So What: Local News, Notes & Links

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

* The Dark Room has announced new hours of operation, with the biggest change being that the venue will be closed on Mondays.

New hours for the rest of the week are 4:00 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. Tuesdays; 4:00 p.m. to 12:00 a.m. Wednesdays and Thursdays; 4:00 p.m. to 1:00 a.m. Fridays and Saturdays; and 10:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Sundays.

* Last Friday's New Music Circle concert by Merche Blasco (pictured) and Sarah Hennies at the Contemporary Art Museum was reviewed by Julio Prato of the blog St. Louis Music Report.

* The weeknight jazz series at the Gaslight Theater is featured in an article by the Jewish Light's Ellen Futterman about current businesses in the old Gaslight Square district.

* St. Louis County Library this month has reopened to new submissions their "Listen Up" program, which makes recordings from local musicians available as part of the library's streaming audio service. Musicians can submit their works now through the end of March at https://www.slcl.org/content/listen-up-stl.

* The recent documentary Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool (available free online for a limited time via streaming from PBS) was reviewed in the UK magazine Jazz Journal.

* The 2020 Carol Moore Memorial Jazz Festival, coming up next weekend at Mineral Area College with trombonist Michael Dease as featured guest, was previewed in a news release published by the Park Hills Daily Journal.

* Audition dates are set for student musicians from St. Louis area middle schools and high schools who would like to take part in Jazz St. Louis' JazzU program next year. The auditions for the 2020-21 school year will take place Monday, June 8 through Thursday, June 11 at JSL's HQ in Grand Center. For details and/or to sign up, go to https://jazzstl.org/education/jazz-u/2020-21-jazzu-auditions/.

Jazz this week: A celebration of Ray Charles, Sarah Hennies & Merche Blasco, Marissa Mulder, Denise Thimes, and more

This week's calendar of live jazz and creative music in St. Louis includes a show with an all-star cast paying tribute to one of the giants of American music; two composer-performers offering provocative sets of experimental sounds; two accomplished female vocalists headlining at intimate venues; and more.

Let's go to the highlights...

Wednesday,
February 26
Pianist Adaron "Pops" Jackson plays the music of Roy Ayers and more for the first of two nights at Jazz St. Louis, and guitarist Dave Black and his Itti Bitti Swing Orchestra will perform for the monthly concert series at the World Chess Hall of Fame.

Thursday, February 27
The touring show "Georgia On My Mind: A Celebration of the Music of Ray Charles" comes to the Touhill Performing Arts Center, with a cast including vocal group Take 6 (pictured, top left), singers Nnenna Freelon and Clint Holmes, and saxophonist Kirk Whalum.

Also on Thursday, singer and impressionist Dean Christopher returns with his "Rat Pack and More"  show to LoRusso's Cucina; The 442s will perform at Joe's Cafe; and trumpeter Brady Lewis and his BLStet are back at The Dark Room.

Friday, February 28
New Music Circle presents a double bill of composer-performers Sarah Hennies and Merche Blasco (pictured, bottom left) doing separate sets at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis.

Working with percussion and electronics, respectively, plus other instruments, both Hennies and Blasco craft distinctive soundscapes, often reflecting the site and circumstances of the particular performance time and space. You can see some previous works by both women in this post from Saturday before last.

Also on Friday, singer Marissa Mulder performs her cabaret show "The John Lennon & Paul McCartney Songbooks" for the first of two nights at Blue Strawberry, and singer Denise Thimes is back home from Chicago for the weekend for the first of two nights at Jazz St. Louis

Saturday, February 29
Singers Jeanne Trevor, Joe Mancuso and Wendy Gordon team up for a matinee performance at Blue Strawberry.

Then on Saturday evening, The Gaslight Squares return to the Frisco Barroom, and keyboardist Mo Egeston and friends bring the "Late Night Grooves" to The Dark Room.

Sunday, March 1
The St. Louis Record Show presents its spring edition at the American Czech Center, while Miss Jubilee performs for jazz brunch at Evangeline's.

Later that afternoon, multi-instrumentalist Joe Bozzi plays a matinee at Circa Pub & Grill, and at the the dinner hour, the Jazz Troubadours return for their monthly gig at Evangeline's.

Tuesday, March 3
The Tick Tock Jazz Band plays vintage jazz and swing for their monthly show at the Tick Tock Tavern, and pianist Carolbeth True and Two Times True with saxophonist Larry Johnson will perform in a concert at the Gaslight Theater.

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: Sarah Hennies, Merche Blasco to perform at the Contemporary Art Museum

Today, let's take a look at some videos featuring music by Sarah Hennies and Merche Blasco, two composer-performers who will be doing separate sets on a shared bill presented by New Music Circle on Friday, February 28 at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis.

Hennies, who's currently a visiting professor of music at Bard College in upstate new York, is a percussionist and composer of concert music for soloists and small ensembles, and also is active in improvisation, film, performance art, and dance.

She has presented her work internationally as both a composer and percussionist, has created commissioned works for various performers and ensembles, and has received a number of grants a fellowships supporting her projects.

Blasco, who's based in New York City, is "an interdisciplinary artist and composer engineering participatory performances through electroacoustic intervention and instrument building."

She's done performances and installations at museums, concert venues, and festivals throughout the United States and Europe, and her work has been featured in major publications including the New York Times, Wired, and more.

Although the specific pieces they will perform here in St. Louis are not available online in video form, you can at least get a feel for the sound and scope of both composers' work from what's there, starting with the first video up above, which documents part of Sarah Hennies' set from a show in January, 2018 at The Cherry Artspace in Ithaca, NY.

After the jump, you can see an excerpt from another live performance by Hennies in April 2017 as part of the Ende Tymes VII Festival of Noise and Experimental Liberation at a venue called Silent Barn in NYC. That's followed by a clip of her performance of a piece called "Falsetto" from October 2016 at the Sacred Root Kava Lounge in Ithaca.

Next up are three videos featuring Blasco, the first recorded in May, 2018 at Spectrum in Brooklyn, NY.

That's followed by an excerpt from her performance from May 2017 at Creative Tech Week in NYC. The final video shows Blasco's set from a show in June 2015 at the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival.

For more about Sarah Hennies, read her 2017 interview on the National Sawdust website, and her 2018 chat with TomTomMag.com. For more about Merch Blasco, check out her profile page on New Music USA, and watch the video of her talk in October 2018 at the interdisciplinary creative space Brooklyn Research.

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