Jazz this week: Dr. Lonnie Smith, Duke Ellington Orchestra, Boney James, the St. Louis Jazz Cafe's grand opening, and more

Better weather, the official onset of spring, and a nicely varied slate of musical attractions make this a good week in St. Louis to get out and hear some live jazz and creative music.

Here's a chronological look at the highlights of the next seven days, starting with veteran jazz organist Dr. Lonnie Smith (pictured), who opened last night and plays through Saturday at Jazz at the Bistro.

For this visit to St. Louis, Smith is joined by the bluesy guitarist Russell Malone and the drummer and New Orleans native Herlin Riley, who seem like they ought to be a very sympatico couple of bandmates. For more about Smith and some video samples of his funk-infused organ wizardry, see this post from Saturday before last. To hear Jazz St. Louis' podcast interview with the good Doctor, go here.

(And while we're at it, a couple of unusual facts about Dr. Lonnie Smith: He is not a physician, nor does he hold a doctorate, earned or honorary, in any academic subject. Also, he's not a Sikh (the religious faith that today is most commonly associated with turbans), nor is he a member of any other denomination that requires believers to wear a turban. Both the "Dr." designation and the distinctive headgear originally came about, so the story goes, for "no particular reason." Both, however, seemed to have served the purpose of making Smith more recognizable and/or memorable, which was probably mighty useful while he was coming up in the 1960s amidst a flock of popular jazz organists, and presumably still handy today.)

Also this evening, guitarist William Lenihan and pianist Kim Portnoy will team up to do a free concert for the Jazz at Holmes series at Washington University. This is being billed as a duo show, and the intimate confines of Holmes Lounge should provide a good opportunity to hear both players' contributions in fine detail.

On Saturday night, St. Louis Jazz Cafe has its grand opening, with music from Erin Bode. The cafe also will host its first jazz brunch on Sunday, with music from the Neal Conners Trio. For more about the St. Louis Jazz Cafe, including links to all previous StLJN coverage of the new downtown jazz club, see this post.

Sunday will be a busy day, with three noteworthy performances competing for local listeners' time and attention. First, there's the Duke Ellington Orchestra, now under the direction of conductor and trumpeter Barrie Lee Hall Jr., who will be in St. Louis for a matinee concert at the Touhill Performing Arts Center. While many of the present-day members of the Orchestra weren't even born yet when the Duke himself died back in 1974, Ellington's vast catalog of compositions and arrangements remains timeless, and always worth hearing.

Of course, if you're anywhere near St. Louis and already a big band fan, chances are that you've already made plans to attend this show. But if you've never heard a big band perform live before, and/or are just getting acquainted with jazz and want to learn more about it, you definitely should get to know Ellington's music - not just because it's historically important, but because, like all art of lasting value, it still is truly engaging, emotive and entertaining, even many years after its creation.

Also on Sunday, guitarist Matthew Von Doran will do a trio concert with bassist Nick Jost and drummer Miles Vandiver at Music Folk, 8015 Big Bend Blvd in Webster Groves. Van Doran hasn't done too many live performances since moving to St. Louis a couple of years ago, and that seems a shame, because based on what's available on record, the man really can play. This event will feature Von Doran, Jost and Vandiver playing both acoustically and electrically in the single-story, storefront space, which is intimate on the scale of someone's living room.

Last - but not least - on Sunday, the presenting organization St. Louis City Jazz is sponsoring a performance by smooth jazz saxophonist Tim Cunningham at the Schlafly Brewery and Tap Room downtown.

Looking beyond the weekend, on Monday the Black Wolf Consort, a new project involving trombonist John Wolf, guitarist Dave Black, and classically trained singer Jessica Heuser, is at BB's Jazz, Blues and Soups, and on Tuesday, The Gramophone will feature the Andrew Miramonti Trio.

Next Wednesday, the popular smooth jazz/funk saxophonist Boney James begins a tour in support of his latest CD, Send One Your Love, right here in St. Louis at The Pageant. James' CD came out around Valentine's Day and, as the name suggests, emphasizes love songs. However, while he will no doubt be playing some romantic songs from the latest release, I'd bet James will be serving up a few fan-pleasing funky jams as well.

As always, these are just a few of the noteworthy performances happening around St. Louis over the next few days. To see listings for more jazz-related events this weekend and beyond, please visit 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.)

Is jazz coming back to downtown St. Louis?

Though many jazz clubs have come and gone in downtown St. Louis over the decades, in recent years it's been tough to find live jazz in the figurative shadow of the Gateway Arch.

In the nearly four years I've been writing StLJN, jazz bookings at the Adams Mark Hotel's lounges and restaurants, once a staple there, first dwindled, and then were eliminated when the riverfront property was sold and re-flagged as a Hyatt Regency. Elsewhere downtown, BB's Jazz, Blues and Soups has continued to book the Sessions Big Band on Mondays, as well as occasional gigs on Sundays featuring locals such as Good 4 the Soul, Todd Mosby and Anita Rosamond, but it remains primarily a blues club. Also, a bit farther to the west, George Sams' Nu-Art Series has presented occasional jazz and creative music performances at the Metropolitan Gallery. Beyond that, though, live jazz in downtown St. Louis proper has been relatively scarce here in the 21st century.

(UPDATE: A reader emails to point out that the concerts put on by the now-defunct Black Artists Group revival in 2007 and 2008 at the Scott Joplin House State Historic Site ought to be included in any accounting of recent jazz activity downtown, and he's right. Although BAG II didn't succeed in building a large audience, the efforts of the group, and particularly those of bassist and event producer Zimbabwe Nkenya, should not be forgotten.)

The deficit has not gone completely unnoticed. A couple of years ago, Jazz St. Louis made an attempt to establish a downtown beachhead of sorts, co-presenting a handful of free, cocktail-hour shows in conjunction with the Hilton at the Ballpark. Having played one of those gigs myself, backing singer Kim Massie, I can say based on first-hand observation that the hotel - how do I put this nicely? - did not seem strongly committed to making the series a success. As it turned out, the idea was abandoned after a few weeks.

More recently, though, there have been a few signs that jazz may be making something of a comeback in downtown St. Louis. Consider the following data points:

1) The St. Louis Jazz Cafe, located at 1500 St. Charles, and previously written about in this space here, here and here, appears to be on track for its grand opening celebration featuring music from Erin Bode this Saturday, March 21.

Someone associated with the cafe apparently has been reaching out to local food writers, as evidenced by these blog posts from the Riverfront Times and Sauce magazine, and Post-Dispatch pop music critic Kevin Johnson also mentioned the grand opening in a blog post here. (Curiously, any press releases intended for St. Louis Jazz Notes, and/or grand opening invitations for yr. humble editor, seem to have been mysteriously lost in the electronic ether and/or mail.)

The St. Louis Jazz Cafe also has updated parts of its Web site, particularly the music calendar, which now reveals who's booked for the first couple of weeks after the grand opening. 3 Central, a smooth jazz band seen in semi-regular rotation at the now-closed Cookie's Jazz and More, will play for the cafe's soft-opening "Friends and Family" night on Thursday, with the Usual Suspects taking over on subsequent Thursdays. (I'm reasonably certain that would be these Usual Suspects, fronted by keyboardist Charlie Brown and singer/saxophonist Jessica Butler, and not these Usual Suspects, who, save for a few videos on YouTube, seem to have evaporated without a trace in the two years since winning the RFT's "Best Cover Band" award.)

Other musical offerings now on the St. Louis Jazz Cafe calendar include the Neal Connors Trio, for the cafe's first Sunday brunch on March 22; Trio Tres Bien (pictured), who are set to appear on Saturday, March 28 and Friday, April 10; and Lamar Harris, who's booked on Saturday, April 4 and Friday, April 17. That's about as far as the calendar goes right now, though there is an RSS feed for those who'd like direct access to any updates.

2) St. Louis City Jazz, the fledgling not-for-profit organization whose mission statement, as their name suggests, involves "bringing live jazz back to the city of St. Louis," is presenting smooth jazz saxophonist Tim Cunningham at the Schlafly Brewery and Tap Room this Sunday, March 22. Cunningham plays from 6:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m., and tickets are $20 at the door.

3) Then there's the Jazz Spot, housed in the space at 400 N. Washington Ave. that once contained the Mandarin Bay restaurant, back when the surrounding hotel first opened a few years ago. The Jazz Spot came into being in 2008, when local real estate and media moguls the Roberts Brothers took over the hotel. However, to date, I haven't written anything about the place here on StLJN, because they haven't featured much in the way of actual jazz music.

Instead, the half-dozen groups listed on the club's Web site's "live music" page would seem to fall mostly into what might loosely be termed the "variety band" category, mixing jazz, R&B, pop, blues and other genres. Only one group listed there has its own Web site, the On Call Band, led by drummer Marty Spikener and saxophonist David Spruill. They're an entertaining band, featuring some good musicians, but not a jazz group per se; indeed, their own Web site emphasizes not their jazz chops, but their versatility, pitching them as able to play everything from blues to reggae.

That said, the Jazz Spot did present a show last October featuring singer and East St. Louis native Phil Perry, who works the boundary of smooth jazz and R&B, and the club will serve as the site for the upcoming CD release event for drummer Stan Hale, so perhaps they will yet begin booking live music on a regular basis that lives up to the implications of their name. For now, I'll be adding a link to the Jazz Spot's site, and to the site of the St. Louis Jazz Cafe, over on the StLJN sidebar, and keeping on eye on developments at both places.

Granted, these are but a handful of semi-random data points, there's a major recession happening, and a handful of shows do not a full-fledged resurgence make. But one would think jazz fans in St. Louis will be hoping for these new downtown presenters to meet with some success. It certainly would be good for local listeners, as well as tourists, left for for some time without adequate musical options in the heart of a city supposedly famous for its jazz heritage. And it would, of course, be good for St. Louis' jazz musicians, who can always use more work. For now, all we can do is wait and see what happens next.

Red Holloway concert at Kiener Plaza canceled

The free concert previously announced by St. Louis City Jazz that would have featured saxophonist Red Holloway performing this Friday, August 29 at Kiener Plaza has been canceled.

Although as of this writing the show is still listed on the group's Web site, callers to the contact number (314-757-0555) listed on the site are being told that the show is off. When I called, the man who answered what apparently is someone's personal mobile phone said that St. Louis City Jazz hoped to reschedule the event "after the first of the year" in 2009.

StLJN Saturday at the Movies: Dave Koz' "Silver Lining," plus Red Holloway plays "Nica's Dream"

This week's videos offer previews of two saxophonists with very different styles who both will be performing in St. Louis this month. The clip up top spotlights Dave Koz, who will play The Pageant next Friday, August 8 to close out DJ and impresario Rick Sanborn's 2008 "Smooth Summer Party" series. Koz is seen here doing the tune "Silver Lining" at a festival in Maui, Hawaii.

The second video shows Red Holloway, who is scheduled to perform a free concert on Friday, August 29 at Kiener Plaza under the auspices of the new presenting organization St. Louis City Jazz. This clip of Holloway playing the Horace Silver composition "Nica's Dream" was recorded at a concert in Tokyo, Japan.

Red Holloway to perform free concert at Kiener Plaza on Friday, August 29

Veteran saxophonist Red Holloway (pictured), lauded by fans and critics as a master of old-school bebop and blues, will be returning to St. Louis next month to perform a free concert at Kiener Plaza on Friday, August 29.

The concert will be the first production presented by St. Louis City Jazz, a not-for-profit organization founded last year. Their Web site says that group's mission is to "expand the culture of live entertainment by providing venues and events that will feature both local and national artists at all competitive levels. Allowing the history to come alive by bringing together the universal language of music to all cultural genres."

Over the course of his long career, Holloway has performed and recorded with a host of well-known blues and jazz artists, including Sonny Stitt, Clark Terry, Lionel Hampton, Memphis Slim, Brother Jack McDuff, Willie Dixon, Junior Parker, Bobby "Blue" Bland, Lloyd Price, John Mayall, and B.B. King. His most recent appearance in St. Louis was in July 2007 at Jazz at the Bistro.

(Edited after posting to add tags.)