Sunday Session: May 31, 2020

Jimmy Cobb

Here's this week's roundup of various music-related items of interest:

* Jimmy Cobb, The Pulse Of 'Kind Of Blue,' Dies At 91 (NPR)
* Drummer Jimmy Cobb Dies at 91 (DownBeat)
* Anthony Davis’s Revolutionary Opera: “X” (The New Yorker)
* Superb-Lee: A JazzTimes Tribute to Lee Konitz (1927–2020) (Jazz Times)
* From Germany to Detroit and back: how Kraftwerk forged an industrial exchange (The Guardian)
* Little Richard statue to be built outside musician’s childhood home (NME.com)
* 'Like a tap being turned off': music magazines fight for survival in UK (The Guardian)
* The Many Faces Of Housekeeping: How Wealth & Privilege Are Distorting Underground Music (TheQuietus.com)
* 'Milli Violini': I was a fake violinist in a world-class miming orchestra (The Guardian)
* A Guide to the Mind-Bending Jazz of François Tusques (Bandcamp.com)
* Add some township jive! How London's jazz scene set itself apart (The Guardian)
* John Medeski Demonstrates Startling Adaptability (DownBeat)
* How Rahsaan Roland Kirk Modified Jazz (Jazz Times)
* Covid Confidential: Ben Goldberg’s Notes From a Pandemic (San Francisco Classical Voice)
* Amazon, Facebook, and Instagram Are Each Launching Music-Tech Projects (Rolling Stone)
* Premiere: Watch A Video For ‘Desert Song,’ The Debut Single By Vocal Group säje (DownBeat)
* ‘Those Were Memorable Times. But I Don’t Want to Live There.’ Reggie Workman played with John Coltrane, won a Guggenheim at 82, and is tired of Zoom (Vulture.com)
* CM von Hausswolff curates seven sound installations for the web (The Wire)
* Why Public Musicology Matters (21cm.org)
* Michael McDonald: A Conversation in Lockdown Times (American Songwriter)
* Utility player (Rochester City Paper)
* The fast life of Buddy Featherstonhaugh (TheBlueMoment.com)
* Jimmy Cobb 1929–2020 (Jazz Times)

StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: Three views of Trio 3

The news that Trio 3 will be playing St. Louis next week offers a welcome excuse to look at some video clips of the group, which includes St. Louis native Oliver Lake on saxophones along with bassist Reggie Workman and drummer Andrew Cyrille. Their performance is being presented by the Nu-Art Series on Saturday, September 19 at Luna Bar, which is next to Bar Italia at 13 Maryland Plaza in the Central West End.

Of course, many, if not most, St. Louis jazz fans already know Lake, and he's made it back home several times in recent years to perform, both on his own and with the World Saxophone Quartet.

However, he's never played here with Trio 3, though the group has been together nearly 20 years. Moreover, while Workman and Cyrille both have had long, varied and distinguished careers, neither has an extensive history of performing in St. Louis. (Nu-Art's George Sams told me that Workman has played here at least once before, in the late 1960s with Bobby Hutcherson. As for Cyrille, as best as can be determined, this may be his debut performance in St. Louis.) So the chance to see and hear these guys, both individually and collectively, is something of a rare occurrence.

Today's first video is an excerpt from a 2005 performance in Montclair, NJ, where Lake now resides. The location is obviously a church, but otherwise is unspecified. There's no indication of a song title either, but the piece does show off Workman's big sound, Lake's plaintive tone and nimble riffing and Cyrille's polyrhythmic approach to the drums.

The second clip is from the other side of the world, recorded during the group's performance in 2008 at the Taichung Jazz Festival in Taiwan. Workman once again gets a fat sound, and once things get rolling both Lake and Cyrille are considerably more aggressive than in the first video.

The third and final clip is a segment from the New Jersey public television program State of the Arts. It features some performance footage of Trio 3 at NYC's Sweet Rhythm, but it's mostly a biographical interview with Lake, in which he talks about his career and music; starting out in St. Louis; how he got together with Workman and Cyrille; and more.

Nu-Art Series to present concerts by Trio 3, Rasul Siddik

The Nu-Art Series, run by trumpeter, gallery owner and former arts administrator George Sams out of his Metropolitan Gallery downtown, is kicking off its fall 2009 season this month with two concerts featuring former St. Louisans who have earned international acclaim in the jazz world.

The group Trio 3, featuring saxophonist and former St. Louisan Oliver Lake (pictured), bassist Reggie Workman and drummer Andrew Cyrille, will perform on Saturday, September 19. The following week, trumpeter Rasul Siddik returns home to the Gateway City to headline a concert on Saturday, September 26.

Both performances will take place from 8:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. at Luna Bar, 13 Maryland Plaza in the Central West End. (Luna Bar is serving as a temporary home for the Nu-Art Series while storm damage to the Metropolitan Gallery building at 2926 Locust is being repaired. Pending the completion of construction, Sams says he hopes to resume regular operations at the gallery in October.) Tickets for each show will be $25.00 at the door.

Lake is well known to St. Louis listeners as a member of St. Louis' Black Artists Group (BAG), co-founder of the World Saxophone Quartet, and as a solo artist whose own music has run the gamut from free jazz to R&B to bop to reggae.

His work with Trio 3 represents an equal collaboration with two genuine heavyweights of the jazz world. Workman has performed or recorded with many of the notable jazz musicians of the past five decades, including landmark albums with John Coltrane and Cecil Taylor, while Cyrille is considered one of the most important and innovative drummers to emerge from the free jazz movement of the 1960s, working with Taylor, Archie Shepp, Roswell Rudd, and others.

As an added bonus, St. Louis trumpeter Floyd LeFlore, another BAG veteran, is scheduled to open the show with a solo version of his performance piece "Ritualistic Revival."

Though younger than Lake, Siddik also was affiliated BAG with as an up-and-coming musician. He has worked with many notable jazz performers, including Lester Bowie, Henry Threadgill and David Murray, and now splits his time between NYC and Paris. For his St. Louis performance, Siddik will bring along his frequent collaborator, pianist Katy Roberts, with bassist Darryl Mixon and drummer Gary Sykes added from the local ranks to complete the band.

Both of these concerts are certainly welcome additions to the fall schedule of jazz performances here in St. Louis, but, being a nosy reporter, I had to ask Sams why he booked Trio 3 on the same night of Sonny Rollins' highly anticipated performance at the Touhill Performing Arts Center (and, for that matter, the Old Webster Jazz and Blues Festival).

He explained that the show had been in the works for a year now, and September 19 was the only date Trio 3 had available. Sams added that he thought the two concerts would appeal to "different crowds." Here's hoping that he's right about that, or at least that there are enough local jazz fans willing and able to shell out their hard-earned cash to support both shows.

UPDATE - 11:00 p.m., 9/11/09: K. Curtis Lyle has more on Lake, Trio 3 and Siddik in an article for this week's St. Louis American, found online here.

(Edited after posting to fix typos.)