This week's calendar of live jazz and creative music in St. Louis provides an opportunity to hear four bandleaders joining forces for the first time on one stage, a powerful pioneer of Afro-Cuban jazz piano, and more.
Let's go to the highlights...
Wednesday, January 30
The Bistro All-Stars(pictured, top left), featuring trumpeter Sean Jones, saxophonist Tia Fuller, vibraphonist Warren Wolf, and pianist Peter Martin, will perform for the first of five nights at Jazz St. Louis.
Given that each of the four principals is a bandleader and composer in their own right, the All-Stars, assembled specifically for this gig, should have plenty of material to draw upon. And while an ad hoc group like this may not have the established chemistry of a regular working band, the jolt of discovery among musicians working together for the first time can be a lot of fun to watch.
Thursday, January 31
Guitarist Dave Black's newest ensemble, the itti bitti Swing Orchestra, plays a free concert for the Jazz at Holmes series at Washington University, and saxophonist Ben Reese's Unity Quartet returns to The Dark Room.
Tuesday, February 5
Cuban-born pianist Chucho Valdés(pictured, bottom left) will mix jazz with the rhythms and folk traditions of his home country in the first of three nights of performances with his "Jazz Bata" project at Jazz St. Louis.
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.)
While the winter weather may have taken a turn for the worse this week in St. Louis, the jazz and creative music touring activity here is heating up, with three (or four, depending on you count) visiting headliners in town over the next few days, plus an eclectic assortment of shows from local performers. Let's go to the highlights...
Wednesday, January 20
Vibraphonist Warren Wolf(pictured, upper left) and his band Wolfpack will begin a four-night engagement continuing through Saturday at Jazz at the Bistro
Wolf, now considered one of the top mallet percussionists in jazz (and who also plays piano and drums) was here most recently in November 2014, co-leading a band with trumpeter Sean Jones and saxophonist Tia Fuller for a weekend at the Bistro. This time, he's fronting his own group, which includes saxophonist Tim Green, who also contributes as a composer, plus pianist Alex Brown, bassist Kris Funn and drummer Billy Williams Jr.
Thursday, January 21 Sarah Jane and the Blue Notes will play vintage swing and blues in the Ritz Carlton Hotel's Lobby Lounge; guitarist Dave Black and Friends featuring singer Feyza Eren will perform at Nathalie’s; and actress/singer Anna Blair offers her latest cabaret show, "I am Reddy, Hear Me Roar" at The Emerald Room at The Monocle.
Friday, January 22
Pedal steel guitarist Susan Alcorn, who usually works solo, will team up with drummer Frank Rosaly (pictured, lower left with Alcorn) for a duo concert of improvised music presented by New Music Circle at Joe’s Cafe.
Also on Friday, New Orleans-based brass/funk/rock band Bonerama is back for another performance at the Broadway Oyster Bar.
Saturday, January 23
On Saturday afternoon, singer Wendy L. Gordon returns to J&C BBQ and Blues, and the Stan Coleman - Darrell Mixon Quartet performs at the Tavern of Fine Arts.
Saturday evening, Wack-A-Doo serves up swing, pop, and Americana at Evangeline's; singer Erika Johnson and guitarist Tom Byrne will duet at Thurman Grill; and guitarist Brian Vaccaro's trio plays at the house concert venue Kinda Blue Club.
Monday, January 25
Trumpeter Randy Holmes leads his quintet in a concert at Webster University's Winifred Moore Auditorium.
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.)
This week, it's the first part of StLJN's video preview of jazz and creative music performers who will be visiting St. Louis during the winter and spring months of 2016.
First up are The Bad Plus, who will be returning to our town to perform Wednesday, January 6 through Wednesday, January 9 at Jazz at the Bistro. Given that this will be the tenth consecutive year that the provocative piano trio has played the Bistro in the month of January, many local jazz fans will already be familiar with them, but if you'd like to catch up with StLJN's coverage of their past appearances here, including posts compiling various performance videos from the last ten years, just click on the tag at the bottom of this post that says "The Bad Plus."
As for what they've been up to since their last St. Louis gig, The Bad Plus spent much of 2015 on two projects that augmented their lineup with additional musicians. One of those was a series of live performances of all the music from Ornette Coleman's 1971 album Science Fiction, aided by saxophonists Tim Berne and Sam Newsome and trumpeter Ron Miles. The other project was a critically acclaimed album and string of gigs with saxophonist Josh Redman, a string that, alas, won't extend to their dates here.
As you may have noticed if you're a regular reader of this weekly feature, the default practice is to try to include the most recent footage available of the performers in question. Unfortunately for purposes of this particular preview, there's no good-quality video available online that was 1) shot during the past year and 2) features just The Bad Plus; the best yr humble editor could find was a handful of audience-shot clips from the Seoul Jazz Festival with adequate audio that were rendered headache-inducing by terribly shaky camera work. So, even though Redman won't be here in St. Louis, the first clip at the top of this post shows one of those Bad Plus gigs with him - specifically, a full set recorded in May of this year at the Detroit Jazz Festival.
Next to arrive here in January will be an ad hoc ensemble billed as the Jazz at Lincoln Center Group, featuring four musicians who have varying degrees of affiliation with that NYC institution, but who all are heavily involved in jazz education. Their performances on Thursday, January 14 and Friday, January 15 at the Bistro will cap a week of working with students in Jazz St. Louis' various education programs and in selected local school districts.
The group features the homecoming of saxophonist and University City native Todd Williams, a contemporary of trumpeter Jeremy Davenport and pianist Peter Martin who's spent much of the last 15+ years under the wing of Wynton Marsalis, working as a member of both the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and Marsalis' own septet.
Williams has moved on from JaLC to a teaching job at Indiana Wesleyan University, and according to his website, he's also now working on a doctorate from Indiana University, so perhaps it should be no surprise that recent footage of him performing seems to scarce online. In fact, aside from some older clips of the JaLC Orchestra and Marsalis' small band, most of which feature Williams only briefly, the best video of him seems to be a clip he recorded not long ago for JaLC's education program, in which he talks about blues inflections for the saxophone and plays "St. Louis Blues," and that's what you'll find right after the jump.
The Jazz at Lincoln Center Group at the Bistro also will include another former member of the JaLC Orchestra, trumpeter Terell Stafford. Stafford also should be quite familiar to local jazz fans, thanks to his recordings for the St. Louis based MAXJAZZ label and a number of headlining appearances here over the past decade, most recently as part of the band assembled to play the Bistro this past September to commemorate Jazz St. Louis' 20th anniversary.
Stafford, who's now teaching at Temple University and directing the Jazz Orchestra of Philadelphia, can be seen in the third clip playing his song "Favor" during a performance recorded in September at the Network for New Music in Philly.
Rounding out the group will be the veteran tuba player Bob Stewart, who's not a member of any regular Jazz at Lincoln Center ensemble but serves as an "educational consultant" to the organization; and drummer Jeff Hamilton, who lives all the way across the country in Los Angeles and whose affiliation with JaLC seems limited to appearing in some educational videos and leading his trio in the occasional gig at JaLC's club venue, Dizzy's.
You can see Hamilton expertly driving that trio in the fourth video clip, which features four songs recorded in May of this year at Dizzy's, and catch can see Stewart in the fifth video, in which he plays a duet with trombonist Ray Anderson on Arthur Blythe's "Lenox Avenue Breakdown," recorded in 2012 at NYC's Cornelia St. Cafe.
After that, vibraphonist Warren Wolf will be in town to lead his group in a series of shows from Wednesday, January 20 through Saturday, January 23 at the Bistro. Wolf, who played the club last season as a co-leader with trumpeter Sean Jones and saxophonist Tia Fuller, can be seen in the sixth clip performing "Things Were Done Yesterday" in May of this year at a northern California venue called Silo's Napa.
The same week Wolf is in town, steel guitarist Susan Alcorn and percussionist Frank Rosaly also will be in St. Louis to play a concert for New Music Circle on Friday, January 22 at Joe's Cafe. You can see Alcorn in the seventh video, performing solo and with bassist Michael Formanek and saxophonist Derrick Michaels in July 2015 at Normal's Books and Records in Baltimore. The eighth (and final) video features an excerpt from a Rosaly solo set in August 2013 at the Milwaukee Noise Fest.
Next week's post will pick up at the end of January 2016 for part two of StLJN's winter/spring 2016 jazz preview. You can see the rest of today's videos after the jump...
This week's calendar of jazz and creative music in St. Louis features two different all-star groups of visiting musicians, a return visit from one of the more prominent all-female ensembles in jazz, and a number of noteworthy shows from local bands and players. Let's go to the highlights...
Tonight, saxophonist Tia Fuller(pictured), who's in town for a Jazz St. Louis educational residency and weekend gig at Jazz at the Bistro, will present a free workshop and performance at Saxquest; and the Gaslight Cabaret Festival resumes with singer/actress Sheri Sanders and her show "Rock It" at the Gaslight Theater.
Tomorrow night, Fuller, trumpeter Sean Jones and vibraphonist Warren Wolf will play for the first of two nights at Jazz at the Bistro, supported by a St. Louis rhythm section of Peter Martin (piano), Jahmal Nichols (bass), and Montez Coleman (drums).
Jones and Wolf, like Fuller, are here this week doing educational residencies for Jazz St. Louis, and so since this is an ad hoc assembly rather than a regular working band, it's hard to say precisely what their repertoire will be. It seems likely that they'll draw on recent albums by the visitors - all three have recorded for the Mack Avenue label, with Wolf and Jones both releasing new CDs this year - but given the talent level, they should sound just fine no matter what they're playing.
On Sunday, Jazz St. Louis will begin their new weekly Sunday jazz brunch at the Bistro, with musical accompaniment from guitarist and singer Tommy Halloran's Guerrilla Swing.
Right around the time that show wraps up, Jazz in Pink will be getting underway at the Sheldon Concert Hall, as the all-female band returns to St. Louis to play another benefit performance for Community Women Against Hardship.
Looking beyond the weekend, on Monday the Webster University Jazz Collective, featuring members of Webster's jazz faculty, will perform at Winifred Moore Auditorium on campus; and guitarist Dave Black and singer Joe Mancuso will return to BB's Jazz, Blues & Soups.
Then on Tuesday, the SIUE Concert Jazz Band, directed by guitarist Rick Haydon, and the recently formed SIUE Alumni Jazz Band will share the stage for a performance at Jazz at the Bistro, playing "your favorite charts from Basie, Ellington, and beyond."
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.)
Today, it's part four of StLJN's video preview of jazz and creative music performers who will be coming to St. Louis this fall. (In case you missed them, here's part 1, part 2, and part 3.)
For this installment, we resume with more of what's coming up in November, starting with a video featuring keyboardist Marco Benevento, who will be back to play Sunday, November 9 at 2720 Cherokee.
Benevento is touring this fall in support of his recent album Swift, which features him singing lead vocals for the first time. As someone who's generally enjoyed his instrumental music, I've not found what I've heard so far of his singing to be particularly compelling, so rather than showcasing one of his new songs here, we've got a live version of the Benevento concert staple "RISD", recorded in June of this year at The Saint in Asbury Park, NJ. (For samples of Benevento new vocal material, check out these live performances of "At The Show" and "Eye to Eye.")
Although all three have recorded for the Mack Avenue label, and Fuller and Jones have worked together on occasion, this specific lineup is a custom one-off for Jazz St. Louis, so there's actually no footage online of all three of them playing together.So instead, we've got clips of them performing individually.
First up is Fuller, seen in a recording made in March of this year at Smoke in NYC that excerpts her solo on a tune that's not positively identified but may very well be "Impressions." The interesting thing about this is that it demonstrates that while some may think of Fuller as a slick R&B saxophonist, based on her tenure with pop singer Beyonce and other commercial gigs, she's also comfortable going outside in a post-Coltrane style.
And speaking of Coltrane, the next clip features Sean Jones' trumpet solo on a big band version of "Giant Steps" recorded with the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, for whom he has spent nearly a decade as lead trumpeter. Below that, you can see Wolf in a duo performance of Chick Corea's "Senor Mouse" with pianist Alex Brown, recorded at a performance by Wolf's band in March of this year in Boston at Berklee College of Music's 939 Cafe.
After that, you can see singer Carole J. Bufford doing "Cry Me A River" in a recording made last year in NYC. She'll perform her show "Body and Soul" on Friday, November 13 and Saturday, November 14 for the Gaslight Cabaret Festival.
Next, it's guitarists Bucky Pizzarelli, Frank Vignola and Vinny Raniolo, who will bring their show "Swing Xing! Three Generations of Swing Guitar" to the Sheldon Concert Hall on Saturday, November 15. They're seen here performing "Three Little Words" in a recording made in May 2014 at the Cutting Room in NYC.
The very next evening, the all-female ensemble Jazz in Pink will take the Sheldon stage in a benefit performance for Community Women Against Hardship. In this clip from 2013, they're playing "Soulchestral Groove."
A few days later, saxophonist Jeff Coffin and his band, the Mutet, will make make their debut at Jazz at the Bistro with a four-night run starting Friday, November 19 and continuing through Saturday, November 22. This recording of "The Mad Hatter Rides Again" was made by an audience member at Coffin's show last October in Athens, GA.
That same weekend, clarinetist and saxophonist Anat Cohen will be back in town to serve as special guest for pianist Peter Martin's concert on Saturday, November 21 at the Sheldon. Cohen, who led her own group for a week at the Bistro a couple of years ago and this year toured with Martin as part of the Newport Jazz Festival 60th anniversary band, is seen here last December at the Umbria Jazz Festival dueting with guitarist Howard Alden on "Espinha de Bacalhau."
Last but certainly not least, today's final video features trumpeter, singer and U City native Jeremy Davenport, who will return from his adopted home in New Orleans for his annual post-Thanksgiving performance on Friday, November 28 and Saturday, November 29 at Jazz at the Bistro. This is a full set of Davenport and his band, apparently recorded within the last year at some sort of private or corporate gig, but otherwise not labeled with a date or place.
You'll find the fifth and final part of the fall 2014 jazz preview in this space next week, and you can see the rest of today's videos after the jump...
Courtesy of Peter Martin Music, StLJN has a pair of tickets to give away for Sunday night's performance by Martin's quartet with vibraphonist Warren Wolf at the Sheldon Concert Hall. To win the two free tickets, just be the first person to comment on this post with the correct answer to this question:
After graduating from University City High School, at what school did Peter Martin study music?
One answer per person, please. Tickets will be held at the Sheldon for pickup on Sunday. (Photo ID may be required.)
UPDATE - 12:20 p.m.: ....Aaaaand we have a winner! Thanks to all for reading.
We're still in a transitional period between spring and summer music schedules here in St. Louis, but there nevertheless are a number of noteworthy jazz and creative music performances happening around town over the next several days. Let's go to the highlights...
Tonight, the Sheldon Concert Hall puts on a benefit concert for tornado relief, featuring performances from traditional jazz band the St. Louis Stompers, pianist Carolbeth True with harmonica player Sandy Weltman, guitarist Rick Haydon, and pianist Stephanie Trick, as well as folk musicians John Higgins and Charlie Pfeffer, Beatles tribute band Pepperland and the gospel group Reborn.
On Friday and Saturday, singer Erin Bode and her group return to Jazz at the Bistro, with guest appearances by "members of the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra." (Bode has collaborated before with musicians from the SLSO, most notably violinist and concertmaster David Halen, but there's no mention of any specific players' names in the promotional info for the gig.) Note also that the 8:30 shows are sold out for both nights, but some tickets do remain for the 10:15 sets..
Also on Friday and Saturday, Robbie's will present trumpeter Melton Mustafa, who will do a tribute to Miles Davis in celebration of the trumpet legend's birthday next week. Friday's performance will be preceded by a workshop that begins at 6:00 p.m.; see Robbie's website for details.
Also on Friday, guitarist Dave Black will play at Cigar Inn in Belleville with Willem von Hombracht on bass and Kevin Gianino on drums.
On Saturday, saxophonist Candy Dulfer will play at The Pageant, with St. Louis' Tim Cunningham opening the show. You can read my Riverfront Times' Critic's Pick on the show here, and for some videos of Dulfer performing in concert, see this post from last Saturday
On Sunday evening, pianist Peter Martin continues his concert series at the Sheldon, teaming up with vibraphonist Warren Wolf (pictured), his bandmate in bassist Christian McBride's band Inside Straight. Wolf is considered one of jazz' rising stars on his instrument, and he and Martin just completed some European dates with McBride so they should be locked in and ready to go.
For more jazz-related events in St. Louis this weekend and beyond, 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.)
(Edited after posting to correct the name of Mondinband's special guest at the Misles Davis Jazz Festival.)
Pianist Peter Martin has announced that he'll continue his series at the Sheldon Concert Hall by joining forces with vibraphonist Warren Wolf (pictured) for a performance at the Sheldon at 7:00 p.m., Sunday, May 22.
Wolf, who's originally from Baltimore, has worked with Martin previously in bassist Christian McBride's group Inside Straight. He's considered a rising star in jazz, and one of the top vibes players to emerge in recent years. The Sheldon concert will be a quartet performance, with bassist Rueben Rogers and drummer Gregory Hutchinson joining Wolf and Martin to complete the ensemble.
Tickets for the concert are priced at $25 for the balcony, $30 for the orchestra floor, and $50 for special VIP seating, and are on sale now via Metrotix.
