Hartenberger World Music Collection of instruments is donated to The Sheldon

The Hartenberger World Music Collection, which includes more than 2,500 musical instruments from around the world, has been donated to The Sheldon by Dr. Aurelia and Jeff Hartenberger.

The collection features African, Asian, European, Oceanic, Middle Eastern and Central, South and North American instruments dating from pre-Columbian times to the present day, and has an estimated value of more than $2 million.

The donation was announced Wednesday, and will be celebrated with "A World of Music: Africa, Asia and Latin America ~ Instruments from the Hartenberger World Music Collection," a new exhibition opening Friday, February 6 in the Sheldon's Gallery of Music. An opening reception with complimentary wine and hors d’oeuvres will be held that evening from 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m., and all the Sheldon galleries will be open until 9 p.m. as part of Grand Center's monthly First Fridays event.

Curated by Dr. Hartenberger, an associate professor of music at the University of Missouri – St. Louis, Webster University, and Maryville University, the exhibition will feature instruments from Africa, Asia and Central and South America, including an eight and one-half octave marimba from Guatemala, a Chimú whistling bottle from 1000 C.E., and a shoko from the 1912 coronation of the Emperor Yoshihito of Japan.

Various parts of the collection have been featured since 2001 in exhibitions at The Sheldon, and the instruments will continue to be shown in rotating exhibits curated by Dr. Hartenberger, as well as used in programs presented by the Sheldon's educational foundation. According to the news release announcing the donation, "it is the goal of The Sheldon to eventually create a world music museum as part of an expanded Sheldon Art Galleries" and to "selectively build the collection through donations, with the help and advice of Dr. Hartenberger and a gallery board committee.”

In addition to instruments from Africa, Asia, Oceania, the Middle East and the Americas, the collection also features European and American instruments used in classical music and jazz, including some owned and played by jazz greats with St. Louis connections such as Clark Terry, Oliver Lake and Hamiett Bluiett.

It also includes experimental, unusual and one-off instruments like the jazzophone (pictured), which was made in the 1920s in Germany. When not in use at the Sheldon, instruments in the collection will be stored offsite in a facility made available by MiTek Industries, which is run by Sheldon board member Dick Marriott.

Nu-Art Series announces Oliver Lake exhibit, Eddie Henderson concert

The Nu-Art Series has announced two events this month as part of their ongoing efforts to spotlight connections between jazz and visual arts.

* A new exhibit featuring paintings by saxophonist Oliver Lake (pictured, above left) and collages by S. Scott Davis III, who's a cousin of bassist Charles Mingus, will open with a reception at 5:30 p.m. Friday, March 16 at Metropolitan Gallery, 2936 Locust St. The exhibit, which is titled "East Meets West," will continue through April 20.

Lake will be in attendance at the opening, and though the event isn't billed as a performance, Nu-Art Series director George Sams says that the saxophonist also will read some of his poetry and play some music as part of the festivities. The reception is free and open to the public.

* Trumpeter Eddie Henderson (pictured, below left), known for his work with Herbie Hancock and many others, will perform in concert at 3:00 p.m., Saturday March 17 at Metropolitan Gallery.

Henderson, who's also a licensed psychiatrist, will team up with St. Louis saxophonist Freddie Washington, who holds a Ph.D, for a show that Sams has dubbed "Doctors That Play." They'll be assisted in their operations by three more St. Louis musicians: bassist Bob Deboo, drummer Gary Sykes and pianist Ptah Williams. Tickets for the Eddie Henderson concert will be $25 at the door.

Exhibit at Sheldon Art Galleries to feature African drums, experimental instruments, and more

The Sheldon Art Galleries once again will display musical instruments from the collection of St. Louis music educator Dr. Aurelia Hartenberger in a new exhibit, "The Beat Goes On: Instruments from the Hartenberger World Music Collection," that will open this Friday, February 17 in the Sheldon's History of Jazz gallery.

"The Beat Goes On" will include one room filled with drums and other rhythm instruments from Africa, such as the one pictured at left; a room featuring rare, experimental and one-of-a-kind instruments, some once owned by famous jazz musicians, including Clark Terry and Artie Shaw; and a room showcasing musical instruments from the American Civil War, including rare drums, saxhorns and OTS (Over the Shoulder) horns.

The Hartenberger collection includes more than 2,000 instruments from Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Europe and Australia, and parts of it were featured in a previous exhibit at the Sheldon in 2009.

"The Beat Goes On" opens with a reception in the galleries from 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. on Friday, February 17, and continues through August 18. Admission is free. Gallery hours are noon to 8:00 p.m. Tuesday; noon to 5:00 p.m. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday; 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. on Saturday; and one hour prior to Sheldon performances and during intermission.

So What: Local News, Notes & Links

Here's the latest wrap-up of assorted links and short local news items of interest:

* Jazz St. Louis' Devin Rodino was on the local cable program STL TV Live this week talking about next Thursday's "Jazz Under The Stars" event at the St. Louis Science Center. You can see the interview here.

* Pianist Peter Martin will be the recipient of an Excellence in Arts award at the 2012 St. Louis Arts Awards, which will be presented Monday by the Arts and Education Council at a fundraiser at the Chase Park Plaza. Martin will perform at the event with singer Dianne Reeves, for whom he serves as musical director. The evening also will include a performance by trumpet player Jason Brown, fine arts director for the Riverview Gardens School District and Arts Educator of the Year, with the Jazz Edge Big Band.

* The Post-Dispatch's Margaret Gillerman filed a final story on the impending closing of Webster Records

* Guitarist Matthew Von Doran (pictured) is at the winter National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) show in Anaheim, CA this week, and will perform with his trio at the convention tonight.

* Also tonight, the St. Louis Artists Guild opens "Oh! You Pretty Things: Indie Music and Design," an exhibition exploring graphic design in the St. Louis indie music scene with an emphasis on the D.I.Y (do-it-yourself) aesthetic and philosophy. The exhibit is free and open to the public, and continues through Saturday, March 17.

The Nu-Art Series to present three events in June

The Nu-Art Series has announced three events to wrap up its spring 2009 "Jazz and the Visual Arts" presentations at the Metropolitan Gallery, 2936 Locust St. in downtown St. Louis.

On Saturday, June 13, the gallery will open an exhibition of works by local mixed media artist Dail Chambers. Chambers, who studied at The Memphis College of Art and has exhibited in St. Louis, Memphis, Philadelphia and Chicago, will give a demonstration workshop from 2:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m, followed by an opening reception from 5:00 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.. A $10 donation is requested to attend the workshop; the reception is free and open to the public. The Chambers exhibit will continue through July 10.

Next up, the musical ensemble JBMG, a contemporary R&B group featuring the grandchildren of St. Louis music legends Fontella Bass and Lester Bowie, will perform in a Father's Day-themed program at 3:00 p.m., Saturday, June 20. Admission is $10.

The spring 2009 series concludes at 3:00 p.m., Sunday, June 28 with a concert by the Cameron Youth Orchestra, directed by James McKay, and featuring pianist Vickie Newton (pictured), who's also familiar to St. Louisans as one of the evening news anchors on local CBS affiliate KMOV. Though not known primarily as a musician, Newton has studied classical piano since childhood, and one of her numerous community activities is serving on the board of Jazz St. Louis. Admission to the June 28 performance is $10.

For more details, visit the Nu-Art Series' new Web site or send an email to info@thenu-artseries.org.

"Visions of Sound" extended until August 29

If you're interested in seeing the Sheldon Art Galleries’ “Visions of Sound” exhibit but haven’t yet had the chance to check it out in person, you’re in luck. The display of jazz and African instruments from the Hartenberger World Music Collection has been extended through August 29.

The Sheldon Art Galleries will host a all-gallery reception for its summer exhibitions from 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. on Friday, June 12. Admission is free. Regular gallery hours are noon to 8:00 p.m. Tuesdays; noon to 5:00 p.m. Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays; 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. Saturdays; and one hour prior to all Sheldon performances and during intermissions. For more on the “Visions of Sound” exhibit, see this post.

Urban Eats Cafe hosting show of Tony Renner's jazz-inspired art

In honor of Jazz Appreciation Month, improvising guitarist, DJ and friend o' this Web site Tony Renner is exhibiting his visual art during April at the Urban Eats Cafe and Bakery, 3301 Meramec Avenue in the Dutchtown neighborhood of south St. Louis.

The show includes his print of Dizzy Gillespie and other jazz-inspired works, and Renner will be at Urban Eats for brunch on Sunday, April 19 to meet, greet and eat with friends, art lovers, the merely curious, and any otherwise-innocent bystanders who happen to wander in looking for a bite. You'll find more details and a sample of Renner's art here.

Peter Leitch to show photos, give concert at Webster University

Peter Leitch is best known to jazz fans as a New York-based guitarist and composer, but it's his skills as a photographer that will be on display next month in St. Louis when his new photography show "New York to New Orleans, 2000 - 2007" opens with a reception from 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. Friday, February 27 at the May Gallery in Webster University's Sverdrup Building, 8300 Big Bend Blvd.

Leitch, who has worked with musical luminaries including Oscar Peterson, Ron Carter, Milt Jackson, Woody Shaw, Pepper Adams, Jaki Byard, Jack McDuff, Kenny Wheeler, Al Grey and St. Louis' own John Hicks, also will play what's being described as "a short concert" with his band at the gallery starting at 7:00 p.m. the next night, Saturday, February 28. Both the reception and concert are free and open to the public.

Sheldon's "Visions of Sound" exhibit to feature musical instrument collection

The Sheldon Art Galleries have announced that a new exhibit, "Visions of Sound: Masterpieces from the Hartenberger World Music Collection," will open on Friday, February 20 in the hall's Bellwether Gallery and History of Jazz Gallery.

The exhibit will feature musical instruments from the collection of St. Louis music educator Dr. Aurelia Hartenberger, which includes more than 2,000 instruments from Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Europe and Australia. For the "Visions of Sound" exhibit, the Bellwether Gallery will display a wide variety of instruments from all over the globe, including a late 17th - early 18th-century Italian mandolin; a Burmese saùng-gauk (arched harp); a Maori putorino (bugle flute); a pre-Columbian priest whistle from 600-900 A.D.; and serpent instruments from 18th and 19th-century Europe.

Meanwhile, the History of Jazz Gallery will present a collection of historical and modern instruments that trace the history of jazz from its roots in Africa to the present day. One room will feature African drums, bells and rattles, as well as gongs, harps, flutes, lutes and mbira (thumb pianos) from different regions. The other two rooms will focus on modern jazz instruments, including some once owned by notable national and local musicians such as Clark Terry, Oliver Lake, Artie Shaw, Eddie Daniels, Hamiet Bluiett, Jeremy Davenport and Red Lehr. The jazz rooms also will feature some unusual 20th-century instruments created for jazz, such as the jazzophone (pictured), the saxotrumpet, and the slide sax.

"Visions of Sound" opens with a reception in the galleries from 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. on Friday, February 20, and continues through May 9. Admission is free. Gallery hours are noon to 8:00 p.m. Tuesday; noon to 5:00 p.m. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday; 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. on Saturday; and one hour prior to Sheldon performances and during intermission.

(Edited 1/17/09 to fix a typo.)

Sheldon Art Galleries to present exhibit of St. Louis concert photos

An upcoming exhibit at the Sheldon Art Galleries will document four decades of St. Louis concerts through photos and memorabilia drawn from the collections of concert promoter (and trumpet player) Steve Schankman and other local music industry notables.

"Jazz, Rock, and Soul: 40 Years of Music in St. Louis, 1968-2008" opens Friday, October 3 in the Sheldon's History of Jazz Gallery with a public reception from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. The exhibit includes photos, memorabilia, archival information, graphic art, rare musical instruments, and video clips documenting jazz, rock and soul concerts in St. Louis over the last 40 years.

"The collection is drawn from the archives of Steve Schankman and Contemporary Productions with contributions from Joe Edwards, KSHE 95, Richard Miller, Mark O’Shaughnessy, Doreatha Polites, Mark Richman, the Sheldon Concert Hall, Steve Straub, Mary Strauss and the Fabulous Fox Theatre, and others," says the Sheldon's news release. "Highlights in the exhibit include instruments that once belonged to Dizzy Gillespie, Clark Terry and Maynard Ferguson and sheet music annotated by Louis Armstrong, all from the collection of Steven Schankman." Schankman, who also was one of the partners in the now-closed Finale Music and Dining, will present a free gallery talk at 6:00 p.m., Tuesday, October 21.

The exhibit runs through February 7, 2009. Gallery hours are noon to 8:00 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays; noon to 5:00 p.m. Wednesdays and Fridays; 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. Saturdays; and one hour prior to Sheldon performances and during intermission. Admission is free. For more information on the exhibition, visit the Galleries’ Web site.

Jazz concert series will accompany fall exhibition at Kemper Museum

A news release sent out by the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum at Washington University says that the museum "will sponsor free Saturday afternoon jazz concerts throughout the fall" in conjunction with the exhibition Birth of the Cool: California Art, Design, and Culture at Midcentury.

The exhibition, which will be on display at the Kemper from September 19 through Jaunary 5, "takes a look at the broad cultural zeitgeist of "cool" that influenced the visual, graphic, and decorative arts, furniture, architecture, music, and film produced in California in the 1950s and early 1960s."

It's listed on the "Upcoming Exhibitions" page of the Kemper's Web site, but there's nothing more specific about the concert series, such as a schedule of performances, either in the news release or, so far, anywhere else on the Kemper's Web site. Still, it sounds like a promising notion, and so yr. StLJN editor will monitor the situation and have more info here when it's released.

Post-Dispatch critic reviews jazz photo exhibit at the Sheldon Art Galleries

In other jazz-related news from the Post-Dispatch, visual arts critic David Bonetti has reviewed the exhibit of jazz photos by Herb Snitzer now on display at the Sheldon Art Galleries, calling it "the most engrossing" of the three shows currently running there. Read the whole thing online here.

As an aside, though Bonetti may know his stuff about visual art, he's apparently quite a bit less well informed about music, as his review calls the late 1950s and early 1960s - the time when Snitzer took the photos now on exhibit at the Sheldon - "the twilight of an art form." Many jazz fans, yr. humble editor included, would disagree fervently with this assessment, and a professional critic from any discipline ought to know better that to confuse commercial popularity, or the lack thereof, with aesthetic and artistic merit. By tacitly admitting his ignorance of all the great jazz music recorded since then, and the many jazz artists who continue to do significant work today, Bonetti undermines his own credibility and does a disservice to his readers and to the jazz community.

Herb Snitzer's jazz photo exhibit at Sheldon Art Galleries featured in AP story

Photographer Herb Snitzer, whose pictures of jazz musicians from the late 1950s and early 1960s are featured in a new exhibition at the Sheldon Art Galleries, is the subject of a feature story that's out today on the Associated Press wire. You can read the article online here.

Exhibit of jazz photos by Herb Snitzer to open May 16 at Sheldon Art Galleries

The Sheldon Art Galleries will celebrate the opening of the new exhibition Herb Snitzer: Jazz Photographs from the Last Years of Metronome with a complimentary wine and cheese reception from 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. on Friday, May 16 (which is also the date of the next Grand Center Gallery Walk).

As the name implies, the exhibit focuses on the work that freelance photographer Herb Snitzer made during the late 1950s and early 1960s for yesteryear jazz magazine Metronome. Snitzer's career spans more than 50 years, including work for top national publications such as Life, Look, The Saturday Evening Post, Fortune, and Time as well as for the New York Times and Herald Tribune. In 1958, he began freelancing for Metronome, becoming photography editor, and then associate editor of the magazine in 1960. During those years, he met, befriended and photographed many jazz greats including Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, John Coltrane, Count Basie, and Nina Simone. Still active in his 80s, Snitzer now lives in Florida, where he continues to do freelance and fine art photography with a special interest in issues of civil and social rights.

The exhibit was curated by historian and jazz specialist Benjamin Cawthra and will continue in the Sheldon Art Galleries' History of Jazz Gallery through September 20. Cawthra, an assistant professor of history at California State University - Fullerton, previously spent nine years working at the Missouri Historical Society, where he researched and curated numerous exhibitions, including Miles: A Miles Davis Retrospective, the first major museum exhibition on Davis' life. An exhibition catalog, published by the Sheldon Art Galleries with an essay by Cawthra and a foreword by Gallery director Olivia Lahs-Gonzales, accompanies the exhibition, and a limited edition portfolio of ten gelatin silver prints of some of Snitzer's greatest jazz photographs, published by Palm Press, Concord, MA, also will be available for purchase.

Gallery hours are noon to 8:00 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays; noon to 5:00 p.m. on Wednesdays and Fridays; 10:00 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturdays; and one hour prior to Sheldon performances and during intermission. Admission is free. For more information on the exhibition, visit the Galleries’ Web site.

Jazz photo exhibition opening October 12 at Sheldon Galleries

The Sheldon Art Galleries will open its new exhibition, "Jam Session: Photographs from the MAXJAZZ Collection," with a complimentary wine and cheese reception to be held from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. on Friday, October 12.

According the Sheldon's press release, the exhibition includes images of jazz musicians such as Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, John Coltrane, Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Billie Holiday, Thelonius Monk, Sonny Rollins and Sarah Vaughan as captured by important photographers including William Claxton, Roy DeCarava, William Gottlieb, Jimmy Katz, Herman Leonard, Herb Snitzer and others. Both the early days of jazz and contemporary artists are represented.

The exhibit runs from October 13, 2007 through January 19, 2008 in the History of Jazz Gallery. Gallery hours are Tuesdays and Thursdays, Noon – 8 p.m.; Wednesdays and Fridays, Noon – 5 p.m., Saturdays, 10 a.m. – 2 p.m. and one hour prior to Sheldon performances and during intermission. Admission is free. For more information, visit the Sheldon Art Galleries Web site.