Sunday Session: August 15, 2021

Gerald Cleaver

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

* Gerald Cleaver about Griots, Ghost Orbits and Modular Synthesis (15Questions.net)
* De La Soul Have Finally Acquired Their Masters, According to Talib Kweli (Consequence.net)
* Inside look: How Sun Studio's music and magic have carried on for almost 70 years (Memphis Commercial Appeal)
* Staunchly Original: Marking 20 Years of Pi Recordings (WBGO)
* Chronology: Quincy Jones in the 1950s (Jazz Times)
* Jazz Fest Canceled; New Orleans Reacts (DownBeat)
* This Musician's Unlikely Duet Partner? The Golden Gate Bridge (NPR)
* Famous Harlem Block Renamed Art Kane Harlem 1958 Place (Jazz Times)
* SFJAZZ Collective: Reflecting the Moment (SFJAZZ.org)
* Chops: Min Xiao-Fen on the Pipa (Jazz Times)
* Tony Bennett Cancels Fall 2021 Tour (Variety)
* Tony Bennett retires from performing (AVClub.com)
* The New York Jazz Museum: 1972-1977 (AllAboutJazz.com)
* Living Spaces: Preserving Jazz Homes (Jazz Times)
* AEG To Require Proof Of Full Vaccination At All U.S. Venues Beginning October 1st (LiveForLiveMusic.com)
* Sonic Temples - The resurgence of Memphis’ classic recording studios. (MemphisMagazine.com)
* Historic St. Louis Church Could Become National Center For Gospel Music (StLouisPublicRadio.org)
* Are NFTs The New Napster? This Time The Music Industry Isn’t Taking Chances (Forbes.com)

So What: Local News, Notes & Links

Here's StLJN's latest wrap-up of assorted links and short news items of local interest:

* Trumpeter Etienne Charles of the SFJAZZ Collective talked with the Post-Dispatch's Daniel Durchholz about the group's latest project, a re-imagining of music by Miles Davis and Sly Stone.

The Collective was scheduled to perform here in St. Louis tomorrow night at The Sheldon, but they've cancelled that show and the remainder of their spring tour due to the COVID-19 outbreak.

* Guitarist Dave Black was the subject of a short feature story in St. Louis magazine.

* This weekend's Carol Moore Memorial Jazz Festival at Mineral Area College, featuring trombonist Michael Dease (pictured), was previewed in a feature story in the Park Hills Daily Journal.

* Jazz St. Louis has published on their website a Q&A with keyboardist Dave Grelle. Grelle's band Playadors performs at the venue tonight and tomorrow night.

* The St. Louis Post-Dispatch/STLToday.com went into their archives to republish photos from when W.C. Handy, composer of "St. Louis Blues," came back to St. Louis for a visit in 1932.

* The venue formerly known as The Stage at KDHX will get a makeover and a new name, Bennie's Blues Room, as it becomes the new headquarters for the St. Louis Blues Society. Focusing on the history of St. Louis blues, the venue (named in honor of the late guitarist and singer Bennie Smith) will present live music, educational events, and more, as detailed in a story by the Post-Dispatch's Kevin Johnson.

* The Regional Arts Commission this week unveiled a five-year plan that would have them working more closely with local arts groups to set priorities and foster collaborations as well as providing funding. For details, see this story by St. Louis Public Radio's Jeremy Goodwin.

Jazz this week: Kuzu, Galactic, Julian Lage & Dave King, Dikeman/ACA Quartet, Soul Message Band, SFJAZZ Collective, and more

It's a busy week for jazz and creative music in St. Louis, with a half-dozen noteworthy shows from visiting performers offering funk, free jazz, re-imaginations of music from two iconic artists, and much more.

Let's go to the highlights...

Wednesday, March 11
Improvising trio Kuzu (pictured, top left), featuring guitarist Tashi Dorji, drummer Tyler Damon and saxophonist Dave Rempis, will perform in a New Music Circle concert at Joe's Cafe.

You can find out more, and see and hear performances on video from all three of them, separately and together, in this post from a couple of Saturdays ago.

Also on Wednesday, cabaret grande dame Marilyn Maye continues with her second of three nights of performances with the Jazz St. Louis Big Band; and Jazz St. Louis' "Whitaker Jazz Speaks" series presents a free event with author William Studdart discussing his book The Jazz War: Radio Nazism, and the Struggle for the Airwaves in WW2 at the St. Louis County Library.

Thursday, March 12
New Orleans funk/jazz band Galactic (pictured, center left) returns to perform at Delmar Hall.

You can find out more about what they've been up to since their last appearance here, and see videos of some recent performances in this post from Saturday before last.

UPDATE - 10:00 a.m., 3/12/20: In an announcement made this morning on Twitter,  Galactic has canceled all tour dates, including tonight's show in St. Louis, until Saturday, March 28.

Also on Thursday, guitarist Julian Lage and drummer Dave King bring their "pop-up" tour to Gaslight Studio, and Dutch saxophonist John Dikeman headlines a bill of free improvisors at the Way Out Club.

Elsewhere around town, Chicago-based organ trio Soul Message Band will perform at The Dark Room, and two more Chicago-based musicians, saxophonist Rob Denty and drummer Tim Mulvenna, will team up with guitarist Vincent Varvel to play a free concert for the Jazz at Holmes series at Washington University.

UPDATE - 7:45 a.m., 3/12/20: In a message published Wednesday night on Facebook, the Jazz at Holmes series announced that the remaining shows for the spring semester, including this week's Denty/Mulvenna/Varvel concert, have been cancelled, in keeping with Wash U's policy regarding current public health concerns over the coronavirus.

Friday, March 13
Keyboardist Dave Grelle's Playadors perform for the first of two nights at Jazz St. Louis, and singer Erin Bode will present at a concert at Focal Point.

Also on Friday, the Ambassadors of Swing play for dancers at the Casa Loma Ballroom, and the Mineral Area College Carol Moore Memorial Jazz Festival, with trombonist Michael Dease as the featured guest, gets underway for the first of two nights at the Mineral Area College Theater in Park Hills, MO.

Saturday, March 14
The all-star SFJAZZ Collective (pictured, bottom left) will perform at the Sheldon Concert Hall, featuring new arrangements of music from Miles Davis' In A Silent Way and Sly and the Family Stone's Stand!.

You can find out more about about the Miles/Sly project and see some brief musical excerpts on video in this post from last Saturday.

Also on Saturday, bassist and singer Janet Evra leads her quartet at Evangeline's, and saxophonist Tim Cunningham returns to Troy's Listening Room.

Sunday, March 15
The Original Knights Of Swing will play a matinee at the Opera House of Pacific; the Coleman Hughes Project celebrates seven years as a band with a show at HollyLou Entertainment; and the JazzU Big Band student ensemble performs at Jazz St. Louis.

Tuesday, March 17
Cabaret Project St. Louis presents their monthly "Singers Open Mic" at Sophie's Artist Lounge, and pianist Kim Portnoy teams up with voice faculty members from Webster U and Webster alumna Erin Bode for  "The Poetry Project" at Union Avenue Christian Church.

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: SFJAZZ Collective plays Sly and Miles

This week, let's take a look at some videos featuring the SFJAZZ Collective, who will be coming back to St. Louis to perform next Saturday, March 14 at The Sheldon.

Formed in 2004, the SFJAZZ Collective is an eight-member, all-star group that's based at San Francisco's presenting and producing organization SFJAZZ, while drawing players from all over the country.

The band's personnel has evolved over the years, as individual members have moved on and been replaced, but they've continued to follow a basic blueprint for an annual album and tour.  Each year,  the group's members create original arrangements based on the works of a specific composer, then come together to perform that material, first in a local residency in San Francisco, then in a recording session and, finally, on tour.

There are a couple of new twists this year, though, as rather than focusing on a single composer, the Collective is re-imagining material from two celebrated albums released in 1969, Sly and The Family Stone’s Stand! and Miles Davis’ In a Silent Way.

In addition, to facilitate that material, this year's edition of the band features its first-ever vocalist, Martin Luther McCoy, and first guitarist, Adam Rogers. Trumpeter Etienne Charles (who, coincidentally, is playing here this week leading his own band at Jazz St. Louis) is the other new addition this year, joining previous members David Sanchez (tenor sax), Warren Wolf (vibraphone), Edward Simon (piano), Matt Brewer (bass), and Obed Calvaire (drums).

You can get a small taste of what the Sly/Miles project is like in the first video up above, created by SFJAZZ to promote the tour and album.

After the jump, you can see short videos that give a taste of the Collective's arrangements of Davis' "In A Silent Way" and Stone's "You Can Make It If You Try" and "(I Want To Take You) Higher," followed by a short clip of them rehearsing Sly's "Sex Machine."

The final video shows how the Collective implemented their approach on another famous Davis piece, the title track of Bitches Brew, as performed by the 2016 version of the band.

For more about the SFJAZZ Collective and their current tour, read the feature story about the band that ran last October in DownBeat, and the interview with vocalist Martin Luther McCoy published this week on the Chicago Symphony's website.

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