Jazz this week: St. Louis Cabaret Festival, Houston Person & Montez Coleman, New Orleans Jazz Vipers, and more

As yr. humble StLJN editor this week has been both swamped with paying-gig-type work and plagued by various equipment malfunctions, and this post is already late, this intro will be both mercifully brief and without embellishment.

Here are some of the more noteworthy jazz and creative music performances happening in and around St. Louis over the next few days: 

Wednesday, July 20
Saxophonist and East St. Louis native Andre Delano, now based on the West Coast, is back in town for a visit and will perform with Good 4 The Soul at The Lux.

Also tonight, the St. Louis Cabaret Festival gets underway with Broadway star Faith Prince and actor/singer Jason Graae performing at the Sheldon Concert Hall. For more about the festival and video samples of the headling performers, see this Saturday video post from a couple of weeks ago.

Elsewhere around town, singer Erin Bode will perform a free concert (weather permitting) for the Whitaker Music Festival at the Missouri Botanical Garden; the Liberation Organ Trio plays at Evangeline's; and the New Orleans Jazz Vipers, featuring former St. Louisans Charlie Halloran on trombone and Chloe Feoranzo on clarinet will perform on a double-bill with Feoranzo's old band, the Sidney Street Shakers, at Foam.

The Vipers' gig is the first of four this week in St. Louis for the band, with shows to follow on Thursday at Joe's Cafe, Friday at Focal Point, and Saturday afternoon at the Blues City Deli. For more about that, see Terry Perkins' article about Halloran, Feorenzo and the band posted yesterday on the website of Alive! magazine.

Thursday, July 21
The St. Louis Cabaret Festival continues with singer Marilyn Maye (pictured, top left), her special guest Ann Hampton Callaway, and pianists Billy Stritch and Tedd Firth at the Sheldon Concert Hall. For more on  what the four of them have planned, listen to Maye and Callaway's interview from yesterday on St. Louis Public Radio.

Also on Thursday, trumpeter Danny Campbell leads a quartet in a free "Jazz in July" show for the Jazz at Holmes series at the Tisch Commons of Danforth University Center on the Washington University campus; and guitarist Brian Vaccaro and his trio will play at The Pat Connolly Tavern.

Friday, July 22
The St. Louis Cabaret Festival continues with pianist and singer Tony DeSare at the Sheldon, while over on the other side of Grand Ave, the veteran tenor saxophonist Houston Person (pictured, lower left) will be in town as a special guest soloist with drummer Montez Coleman's band as they undertake two nights of performances at Jazz at the Bistro. You can find out more about Coleman's shows in a preview story written by the Post-Dispatch's Calvin Wilson

Also on Friday, Second Generation Swing will play for dancers at the Casa Loma Ballroom; and trumpeter and singer Dawn Weber performs in a free outdoor concert as part of the summer series at 370 Lakeside Park in St. Peters.

Saturday, July 23
Singer Joe Mancuso and guitarist Dave Black will celebrate the release of their new duo CD with a performance at the Kranzberg Arts Center; bassist Bob DeBoo brings his trio to The Dark Room; saxophonist Tim Cunningham will be playing soul jazz and R&B at @Nesby's; and Miss Jubilee will offer up danceable swing, jump blues and more at the Casa Loma Ballroom.

Sunday, July 24
The Coleman Hughes Project will play an early evening show at The Rustic Goat; the Ambassadors of Swing return to Kirkwood Station Brewing Company; and the St. Louis Cabaret Festival wraps up with a final celebration and showcase of students from the coterminous St. Louis Cabaret Conference at the Ferring Jazz 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.)

Jazz this week: Harry Connick Jr., St. Louis Cabaret Festival, Russell Gunn with Montez Coleman, and more

It's looking like a good week to get out and hear some live jazz and creative music in St. Louis, particularly for fans of vocalists.

With three headliners performing for the St. Louis Cabaret Festival, plus the opening of a locally produced show paying tribute to a legendary singer, plus the much-anticipated return of one of today's most popular crossover performers, and more, there are plenty of options from which to choose. Let's go to the highlights....

Wednesday, July 22
Marilyn Maye (pictured, top left), considered by many to be the grande dame of cabaret singers, begins the concert portion of the St. Louis Cabaret Festival with a performance of her show "Sinatra Her Way" at the Sheldon Concert Hall.

Produced by Cabaret Project of St. Louis, the festival is the performance portion of their annual St. Louis Cabaret Conference, and continues through Saturday night. You can find out more and see videos of Maye and the festival's other headliners in this post from last Saturday.

Also tonight, guitarist and singer Tommy Halloran's Guerrilla Swing will perform for the World Chess Hall of Fame's music series, and Dizzy Atmosphere returns to The Shaved Duck.

Thursday, July 23
The St. Louis Cabaret Festival continues with a performance by singer, songwriter and pianist Jason Robert Brown at the Sheldon, while a couple of blocks away at Jazz at the Bistro, Jazz St. Louis will be presenting "Swingin’ for the Fences: Big Bands & Baseball," the first in a series of three free events over the next two weeks highlighting the connections between jazz and baseball. 

Also in the Grand Center district, the tribute show "Sinatra at 100" with singer Joe Scalzitti and the St. Louis Big Band begins a three-week run at the Kranzberg Arts Center.

Elsewhere around town, the Wire Pilots will play a free concert for the Jazz at Holmes summer series at Washington University; Franglais returns to Howard's in Soulard; and singer Erin Bode will perform in a free outdoor concert at  Kirkwood Station Plaza in downtown Kirkwood.

Friday, July 24
It's an East St. Louis reunion in Grand Center, as trumpeter Russell Gunn (pictured, center left) comes back from his current home in Atlanta to join drummer and fellow Lincoln HS alum Montez Coleman and his group for a weekend of shows at Jazz at the Bistro.

While Gunn's recent album Electric Butterfly showed a heavy rock influence, with songs built on distorted, riffing guitars, the musical menu for this weekend's collaboration with Coleman remains undisclosed, as Jazz St. Louis' promo for the show has been light on specifics. But regardless of whether they're playing Gunn's funk and rock-oriented material, swinging jazz, or a mix, the gig definitely should be worth hearing.

Also on Friday, the Cabaret Festivial continues with a performance by Christine Ebersole at the Sheldon Concert Hall, and pianist Carolbeth True, her band Two Times True and singer Christi John Bye will play a concert at St. Peter's United Church of Christ in Ferguson.

Elsewhere around town, singer Joe Mancuso leads a quartet at Nathalie's; Wack-A-Doo will play swing, hot jazz and Americana at Thurman Grill; and the Original Knights of Swing perform for dancers at the Casa Loma Ballroom

Saturday, July 25
The St. Louis Cabaret Festival wraps up with a showcase for Cabaret Conference participants at the Kranzberg Arts Center; Miss Jubilee plays for dancers at Casa Loma Ballroom; and saxophonist Tim Cunningham will be at Troy's Jazz Gallery.

Sunday, July 26
Gaslight Square veterans Trio Trés Bien emerge for a rare public live performance, joined by singer Danita Mumphard for a free outdoor concert at Ivory Perry Park, 800 N. Belt.

Monday, July 27
"Blind" Willie Dineen and the Broadway Collective are back for their regular monthly gig at BB's Jazz, Blues & Soups.

Tuesday, July 28
Singer and pianist Harry Connick Jr. returns to St. Louis to perform at the Peabody Opera House. The New Orleans native (pictured, lower left), who has enjoyed wide attention the past couple of years as a celebrity judge on TV's American Idol, released his most recent album Every Man Should Know back in 2013.

He last performed here in March 2014 as headliner for Variety's "Dinner With The Stars," also at the Peabody, and though that gig was well-received by all accounts, no doubt fans will be looking forward this time to the full-length version of his touring show.

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: 2015 St. Louis Cabaret Festival

Today, let's take a look at some video clips featuring the stars of next week's St. Louis Cabaret Festival. Produced by Cabaret Project of St. Louis, the festival serves as the performance portion of their annual St. Louis Cabaret Conference, a week-long event offering educational programs, professional development, networking, and other activities for aspiring and established cabaret performers.

Three of the best-known singers involved in the conference will headline public performances at the Sheldon Concert Hall. The concerts begin with Marilyn Maye, who's still remarkably spry and vocally sharp at age 87 and considered by many to be the matriarch of contemporary cabaret. She was a main attraction at last year's conference and will return this year to perform a program of songs associated with Frank Sinatra on Wednesday, July 22 at the Sheldon.

In the first video up above, you can see Maye singing "Here's to Us" at the 2014 Manhattan Association of Cabarets & Clubs (MAC) Awards, where she was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award.

After the jump, there's a clip of Maye performing "The Man That Got Away," recorded in March 2014 at The Allen Room by Jazz at Lincoln Center, with assistance from her musical director, pianist Billy Stritch, along with bassist David Katzenberg and drummer Daniel Glass.

Next up is singer and pianist Jason Robert Brown, who will perform on Thursday, July 23 at the Sheldon. Known more as a composer and songwriter than a performer, Brown has won two Tony Awards for writing the scores for Parade and The Bridges of Madison County.

But though he may spend most of his time behind the scenes, Brown also is quite capable of capturing an audience's attention on stage, as you can see in the third video, which features him performing "When You Say Vegas" from the short-lived Broadway musical Honeymoon in Vegas. Brown is backed by Charlie Rosen's Broadway Big Band in the clip, which was recorded last October at 54 Below.

In the fourth video, you can see Brown talking for a couple of minutes about the process of making changes in a new show during previews, and then performing a solo piano/vocal version of "Being A Geek," which was written for, and then cut from, the musical 13.

The festival's final headliner is Christine Ebersole, who will perform on Friday, July 24 at the Sheldon. Ebersole is a two-time Tony Award-winning actress and singer who has had many roles in TV and film and has starred in Broadway shows such as 42nd Street, Grey Gardens, Dinner at Eight, and Blithe Spirit.

Ebersole also is a veteran concert and cabaret performer, and the fifth video embed shows her singing "Something There" from her album Strings Attached in a show last year at the NYC venue 54 Below. In today's final clip, she can be seen performing "After All," from the musical Ever After, in May of this year on an episode of Sirius/XM radio's theater-talk show Seth Speaks.

In addition to the concerts by the three headliners, the festival also will include a showcase performance by conference participants on Saturday, July 25 at the Kranzberg Arts Center.

For more about the St. Louis Cabaret Festival and the Cabaret Conference, you can listen to an interview with Marilyn Maye and Tim Schall, producer and co-founder of the conference, from yesterday's “Cityscape” program on KWMU/St. Louis Public Radio.

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

The Sheldon offering discount tickets for Cabaret Festival performances

The Sheldon Concert Hall and the St. Louis Cabaret Festival are offering discounts on tickets to three festival performances next month.

With the discount, ticket buyers can get $10 off of the regular $45 orchestra level ticket price for the concerts at the Sheldon featuring Marilyn Maye on Wednesday, July 22; Jason Robert Brown on Thursday, July 23; and Christine Ebersole (pictured) on Friday, July 24. All three concerts start at 8:00 p.m.

To get the ticket discount, go to http://metrotix.com/, select the concert(s) of your choice, and when prompted, enter the promo code SHELDON.

So What: Local News, Notes & Links

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

* The Miles Davis Memorial Project's campaign to place a statue of Davis in downtown Alton was featured this week in a story on St. Louis Public Radio.

* Meanwhile, this week's news from the set of Miles Ahead, actor-director Don Cheadle's feature film about Davis now lensing in Cincinnati, includes a first look at Emayatzy Corinealdi in costume as Davis' ex-wife Frances Taylor, via IndieWire; and a brief feature about the film on WNYC radio.

* Saxophonist and U City native Marty Ehrlich will help kick off the fall season of the New York chapter of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians with a concert on Friday, September 12 at the Community Church of New York. Ehrlich's Trio Exaltation, with bassist John Hebert and drummer Nasheet Waits, will share the bill with drummer Thurman Barker's ensemble. The series also will feature a concert by saxophonist and former St. Louisan Oliver Lake on November 7.

* Singer Denise Thimes (pictured) has been named a recipient of a 2015 St. Louis Arts Award from the Arts and Education Council. Thimes' trophy for "Excellence in the Arts" will be presented along with the rest of this year's awards at a gala event on January 19 at the Chase Park Plaza.

* The Big Little Big Band has posted to Facebook an album of photos from their concert last week for the St Louis Jazz Club.

* Last Friday's St. Louis Cabaret Festival performance by pianist/singer Billy Stritch and singer Marilyn Maye was reviewed by Chuck Lavazzi of KDHX.

* Single tickets for the various 2014-15 series at the Sheldon Concert Hall go on sale at 10:00 a.m tomorrow, Saturday, August 9. (However, you can get a day's head start by going here and entering the promo code SHE14.) You can listen to music samples from the various performers on the Sheldon's SoundCloud page.

* Saxophonist Tim McAllister, the soloist on the St. Louis Symphony's recent recording of composer John Adams' City Noir, recounts the history and development of the work in an interview with the San Jose Mercury News' Richard Scheinin.

* Yr. humble StLJN editor is serving this month as a guest blogger for New Music Box, the online publication of New Music USA, and you can see the first of four scheduled posts - an essay about the potential uses and misuses of musical genre designations - here.

* To celebrate the 65th anniversary of Prestige Records, the label is holding a giveaway of prizes including a 20-CD boxed set of remastered recordings supervised by legendary engineer Rudy Van Gelder and reissues of early music by Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk and more. You can enter the drawing here.

* Jazz radio update: On this Saturday's edition of “Somethin’ Else” on Radio Arts Foundation - St. Louis, host Calvin Wilson will spin music from trios led by saxophonists, including Joshua Redman, Joe Henderson and Branford Marsalis. "Somethin' Else" can be heard at 8:00 p.m. Saturdays on 107.3 FM, 96.3 HD-2, and online at http://www.rafstl.org/listen.

Then on Sunday night, KWMU's "Jazz Unlimited" continues host Dennis Owsley's documentary look at the history of St. Louis jazz with an episode covering the late-1960s rise of the Black Artists Group and Human Arts Association. "Jazz Unlimited" can be heard from 9:00 p.m. to midnight Sundays on KWMU (90.7 FM) and online at http://www.stlpublicradio.org/listen.php.

(Updated after posting to add New Music Box link.)

Jazz this week: St. Louis Cabaret Festival, Bull of Heaven, "All That Tap XXIII," and more

Though the dog days of August are looming nigh, it's a busy week for live jazz and creative music in St. Louis, with local festivals representing two different branches of jazz-related performance, a rare live gig from a much-talked-about experimental music duo, and a whole lot more. Let's go the highlights...

Tonight, Broadway star Faith Prince kicks off the St. Louis Cabaret Festival with a performance of her show "Have A Little Faith" at the Sheldon ballroom. Produced by Cabaret Project of St. Louis, the festival takes place in conjunction with their annual St. Louis Cabaret Conference. You can read more about it and see some video of Prince and the festival's other headliners in this post from last Saturday.

Tomorrow, the Cabaret Festival continues with longtime St. Louis favorite Ann Hampton Callaway (pictured) presenting "The Streisand Songbook" at the Sheldon.

Also on Thursday, pianist Kara Baldus, bassist Eric Stiller and drummer Kyle Honeycutt will play a free concert to wrap up Washington University's summer Jazz at Holmes series, which is being staged at Tisch Commons in the Danforth University Center; and the Tavern of Fine Arts will present their monthly "Experimental Arts Open Improv Night" with live improvised music.

On Friday, the Cabaret Festival presents a double bill at the Sheldon, with pianist and singer Billy Stritch opening with his own show entitled "I've Got Your Number: The Jazz of Cy Coleman" and then accompanying singer Marilyn Maye for her headlining set. Given Maye's status as one of the reigning grande dames of cabaret, this seems a likely sellout, so if you're interested in going, advance reservations would be a must.

Fortunately, if you can't get tickets in time, there will be plenty of St. Louis jazz vocal talent on display around town on Friday, too, as Miss Jubilee plays a free show at the St. Louis Art Museum; Wendy Gordon and pianist Arthur Toney return to DeLeo's Cafe & Deli; the Ann Dueren Trio performs at Il Bel Lago; and Sarah Jane and the Blue Notes will be swinging at Evangeline's. And should you be out west in Union, MO, you can catch singer Joe Mancuso's quartet at Domenic's Ristorante and Social Club (membership in la familia not required.).

On Saturday, the Cabaret Festival wraps up with the St. Louis Cabaret Conference Showcase at the Kranzberg Arts Center, featuring performances from a roster of up-and-coming singers in town to take part in the conference.

That same evening, the spotlight shines on yet another part of the jazz diaspora as the annual St. Louis Tap Festival comes to a conclusion with "All That Tap XXIII", presented this year at the Edison Theatre.

Pianist Carolbeth True's trio will provide the music for a lineup of dancers including the festival's founder, Robert L. Reed; Emmy Award-winning choreographer Jason Samuels Smith; dancer and author Karen Callaway Williams; the Israeli dance team of Avi Miller and Ofer Ben; Reed’s protégé Logan Miller; multi-media choreographer Bob Audy; Evan Ruggiero; Maud and Chloe Arnold, who were featured on this past season of the Fox network's So You Think You Can Dance; Martin 'Tre' Dumas III; and Megan Maltos.

Elsewhere around town on Saturday, the experimental duo Bull of Heaven will be in town for a rare live performance at Lemp Neighborhood Arts Center. As much a conceptual art project as a performing unit, Bull of Heaven reportedly have released hundreds of thousands of hours of audio since being formed in 2006, including individual "songs" that are hundreds of hours long, as well as "music puzzles" using some of the peculiarities and specifics of digital technology to deliver unexpected results. For a bit more about them, and links to interviews with the group's members, see this post.

And if all that's not enough for one Saturday night, the Funky Butt Brass Band will be making a comparatively rare non-holiday appearance at Off Broadway; and singer Tony Viviano will present his "Tony Bennett 88th Birthday Tribute" at Four Seasons Winery in Chesterfield.

On Sunday, the Friends of Scott Joplin will host their monthly "Ragtime Rendezvous" at the Scott Joplin House State Historic Site; singers Mary Dyson and Dianne Vaughn will be this week's guest stars with saxophonist Willie Akins' quartet at Troy's Jazz Gallery; and guitarist Dave Black will play at Pomme Cafe & Wine Bar.

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: St. Louis Cabaret Festival

Today, let's take a look at some video clips featuring the stars of next week's St. Louis Cabaret Festival. The festival is produced by Cabaret Project of St. Louis, and takes place in conjunction with their annual St. Louis Cabaret Conference, a week-long event offering educational programs, professional development, networking, and so on for cabaret performers, both established and aspiring.

In the first video up above, Marilyn Maye, the Kansas native whose show business career spans parts of seven decades, performs a medley of songs by Johnny Mercer with Ted Firth (piano) and Steve Doyle (bass), recorded in June 2009 at Birdland in NYC.

Maye will co-headline a concert with pianist and singer Billy Stritch on Friday, August 1 at the Sheldon Concert Hall's upstairs ballroom.After the jump, you can see her, backed by Stritch on piano, in an undated but fairly recent clip singing "My Man."

Next, while online videos featuring Stritch as a solo performer do not seem to be in plentiful supply, we were able to find one of him singing and playing "I've Got the World on a String" and "I've Got Rhythm" at an awards show way back in 1999.

(You also can see a full hour of Maye and Stritch together right here in St. Louis courtesy of HEC-TV's I Love Jazz, which devoted a whole episode to them in September 2013 that, alas, cannot be embedded.)

Below that, there's a video tribute filmed at Birdland on the occasion of Maye's 85th birthday. Depending on your interest in the minutiae of NYC's cabaret and theater scenes, you may or may not want to watch the whole thing, but definitely check out the first part featuring a brief improvised blues duet between Maye and another of the festival's performers, longtime St. Louis favorite Ann Hampton Callaway.

Callaway has been a regular visitor here over the last decade and a half, and she'll be back at the Sheldon next Thursday, July 31, performing an evening of songs associated with Barbra Streisand.

You can see Callaway in the fifth clip teaming up with Maye again for an impromptu version of "It Had to be You" recorded in 2010 at a benefit gala for the Heartland Men's Chorus in Kansas City, and below that, there's a video compiling some highlights of her Streisand show.

The festival's final headliner, singer and actress Faith Prince, is represented by the final two clips. Although Prince is a well-known regular on Broadway thanks to starring roles in shows like Guys and Dolls, Bells Are Ringing and Annie, there seems to be essentially no online video of her performing in a cabaret setting.

So instead, we close out today with a clip of Prince singing "Adelaide's Lament" from Guys and Dolls on a 2001 TV special; and an interview she recorded for the program "Show People With Paul Wontorek."

For more about the St. Louis Cabaret Festival, you can hear Callaway and Cabaret Project of St. Louis' Tim Schall in this interview recorded Friday for the "Cityscape" program on KWMU (90.7 FM).

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