This week's calendar of live jazz and creative music in St. Louis offers Afro-Cuban rhythms, smooth jazz with a backbeat, free improvisation, a tribute to one of the greatest composers and bandleaders in jazz, and more.
Let's go to the highlights...
Wednesday, April 24
Percussionist Pedrito Martinez brings his band to Jazz St. Louis for the first of five nights of performances, continuing through Sunday.
Born in Cuba and now based in NYC, Martinez (pictured, top left) has spent the past two decades lending his considerable talents to a variety of well-known jazz and pop performers, and in recent years has been getting more attention as a bandleader, too.
Friday, April 26
Saxophonist Boney James still a popular favorite among those who enjoy jazz in the form of R&B- and funk-infused grooves, plays at The Pageant.
Though James (pictured, center left) hasn't released any new music since his most recent St. Louis appearance at the Gateway Jazz Festival last summer, fans no doubt will relish the opportunity to hear a full-length show while seeing him up close.
You can see him on video performing some of the material from his most recent album, 2017's Honestly, in this post from last Saturday.
Elsewhere around town, the Hot Club of St Louis, a new group featuring guitarists Joe Park and Paul Davis, violinist/guitarist Christopher Voelker, and bassist Willem von Hombracht, will make their debut playing Gypsy jazz and vintage swing at Focal Point; and Carolbeth True and Two Times True with saxophonist Larry Johnson return to Parkside Grille.
Saturday, April 27
In their first performance since the passing of one of their founding members, poet Michael Castro, the STL Free Jazz Collective(pictured, bottom left) is inviting other poets to sit in with them for a concert at Link Auditorium in the Central West End.
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, let's take a look at some videos featuring percussionist and vocalist Pedrito Martinez, who's coming to St. Louis to perform Wednesday, April 24 through Sunday, April 28 at Jazz St. Louis.
Martinez, 45, was born and raised in Havana, Cuba, where he learned to play popular Cuban styles as well as Afro-Cuban folkloric and religious music on a variety of percussion instruments. He came to the U.S. from Havana in 1998, and over the past 20 years has compiled an extensive resume of credits with well-known musicians in several genres.
In all, Martinez has contributed to more than 50 recordings as well as live performances by jazz musicians including Wynton Marsalis, Paquito D'Rivera, Steve Turre, Bill Summers, Cassandra Wilson, Joe Lovano, Brian Lynch, Stefon Harris, Jane Bunnett, Eliane Elias, Stefon Harris, Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Conrad Herwig, Eddie Palmieri, Esperanza Spalding, and Los Hombres Calientes.
He's also lent his talents to rock and pop performers including Bruce Springsteen, Paul Simon, James Taylor, Sting, Angélique Kidjo, Edie Brickell, Rubén Blades, and Elton John. Before starting his own group, Martinez was a founding member of the band Yerba Buena, which released albums in 2003 and 2005, and he's also is a member of Jazz at Lincoln Center's Nuevo Jazz Latino program.
More recently, Martinez earlier this year teamed up with pianist and fellow Cuban Alfredo Rodriguez on an album called Duologue, a collaboration that actually got started here in St. Louis when the two played a duo gig in February 2017 at Jazz St. Louis. That was Martinez's second gig at the Bistro, having previously brought his group here for a two-night stand in May 2015.
The Pedrito Martinez Group, which began in in 2005, has put out two albums to date, releasing their first recording in 2013, and the follow-up Habana Dreams in 2016. Along with Martinez on percussion and lead vocals, the group includes Sebastian Natal on bass and vocals, Jhair Sala on percussion and vocals, and Issac Delgado Jr. on keyboards and vocals.
You can see and hear them in action in the first video up above, an NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert recorded just a couple of months ago.
After the jump, you can see and hear three selections recorded in 2018 at Galeria Cafe Libro in Bogota, Colombia: "La Luna," "Amor de Mi Vida" and "Yo Si Quiero Estar Contigo."
Next up is a video performance of "Recuerdos," recorded in August 2018 at a gig in Bologna, Italia.
Finally, you can get a close-up look at some of Martinez' techniques via a brief instructional video released earlier this year by The Drum Channel.
This week's calendar of live jazz and creative music in St. Louis features a couple of noteworthy duo performances, a country singer turned big-band crooner, a new location for one of Grand Center's jazz spots, and more.
The two Cuban natives will be joining forces as a duo for the first time at their gigs here and then next week at NYC's Jazz Standard, likely drawing from both their respective personal songbooks and perhaps touching on traditional Cuban music as well. For more about Rodriguez and Martinez (pictured) and some video samples of recent performances, check out this post from last Saturday.
Thursday, February 2
Trumpeter Randy Holmes and pianist Carolbeth True will perform as a duo in a free concert for the Jazz at Holmes series at Washington University.
Elsewhere around town, pianist Adam Maness starts a new weekly Thursday night gig with his trio at Thurman's in Shaw; and pianist Ptah Williams and guitarist Eric Slaughter will help inaugurate the new incarnation of The Dark Room, which this week moves into the Grandel Theatre from its previous spot on Grand.
Friday, February 3
Singer Tim Rushlow(pictured, bottom left), best known for his work in country and contemporary Christian music, is mixing up his genres a bit these days, touring with a big band and presenting what's being billed as "a 1960s-style Las Vegas supper club experience" at the Sheldon Concert Hall.
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, StLJN's video spotlight shines on pianist Alfredo Rodriguez and percussionist and singer Pedrito Martinez, who are coming to St. Louis for a series of duo performances starting Wednesday, February 1 through Saturday, February 4 at Jazz at the Bistro.
Both Martinez, 43, and Rodriguez, who's 31, are originally from Cuba, and came to the United States to pursue their musical careers in 1998 and 2009, respectively.
Martinez settled in New York City, and was part of the group Yerba Buena before forming his own band in 2005. Thanks in part to a decade-long residency at the Manhattan club Guantanamera, he connected with the jazz and Latin music scenes in NYC sufficiently to have appeared on more than 50 albums as a sideman, including work with pop and rock stars like Paul Simon, Bruce Springsteen, and Sting.
His first album as a leader was released in 2013, earning a Grammy nomination and ending up on a number of critics' lists of best albums of the year. Martinez' most recent recording is Habana Dreams, which came out last summer, featured guest appearances from Marsalis, Ruben Blades, Angelique Kidjo, Isaac Delgado, Roman Diaz, and again received generally high marks from critics.
Rodriguez first earned international attention as one of a dozen pianists from around the world showcased at the 2006 Montreux Jazz Festival. That appearance brought him to the attention of producer Quincy Jones, who became a mentor and producer to Rodriguez when the pianist finally came to the US three years later. Since moving here, he has released three albums on Mack Avenue Records, the most recent of which, Tocororo, came out last year.
While Martinez and Rodriguez have recorded together on the pianist's second album, both usually are occupied leading their own bands, so the only online video of them playing together as a duo is a very brief snippet released last week by Rodriguez to promote their upcoming dates here in St. Louis and the following week at NYC's Jazz Standard. You can see that clip up above.
In lieu of additional duo videos, after the jump you can see both men leading their own bands in some relatively recent live gigs. First up is Rodriguez playing "The Invasion Parade," a piece that he recorded originally with Martinez and Esperanza Spalding, and which is performed here with bassist Peter Slavov and drummer Henry Cole in January 2015 at SubCulture in New York City.
Below that, there's a clip of Rodriguez performing last April at Visioninmusica 2016 in Terni, Italy, in which he, bassist Ranier Elizarde and drummer Michael Olivera play the title song from Tocororo and their arrangement of the Cuban standard "Guantanamera." That's followed by the same trio performing "Yemayá" at the 2016 Montreux Jazz Festival
The next clip features Pedrito Martinez and his group playing the traditional song "Compa Gellatano" at the 2016 Percussive Arts Society International Convention (PASIC) held in November in Indianapolis. Along with the Martinez on percussion and lead vocal, the band includes his former student Jhair Sala on percussion and vocals, pianist Edgar Pantoja-Aleman, and bassist Yunior Terry.
That's followed by a couple of performances from 2016, a recording of "La Habana" done in April at Subrosa in New York City, and "Recuerdos," which is from a show promoting the release of Martinez' most recent album in June at the McKittrick Hotel in NYC.
This weekend offers St. Louis fans of jazz and creative music a nice opportunity to see four different touring acts in four days at four different venues, plus a variety of performances from local players. Let's go to the highlights...
Thursday, May 7
Percussionist Pedrito Martinez and his group will make their St. Louis debut with a one-night stand at Jazz at the Bistro.
Martinez (pictured, top left) is a 41-year-old Cuban native who moved his homeland first to Canada in 1998, and then to the United States, where he came to public attention in 2000 for winning that year's Thelonious Monk Institute Competition.
He subsequently helped found the band Yerba Buena, and has gone on to perform with well-known jazz, Latin and pop musicians including Paquito D’Rivera, Wynton Marsalis, Paul Simon, Eddie Palmieri, Bebo Valdés, Bruce Springsteen, Cassandra Wilson, Arturo O’Farrill, Joe Lovano, and numerous others.
Martinez' own group released their first album in 2013, and has performed at Jazz at Lincoln Center, Newport Jazz Festival, New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, Montreal Jazz Festival, Montreux Jazz Fest, and numerous other major festivals and venues.
Friday, May 8
If you're free during the day on Friday (or able to play hooky from work or school), you can head over to the St. Louis Zoo and take in a free concert by the Mizzou New Music Ensemble*. They'll be visiting from down the road in Columbia for a 2:00 p.m. performance at The Living World featuring new works from Mizzou composers that were inspired by the Zoo.
That evening, New Music Circle closes out their 2014-15 presenting season with a performance by saxophonist Tim Berne’s band Snakeoil(pictured, center left) at The Stage at KDHX.
Berne's reputation as a top-flight improvisor notwithstanding, Snakeoil is mainly a vehicle for his compositions, which can be intricate multi-part affairs that may seem perplexing at first but ultimately reward close listening. For more about Berne and Snakeoil, and some very recent clips of them in action, please see this post from last Saturday.
Also on Friday, Miss Jubilee will make her debut at Jazz at the Bistro, for the first of two nights in which the popular retro-style songstress and band will bring their blend of jump blues, pre-WWII jazz, and early rock & roll to the Bistro stage.
Saturday, May 9
Guitarist Todd Mosby presents the first-ever '"East West Fusion Festival"at the Kranzberg Arts Center, featuring a headlining performance from renowned fusion/New Age bassist Michael Manring (pictured, bottom left), plus sets from Mosby's own new fusion sextet Axis, and the husband-and-wife duo Bryan & Lola.
Also on Saturday, Sarah Jane and the Blue Noteswill return to Evangeline's; Farshid Etniko plays the Southside house concert venue KindaBlue; and members of new music ensemble Alarm Will Soundwill be joined by their students from the "Music Today!" program at the Community Music School of Webster University for a semester-culminating performance at Tavern of Fine Arts.
Sunday, May 10
This year for her annual Mother's Day show at the Sheldon Concert Hall, singer Denise Thimes has enlisted as her special guest the fine pianist Cyrus Chestnut, who by now should be familiar to many St. Louis jazz fans from his frequent appearances at Jazz at the Bistro. Proceeds from the event benefit the Mildred Thimes Foundation, a charity named after Thimes' late mother that raises money to fight pancreatic cancer.
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.)
* Full disclosure: In addition to being an alumni of the University of Missouri, yr. humble StLJN editor also is employed by the public relations firm Slay and Associates to assist the University's Mizzou New Music Initiative in publicizing its various events and programs, including the Mizzou New Music Ensemble.
With both New Music Circle and Jazz at the Bistro recently announcing some additions to their respective springschedules, today let's check out some some video samples of those bands and musicians coming here in those just-announced performances.
First up are pianist Matthew Shipp and bassist Michael Bisio, who will be playing a concert presented by NMC on Saturday, March 28 at The Stage at KDHX. The video at the top of this post shows them performing a full set in September 2015 at the Bop Shop in Rochester, NY.
You can see a complete concert by Glasper, the Experiment and the Metropole Orkest, recorded in 2014 at the North Sea Jazz Festival in The Netherlands, followed by a clip from Harrold's YouTube page, showing him jamming with the Experiment and trading licks with saxophonist Casey Benjamin in an excerpt from a show last January at the Troubador in Los Angeles.
The fourth video features Black Host, the group led by drummer Gerald Cleaver who will be playing a New Music Circle concert on Saturday, April 25, also at The Stage at KDHX. It's a full set of theirs recorded in May, 2013 at SEEDS::Brooklyn, a house concert venue in the NYC borough of the same name.
Next up is percussionist Pedrito Martinez and his group, who will play a one-nighter at the Bistro on Thursday, May 7. They're seen here at the 2015 Panama Jazz Festival playing "Buscando Guayabas," which you might know from the late 1970s version by Willie Colon and Ruben Blades.
Last but not least, there's a full set from trumpeter Avishai Cohen's trio Trevini, recorded April 30, 2013 at Duc Des Lombards, Paris for International Jazz Day. Trevini also will be playing a one-nighter at the Bistro, on Thursday, May 21.
Tickets for the New Music Circle concerts are on sale now via Brown Paper Tickets. Tickets for the Jazz at the Bistro shows are available now for purchase by Jazz at the Bistro subscribers, and will go on sale to the general public at 10:30 a.m. Wednesday, March 11 via phone at 314-571-6000 and online.
You can see the rest of today's videos after the jump...
Most notably, the Robert Glasper Experiment with special guest, St Louis' own Keyon Harrold, on trumpet, will perform on Wednesday, April 22 and Thursday, April 23 at the Bistro.
Along with the leader on keyboards, the regular lineup of the Experiment (pictured) also includes another St. Louisan, drummer Marc Colenburg, as well as bassist Derrick Hodge and saxophonist and vocalist Casey Benjamin.
They recently won a 2015 Grammy Award for Best Traditional R&B Performance for "Jesus Children," a song from Glasper's 2013 album Black Radio 2 that featured guest vocal performances from Lalah Hathaway (daughter of another former St. Louisan, the late keyboardist, singer and songwriter Donny Hathaway) and Malcolm Jamal Warner.
Glasper's only visit to the old version of the Bistro was back in 2012, and given how much his star has risen since then, plus the additional local interest stemming from the presence of Harrold and Colenburg, tickets for these shows in the newly expanded venue seem likely to be a hot commodity.
Also added to the spring schedule were single evenings featuring the Bistro debuts of percussionist Pedrito Martinez and his group on Thursday, May 7, and trumpeter Avishai Cohen's Triveni on Thursday, May 21.
Martinez, who was born in Cuba but has lived since 1998 in NYC, has played with notable musicians and singers including Paquito D’Rivera, Wynton Marsalis, Paul Simon, Eddie Palmieri, Cassandra Wilson, Arturo O’Farrill, Joe Lovano, and more, and also co-founded the group Yerba Buena. The first album by his eponymous band, The Pedrito Martinez Group, was released in 2013; it made the year-end "best of" lists of a number of jazz critics and also earned a Grammy nomination.
Cohen is the brother of clarinetist/saxophonist Anat Cohen and saxophonist Yuval Cohen, and like his siblings was born and raised in Tel Aviv, Israel before coming to the US. He has released seven albums as a leader including three with Triveni, which is a trio also featuring bassist Omer Avital and drummer Nasheet Waits. Their St. Louis performances are part of a week of shows that also will include dates in NYC, Boston and Chicago.
As per usual at the Bistro, all three acts will play will two separate sets each night, at 7:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. Tickets for the Robert Glasper Experiment with Keyon Harrold are priced at $35 for adults, $15 for students; for Avishai Cohen's Triveni, $30 for adults, $10 for students; and for Pedrito Martinez, $25 for adults and $10 for students.
Tickets for all three shows are available now for purchase by Jazz at the Bistro subscribers, and will go on sale to the general public at 10:30 a.m. next Wednesday, March 11 via phone at 314-571-6000 and online.
