Sunday Session: March 14, 2021

Roy Haynes

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

* Guelph Jazz Festival offering 'hyper intimate' live music with One-on-One Concert Series (Guelph Today)
* Theo Bleckmann & the Westerlies: This Land Is Their Land (Jazz Times)
* PRS for Music says that more women are registering as professional songwriters, but they’re still underrepresented and earn less than their male counterparts (MusicRadar.com)
* zaynnah conversation....with Sonny Rollins (Zayannah)
* “Judas and the Black Messiah”: Revolutionary Down to the Tunes (TheCorsairOnline.com)
* Best Charles Mingus Pieces: 20 Essentials By Jazz’s Fiery Iconoclast (UDiscoverMusic.com)
* Space Oddity: the weird history of the Soviet ANS synthesizer (5Mag.net)
* The Baddest Man in Town (TheAmericanScholar.org)
* 'Swingin’ the Blues' book encapsulates life, legacy of San Marcos jazz legend (UniversityStar.com)
* Family Record (Style Weekly)
* ‘Godzilla vs. Kong’ Composer Tom Holkenborg Says They Created a Drum So Big It Wouldn’t Fit Through His Door (Collider.com)
* With Just One Full-Time Jazz Club Left In The District, Local Musicians Contemplate Their Future (DCist.com)
* UConn celebrating 50th anniversary of Joni Mitchell’s ‘Blue’ with international conference open to academics and music lovers (Hartford Courant)
* Jazz clarinetist Dr. Michael White takes a break from songwriting marathon for Snug Harbor gig (NOLA.com)
* With yet another Grammy nomination, Pat Metheny talks music, COVID, his KC upbringing (Kansas City Star)
* How Many Movies About Billie Holiday Does it Take… (The Nation)
* Tribune photos of the famous Mister Kelly's (Chicago Tribune)
* On Roy Haynes’ 96th Birthday Today, a Collective Card From More Than 20 Jazz Giants (Mother Jones)
* Inside the ‘Black Market’ Where Artists Can Pay for Millions of Streams (Rolling Stone)
* Audio cassette tape inventor Lou Ottens dies aged 94 (BBC)
* Country Music Is Changing, in Spite of Itself (Pitchfork.com)
* “The Most Beautiful Sound Next to Silence” (City-Journal.org)
* Jane Monheit Talks New Album Come What May And Her Love Of Musical Theatre (IHeartRadioBroadway.com)
* Considering Chick Corea's Grammys Success And The Kitchen Sink Of Genre (NPR)

StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: A Claudia Quintet sampler

Today, let's take a look at some video clips featuring the Claudia Quintet, who will be making their St. Louis debut in a concert sponsored by New Music Circle at 7:30 p.m. next Friday, March 2 at the 560 Music Center.

Formed by drummer John Hollenbeck in the late 1990s to play his small group compositions with some of his favorite collaborators, the Claudia Quintet also includes Chris Speed (clarinet, tenor saxophone), Matt Moran (vibraphone, percussion), Drew Gress (acoustic bass), and the newest addition, accordion player and keyboardist Red Wierenga, who replaced original member Ted Reichman late in 2011. (There's no "Claudia" in the group - the name is derived from an overenthusiastic fan who showed up at one of their early gigs, spent the whole evening gushing about how much she liked the music and planned to return every week, and then never was heard from again.)

Though nominally a jazz group, the Claudia Quintet incorporates a variety of influences, also drawing on minimalism and other styles of contemporary composition as well as pop music. They released their first, eponymous recording in 2001, and since have issued five more albums. Their most recent, What Is The Beautiful?, was released late in 2011, and features poems by Kenneth Patchen set to music with vocals by Kurt Elling and Theo Bleckmann.

Bleckmann also will be on hand for the Quintet's St. Louis date, which Hollenbeck said will feature much of the material from that latest CD. (Look for yr. humble editor's interview with the drummer/leader next week on the Riverfront Times' RFT Music Blog)

Because What Is The Beautiful? just came out in December, there really are no videos online yet featuring live performances of those particular songs. Instead, today we have a sampling of slightly older clips from 2009 and 2010 that nevertheless serve to show off some Hollenbeck's compositional ideas and demonstrate the musicians' interactions in a live setting.

Up above is a version of "Royal Toast," the title track from the Quintet's 2009 CD, seen here in a version recorded at the Jazz Baltic festival that year. Down below, you'll find the song "Rainy Days" from the same show.

Below that are four numbers from the Claudia Quintet's show at a festival in 2010 in San Sebastián, Spain: "Be Happy," "Paterna Terra," "Jazz Envy" and "They point, Glance...". (Note that this gig featured electric bassist Trevor Dunn subbing for Gress.)

To wrap up, we've got a short snippet of an improvised duo performance featuring Hollenbeck and Bleckmann, who have worked together in that format for more than a decade. Bleckmann also has a thriving solo career of his own, having released several albums as a leader and worked with a variety of high-profile musicians including avant-garde composer Meredith Monk, Laurie Anderson, Anthony Braxton, Steve Coleman, Dave Douglas, Phillip Glass, John Zorn, the Bang on a Can All-Stars, and many others.

For more on the Claudia Quintet, check out this interview Hollenbeck did in 2011 with New Music Box; this 2009 interview with PopMatters; and this 2010 piece from Spinner.

Larry Ochs and Kihnoua to play Wednesday, March 28 at Kranzberg Arts Center

New Music Circle has announced that saxophonist Larry Ochs will be bringing his group Kihnoua (pictured, above left) to St. Louis for a performance at 7:30 p.m., Wednesday, March 28 at the Kranzberg Arts Center.

In addition to Ochs, the group features Scott Amendola on drums and electronics and Dohee Lee on vocals, plus bassist Trevor Dunn, who will be a special guest on their St. Louis date.

Kihnoua's sound is described as "music that intermingles the very new thoughts, sounds and structures of jazz (or perhaps better said as “Western improvised music”) with influences from very ancient sounds of Korea and from other folk-music/ blues influences of Asia, Africa and the USA."

Tickets for Larry Ochs and Kihnouha are $15 for general admission, $7 for students/artists with a valid ID, and can be purchased online at NMC's website or at the door.

NMC also has announced that singer Theo Bleckmann (pictured, below left) will be performing with drummer John Hollenbeck's Claudia Quintet at their previously scheduled concert on Friday, March 2 at 560 Music Center.

Bleckmann perhaps is best known for his 15 years with composer Meredith Monk's ensemble, but he also has released a series of critically acclaimed solo recordings and has collaborated with musicians and composers including Laurie Anderson, Uri Caine, Philip Glass, Sheila Jordan, Phil Kline, David Lang, Kirk Nurock, Ben Monder, Kenny Wheeler, John Zorn, and the Bang on a Can All-Stars. He's a promising addition to what already was shaping up to be one this spring's most intriguing creative music shows.

Tickets for the Claudia Quintet concert also are priced at $15 and $7, and can be purchased from NMC's website or at the door.