to start this recurring feature with something Miles Davis-related, and this week there's just one such link, to a podcast tribute to Davis and Kind of Blue, hosted by Errington Thompson.
* However, one of StLJN's fave jazz/music sharing blogs, Destination: Out, currently has a post devoted to another St. Louis trumpeter, the great Lester Bowie (pictured), and his time working with famed African bandleader, saxophonist and vocalist Fela Kuti. As a bonus, one of the MP3s included in the post also features St. Louis' own Phillip Wilson on drums. If you're interested, we suggest you download immediately, as D:O's files only stay online for a short time. For more on Lester Bowie's stint with Fela Kuti, go here.
* Saxophonist and St. Louis native Eric Person was in the Quad Cities on the Iowa/Illinois border last week for a concert with his band Meta-Four and a workshop with local student musicians; read more about it here.
* Another former St. Louisan, saxophonist David Sanborn, will be one of the headliners at this year's Vancouver Jazz Festival, which takes place from June 26 to July 5. Also performing at the fest: the Monterey Quartet, featuring Dave Holland, Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Chris Potter and Eric Harland; guitarists Al DiMeola and Derek Trucks; and pianists Fred Hersch, Kenny Werner and Chucho Valdés.
* The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article by Larry Blumenfeld about "Astronome: A Night at the Opera," the collaboration between avant garde theater director Richard Foreman and saxophonist/composer John Zorn, who once studied at our town's Webster University. "Astronome..." is running now through April 5 at Foreman's Ontological-Hysteric Theater in NYC.
* Last week's New York premiere of Martino Unstrung, the documentary about guitarist Pat Martino's comeback from a life-threatening brain injury, drew an overflow crowd. The movie played in St. Louis last November during the St. Louis International Film Festival, and Martino was here in February to perform at Jazz at the Bistro.
* Next up, a few items of general interest to jazz and creative music, starting with some bad news out of Detroit, as the famed Motor City jazz club Baker's Keyboard Lounge may have to close due to financial problems.
* Closer to home, and on a happier note, the School of Music at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale will host the third annual Outside The Box festival of new music from March 25 through April 11. The eclectic festival will include more than two dozen concerts and workshops, including performances of works by guest composers Bernard Rands and Olly Wilson, plus programs featuring theremin music, a sonic tribute to Buckminster Fuller, a concert by Carbondale's own New Arts Jazztet, and even "Mazurka Mania," a celebration of the Polish folk dance and the music that goes with it.
* Last but not least, the first annual Guthman Musical Instrument Competition held recently at Georgia Tech saw more than 60 musicians, inventors and hobbyists submit musical instruments of their own design to try to win a cash prize of $10,000. Wired magazine has the rundown on the competition and a photo gallery of some of the instruments here.
Here's our weekly compilation of news and links related to jazz, improvisation, and creative music in St. Louis, including news of musicians originally from the Gateway City, recent visitors, and coming attractions, plus assorted other items of interest:
* For our mandatory weekly portion of Miles Davis-related content, via Blogcritics, here's a review of Miles Davis: The Sound of Miles Davis, a newly restored and reissued 1959 television special featuring most of the band from Davis' Kind of Blue sessions that's airing on PBS stations this month during pledge drives.
Alas, from what I can tell, the Davis film is not scheduled to be shown on St. Louis' PBS affiliate KETC. If you'd like to express your feelings about that, here's the relevant information from the station Web site's contact page: "For questions about programs on Channel 9, changes of address, KETC Guide delivery, general station information and questions about membership or pledge, call (314) 512-9199 or 1-800-729-9966 or send your letters by e-mail to letters@ketc.org."
* Another of our favorite Notes from the Net subjects, alto saxophonist and one-time Webster University student John Zorn, is set to headline the Equinox Festival in London this June.
* Opening the "coming attractions" file, trumpeter Chris Botti, who's got twogigs in St. Louis on his "to do" list for 2009, kicked off the month of March by visiting a number of PBS stations around the country promoting his latest PBS special, Chris Botti In Boston, which is being released on DVD on Tuesday, March 31. Also, word comes this week that a performance by Botti with orchestra will be one of the headline events of the 30th annual Montreal Jazz Festival in July.
* Next up, we've got news of recent visitors to St. Louis, starting with a review of the Pat Martino Trio's February 28 gig at the Lakeland Jazz Festival in Ohio, penned by Mike Marshall for AllAboutJazz.com. Martino was in St. Louis last month to play Jazz at the Bistro.
* Then there's "Trying to Understand the Logic of The Bad Plus," in which Saby Reyes-Kulkarni of the Seattle Weekly wonders if the much-hyped, sometimes controversial trio, last seen here in January at the Bistro, is just covering the same old ground with their latest release For All I Care.
* As regular StLJN readers doubtless are already aware, the Blue Note 7 played St. Louis' Sheldon Concert Hall in February. More recently, Blue Note records recently had an event commemorating its 70th anniversary at Royce Hall in Los Angeles, and DJ and blogger Leroy "The JazzCat" Downs was there and has a story with photos.
* Here's a New York Timesreview of singer and actor Tom Wopat's latest cabaret/nighclub act. Wopat was in St. Louis last month to perform under the auspices of Cabaret St. Louis.
* And here's a short review of Return to Forever's new live CD Returns, written by John Kalman for AAJ.com. The CD is drawn from recordings made during last year's reunion tour, which included a stop at St. Louis' Fox Theatre.
* Following up on another story we've been tracking here recently, here's a nifty Fred Kaplanreview for Slate of the recent Thelonious Monk Town Hall tribute that makes very nice use of audio clips from the album of the original concert and the tribute show. Also, Doug Ramsey's Rifftides has some "inside stuff" on the Monk tribute from Sam Stephenson of the Jazz Loft Project at Duke University, who helped produce the concerts.
* And Icons Among Us: jazz in the present tense. is a new four-part documentary film series that examines the world of contemporary jazz. It feature live footage and interviews of current jazz stars, including many musicians familiar to St. Louis audiences, such as The Bad Plus, Terence Blanchard, Jason Moran, Charlie Hunter, Dirty Dozen Brass Band and Medeski Martin and Wood, as well as predecessors and influences including Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter and Wynton Marsalis. The Documentary Channel will telecast the Icons Among Us series on four consecutive Mondays at 9:00 p.m. Eastern Time beginning April 20, following its world premiere on April 15 at Jazz at Lincoln Center.
There's lots going on in St. Louis this week with regard to jazz and creative music, and yr. humble editor's time is somewhat short today due to other pressing business, so let's go right to the highlights:
Tonight, guitarist Pat Martino (pictured) and his trio, featuring organist Tony Monaco, open a four-night engagement at Jazz at the Bistro, with two sets a night through Saturday. For more about Martino, including some video clips, see this post from a couple of weeks ago.
Then on Friday, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band will bring their traditional New Orleans sound to Powell Symphony Hall for a Mardi Gras-themed concert. (For more about St. Louis' local Mardi Gras events over the next few days, go here or here.) Also on Friday is the opening reception for the Sheldon Art Galleries' "Visions of Sound" exhibit of musical instruments, which was covered earlier by StLJN here.
On Saturday, the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra will honor singer Mae "Lady Jazz" Wheeler during a special concert at Powell Hall celebrating Black History Month. Singers Denise Thimes, Zella Jackson Price and Skeet Rogers will pay tribute to Wheeler, with Brian Owens serving as MC. The program also will feature the SLSO's In Unison Chorus, directed by Robert Ray, and will include orchestral works from Still and Beethoven as well as James Weldon Johnson's "Lift Every Voice And Sing."
That same evening, just down the street at the Kranzberg Arts Center, keyboardist and electronic musician James Hegarty will debut his new ensemble Off-Topic, which also includes saxophonist Dave Stone, percussionist Henry Claude and bassist Willem von Hombrecht. From the program description sent out by New Music Circle, it sounds like they'll be working at the intersection of free improv, jazz and contemporary classical. If you like that style of music, this gig seems quite promising.
Also on Saturday: The Southwestern Illinois College Jazz Festival in Belleville, which will feature a day of performances by student bands from schools in Metro East, and culminating in an free evening concert spotlighting the fest's guest artist, bassist Rodney Whitaker, with Reggie Thomas on piano, Marty Morrison on drums and Rick Haydon on guitar. Whitaker also will present a clinic/master class at 1:00 p.m. Saturday afternoon.
Then on Sunday night, the Blue Note 7 perform at the Sheldon Concert Hall. For more about this all-star ensemble and their tour commemorating the 70th anniversary of Blue Note records, plus videos of performances by the individual members of the group, see this post from last Saturday. (UPDATE: 12:00 p.m., 2/22/09 - The Post-Dispatch's Calvin Wilson previewed the Blue Note 7 concert in an interesting story for Sunday's paper that includes quotes from the band's pianist, Bill Charlap, and producer Michal Cuscuna. For some reason, the article isn't being promoted on the front page of the Post's Web site STLtoday, but you can read it online here.)
Looking beyond the weekend, on Monday morning singer Mardra Thomas and pianist Reggie Thomas will do a "Coffee Concert" at the Sheldon. (The program repeats at the same time on Tuesday.) Then on Monday night, the Webster University Big Band performs at Winifred Moore Auditorium on the Webster campus.
As always, these are just a few of the performances going on around town over the next few days; for more jazz-related events this weekend and beyond, please visit 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.)
(Updated 2/19/09 to add info on two more events on Saturday.)
This week, we've got three music videos featuring guitarist Pat Martino, who will be in St. Louis from Wednesday, February 18 through Saturday, February 21 to perform at Jazz at the Bistro. A native of Philadelphia, Martino came up in the 1960s playing in the classic organ-trio style and established himself as one of the top young guitarists in jazz. At the turn of the 1970s, he branched out into fusion, making memorable recordings such as Starbright and Joyous Lake that impressed both fusion fans and traditionalists.
Then in 1980, Martino suffered a near-fatal brain aneurysm. Surgery saved his life, but wiped all his memories of how to play the guitar. Martino had to relearn to play music again from scratch, and his illness and subsequent return to excellence in a relatively short time were the subject of a 2007 documentary, Martino Unstrung, that was screened last fall at the St. Louis International Film Festival. Martino's present-day playing has hints of both the old school and the new school, as he uses tonal, harmonic and formal ideas from the fusion years as part of what is essentially a fairly traditional, straight-ahead concept of a guitar-focused jazz group.
In the first video, recorded in 2008, Martino is playing a swinging blues, name unknown to me, with the able assistance of organist Tony Monaco and drummer Harvey Mason. The other two clips are both from a performance in 2001 at the Umbria Jazz Festival in Italy, and feature Martino, Joey DeFrancesco on organ and Byron Landham on drums. The one just below shows them playing a Martino composition called "The Great Stream," and in the embed window at the bottom, they're doing a Cal Massey song, "These Are Soulful Days."
The 17th annual St. Louis International Film Festival, which begins this Thursday, November 13 and continues through Sunday, November 23, will feature St. Louis premieres of a number of recent music-related movies as well as an historic silent film with live musical accompaniment.
The fest's busiest day for cinema related to jazz and creative music looks to be next Sunday, November 16. At 3:00 p.m. that day at the St. Louis Art Museum Auditorium, the festival will screen The Inferno, a silent Italian film from 1911, with live musical accompaniment by Semi-Acoustic Noise Ensemble (S.A.N.E). It's the first full-length Italian film ever made, and is loosely based on Dante’s epic; this version was restored in 2004.
This event is co-sponsored with New Music Circle and represents the 22nd installment of the organization's Circle/Cinema series of films with live music. Longtime NMC board member and analog synth wizard/guitarist/bassist Mike Murphy is one of the principals in S.A.N.E., along with multi-instrumentalist, singer and songwriter tory z. starbuck (who, like e.e. cummings, prefers the lower case); starbuck's muse/cohort Venus Slick on synths; plus a couple of musicians I don't know, J. Bruce McLaughlin and Tony Engelhardt. Murphy, starbuck et al have done this sort of thing a number of times before, and I'd expect them to cook up something interesting for this outing, too.
(Full disclosure: While working as administrator for New Music Circle in the 1990s, I co-conceived the Circle/Cinema series, handled production chores for the first several installments, and also played keyboards in a couple of them. I've also worked with Murphy on several projects.)
At 7:00 p.m. that evening, the festival will show Throw Down Your Heart at Webster University's Winifred Moore Auditorium. The movie documents banjo player Bela Fleck's trip through Africa to explore the roots of his instrument and record an album. As mentioned in this previous post, Fleck will be bringing some of the musicians featured in the film to St. Louis in April for a concert at The Sheldon.
Then at 9:30 p.m. at the Tivoli in University City, it's Martino Unstrung, in which "neuropsychologist and author Paul Broks travels America in search of the soul of legendary jazz guitarist Pat Martino, who was brutally silenced by memory-stripping brain surgery to remove a tumor. Through the remarkable story of Martino’s difficult ascent from the depths of amnesia to the peak of artistry, Broks explores the nature of memory, self, creativity and the brain systems underlying personal identity, making some ground-breaking discoveries on the way."
To find out more about Martino Unstrung, you can check out the trailer in the embedded video window below, and a recent package of related stories from AllAboutJazz.com, including interviews with Martino, Broks and director Ian Knox, and a review of the DVD. As noted here, Martino will be in St. Louis February 18-21 to perform at Jazz at the Bistro.
In chronological order, the festival's other music-related films include:
12:00 p.m., Saturday, November 15 at the Tivoli Song Sung Blue, which tells "the inspiring and ultimately tragic love story of Lightning & Thunder, Mike and Claire Sardina, a Milwaukee husband-and-wife singing duo who pay tribute to the music of Neil Diamond."
4:30 p.m., Sunday, November 16 at the Tivoli Number One With A Bullet, which "explores the interrelationships between guns,poverty, drugs, hip-hop culture and cultural violence" via interviews with "record-company insiders, gun-shop owners, drug dealers, doctors, urban-community members and rap stars."
4:30 p.m., Tuesday, November 18 at Plaza Frontenac Opera Jawa, an "all-dancing, all-singing gamelan musical epic" based on the Hindu epic “The Ramayana.” (This film will be shown again at 9:15 p.m. Wednesday, November 19 at Plaza Frontenac.)
5:00 p.m., Tuesday, November 18 at the Tivoli How it is with Phooie, "an intensely personal portrait" of Phil “Phooie” Steinberg, a 35-year veteran of the music industry who was forced to close his longtime record store, the Disc Connection, due to radical changes in the music business.
9:30 p.m., Tuesday, November 18 at the Tivoli The Wrecking Crew, a documentary about the group of Los Angeles studio musicians who worked on recordings by producer Phil Spector and artists including the Beach Boys, the Mamas and the Papas, Frank Sinatra, the Monkees and countless others, performing on more No. 1 singles than the Beatles.
7:15 p.m., Wednesday November 19 at the Tivoli Agile, Mobile, Hostile: A Year With Andre Williams, which deals with the life and personal troubles of R&B singer/songwriter Andre Williams, who's written and recorded a number of hits but also has struggled with "addiction, poverty, homelessness and the legal system."
1:00 p.m., Saturday, November 22 at the Tivoli Summer Sun, Winter Moon, which was co-commissioned by the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and documents the collaboration between composer Rob Kapilow and Darrell Robes Kipp, a Blackfeet Indian poet, on a symphony inspired by the Lewis and Clark expedition.
5:30 p.m., Saturday, November 22 at the Tivoli As Slow as Possible, the story of a man slowly going blind from a chronic disease who travels from Canada to Halberstadt, Germany to hear the first note change in a 639-year-long automated organ performance of the John Cage composition “As Slow As Possible.”
For a complete festival schedule, see the SLIFF Web site.
Jazz St. Louis has announced that guitarist Pat Martino (pictured) will perform at Jazz at the Bistro from Wednesday, February 18 through Saturday, February 21, taking the spot on the schedule originally designated for a four-night gig by pianist Robert Glasper and his group.
Glasper's dates have been postponed due to the anticipated birth of his child in February 2009; instead, he'll come to the Bistro next October as part of the 2009-10 season. Since the performances are in separate seasons, tickets for Glasper's February dates will not be honored for the new dates in October, and because of the price differential, they can not be used for Martino's gig. Instead, buyers must return their tickets to their point of purchase for a full refund.
Martino will be backed by organist Tony Monaco and drummer Scott Allan Robinson, suggesting that his sets will definitely acknowledge the guitarist's old-school Philly organ trio roots. Tickets are priced at $30 for Wednesday and Thursday, and $35 on Friday and Saturday, and will go on sale at 10:00 a.m. next Tuesday, November 4 through all Metrotix outlets, online at www.metrotix.com, via phone at 314-534--111 or through the Jazz St. Louis box offices at 314-289-4030.
