Jazz this week: Chris Botti; Eddie Henderson; Rogers, Owens & Ellis; Faith Prince and more

This week's jam-packed calendar of live jazz and creative music in St. Louis features performances from two top trumpeters, a cavalcade of cabaret, and more.

Let's go to the highlights...

Wednesday, October 24
Singer Darius de Haas will present the first of two nights of performances of his cabaret show "A Bernstein Thing" at Jazz St. Louis.

Also on Wednesday, the "Grand Center Jazz Crawl" features pianist Jim Hegarty's trio at The Stage at KDHX, along with the jam session led by bassist Bob Deboo at the Kranzberg Arts Center and trumpeter Kasimu Taylor and band at The Dark Room.

Thursday, October 25
Singer Denise Thimes will be back from her new home in Chicago to headline the "Mildred Thimes Foundation 14th Annual Benefit Concert" at the Sheldon Concert Hall. This year's show will feature Thimes and friends interpreting material associated with singers Luther Vandross and Chaka Khan. .

Also on Thursday, Italian drummer Lecrezio de Seta will be joined by bassist/guitarist William Lenihan and keyboardist Jay Oliver for a free concert for the Jazz at Holmes series at Washington University; saxophonist Ben Reece's Unity Quartet returns to The Dark Room; and trumpeter Jim Manley and guitarist Randy Bahr will head to O'Fallon, MO for a gig at the Rendezvous Cafe & Wine Bar.

Friday, October 26
Trumpeter Chris Botti (pictured, top left) returns to St. Louis for the first time since 2015 to perform once again with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra at Powell Hall.

Also on Friday, the revived Nu-Art Series gets underway with a concert featuring trumpeter Eddie Henderson (pictured, bottom left) with poet Lyah LeFlore, pianist Ptah Williams, and fellow trumpeter and Nu-Art impresario George Sams at Xavier Hall on the St. Louis University campus.

For more about Henderson, who turns 78 the day of his St. Louis show, plus some videos of recent performances, check out the post from last Saturday.

Elsewhere around town, bassist Reuben Rogers, drummer Ulysses Owens Jr. and saxophonist John Ellis, joined by St. Louis' own Peter Martin on piano, will wrap up a week-long educational residency for Jazz St. Louis with the first of two nights of performances at the Bistro; and the Gaslight Cabaret Festival resumes with Tony Award winning actress and singer Faith Prince performing for the first of two evenings at the Gaslight Theater/

Saturday, October 27
Singer Barb Jungr and singer, pianist and St. Louis native John McDaniel return with a one-night-only performance of their latest cabaret show, "1968 - Let The Sunshine In," at the Kranzberg Arts Center; and pianist Mo Egeston is back at The Dark Room.

Sunday, October 28
Though singer/songwriter Jimmy Webb's two performances for the Gaslight Cabaret Festival are sold out, Sunday offers several other noteworthy musical options, as pianist David Thomas Roberts will perform at the Scott Joplin House State Historic Site's Rosebud Cafe, and the eight-piece, Seattle-based Afrobeat band Polyrhythmics will play at the Old Rock House

Also on Sunday, trumpeter Randy Holmes has his Hard Bop Heritage band back in action at the Ozark Theatre; and the Bosman Twins with guest vocalist Marsha Evans will provide the music for the "Royal Vagabonds Foundation Scholarship Benefit" at the Sheldon Concert Hall.

Monday, October 29
The Usual Suspects play at BB's Jazz, Blues & Soups, and drummer Nick Savage leads a quartet in a concert at Winifred Moore Auditorium on the Webster University campus.

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.)

Sunday Session: August 19, 2018

Aretha Franklin

Here's a roundup of various music-related items of interest that have shown up in one of StLJN's various inboxes or feeds over the past week:

* How Much Does It REALLY Cost To Be A Classical Musician? (Ludwig-Van.com)
* Live Review: 45th Umbria Jazz Festival (DownBeat)
* Review: Warsaw Summer Jazz Days (Jazz Journal)
* A Listener’s Guide to “Loud Jazz” (Jazz Times)
* Chicago Jazz Festival to Mark 40th Anniversary (DownBeat)
* Jazz In The 21st Century Is All About 'Playing Changes' (NPR)
* “You Haven’t Done Enough To Be The Way You Are.” Robert Glasper Speaks On Lauryn Hill’s Mistreatment of Artists (MadameNoire.com)
* Top 10 Moments of the 2018 Newport Jazz Festival (Jazz Times)
* The American guitar industry is making a serious comeback (Yahoo.com)
* Warner Music Buying Uproxx Is a Depressing Look Into the Music Industry’s Monolithic Future (SPIN)
* We Shall Overcome publisher handed $352,000 legal bill after song declared public domain (CompleteMusicUpdate.com)
* Ronnie Foster's "Mystic Brew" (SFJAZZ.org)
* Inhabiting Sound: Matana Roberts Speaks (JazzSpeaks.org)
* A Miraculous Field Recording: The Guitar Playing of Joseph Spence (The New Yorker)
* 'It's a code for living': Gregory Porter and José James on the music of their heroes (Los Angeles Times)
* Nate Chinen on ’70s and ’80s Jazz (Jazz Times)
* Jimmy Page and the Grouses of the Holy (GQ)
* When Music Was Bigger Than Life: Sonny Rollins in New York City (TownTopics.com)
* Why Are Record Companies Dumping Their Spotify Stock? (NoVA.edu)
* Thank god for the return of the generation gap in pop (The Spectator)
* In Memoriam: Aretha Franklin (DownBeat)
* Aretha Franklin Was America's Truest Voice (NPR)
* 'She doesn't just move you, she shakes you': all-star tributes to Aretha Franklin (The Guardian)
* Aretha Franklin, a 'performer without peers' (Detroit News)
* How Aretha Franklin’s Jazz Beginnings Predicted Her Genre-Transcending Career (Rolling Stone)
* Tyshawn Sorey Travels Further Out on New Works (DownBeat)
* "The Sleeping Bear" Awakens: The Revival of the Hammond B-3 Organ (SFJAZZ.org)
* Musicians only received 12% of the music industry’s $43 billion revenue in 2017 (ConsequenceOfSound.net)
* William Parker’s Late-Career Bloom (The Nation)
* Pop Songs in English, Written by Native Speakers of Swedish (The Paris Review)
* Ulysses Owens’ Delivers Poignant Messages on Freedom (DownBeat)
* Prince Estate and Sony Release 23 Long-Unavailable Albums Digitally (Variety)
* This Black Woman Was Once the Biggest Star in Jazz. Here’s Why You’ve Never Heard of Her (Narrative.ly)

Jazz this week: "Songs of Freedom," Ramsey Lewis, Abdullah Ibrahim & Ekaya, and more

It's another jam-packed week of live jazz and creative music in St. Louis, with two esteemed pianists appearing back-to-back at one of the city's best-sounding halls; a retrospective of music from three of the 1960s' most provocative female vocalists, starring a St. Louis native; a couple of events raising scholarship money for local music students; and more. Let's go to the highlights...

Wednesday, April 11
Drummer Ulysses Owens, Jr. presents his show "Songs of Freedom," with featured vocalists Joanna Majoko and St. Louis' own Alicia Olatuja, for the first of four nights at Jazz at the Bistro. Developed by Owens for Jazz at Lincoln Center, the production explores the 1960s through the music of Joni Mitchell, Abbey Lincoln, and Nina Simone.

Also on Wednesday, trumpeter Jim Manley is back at Sasha's Wine Bar, and the weekly "Grand Center Jazz Crawl" features saxophonist Andy Ament at The Stage at KDHX, a jam session led by bassist Bob Deboo at the Kranzberg Arts Center, and trumpeter Kasimu Taylor's band at The Dark Room.

Thursday, April 12
Saxophonist Ben Reece’s Unity Quartet returns to The Dark Room and pianist Adam Maness' trio will be back at Thurman's in Shaw.

Friday, April 13
Pianist Ramsey Lewis (pictured, top left) is the headline attraction at the Sheldon Concert Hall's annual benefit gala. The concert is billed as Lewis playing the music of the Beatles,  but don't be surprised if he slips in a couple of his own hits like "The In Crowd" or "Sun Goddess" along with his interpretations of the Fab Four.  As usual with their benefit performances, the Sheldon is offering a limited number of concert-only tickets; contact their box office for availability.

Also on Friday, the Webster Groves Concert Hall reopens for the spring with "Take the "A" Train Cabaret," featuring storyteller and comedian Bobby Norfolk, pianist Tom George, and singer Beverly Brennan; saxophonist Tim Cunningham plays smooth jazz and R&B at Troy's Jazz Gallery; and singer Anita Jackson will be working the late shift at The Dark Room.

Saturday, April 14
On Saturday afternoon, Miss Jubilee will perform at the Scott Joplin House State Historic Site's Rosebud Cafe as part of the Friends of Scott Joplin's new monthly series there.

Saturday evening, pianist Abdullah Ibrahim (pictured, bottom left) and his band Ekaya, featuring trumpeter Freddie Hendrix, will present "Jazz Epistles - The Story in Concert" at the Sheldon Concert Hall. 

The Jazz Epistles were one of Ibrahim's first bands, bringing a hard bop sound modeled on Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers to his native South Africa in the late '50s, and he's been touring this tribute show since last year with various trumpeters standing in for the late Hugh Masekela, who was part of the original Jazz Epistles and had planned to . For more about Ibrahim and this retrospective show, plus a video from this current tour and more, check out this post from last Saturday.
 
Also on Saturday, pianist Greg Mills will present original improvisations in a free concert at St. Louis University's Xavier Hall; the Midwest Jazz-tette plays West Coast jazz at the Webster Groves Concert Hall; and Acoustik Element will be joined by percussionists Baba Mike and Matt Henry for a show at Joe's Cafe & Art Gallery.

Sunday, April 15
There's more matinee action on Sunday , as singer Joe Mancuso brings his organ trio to the house concert venue The Judson House, and drummer Chuck Kennedy, pianist Curt Landes, bassist Glen Smith, and singers Valerie Tichacek, Trish Richardson and Tom Kozlowski will present their take on Liverpool's most famous hitmakers, "The Beatles Go Jazz," at the Webster Groves Concert Hall.

Also on Sunday, Jazz St. Louis presents "Swing For The Scholars," a benefit raising money for music scholarships for local students with entertainment provided by Denise Thimes, Good 4 The Soul, members of the Funky Butt Brass Band, and more.

Monday, April 16
The music department at Webster University will present their annual Suzy Shepard and Donald O. Davis Scholarship Concert, featuring students, faculty and perhaps even some alumni performing music associated with Ella Fitzgerald, at Winifred Moore Auditorium on the Webster campus. 

Tuesday, April 17
Improvisational keyboardist Thollem, violinist Alex Cunningham, and singer/pianist Ellen the Felon will perform on a triple bill at Foam; and drummer Montez Coleman and guitarist Eric Slaughter will host "The Tuesday Night Hit" jam session at The Dark Room.

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: Winter/spring 2018 jazz preview, part five

This week, StLJN's winter/spring 2018 jazz preview continues with part five in a series of posts featuring videos of jazz and creative music performers who will be coming to St. Louis in the first few months of the new year. (If you missed the previous installments, you can see part one here, part two here, part three here, and part four here.)

Continuing in chronological order from where last week's post left off, the first video up above features singer and St. Louis native Ken Page, the St. Louis native and star of Broadway and film who will bringing his cabaret act to Jazz at the Bistro on Wednesday, April 4 and Thursday, April 5. Page, who's known for his roles in the original casts of musical theater megahits such as Ain't Misbehavin' and Cats, as well as for his voice characterization of Oogie Boogie in Tim Burton's animated film The Nightmare Before Christmas, is seen here in a demo reel compiled to showcase his talents for potential bookings.

Page will be followed on the Bistro stage by drummer Allison Miller, trumpeter Riley Mulherkar and saxophonist Chad Lefkowitz-Brown, who will be in town that week to do an educational residency for Jazz St. Louis and will cap it with performances on Friday, April 6 and Saturday, April 7 at the Bistro.

As with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Group that's here this week at the Bistro, Miller, Mulherkar and Lefkowitz-Brown (and presumably a local support musician or two) will be joining forces specifically for this gig, so the only available footage to show you is of them performing individually.

Miller can be seen in the first video after the jump with her band Boom Tic Boom, performing "Fuster," the opening track from their album Otis Was a Polar Bear, at a gig in May 2016 in Philadelphia. (Along with the leader on drums, Boom Tic Boom includes pianist Myra Melford, violinist Jenny Scheinman, cornetist Kirk Knuffke, clarinetist Ben Goldberg, and bassist Todd Sickafoose.)

After that, you can see Mulherkar playing Duke Ellington's "Echoes of Harlem" in a jam session last April at the Kranzberg Arts Center right here in St. Louis, accompanied by bassist Bob DeBoo and drummer Montez Coleman, followed by a clip of Lefkowitz-Brown playing Charlie Parker's "Yardbird Suite" with his quartet, which includes Takeshi Ohbayashi on piano, Tamir Shmerling on bass, and Bryan Carter on drums.

Next up at the Bistro will be "Songs of Freedom," a show developed by drummer Ulysses Owens, Jr that will be performed by a group led by him and featuring vocalists Alicia Olatuja and Joanna Majoko starting Wednesday, April 11 and continuing through Saturday, April 14 at the Bistro.

First presented at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City, "Songs of Freedom" is based on the music of what the promotional copy calls "three iconic voices of the 1960s--Joni Mitchell, Abbey Lincoln and Nina Simone--and the complex ways in which they call out to each other."

Unfortunately, none of the previous performances seem to have been recorded on video and put online, so instead in today's fourth clip you can see a full set of Owens leading a band with bassist Reuben Rogers, vibraphonist Joel Ross, and singer Vuyo Sotashe last August as Dizzy's Club in NYC.

That's followed by a clip of Majoko singing "Bye Bye Blackbird" recorded a couple of years ago at UMFM studios in Winnipeg, MB, Canada, accompanied by Jocelyn Gould (guitar), Carter Graham (keyboard), Karl Kohut (bass), and Curtis Nowosad (drums). (St. Louis native Olatuja can be seen in last week's post, which previewed, among others, her solo shows in February at the Bistro.)

The same night that Owens and company wrap up at the Bistro, pianist Abdullah Ibrahim and his band Ekaya will be in town to perform on Saturday, April 14 at the Sheldon Concert Hall.

Ibrahim originally was scheduled to be joined by trumpeter Hugh Masekela for a program recounting the history of the Jazz Epistles, South Africa's first bebop band, of which both men were members.

However, Masekela's health issues have caused him to cancel all his live shows for the first part of 2018, so as of this writing, the concert is still set to go on, but no replacement trumpeter has been announced yet.

It was announced this past week that the estimable Wadada Leo Smith will be performing with Ibrahim for dates next month at SFJAZZ in San Francisco, which ought to make for a very interesting collaboration. And Ibrahim has worked with some other very capable trumpeters, too, as in the next clip, which shows him and Ekaya plus special guest Terence Blanchard in a full set recorded last July at the Jazzaldia festival in Donosti, Spain.

The final two videos today feature the headliners of the 2018 Greater St. Louis Jazz Festival, which will present the The University of North Texas One O’Clock Lab Band on Friday, April 21 and Gordon Goodwin’s Big Phat Band on Saturday, April 22, both at the Touhill Performing Arts Center.

The One O'Clock Lab Band, which is UNT's top student ensemble, can be seen in the penultimate clip performing "Harlem Nocturne" in a show last November on campus. That's followed by a video of a full show from the Big Phat Band, recorded in November 2015 at the Los Angeles College of Music.

Look for part six of StLJN's winter/spring 2018 jazz preview next week in this space. You can see the rest of today's videos after the jump...

Jazz this week: The Sheldon turns 100, Dave Black & Paul DeMarinis, Josh Quinlan, "A Jazz Heaven: Under The Rainbow" and more

The jazz and creative music calendar this weekend is front-loaded with an all-star ensemble convening Thursday at the Sheldon Concert Hall for a big birthday party. But while that concert may have the marquee names, there are plenty of other noteworthy shows happening around town over the next few days, too. Let's go to the highlights....

As mentioned above, the big-ticket event of the weekend happens tonight, as the Sheldon Concert Hall will commemorate its 100th anniversary celebration with a gala concert featuring the world premiere of pianist Peter Martin's new work "This Present Past," commissioned specifically to celebrate the hall's centennial.

Martin (pictured) will be joined by saxophonist Branford Marsalis, bassist Christian McBride, drummer Ulysses Owens Jr, soprano Christine Brewer, violinist David Halen and other members of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. Halen and his SLSO colleagues also will perform the world premiere of another commissioned piece, a string quartet composed by Stefan Freund, who teaches music at the University of Missouri and is cellist with the contemporary chamber ensemble Alarm Will Sound, who will perform next Thursday at The Sheldon.

Although the Sheldon concert is reported to be close to a sell-out, there may be a few tickets remaining at the door, but I'd suggest calling ahead before making the trip down there.

Elsewhere around town tonight, trumpeter Bob Ceccarini will play "Tin Pan Alley and the Music of Jerome Kern" in a free concert for the Jazz at Holmes series at Washington University. And although the Thursday night jam sessions hosted for several months by guitarist Tom Byrne at Highway 61 Roadhouse have ended, two new weekly events have begun downtown on Thursdays that may help fill the gap: Clave Sol, led by pianist Phil Gomez, now are hosting a Latin jazz jam session downtown at Lola, while retro-style singer Miss Jubliee will be performing swing, jazz and blues at Thaxton Speakeasy, 1009 Olive.

Tomorrow night, guitarist Dave Black and saxophonist Paul DeMarinis will play for the first of two nights at Jazz at the Bistro. Though the two veterans of the Webster University jazz faculty are capable of tackling a variety of musical styles, the promo material from Jazz St. Louis for the show says they'll be doing "straight ahead jazz," though likely with at least few twists along the way.

Also on Friday, Colorado-based saxophonist Josh Quinlan will be in town for a gig with his Funky Fresh Trio at Robbie's House of Jazz; and the new music ensemble eighth blackbird - the Chicagoans prefer the lower case - will perform at the Touhill Performing Arts Center.

Over on the east side, pianist Tim Garcia leads a trio at Cigar Inn in Belleville, and saxophonist Tim Cunningham is back at Jazz on Broadway in Alton.

On Saturday afternoon, saxophonist Wilie Akins will perform at the Metropolitan Gallery as part of the Nu-Art Series' "Tenor Madness Project." Also on Saturday afternoon, the touring musical revue In The Mood, featuring music from Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, and other Swing Era idols, plays the first of two shows at the Touhill, with a second performance in the evening. Then on Saturday night, trumpeter Randy Holmes will lead a sextet in a tribute to Art Blakey at Robbie's.

On Sunday afternoon, singer Wendy Gordon will present "Under the Rainbow," another performance in her "A Jazz Heaven" series, at the Florissant Civic Center Theatre. Jeanne Trevor, who starred alongside Gordon in earlier editions of the production, is back to sing music associated with Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan, along with a cast featuring singers Joe Mancuso, Chuck Flowers and Barbara Helmer, poet Clayton McCants, narrator Sheila Reed, and a band including Adrian Bowers (trumpet), Chad Evans (saxophones), Arthur Toney (piano), Jeff Anderson (bass), and Gary Sykes (drums).

Looking beyond the weekend, on Monday the Sessions Big Band will be back for their monthly gig at BB's Jazz, Blues and Soups. And on Tuesday, the funky organ trio Downstereo, who formerly played Sunday nights at now-shuttered Delmar Lounge, have set up a weekly gig at The Crow's Nest in Maplewood.

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.)

Martin, Davenport get rhythm for April 2 concert at the Sheldon

Pianist Peter Martin has announced two more guest artists for his upcoming concert with trumpet player, singer and fellow University City native Jeremy Davenport.

Bassist Chris Thomas and drummer Ulysses Owens (pictured) also will be on board for the performance on Friday, April 2 at the Sheldon Concert Hall, the second in Martin's eponymous new series.

Thomas has worked with drummer Brian Blade, trumpeter Terence Blanchard, saxophonists Josh Redman and Javon Jackson, the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and more, while Owens' credits include performances and/or recordings with trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, singers Vanessa Rubin and Kurt Elling, organist Dr. Lonnie Smith, the Count Basie Orchestra, saxophonist Benny Golson, guitarist Russell Malone, pianist Mulgrew Miller and bassist Christian McBride.

Tickets for the April 2 concert are on sale now via Martin's website.