Jazz this week: Sonny Rollins, Chris Botti, Trio 3, Old Webster Jazz and Blues Festival, St. Louis Rivermen, and more

There's lots going on in St. Louis over the next few days, as it's the busiest weekend of the fall so far for jazz and creative music. Let's go to the highlights:

Tonight, local funk/hip-hop band Fresh Heir does a free concert for the Jazz at Holmes series at Washington University.

On Friday, trumpeter Chris Botti returns to town to perform at the Fox Theatre, making good on a date that was postponed from last year. (You can read a brief preview of Botti's show that I wrote for the Riverfront Times here.)

Also on Friday, drummer Stan Hale's new group debuts at Robbie's House of Jazz, featuring Hale, bassist David Certain, saxophonist Ben Reece, singer Renee Smith, and yr. humble StLJN editor on keyboards. We'll be playing a mix of straight-ahead and soul/jazz with occasional Latin touches.

Saturday features three major events worthy of your time and attention, starting with the long-anticipated performance by saxophone legend Sonny Rollins (pictured) in a concert sponsored by Jazz St. Louis at the Touhill Performing Arts Center. For more about Rollins, check out StLJN's previous coverage here, and also this short preview piece from this week's Riverfront Times.

Also on Saturday, the Nu-Art Series presents Trio 3 with Oliver Lake, Reggie Workman and Andrew Cyrille at Luna Bar in the Central West End. For more about Trio 3, see these two posts, as well as this recent interview done with Lake before a solo gig in Sacramento, CA.

As if choosing between those two shows wasn't enough of a dilemma, Saturday is also the day of this year's Old Webster Jazz and Blues Festival, a free, all-day event held in the business district near Lockwood and Gore in Webster Groves.

Jazz acts in this year's lineup include Two Times True, with pianist Carolbeth True; Standard Time, with guitarist Rick Haydon, singer Mardra Thomas and pianist Reggie Thomas; the Matthew Von Doran Trio; Webster University Faculty Jazz Band; Webster Groves High School Jazz Band; Wild, Cool & Swingin'; and the Funky Butt Brass Band. There's also the St. Louis Jazz & Blues Revue, a group assembled for the festival that includes Anita Rosamond (vocals, keyboard), Rich McDonough (guitar), Jesse Gannon (keyboard, vocals), Phil Burton (bass, vocals), Joe Meyer (drums), Lew Winer III (saxophones, vocals) and Rob Endicott (trumpet, flugelhorn). The Revue will pay tribute to St. Louis musical legends including Miles Davis, Chuck Berry, Fontella Bass, Ike & Tina Turner, Jimmy Forrest and Albert King.

Also note that just down the street from the festival's Allen Avenue stage, the Robert Edwards Big Band will hold forth Saturday evening at Robbie's House of Jazz. For more about the new club and Edwards' big band, see this piece I did for the Riverfront Times "A to Z" music blog.

On Sunday, the St. Louis Jazz Club presents the St. Louis Rivermen in a concert of traditional New Orleans style jazz at at the Panorama Banquet Room of Bel-Air Bowl in Belleville.

Looking beyond the weekend, on Tuesday guitarist Todd Mosby will give a free concert and clinic at the Music Center of Kirkwood. (See this post for details.)

For more jazz and creative music events this weekend and beyond, check the St. Louis Jazz Notes Calendar, available for viewing on the left sidebar or by clicking here.

(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.)

(Edited 9/18/09 to fix a typo and add tags.)

StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: Three views of Trio 3

The news that Trio 3 will be playing St. Louis next week offers a welcome excuse to look at some video clips of the group, which includes St. Louis native Oliver Lake on saxophones along with bassist Reggie Workman and drummer Andrew Cyrille. Their performance is being presented by the Nu-Art Series on Saturday, September 19 at Luna Bar, which is next to Bar Italia at 13 Maryland Plaza in the Central West End.

Of course, many, if not most, St. Louis jazz fans already know Lake, and he's made it back home several times in recent years to perform, both on his own and with the World Saxophone Quartet.

However, he's never played here with Trio 3, though the group has been together nearly 20 years. Moreover, while Workman and Cyrille both have had long, varied and distinguished careers, neither has an extensive history of performing in St. Louis. (Nu-Art's George Sams told me that Workman has played here at least once before, in the late 1960s with Bobby Hutcherson. As for Cyrille, as best as can be determined, this may be his debut performance in St. Louis.) So the chance to see and hear these guys, both individually and collectively, is something of a rare occurrence.

Today's first video is an excerpt from a 2005 performance in Montclair, NJ, where Lake now resides. The location is obviously a church, but otherwise is unspecified. There's no indication of a song title either, but the piece does show off Workman's big sound, Lake's plaintive tone and nimble riffing and Cyrille's polyrhythmic approach to the drums.

The second clip is from the other side of the world, recorded during the group's performance in 2008 at the Taichung Jazz Festival in Taiwan. Workman once again gets a fat sound, and once things get rolling both Lake and Cyrille are considerably more aggressive than in the first video.

The third and final clip is a segment from the New Jersey public television program State of the Arts. It features some performance footage of Trio 3 at NYC's Sweet Rhythm, but it's mostly a biographical interview with Lake, in which he talks about his career and music; starting out in St. Louis; how he got together with Workman and Cyrille; and more.

Nu-Art Series to present concerts by Trio 3, Rasul Siddik

The Nu-Art Series, run by trumpeter, gallery owner and former arts administrator George Sams out of his Metropolitan Gallery downtown, is kicking off its fall 2009 season this month with two concerts featuring former St. Louisans who have earned international acclaim in the jazz world.

The group Trio 3, featuring saxophonist and former St. Louisan Oliver Lake (pictured), bassist Reggie Workman and drummer Andrew Cyrille, will perform on Saturday, September 19. The following week, trumpeter Rasul Siddik returns home to the Gateway City to headline a concert on Saturday, September 26.

Both performances will take place from 8:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. at Luna Bar, 13 Maryland Plaza in the Central West End. (Luna Bar is serving as a temporary home for the Nu-Art Series while storm damage to the Metropolitan Gallery building at 2926 Locust is being repaired. Pending the completion of construction, Sams says he hopes to resume regular operations at the gallery in October.) Tickets for each show will be $25.00 at the door.

Lake is well known to St. Louis listeners as a member of St. Louis' Black Artists Group (BAG), co-founder of the World Saxophone Quartet, and as a solo artist whose own music has run the gamut from free jazz to R&B to bop to reggae.

His work with Trio 3 represents an equal collaboration with two genuine heavyweights of the jazz world. Workman has performed or recorded with many of the notable jazz musicians of the past five decades, including landmark albums with John Coltrane and Cecil Taylor, while Cyrille is considered one of the most important and innovative drummers to emerge from the free jazz movement of the 1960s, working with Taylor, Archie Shepp, Roswell Rudd, and others.

As an added bonus, St. Louis trumpeter Floyd LeFlore, another BAG veteran, is scheduled to open the show with a solo version of his performance piece "Ritualistic Revival."

Though younger than Lake, Siddik also was affiliated BAG with as an up-and-coming musician. He has worked with many notable jazz performers, including Lester Bowie, Henry Threadgill and David Murray, and now splits his time between NYC and Paris. For his St. Louis performance, Siddik will bring along his frequent collaborator, pianist Katy Roberts, with bassist Darryl Mixon and drummer Gary Sykes added from the local ranks to complete the band.

Both of these concerts are certainly welcome additions to the fall schedule of jazz performances here in St. Louis, but, being a nosy reporter, I had to ask Sams why he booked Trio 3 on the same night of Sonny Rollins' highly anticipated performance at the Touhill Performing Arts Center (and, for that matter, the Old Webster Jazz and Blues Festival).

He explained that the show had been in the works for a year now, and September 19 was the only date Trio 3 had available. Sams added that he thought the two concerts would appeal to "different crowds." Here's hoping that he's right about that, or at least that there are enough local jazz fans willing and able to shell out their hard-earned cash to support both shows.

UPDATE - 11:00 p.m., 9/11/09: K. Curtis Lyle has more on Lake, Trio 3 and Siddik in an article for this week's St. Louis American, found online here.

(Edited after posting to fix typos.)