Jazz this week: Benny Green Trio, "Superheroes of Blackness," Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, and more

This week's calendar of jazz and creative music in St. Louis includes a visit from a stellar straight-ahead jazz pianist, some adventurous electronic sounds, shows mixing music with poetry and video animations, and more.

Let's go to the highlights...

Wednesday, February 21
Pianist Benny Green (pictured, top left) returns with his trio for the first of four nights at Jazz at the Bistro.

Notably influenced by Bud Powell and especially Oscar Peterson, Green (like Cyrus Chestnut, who played the Bistro earlier this year) is something of a traditionalist in terms of his stylistic antecedents.

Like Peterson, he can muster showy technique when the mood strikes, but Green also swings hard - a tendency that no doubt was encouraged during his time playing in the trio of one of Peterson's favorite bassists, the legendary Ray Brown. 

Elsewhere around town, the Ambassadors of Swing perform for the monthly "Shake and Shout Wednesday" event at Tin Roof St. Louis.

Thursday, February 22
The Jazz at Holmes series at Washington University presents a free concert featuring poet Eileen G'Sell giving a spoken word performance with improvisational music from keyboardist Jay Oliver, guitarist/bassist William Lenihan, and drummer Steve Davis.

Also on Thursday, the monthly Bruxism expermental music series will present Chris Smentowski,  Vernacular Pulse Quintet, and Nebulosa at the Schlafly Tap Room; drummer Stephen Haake's trio plays at The Pat Connolly Tavern; and saxophonist Ben Reece’s Unity Quartet returns to The Dark Room

Friday, February 23
Multi-instrumentalist Lamar Harris presents "Superheroes of Blackness" for the first of two nights at .ZACK in Grand Center. The multi-media production is described as "a live computer-animated journey of epic proportions," with visuals by illustrator David Gordon and an eight-piece live band led by Harris.

Also on Friday, Sarah Jane and the Blue Notes return to Evangeline's; Second Generation Swing plays for dancers at Casa Loma Ballroom; and The People’s Key perform at The Dark Room.

Saturday, 
February 24
Multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe will perform in a concert presented by New Music Circle at Urb Arts in the Old North neighborhood. 

Lowe (pictured, bottom left) combines his voice with modular synthesizers and, in many performances including this one, video or film projections to create soundscapes that can range from ethereal to industrial. For more about him, plus some video samples of previous live performances, check out this post from last Saturday.

Also on Saturday, the Gaslight Squares perform in concert at Focal Point; pianist Carolbeth True and Two Times True with saxophonist Larry Johnson play at the KindaBlue Club; and the Funky Butt Brass Band are back at the Broadway Oyster Bar.

Sunday, February 25
Drummer Montez Coleman and friends will play for brunch at The Dark Room, while Miss Jubilee returns to Evangeline's.

Also on Sunday afternoon, the touring show "In the Mood," a nostalgic look at the big band era featuring a 13-piece band and six singer/dancers, returns to the Touhill Performing Arts Center; and the Folk School at KDHX hosts their monthly "Traditional Jazz Jam".

Monday, February 26
Dizzy Atmosphere plays swing and Gypsy jazz at The Shaved Duck, and guitarist Dave Black will lead a quartet in a concert featuring his original music at Winifred Moore Auditorium on the Webster University campus.

Tuesday, February 27
Trumpeter Jim Manley returns to Evangeline's.

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.)

StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe's modular sounds

This week, let's take a look at some videos featuring multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, who will be in St. Louis next week to perform in a concert presented by New Music Circle on Saturday, February 24 at Urb Arts.

Born in 1975, Lowe grew up in Kansas City and began playing bass and singing in post-punk and rock bands as a teenager. After joining the "math rock" band 90 Day Men and moving to Chicago to be closer to their base of operations, in the mid-2000s Lowe began giving solo performances of just his voice and modular synthesizer, sometimes using the pseudonym Lichens.

Now based in Brooklyn, Lowe subsequently has worked with a wide range of artists and musicians, including Ben Russell, Ben Rivers, Rose Lazar, Hisham Akira Bharoocha, Tarek Atoui, Ben Vida, Mark Borthwick, Lucky Dragons, Alan Licht, Michael Zerang, Doug Aitken, Patrick Smith, Monica Baptista, Lee Ranaldo, White/Light, Kevin Martin, Chris Johanson, Tyondai Braxton, David Scott Stone, Genesis P-Orridge, Rose Kallal, and more.

In addition to his solo performances, he still plays with the experimental metal band Om, and in recent years also has begun collaborating with filmmakers and videographers, adding a visual element to his live performances.

Here in St. Louis, he'll be playing unaccompanied, and you can see and hear an example of one of Lowe's solo sets in the first video up above, which was recorded in July 2017 at the Berkeley Arts Museum in Berkeley, CA.

After the jump, you can see another full performance by Lowe, recorded November 4, 2016 at the Renaissance Society in Chicago in conjunction with an exhibition of work by artist Ben Rivers.

Next is a piece called "We Echo Now His Love," recorded in April 2016 at the Sonambient Barn, an eighteenth-century stone barn in Barto, Pennsylvania that house metal sculptures/instruments devised by artist Harry Bertoia.

That's followed by another full set, from 2014 at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, and then by an interview video from the 2017 Brighton Modular Meet in England, in which Lowe discusses his creative process and use of modular synths.

The next-to-last video is sort of a lecture and demonstration of his gear by Lowe, recorded in 2016 at Superbooth, a modular synth exposition held in Berlin, Germany. The final clip is a recording of a discussion on "universal musics" led by Lowe at "Machines in Music," an event held in October 2015 in NYC.

For more about Robery Aiki Aubrey Lowe, read his 2014 interview with The Quietus and this interview published in December 2017 on the website of the Museum of Art and Design.

You can see the rest of today's videos after the jump...

StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: Winter/spring 2018 jazz preview, part 3

Today, it's part three of StLJN's winter/spring 2018 jazz preview, featuring videos of the jazz and creative music performers who will be visiting St. Louis in the first few months of the new year.  (The series features these coming attractions in chronological order; you can see part one here, and part two here.)

Picking up where we left off last week, the first video features trumpeter and St. Louis native Keyon Harrold, who's set to perform on Wednesday, February 7 and Thursday, February 8 at Jazz at the Bistro.

These shows will be Harrold's first in his hometown since releasing his second album as a leader, The Mugician, in September, and no doubt he'll be including material from that recording in his sets at the Bistro. You can hear live versions of some of that same music in the video up above, an episode of BRIC TV's program B-Side devoted to Harrold that was recorded in October 2017 in New York City.

After the jump, there's a clip of another St. Louis native who's now a rising star on the international jazz scene: singer Alicia Olatuja, who was known as Alicia Miles while growing up in St. Louis and attending the University of Missouri.

Now married to bassist Michael Olatuja, who also leads her band, she made her Bistro debut last April as a guest star with harmonica player Gregoire Maret, and is set to headline her own shows at the venue starting Wednesday, February 14 through Saturday, February 17. She's seen here performing "Love Me Still," first made famous by R&B diva Chaka Khan, in August 2015 at Dizzy's in NYC.

The third video features pianist Benny Green, who will perform with his trio from Wednesday, February 21 through Saturday, February 23 at the Bistro. Green spent nearly a decade as part of bassist Ray Brown's latter-day trio, emphasizing the mainstream swing and bop that's continued to be foundational to his playing, and in this clip, recorded in 2016 at the University of Michigan, you can hear those roots as Green plays a solo version of Bud Powell's "Hallucinations." 

That same week, electronic musician and multi-media artist Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe will be in town for a performance presented by New Music Circle on Saturday, February 23 at Urb Arts in the Old North neighborhood. Today's fourth video shows a full set of Lowe performing live as part of the 2017 Brighton Modular Meet at the Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts, University of Sussex, Brighton, England.

Next, it's trumpeter Sean Jones, who will be back with his quartet to perform Wednesday, February 28 through Saturday, March 3 at the Bistro. Jones has been a frequent visitor to the Bistro in recent years, even recording his most recent album there. The penultimate clip shows Jones in an episode of the web series "The Pace Report" from June 2017, discussing that recording, his long-running quartet, influences, and his role as an educator at Berklee.

The final video features trombonist Delfeayo Marsalis and the Uptown Jazz Orchestra, who will be in St. Louis to perform on Saturday, March 3 at the Sheldon Concert Hall.

Son of Ellis Marsalis, younger brother to Wynton and Branford Marsalis, and older brother to Jason Marsalis, Delfeayo leads a big band stocked with musicians from New Orleans, often including baritone saxophonist Roger Lewis of the Dirty Dozen Brass Band and multi-reedman Victor Goines. Both Lewis and Goines are on hand for this video, a full set recorded in February 2017 at Dizzy's Club in NYC's Lincoln Center.

Look for part four of StLJN's winter/spring 2018 jazz preview next week in this space. You can see the rest of today's videos after the jump...