Sunday Session: October 4, 2020

Dorothy Ashby

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

* The Stanley Crouch I Knew (New York Review of Books)
* Cecil Taylor and his Mendota Players – Snapshots. By Paul Ruppa (The Wire)
* Captain Beefheart’s ’10 commandments of guitar playing’ (FarOutMagazine.co.uk)
* Deep algebra for deep beats: The beautiful sounds of musical programming (Ars Technica)
* Wire Playlist: Musician-Owned Record Labels In Jazz In The 1970s (The Wire)
* Dorothy Ashby: Pioneering Jazz Harpist (UDiscoverMusic.com)
* The Death and Rebirth of the Rock Saxophone (TrebleZine.com)
* In Mother Mallard’s Portable Masterpiece Company, An Overlooked Institution of Moog Music (Bandcamp.com)
* John Hollenbeck Takes Back Recordings And Forges Ahead (DownBeat)
* What It’s Like to Be Black in Indie Music (Pitchfork.com)
* New Dave Brubeck Releases in Fall Pipeline (Jazz Times)
* ‘The Story I’m Telling’: An Interview with Archie Shepp (New York Review of Books)
* Sharel Cassity Is ‘Fearless’ Amid Recovery (DownBeat)
* North Philly activist, poet, and musician Moor Mother on her free jazz musical, Afrofuturism, and Patti LaBelle (Philadelphia Inquirer)
* Antidote to Isolation - Vijay Iyer On How Music Reconnects Us In A Socially Distant World (Steinway.com)
* “This is more than an annoying blip.” Aaron Liddard’s perspective on the future of the music industry (London Jazz News)
* Arlo Guthrie on His Dad, Protesting, and “Alice’s Restaurant” (UnderTheRadarMag.com)
* Wire Playlist: Tashi Dorji (The Wire)
* The Futility of Rolling Stone’s Best-Albums List (The New Yorker)
* A Deep Dive into John Coltrane's 'A Love Supreme' by His Biographer, Lewis Porter (Pt. 3) (WBGO)
* Harlem of the West: San Francisco's Fillmore District (PleaseKillMe.com)
* Maria Schneider: A Tale Of Two Worlds (Jazz Times)
* The Canterbury Scene: How A Bunch of Bookish Bohemians Became The Monty Pythons of Prog (UDiscoverMusic.com) * JT Video Premiere: The Love Letter Sessions by Jimmy Heath (Jazz Times)
* The True Poet of Jazz (City-Journal.org)

Jazz this week: Manhattan Transfer & Take 6; Cassity, Jensen & Wolfe; and more

While this week's concert calendar isn't as jam-packed with jazz and creative music as last week's almost-insane schedule, there still are several noteworthy shows happening over the next few days, including a long-anticipated concert teaming up two of the top jazz-influenced vocal groups in the world, and more.

Let's go to the highlights...

Wednesday, October 26
The eclectic instrumental quartet The 442s will take the stage for the first of two nights at Jazz at the Bistro, where their sets will include music they created this past summer as the first-ever artists-in-residence for Forest Park Forever.

Elsewhere in Grand Center, the weekly "jazz crawl" proceeds with bassist Bob Deboo and friends hosting a jam session at the Kranzberg Arts Center and trumpeter Kasimu Taylor leading a trio at The Dark Room. Also on Wednesday, Elsie Parker and the Poor People of Paris return to Nathalie's, and the Jazz Troubadours play at Evangeline's.

Thursday, October 27
Singer Denise Thimes headlines her 12th annual benefit performance at the Sheldon Concert Hall, raising money for the Mildred Thimes Foundation (named after her late mother) to fight pancreatic cancer. Thimes will be joined by guest performers including the Chicago-based singer Dee Alexander and comedian Monique Marvez.

Also on Thursday, the New Orleans Suspects are back in town for another performance at the Broadway Oyster Bar, and singer Erin Bode returns to Cyrano's.

Friday, October 28
The joint tour by vocal groups Manhattan Transfer and Take 6 (pictured, top left) billed as "The Summit" arrives in St. Louis for a concert at the Touhill Performing Arts Center.

Based on reports from earlier in the tour, the show will include favorites from both groups, performing separately and together, as well as an entertaining segment in which each group performs some of the other's material. If you're a fan of jazz vocal harmony or ensemble singing in general, this should rank as the "must-see" concert of the year.

Also on Friday, saxophonist Sharel Cassity, trumpeter Ingrid Jensen, and bassist Ben Wolfe wrap up their week-long educational residency for Jazz St. Louis with the first of two nights of performances at Jazz at the Bistro, with some help from pianist Phil Dunlap and drummer Marty Morrison. For more about Cassity, Jensen, and Wolfe (pictured, bottom left), and some video samples of all three musicians in action, see this post from last Saturday.

That same evening, the Gaslight Cabaret Festival resumes with singer and actress Tovah Feldshuh performing for the first of two nights at the Gaslight Theater; Sarah Jane and the Blue Notes return to the Venice Cafe; and Miss Jubilee plays for dancers at the Casa Loma Ballroom.

Saturday, October 29
Singer Feyza Eren returns to the house concert venue KindaBlue, and Animal Children will play at The Dark Room.

Sunday, October 30
The St. Louis Jazz Club presents pianist Stephanie Trick in a matinee performance at the Moolah Temple,
and the JazzU Big Band, made up of the top high school students in Jazz St. Louis' education programs, will make their debut at Jazz at the Bistro.

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: Sharel Cassity, Ingrid Jensen & Ben Wolfe

Today, let's take a look at three musicians who will be sharing the stage next Friday, October 28 and Saturday, October 29 at Jazz at the Bistro.

Saxophonist Sharel Cassity, trumpeter Ingrid Jensen and bassist Ben Wolfe aren't regular bandmates, but all three will be in town next week to do educational residencies for Jazz St. Louis, and they'll then join forces (presumably augmented by a local musician or two) to wrap things up with two nights of public performances at the Bistro.

Wolfe may be the most familiar to St. Louis audiences, as he released a couple of albums as a leader on the locally based label MAXJAZZ (acquired earlier this year by Detroit's Mack Avenue Records). However, the 54-year-old bassist probably is best known as an accompanist, particularly for his work with highly visible performers including singer/pianist Harry Connick Jr., trumpeter Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, and singer and pianist Diana Krall, as well as many others.

Cassity, the youngest of the three at 38, played at the Sheldon here in St. Louis last year as part of the Dizzy Gillespie tribute band led by bassist John Lee. In addition to fronting her own groups, the Iowa native also has worked with trumpeter Nicolas Payton; big bands including the DIVA Jazz Orchestra, the Jimmy Heath Big Band, and the Roy Hargrove Big Band; and numerous other small groups.

Jensen, who's 50 years old and hails from Vancouver, is a Berklee graduate who moved to NYC in the late 1980s. From busking in subway stations and playing pickup gigs, she's risen gradually to headliner status, working along the way with composer/arranger Maria Schneider's acclaimed big band, bassist and singer Esperanza Spalding, pop singer Corrine Bailey Rae, keyboardist Jason Miles, and many others. Jensen also has been nominated twice for Juno awards - the Canadian equivalent of the Grammys - and won in 1995 for her album Vernal Fields.

You can see Cassity and her band Elektra in the first video up above, performing a full set recorded in July of this year at Dizzy's Club in NYC's Jazz at Lincoln Center. Along with the leader on alto and soprano sax, the group includes guitarist Mark Whitfield, keyboardist Miki Hayama, bassist Rashaan Carter, and drummer Lucianna Padmore.

After the jump, you can see Cassity fronting an acoustic quintet with E .J. Strickland (drums), Josh Evans (trumpet), Victor Gould (piano) and Yasushi Nakamura (bass) in an excerpt from a set recorded this past April at Teatro Vivian Blumenthal in Guadalajara, Mexico.

Next, you can see Jensen starring in a episode of Discover Jazz, a program produced by Vermont PBS, that aired for the first time earlier this month. The performance features Jensen and her sister, saxophonist Christine Jensen, with a rhythm section including pianist Jon Cowherd, bassist Matt Clohesy, and drummer Jon Wikan.

Below that, you can see Jensen's set from this year's Mary Lou Williams Jazz Festival, recorded in May at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC.

Finally, you can see Wolfe providing the low end for two very different performances - a stripped-down rendition of "Stardust" by guitarist and singer Doug Wamble, recorded in 2015, and a radically reworked version of "Autumn Leaves" with pianist Orrin Evans and drummer Obed Calvaire, recorded in 2011.

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

Jazz this week: Metta Quintet, Lenihan & Williams, and more

Whether it's because of Halloween, the impending end of Daylight Savings Time, pre-Election Day activities, the economic recession, or something else entirely, it's a relatively slow weekend for jazz and creative music in St. Louis, with just a handful of shows to highlight:

Tonight, guitarist William Lenihan and pianist Ptah Williams will play music from Miles Davis' album Bitches Brew in a free concert for the Jazz at Holmes series at Washington University. Also tonight, percussionist Thomas Zirkle gives a free concert at St. Louis Community College-Forest Park's Mildred E. Bastian Performing Arts Center. The concert will feature Zirkle's compositions for solo marimba as well as new music for the duo HaZMaT, which teams Zirkle with fellow percussionist Matt Henry.

On Friday and Saturday, the Metta Quintet performs at Jazz at the Bistro. The NYC-based ensemble led by drummer H. Benjamin "Hans" Schumann has been in town all week for an educational residency for Jazz St. Louis, and they've brought a lineup that's significantly different from the one described on their Web site and in a post here last Saturday.

Schumann and bassist Joshua Ginsburg remain with the ensemble, but saxophonists Marcus Stickland and Mark Gross and pianist Helen Sung are gone. For their St. Louis gig this week, the Metta Quintet instead is featuring trumpeter Phillip Dizack, a 2007 graduate of Manhattan School of Music who's worked with saxophonist Greg Tardy and done freelance jazz and Latin gigs around NYC; alto saxophonist Sharel Cassity (pictured), who went to Juilliard and has worked with the Diva Jazz Orchestra, trumpeter Ingrid Jensen and guitarist Mark Whitfield; and the fine young pianist Lawrence Fields, a St. Louis native and recent graduate of Berklee College of Music.

Fields is, as many local listeners already know, an enormously promising player who has performed and/or recorded with notables such as Alvin Batiste, Branford Marsalis, Roy Haynes, Jeff “Tain” Watts, Terri Lynne Carrington and Nicholas Payton. You can see a profile of him done by Ruth Ezell for Living St. Louis, the local newsmagazine show of PBS affiliate KETC, in the embedded video window below.

As for Dizack and Kassity, I honestly can't tell you much beyond what you can see for yourself on their respective Web sites, though Jazz St. Louis director of operations Bob Bennett, a saxophonist himself, did note in an email that he digs Kassity's bop-flavored sound.

This just in: Jazz St. Louis is offering a two-for-the-price-of-one deal on tickets for Friday night's sets by the Metta Quintet. To take advantage of the special offer, order your tickets by calling the Jazz St. Louis offices at 314-289-4030 and using the coupon code METTA0801.

Looking beyond the weekend, the Sessions Big Band will be back at BB's Jazz Blues and Soups on Monday night, and on Tuesday, The Gramophone features saxophonist Bennett Wood along with election returns on the big-screen TV.

As usually happens at the end of one month and the beginning of another, gig information from both venues and musicians is still arriving at StLJN HQ. You'll find the latest updates on more jazz-related events in St. Louis this weekend and beyond on the St. Louis Jazz Notes Calendar.

(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.)