Jazz this week: Ken Page, Miller, Mulkerhar & Lefkowitz-Brown, C. Spencer Yeh & Andrew Lampert, Mark Lettieri, Anat Cohen & more

It's a busy week for live jazz and creative music in St. Louis, with performances in styles ranging from cabaret to vintage jazz to fusion to experimental intermedia and beyond.

Let's go to the highlights...

Wednesday, April 4
Singer, actor and St. Louis native Ken Page, now living back in his hometown after a distinguished career on Broadway and in film, will perform his cabaret show for the first of two nights at Jazz at the Bistro .

Page (pictured, top left), whose resume includes the original casts of Ain't Misbehavin' and Cats, will be making his debut at the Bistro with these shows, and the demand for tickets should be high, so advance reservations are strongly suggested.

Also on Wednesday, the weekly "Grand Center Jazz Crawl" features saxophonist Austin Cebulski and guitarist Tom Byrne at The Stage at KDHX; the jam session led by bassist Bob DeBoo at the Kranzberg Arts Center; and trumpeter Kasimu Taylor's band at The Dark Room.

Thursday, April 5
Roya and the High Timers perform vintage jazz and swing for the monthly "Koken House Shout" at Koken Art Factory; saxophonist Dave Stone brings his trio to The Dark Room; and pianist Adam Maness' trio will be back at Thurman's in Shaw.

Friday, April 6
Drummer Allison Miller, trumpeter Riley Mulherkar and saxophonist Chad Lefkowitz-Brown wrap up a week-long educational residency for Jazz St. Louis with the first of two evenings of performances at Jazz at the Bistro. (As with past occasions when JSL has assembled an ad hoc band from among visiting clinicians,  the three NYC-based musicians presumably will be supported by local players on bass and piano or guitar, but as of this writing Jazz St. Louis hasn't shared any information as to who they'll be.)

Also on Friday, singer Ken Haller will reprise his cabaret show "Song by Song by Sondheim" for the first of two nights at the Kranzberg Arts Center, and Miss Jubilee plays for dancers at the Casa Loma Ballroom.

Saturday, April 7
New Music Circle presents musician C. Spencer Yeh and artist, filmmaker and St. Louis native Andrew Lampert (pictured, bottom left) in a collaborative performance at The Luminary.

You can find out more about both men and see some related videos in this post from last Saturday.

Also on Saturday, guitarist Mark Lettieri, known for his work as a member of Snarky Puppy, leads a trio at The Ready Room; singer and actor Norm Lewis will perform music from Broadway and the Great American Songbook at the Sheldon Concert Hall; and trumpeter Jim Manley leads at trio at the house concert venue KindaBlue Club.

Sunday, April 8
The Arcadia Dance Orchestra will perform vintage pre-war jazz in a matinee at Christ Church Cathedral, and the Coleman Hughes Project with singer Adrianne Felton-King will present a "Tribute to Sade" at The Signature Club.

Monday, April 9
Dizzy Atmosphere plays for diners at The Shaved Duck; the Webster University Jazz Collective will perform in concert at Winifred Moore Auditorium on the Webster campus; and singer and impressionist Dean Christopher brings his "Rat Pack & More" show back to One 19 North Tapas and Wine Bar.

Tuesday, April 10
Clarinetist Anat Cohen brings her Tentet to McKendree University's Hettenhausen Center for the Arts in Lebanon, IL (which, for those contemplating the drive, is roughly the same distance from the Gateway Arch as Chesterfield.)

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: C. Spencer Yeh and Andrew Lampert

This week, let's take a look at some videos featuring musician and artist C. Spencer Yeh and artist, curator and filmmaker Andrew Lampert, who will be joining forces for a performance presented by New Music Circle next Saturday, April 7 at The Luminary.

Yeh is a violinist, vocalist and electronic musician who studied film in college; Lampert is an artist and filmmaker who frequently collaborates on multimedia performances and sometimes plays music. For their St. Louis show, each man will do a separate set, and then they'll perform together for the evening's finale.

Born in Taiwan, Yeh studied film at Northwestern University in Chicago and is known for his musical project Burning Star Core and for collaborations with artists such as Tony Conrad, Thurston Moore, Jandek, Ben Hall and Don Dietrich, Nate Wooley, Colin Stetson, Okkyung Lee, John Wiese, Chris Corsano, and many others.

Lampert, who's originally from St. Louis, was trained as a film archivist and previously was a curator for Anthology Film Archives in New York City. In his own work, he "explores the cinematic experience as content, experimenting with the physical spaces between projector, projectionist, audience and screen, and with the experiences made possible through their convergence."

What this most likely means in terms of their performance here is that Lampert will be projecting images from a variety of sources – 8mm film, 16mm film, and digital video - and cutting and mixing them in real time, presumably in response to the sounds Yeh is producing with his violin, vocals, and electronic gear running through a quadrophonic (i.e four discrete channels) sound system.

Since this will be the first time that Yeh and Lampert will have performed together, there's no way to "preview" the show in any meaningful sense, and in any case, an online video is only going to capture a portion of what happens in a multi-media show like the one they'll be doing.

What is possible, though, is to show you some of the work Yeh and Lampert have done individually, in hopes of conveying some idea of what their collaboration may be like.

The first video up above is a recording of Yeh's performance at the 2017 New Media Art & Sound Summit in Austin, TX, in which he's using his quadrophonic setup to process and playback material drawn from recordings of the RCA Mark II synthesizer, the first programmable synthesizer ever built.

After the jump, you can see two more of Yeh's solo performances, from March 2014 at the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston, TX, and March 2012 at Studio Soto in Boston, that demonstrate more of the range of his sets.

The fourth clip is a 2014 interview with Yeh, in which he talks about the development of his work, the Burning Star Core project, and his approaches to using voice, violin and abstract sound.

As for Lampert, the nature of his performance work makes it difficult to document in the usual ways, so there's not much pertinent footage available online. That said, today's fifth video is a recording of a gig he did with percussionist Chris Corsano in 2014 in Austin, TX that may have some relevance to how he'll approach his St. Louis performance. The sixth and final clip is a brief excerpt from a performance that Lampert did with video artist Greg Pope in 2011 in Norway, offering another glimpse of his live modus operandi.

For more about Andrew Lampert, read the brief feature about him from 2010 in Bomb magazine, and his 2014 interview published on the website of the School of Art Institute of Chicago.

For more about C. Spencer Yeh, read the feature story about him in the December 2017 issue of Interview magazine and the interview with him published in 2016 on the website of Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.

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

Jazz this week: Jane Monheit, Douglas Ewart and the STL Free Jazz Collective, Battle Trance, holiday jazz begins, and more

This week's busy calendar of live jazz and creative music in St. Louis includes a return engagement from one of the most popular female vocalists in jazz; a couple of shows featuring adventurous woodwind players; the first few of what will be many holiday-themed concerts for the season; and more.

Let's go to the highlights...

Wednesday, November 29
Singer Jane Monheit returns to St. Louis for the first of four nights at Jazz at the Bistro. Monheit (pictured, top left) last performed here in 2015 with singer and guitarist John Pizzarelli at the Sheldon's annual benefit gala, and before that in 2014 at the Bistro.

She first won wide public attention shortly after the turn of the century, applying a plush vocal tone and a sure sense of swing to mostly standards from the Great American Songbook. Since then, Monheit has released a dozen albums as a leader, and also made guest appearances on record with a wide variety of performers, from fellow singers such as Sara Gazarek and Tony DeSare to instrumentalists including David Benoit, Ray Brown Jr., and many others.

After recording for five different labels, including Sony, Concord, and Decca/EmArcy. Monheit in 2016 started her own record company, Emerald City Records, inaugurating the imprint with the release of The Songbook Sessions, a tribute to Ella Fitzgerald. Listeners this week at the Bistro can expect an emphasis on that material, though the multi-night gig also should give Monheit a chance to dig into her back catalog as well.

Also on Wednesday, singer Joe Mancuso continues his weekly gig at Taha'a Twisted Tiki in The Grove; the Cary Colman Jazz Trio plays at Evangeline's; and this week's "Grand Center Jazz Crawl" features Jacob Alspach at Squatters Cafe/The Stage at KDHX, the jam session led by bassist Bob DeBoo at the Kranzberg Arts Center, and trumpeter Kasimu Taylor's band at The Dark Room.

Thursday, November 30
Guitarist Vincent Varvel leads a quartet in a free concert for the Jazz at Holmes series at Washington University; the Liberation Organ Trio plays at Evangeline's; singer Feyza Eren and her quartet will perform at Joe's Cafe; and saxophonist Ben Reece's Unity Quartet returns to The Dark Room.

Friday, December 1
Pianist Carolbeth True and Two Times True with guest vocalist Kim Fuller will perform at the Webster Groves Concert Hall; singer/guitarist Tommy Halloran continues his weekly residency at Das Bevo Underground; and saxophonist Tim Cunningham is at Troy's Jazz Gallery.

Saturday, 
December 2
Freddie Washington will be the latest local saxophonist to be featured in Saxquest's series of free Saturday matinee performances, while just down the street at Dead Wax Records, Battle Trance will be promoting their Saturday evening show for New Music Circle with a free in-store performance.

Then, as fate would have it, Saturday evening offers a tough choice for fans of woodwinds and/or creative music, with two shows of interest happening simultaneously.

Battle Trance (pictured, center left), who will be making their St. Louis debut in their Saturday evening concert at The Luminary, is an ensemble of four tenor saxophonists who use extended techniques to play music that's a mix of composition and improvisation, though it can be hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. You can find out more about them, and see videos of some sample live performances, in this post from a couple of Saturdays ago.

Meanwhile, across town in the Old North neighborhood, multi-instrumentalist Douglas Ewart will be in town to join the STL Free Jazz Collective for a free concert at the 14th St. Artist Community.

Ewart (pictured, bottom left), who plays a whole arsenal of woodwinds, percussion, and self-made instruments, was one of early members of Chicago's Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, and has performed and/or recorded with many of the most important creative musicians of the past half-century. There's more about Ewart, including videos of some of his live performances, in this post from last Saturday.

Sunday, December 3
It's another day for matinees, as the St. Louis Jazz Club presents Cornet Chop Suey playing traditional jazz and swing at the Moolah Shrine Temple, while the Friends of Scott Joplin present their monthly "Ragtime Rendezvous" at the Scott Joplin House State Historic Site's Rosebud Cafe.

Also on Sunday afternoon, the UMSL Jazz Ensemble directed by Jim Widner, Vocal Point, and University Orchestra will present their annual free concert, "UMSL's Jazz For The Holidays," at the Touhill Performing Arts Center; and trumpeter Randy Holmes, singer and impressionist Dean Christopher, and a mini-big band will pay tribute to Frank Sinatra and Hoagy Carmichael at the Webster Groves Concert Hall.

Monday, December 4
Trumpeter Jim Manley is back at Momo's Greek Restaurant, and Washington University's student jazz combos will show off what they've learned this semester in a free performance at the 560 Music Center.

Tuesday, December 5
Dean Christopher, having a busy week, headlines "A Vegas 'Rat Pack and More' Christmas" at the Sheldon Concert Hall.

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: Ikue Mori & Nate Wooley

This week's grab-bag of videos features electronic musician Ikue Mori and trumpeter Nate Wooley, who will be performing in a concert presented by New Music Circle next Saturday, February 18 at The Luminary.

Mori, 63, is a Japanese native who first gained recognition in the late 1970s as the drummer for the NYC-based "No Wave" band DNA. She subsequently began working with drum machines and electronics, eventually abandoning the drums entirely for a laptop computer, which remains her preferred instrument. She has collaborated live and on record with many well-known improvising musicians, including Zeena Parkins, Dave Douglas, Fred Frith, and perhaps most notably, saxophonist/composer John Zorn, with whom Mori has made 20 recordings over the last 30+ years.

Wooley, who at 43 years old is a generation younger than Mori, grew up in a small town in Oregon and moved to NYC in 2001. He has performed with Zorn, Frith, Anthony Braxton, Ken Vandermark, Evan Parker, Chris Corsano, Peter Evans, and Halvorson and numerous others, and has earned recognition for a distinctive style of solo performances informed by the relative stillness of his rural upbringing that incorporates "vocalization, extreme extended technique, noise and drone aesthetics, amplification and feedback."

Wooley also is curator of the Database of Recorded American Music and editor of Sound American, which are "dedicated to broadening the definition of American music through their online presence and the physical distribution of music through Sound American Records."

For their St. Louis show, Mori and Wooley will perform individually and as a duo. Although there doesn't seem to be any video online of previous collaborations between the two of them, you can get something of an idea of what to expect by checking out the videos below, in which both are featured performing in three different contexts.

First up is an excerpt from a show by Wooley's quartet last July at a venue called Rye Bar in Brooklyn, NYC. In addition to the leader, the band includes alto saxophonist Chris Pitsiokos, bassist Brandon Lopez, and drummer Dre Hocevar.

After the jump, you can see an excerpt from a duo performance featuring Wooley and Australian-born improvising vocalist Charmaine Lee in November 2016 at Gallery 456, the venue of the Manhattan-based Chinese-American Arts Council.

Below that, you can see a solo performance by Wooley titles "For Kenneth Gaburo" recorded in January 2015 at Avant Media, which is also in Brooklyn.

The fourth clip features Ikue Mori with drummer Yoshimi Yokota from the Japanese rock band THe Boredoms and cellist Okkyung Lee performing in December 2016 at Saint Vitus in Brooklyn.

Next is an excerpt from from a show by Phantom Orchard, Mori's duo project with harpist Zeena Parkins, recorded in November 2015 at the Zorn-curated NYC performance space The Stone.

The final video is from a solo performance by Mori in 2009 at the Unlimited Festival in Wels, Austria. Entitled "Nymphs, witches and fairies," it's a live realization of a soundtrack she composed for a marionette theater performance, augmented here by "film sequences," also by Ikue Mori.

For more about Ikue Mori, check out "In Conversation: Ikue Mori & Okkyung Lee," her 2012 interview with ATTN, and her interview with A Liminal, also from 2012.

For more on Nate Wooley, check out his recent interview on the website of Ars Nova Workshop, and his 2016 interviews with Point of Departure and Bandcamp.com's Bandcamp Daily.

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

Jazz this week: Peter Martin, Bobby Watson & Angela Hagenbach, Rhys Chatham, and more

This week's lineup of jazz and creative music performances in St. Louis includes a rare nightclub appearance by a favorite hometown pianist, several noteworthy touring performers, and a rather eclectic selection of tribute shows.

Let's go to the highlights....

Wednesday, May 18
Pianist Peter Martin will lead his trio for the first of two nights at Jazz at the Bistro, the first time he's played the room since it was expanded and renovated in 2014.

Martin (pictured, top left) will be joined by bassist Reuben Rogers and drummer Gregory Hutchinson, both first-rate players who contributed to his most recent album What Lies Ahead and have been working with him on some touring dates as well, so they should be primed and ready from the first downbeat. Given Martin's local popularity - he grew up in U City, and continues to live in St. Louis while touring internationally as music director for singer Dianne Reeves - tickets may be hard to get, so advance reservations are recommended.

Also tonight, the experimental noise-rock duo Ahleuchatistas return to headline a four-band bill at 2720 Cherokee, and Cabaret Project St. Louis will celebrate the fourth anniversary of their "Open Mic Night" at the Tavern of Fine Arts

Thursday, May 19
The New Orleans-based band Nutrio makes their St. Louis debut at Evangeline's. The group, which includes saxophonist and clarinetist Byron Asher, bassist Trey Boudreaux, and drummer Shawn Myers, is touring the Midwest in support of their self-titled debut EP.

Also on Thursday, singer Feyza Eren and friends will perform at Nathalie’s

Friday, May 20
The Jazz Edge Orchestra will present a concert paying tribute to Kansas City jazz at the Touhill Performing Arts Center, featuring as special guests the veteran alto saxophonist Bobby Watson (pictured, center left), who once was a key part of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers and now co-leads the jazz program at UMKC's conservatory of music; and vocalist and KC native Angela Hagenbach.

Elsewhere on Friday, the funk/jazz quartet Good 4 the Soul will join forces with keyboardist Reggie Thomas for the first of two nights of a tribute to the late keyboardists Joe Sample and George Duke at Jazz at the Bistro; Western swing favorites Asleep At The Wheel will be in town to perform at the Old Rock House, and guitarist Eric Slaughter and bassist Glen Smith will play duets at Tavern of Fine Arts.

Saturday, May 21
Saxquest continues their series of free performances and workshops with a matinee from the New Horizon Saxophone Quartet, which features faculty members from the University of Cincinnati, Drake University, and Colorado State University and "combines the rhythmic and improvisatory language of jazz with elements of modern chamber composition."

Then on Saturday night, trumpeter Kasimu Taylor leads a quintet playing the music of Miles Davis at Kranzberg Arts Center, while the Funky Butt Brass Band will turn their monthly show at Broadway Oyster Bar into a tribute to Prince. Also on Saturday, trumpeter Jim Manley and guitarist Randy Bahr's All-Star Band returns to Nathalie's, and Wack-A-Doo plays swing, vintage pop and Americana at Evangeline's.

Sunday, May 22
On Sunday afternoon, the St. Louis Jazz Club presents Cornet Chop Suey in a matinee performance of traditional jazz and swing at the Doubletree Hotel St. Louis at Westport.

Sunday night, composer and multi-instrumentalist Rhys Chatham will be visiting for a rare solo performance at The Luminary, with St. Louis' Vernacular String Trio as opening act.

A seminal figure in NYC's experimental music scene of the 1970s and '80s, Chatham (pictured, bottom left) has lived in France for the past 30 years, and his appearances stateside are infrequent and often confined to the coasts. For more about Chatham and some video samples of his music, see this post from last Saturday. 

Also on Sunday night, the Dave Dickey Big Band will play their regular monthly show at Jazz at the Bistro, with an intermission performance from the Sperring Middle School Jazz Ensemble.

Monday, May 23
Dizzy Atmosphere plays swing and Gypsy jazz at The Shaved Duck.

Tuesday, May 24
Two groups associated with improvising pianist Greg Mills, the Mount Everest Trio and the Perihelion Ensemble, will share an evening at the Tavern of Fine Arts.

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: The music of Rhys Chatham

Today, let's look at some videos featuring the music of Rhys Chatham, who's coming to St. Louis to perform a solo show on Sunday, May 22 at The Luminary.

Chatham, who's 63 years old, is a composer, guitarist, and multi-instrumentalist who's been a notable figure in American avant-garde and minimalist music for nearly five decades. Living in France since 1987, he tours only occasionally in the United States, lending his gig here next week an additional sense of importance.

A native New Yorker, Chatham studied while still a teenager with electronic composer Morton Subotnick and minimalist pioneer La Monte Young, and in 1971 he became the first music director of the experimental NYC performance space The Kitchen. There, he produced concerts by artists ranging from composers such as Steve Reich and Philip Glass to experimental improvisors like guitarists Fred Frith and Arto Lindsay, and helped establish the space's reputation as an incubator for some of the era's most intriguing sounds.

Influenced by NYC's punk rock and "No Wave" bands, in the late 1970s Chatham began writing music for ensembles of electric guitars, starting with pieces composed for a handful of guitarists and eventually moving up to orchestra-sized groups of 100 or more. These large-scale works helped him gain recognition internationally, and probably are still what he's best known for today.

More recently, Chatham has returned to creating music for small ensembles and solo performances, often incorporating flute (his first instrument as a child), trumpet (which he began playing in the 1980s), and electronic keyboards and effects along with guitar.

You can see one of those solo performances, recorded last June in Berlin, in the first video up above. After the jump, you can see an excerpt from another solo piece, "30ix15," also recorded last year by Chatham in his studio.

That's followed by a video of part of a duo performance by Chatham and guitarist Nico Guerrero last July in Paris at a venue called Détail, and one of a trio performance by Chatham, drummer Rune Kielsgaard and bassist Jeppe Skovbakke at the Click Festival, held in May 2015 in Elsinore, Denmark.

The last two videos feature examples of Chatham's works for multiple electric guitars. The fifth clip, "Drastic Classical Music for Electric Instruments," is a relatively early example, recorded in April 1981 at The Kitchen that features four guitarists and a drummer.

The sixth video is a recording of "A Secret Rose," written by Chatham in 2006 for an ensemble of 100 guitars, and seen here in a recording made at the 2014 Frontiers Festival in Birmingham, England.

For more about Rhys Chatham, check out the interview with him published in 2014 by The Quietus; his 2013 interview with A Closer Listen; and his 2013 interview with Blurt magazine.

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

Jazz this week: Kenny Barron, Tyondai Braxton, Thurman Barker, an all-star band with Cohen, Wilson, Hill & Oh, and more

It's a terrifically busy week for jazz and creative music in St. Louis, with a number of interesting musicians visiting town over the next few days. So let's skip the rest of the preamble and go straight to the highlights...

Wednesday, April 6
Pianist Kenny Barron returns to St. Louis for the first of two evenings with his trio at Jazz at the Bistro.

Officially designated as an NEA "Jazz Master," the 72-year-old Barron is a stylistically versatile pianist, albeit with a notable affinity for the music of Thelonious Monk, who possesses touch, technique, tone, and taste in abundance, and deploys them in a consistently satisfying fashion. For some samples of his playing, check out the video post that preceded his appearance last year at the Bistro.

Thursday, April 7
Percussionist Thurman Barker, a founding member of Chicago's Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians who's played with some of the most significant figures of the past half-century of improvised music, will headline a ticketed concert ($10 GA, $5 students) for the Jazz at Holmes series at Washington University.

Barker (pictured, top left) will be joined by saxophonist Joel Vanderheyden, trombonist Wayne Coniglio, and bassist Paul Steinbeck, who teaches at Wash U. He'll also perform in a separate event at Wash U on Friday (see below). For more about Barker, and some video samples of him performing in several different musical context, see this video post from a couple of Saturdays ago.

Most weeks, Barker's performance would a shoo-in must-see for local fans of adventurous music, but that's complicated in this particular instance by the appearance of composer Tyondai Braxton in St. Louis on the same night for a solo performance at The Luminary.

Braxton, the son of famed composer and saxophonist Anthony Braxton, has made a variety of music in his career, ranging from experimental rock with the group Battles to compositions for full orchestra to sound installations in museums. While it's not clear from the advance promotion exactly what's involved in one of his solo performances, based on his recent work and reputation, it should be worth hearing.

Elsewhere around town on Thursday, the Gaslight Cabaret Festival resumes with St. Louis' own Joe Dreyer and Rosemary Watts performing "Nuance and Novelty" at the Gaslight Theater; singer Ralph Williams begins a monthly residency at Troy's Jazz Gallery; and The Gaslight Squares will play traditional jazz at Thaxton Speakeasy

Friday, April 8
This week, Jazz St. Louis has brought several well-known musicians to town for educational residencies, and to wrap up their stay, clarinetist and saxophonist Anat Cohen, drummer Matt Wilson, trumpeter Marquis Hill, and bassist Linda Oh will take the stage at Jazz at the Bistro for the first of two nights of performances.

While an ad hoc ensemble like this one obviously doesn't have an established songbook to tap, Cohen (pictured, center left) and Wilson have both led their own bands at the Bistro before, offering ample energy and showmanship in the process, while Hill and Oh are regarded as two of the top up-and-coming players in jazz on their respective instruments. So, with a little help from Jazz St. Louis' own Phil Dunlap on piano, a good time should be had by all.

Meanwhile, over at Washington University, Thurman Barker, Joel Vanderheyden & Paul Steinbeck will improvise live music to silent films for "Sonic Visions: Experimental Film + Live Jazz", a free event presented in Brown Hall's Auditorium (aka Room 100) on the Wash U campus.

Also on Friday, jazz/fusion band Dreaming In Colour performs at the Kranzberg Arts Center; The Sidemen will play for dancers at the Casa Loma Ballroom; and singer, songwriter and pianist Steven Lutvak offers "A Gentleman's Guide to A Gentleman's Guide" for the first of two nights at the Gaslight Theater.

Saturday, April 9
The Bloomington, Indiana-based Liberation Music Collective (pictured, lower left) will be in town for two events at the Center for Social Empowerment and Justice, located at Wellspring Church, 33 S. Florissant Rd.

LMC is a self-described "socially conscious big band" featuring students and alumni of Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music. Following "in the footsteps of Charlie Haden, Max Roach, Charles Mingus, and many others, " the group is "dedicated to performing original compositions about contemporary social issues." They'll host an afternoon workshop for young musicians (middle school to college age), with a  "Jazz for Justice" concert that evening.Both events are free, with donations accepted.

Also on Saturday, saxophonist Rahsaan Barber will be in town to present an afternoon performance and workshop at Saxquest, and The Wire Pilots will serve up their original jazz fusion that evening at the gallery and event space 1900 Park.

Sunday, April 10
If you're in the mood for some Gypsy jazz and swing this weekend, Sunday would seem to be the pick day and the Central West End the place, as Franglais are playing for the jazz brunch at Evangeline's, and Coco Rico will be doing an early evening performance at Nathalie's.

Monday, April 11
The Webster University Jazz Collective will perform at Winifred Moore Auditorium on the Webster campus

Tuesday, April 12
The Saxquest Nonet Jazz Orchestra will return for an early evening performance at the Tavern of Fine Arts.

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.)

April gets adventurous with concerts by Fred Lonberg-Holm & Frode Gjerstad, Tyondai Braxton, and Thurman Barker

Three shows recently added to the St. Louis concert calendar mean the first full week of April could be a busy one for local fans of adventurous jazz and creative music:

* Chicago-based cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm and Norwegian saxophonist Frode Gjerstad (pictured, top left) will team up for a concert of improvised music at 8:00 p.m. Tuesday, April 5 at Jackson Pianos, 4354 Olive St.

Lonberg-Holm is an active participant in Chicago's busy free-improv and jazz scenes, and has collaborated there and around the globe with musicians including Joe McPhee, Peter Brötzmann, Ken Vandermark, Chris Corsano, Lotte Anker, Mats Gustafsson, Glenn Kotche, Jim O'Rourke, Jeff Parker, Michael Zerang, and many more. He's also contributed to recording projects by rock groups such as Califone, Freakwater, God-is-my-co-pilot, L'altra, Smog, Super, US Maple, Wilco, and others.

Gjerstad, who concentrates on alto sax but also plays clarinet and flute, has contributed to more than 50 recordings since beginning his career in the 1970s. He too has played with Peter Brötzmann, and also has performed with many other well-known improvising musicians, such as William Parker, Borah Bergman, Derek Bailey, and Evan Parker.

Admission to the Fred Lonberg-Holm/Frode Gjerstad performance will be "$10-$15 suggested" at the door, a price that includes "free beer/wine/food."

* Composer Tyondai Braxton will perform at 8:00 p.m. Thursday, April 7 at The Luminary.

Braxton, former front man for the experimental rock band Battles and the son of famed saxophonist/composer Anthony Braxton, has created a wide variety of music during his career, ranging from a recent duo collaboration with Phillip Glass to symphonic works such as his album Central Market, which has been performed live by orchestras including the London Sinfonietta and the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

His multimedia installation "HIVE" recently premiered at the Guggenheim Museum in NYC, with an accompanying soundtrack set for release next month on Nonesuch Records.

Braxton (pictured, center left) will perform solo at The Luminary, with St. Louis' Hylidae as opening act. Tickets are $15 in advance, $17 day of show.

* Another well-known, Chicago-based improviser, drummer Thurman Barker, already was scheduled to be in St. Louis that same week to perform on Thursday, April 7 for Washington University's Jazz at Holmes series.

Now, Wash U has announced another performance by Barker (pictured, bottom left), a free event at 7:00 p.m. Friday, April 8 in the auditorium (aka Room 100) of Brown Hall, which for many years has been a site for film screenings on campus.

"Sonic Visions: Experimental Film + Live Jazz" will feature Barker, saxophonist Joel Vanderheyden, and bassist and Wash U faculty member Paul Steinbeck creating improvised scores for silent films by Stan Brakhage, Tomonari Nishikawa, and Walter Ruttmann.

Rhys Chatham to perform Sunday, May 22 at The Luminary

Guitarist, trumpeter and composer Rhys Chatham, known since the late 1970s for his experimental works orchestrating large ensembles of electric guitars, is coming to St. Louis to perform at 9:00 p.m. Sunday, May 22 at The Luminary. The Vernacular String Trio will open the show.

Chatham (pictured), who was the very first music director of the famed NYC performance space The Kitchen, has lived in France since 1987. His influence can be heard in several subsequent generations of musicians in a variety of genres, including adventurous rock acts such as Sonic Youth, Tortoise, and Godspeed You! Black Emperor.

The 63-year-old has enjoyed something of a resurgence in recent years, touring in the US and Europe, writing new commissioned works for large ensembles, and making several new recordings on both guitar and trumpet, which he began playing in 1983. His most recent album Harmonie Du Soir came out in 2013 on the Northern Spy label.

Tickets for Rhys Chatham at The Luminary are $15 in advance, $17 day of show, and are on sale now.

Jazz this week: Joshua Redman Trio, Nevermore Jazz Ball, Eli Keszler & Rashad Becker, Marco Benevento, and more

There's a jam-packed schedule of jazz and creative music over the next few days in St. Louis, with a variety of musical styles and sensibilities on offer. Let's go to the highlights...

Tonight, saxophonist Joshua Redman and his long-running trio will open a four-night stand continuing through Saturday at Jazz at the Bistro. Redman last played the Bistro with bassist Reuben Rogers and drummer Greg Hutchinson back in 2010, and for a look at some of what they've been up to since then, check out this video post from last Saturday.

Also tonight, the eclectic instrumental quartet The 442s will play at the Sheldon Concert Hall.

Tomorrow night, Lindy Hop St. Louis' weekend-long event the Nevermore Jazz Ball gets underway with an opening dance at The Gramophone featuring music provided by the Mound City Mamas, a new St. Louis group led by banjo player Kellie Everett.

Also tomorrow, the Gaslight Cabaret Festival resumes with St. Louisans Joe Dreyer and Rosemary Watts presenting their show "Mixing It Up" at the Gaslight Theater; and the Mike Buerck Orchestra, featuring a number of musicians who have worked in the pit bands at the Muny and/or Fox Theatre, will play a free concert of big band swing for the Jazz at Holmes series at Washington University.

On Friday, pianist/singer Jesse Gannon will perform at the Ozark Theatre, while Sarah Jane and the Blue Notes return to the Venice Cafe.

That same evening, the Gaslight Cabaret Festival will feature two Chicago performers, pianist and singer Beckie Menzie and singer Tom Michael, presenting "That '60s Show" at the Gaslight Theater.

Meanwhile, the Nevermore Jazz Ball will continue with a sextet led by guitarist/banjoist Jake Sanders providing the music for dancers at the Franklin Room, a venue at 816 Allen Ave in Soulard that's usually used for wedding receptions and private parties.

On Saturday afternoon, the NJB will present the annual Cherokee Street Jazz Crawl, a free, public event that will feature Tommy Halloran, Miss Jubilee, Wack-A-Doo, Swing Deville, The Sidemen, the Jazz St. Louis All-Stars student ensemble and more performing at various venues and businesses located along a stretch of Cherokee St. from the 2100 to the 2800 blocks. The Ball continues Saturday evening with Sanders’ Arcadian Serenaders, an expanded version of his band from Friday night, playing for dancers at the Casa Loma Ballroom.

Also on Saturday night, percussionist and installation artist Eli Keszler (pictured) and electronic musician Rashad Becker will perform separate sets in a concert presented by New Music Circle at the new location of The Luminary, 2701 Cherokee St. For more about both men, plus some performance videos, see this post from a couple of weeks ago.

Elsewhere around town, Chicago's Joan Curto will keep the Gaslight Cabaret Festival going with a performance of Cole Porter songs at the Gaslight Theater; singer Feyza Eren will bring her quartet to house-concert venue the KindaBlue Club; and singers Mary Dyson and Diane Vaughn will team up for a return appearance at Troy's Jazz Gallery.

On Sunday, keyboardist (and now singer!) Marco Benevento will be in town to play at 2720 Cherokee, likely showcasing much of the material from his most recent album Swift, for which he vocalized on record for the very first time.

Looking beyond the weekend, on Monday more of Webster University's student jazz combos will be performing at the Community Music School on the Webster campus; and percussionist Joe Pastor's group returns to BB's Jazz, Blues & Soups.

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: Rashad Becker & Eli Keszler

This week, let's take a look at Rashad Becker and Eli Keszler, two musicians who will be sharing a bill playing separate sets in a concert presented by New Music Circle on Saturday, November 8 at The Luminary.

The German-born Becker is known in the music industry as a mastering and cutting engineer with more than 1,200 albums to his credit. His own music uses real-time synthesis and sampling to realize what Becker calls "traditional music Of notional species."

You can hear an example of one of his solo sets in the first video window up above, recorded in April of this year in Turin, Italy. After the jump, there are two more shows by Becker, from June 2013 at the PAN ACT Festival in Boston, and February 2012 in Bristol, England.

Below that are three videos featuring Keszler, a percussionist who also does sound installations. The first, of a work called "Archway," documents a collaboration between Keszler and So Percussion to create a piece of music using the Manhattan Bridge as both the setting and, by running piano wires from the bridge to the ground, an instrument.

Next, there's another of Keszler's works created for a specific location - in this case, the Helm V&A Museum in London - that combines live performance with electronic manipulation of sound. The final video is a clip of a Keszler solo percussion set recorded in 2012 at the Bruismelk Festival in Antwerp, Belgium.

For more about Rashad Becker, read this interview in BOMB magazine; this review of volume 1 of his Traditional Music of Notional Species; and this interview with him about his engineering and mastering work. You also can hear more of Becker's music on SoundCloud.

For more about Eli Keszler, see this 2012 interview at Tiny Mix Tapes; this review of his 2012 two-disc set Catching Net; and his SoundCloud page.

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

New Music Circle 2014-15 season to include Roscoe Mitchell & Craig Taborn, Tim Berne, Thumbscrew, and more

New Music Circle has announced their 2014-15 season, with seven concerts featuring what looks to be an intriguing mix of edgy jazz and improvised music, electronics, and contemporary composition.

The schedule kicks off with a concert by Thumbscrew, featuring guitarist Mary Halvorson, bassist Michael Formanek and drummer Tomas Fujiwara, on Friday, September 12 at Joe's Cafe, the "house concert" venue at 6014 Kingsbury Ave in the Central West End.

All NYC-based, Thumbscrew's members first worked together as the rhythm section for trumpeter Taylor Ho Bynum's sextet, and decided to continue performing together as a trio, with the group serving as an outlet for each member's original compositions as well as improvisation.

The Bynum sextet played St. Louis in an NMC-sponsored show in November 2012, but that date included Ken Filiano on bass rather than Formanek. So, along with the welcome return of Halvorson, one of the more original guitarists to emerge in the last decade, this will be the first chance local listeners will have to hear the three of them together.

They'll be followed a double bill featuring separate sets by another NYC-based musician, drummer and sound artist Eli Keszler, and Berlin electronic musician Rashad Becker on Saturday, November 8 at the new location of The Luminary at 2701 Cherokee St.

Keszler's solo music and installations are said to draw inspiration from sources including free-jazz drummer Han Bennik and composer Conlon Nancarrow, while Becker, known for his work as a recording and mastering engineer as well as his own music, "utilizes realtime synthesis and sampling techniques that set into motion intricate sonic worlds that recall the complexities of human speech and various exotic aural phenomena."

Next up, multi-instrumentalist Roscoe Mitchell (pictured, top left) and keyboardist Craig Taborn will team up for a duo performance on Friday, December 5 at The Stage at KDHX, which is part of the station's new HQ at 3524 Washington Ave. in Grand Center.

Mitchell, a founding member of the Art Ensemble of Chicago and the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), is considered one of the cornerstone players of the 1960s free-jazz movement. His highly influential 1966 album Sound was one of the first records to showcase the mix of composition and collective improvisation, on both traditional and non-traditional instruments, found in much of the subsequent work by the Art Ensemble and other AACM-affiliated groups.

Mitchell subsequently has led other bands including the Creative Arts Collective, the Sound Ensemble, and Note Factory; and also began teaching, most recently at Mills College in Oakland, where he's been the Darius Milhaud Chair of Composition since 2007.

Meanwhile, Taborn (pictured, center left) has gained a reputation as one of the more versatile keyboardists of his generation, playing piano, electric piano and organ with jazz artists including Chris Potter, Dave Holland, and James Carter as well as with Mitchell's Note Factory and other experimentally inclined players such as saxophonists Lotte Anker, David Binney, and Tim Berne; drummers Gerald Cleaver and Susie Ibarra; and many others.

After the holidays, the schedule resumes in January with the annual "NMC Showcase," which at this point is mostly TBA, though NMC's Jeremy Kannapell tells StLJN that St. Louis pianist Johanna Ballou, a graduate of the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama who specializes in music by contemporary composers, will be one of the featured performers.

The following month, Lotte Anker, who played with Taborn and Cleaver in an NMC-presented concert here in February 2013, will return to perform on a split bill with cellist Okkyung Lee on Saturday, February 21 at Joe's Cafe.

Lee has collaborated frequently with visual artists and choreographers, as well as with musicians including Christian Marclay, Thurston Moore, Laurie Anderson, Ikue Mori, Jim O'Rourke, John Zorn, Chris Corsano, Leo Wadada Smith and Vijay Iyer. For more about Anker, check out this video showcase post that ran before her 2013 gig here.

St. Louis' own Darin Gray will be featured in the next concert, as the bassist, known for many years as a prolific and peripatetic improviser and more recently as sideman to alt-rocker Jeff Tweedy, will team with drummer Glenn Kotche in their duo project On Fillmore to play Saturday, March 14 at The Stage at KDHX.

The final concert of the 2014-15 season will feature saxophonist Tim Berne's quartet Snakeoil on Friday, May 8, also at The Stage at KDHX.

Known early in his career for drawing significant compositional and improvisational inspiration from former St. Louisan, Black Artists Group and World Saxophone Quartet co-founder Julius Hemphill, Berne has continued to champion Hemphill's legacy while carving out a musical identity of his own via his label Screwgun Records.

Snakeoil (pictured, lower left) which also includes Oscar Noriega (clarinet, bass clarinet), Matt Mitchell (piano), and Ches Smith (drums, percussion), serves as a vehicle for Berne's original compositions, and has released two albums on the ECM label.

In addition to their concert performances, Keszler, Becker, Mitchell and Taborn, and Gray and Kotche all will take part in some sort of workshop or educational program while they're here, though the details on those events have yet to be finalized.

So what's the takeaway here? As with any season schedule, one can quibble with individual selections, but as a fan of Halvorson and Taborn - neither of whom can be said to be exactly over-exposed - I'm happy to have them back, even if they did play here relatively recently. As for Mitchell, as best I can tell, the last time he performed in St. Louis was in the mid-1980s with the Art Ensemble, so his return is long overdue.

Add in the local debuts of the others and the return Berne - who's been a noteworthy presence on the music scene for decades now but hasn't played here since a 1990s gig at Wash U's notoriously atrocious sounding room, the Gargoyle - and all in all, it's shaping up to be the sort of season that induced Calvin Wilson of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch to name New Music Circle as the "Best Place to Hear Jazz" in the paper's recent "Go! List" issue. While other local presenters may have considerably more resources to work with, NMC continues to offer fans of adventurous music one of the best bangs for the buck in St. Louis.

All performances are scheduled to start at 7:30 p.m.. Single tickets are $20 for general admission, $10 students, for all shows except Mitchell and Taborn, which has a ticket price TBA.

(Edited after posting to correct the date on the Keszler/Becker concert, and to note Tim Berne's previous St. Louis appearance.)