StLJN Reader Poll: Who should play the David Sanborn Jazz Festival?

Last week, the Post-Dispatch ran a story announcing that plans were underway for a new jazz festival in St. Louis named after and featuring saxophonist David Sanborn. The article, linked above, indicated that organizers would like to book musicians for the event who have some sort of connection to St. Louis.

Which, as we wait for more details or an official announcement, raises a question: Who would St. Louis jazz fans like to see perform at the proposed David Sanborn Jazz Festival? Just for fun, we've created a poll listing some well-known musicians with connections to this area, and you're invited to take part and make your opinions known. You can select up to three choices from the list provided, or add your own. Just select "other," then add a comment, either on the poll or on this post, and write in the name of your alternate choice.

While we can't guarantee that anyone connected with the event will take notice of the results, it could provide some interesting possibilities for discussion...




(Edited for clarity after posting.)

Post-Dispatch reports plans for David Sanborn Jazz Festival in St. Louis

This just in: The St. Louis Post-Dispatch's Kevin Johnson has reported that plans are underway for a new jazz festival in St. Louis. The event would bear the name of, and be headlined by, saxophonist and St. Louis native David Sanborn (pictured) and would take place in September 2013 in the Grand Center neighborhood.

The story reports that the proposed David Sanborn Jazz Festival could run from one to three days, including both free outdoor shows and ticketed indoor concerts. The Bistro at Grand Center, home of Jazz St. Louis' Jazz at the Bistro series, likely would be one venue, with others in the Grand Center area including Powell Symphony Hall also under consideration. Along with Sanborn, the festival's bookings would emphasize musicians with a St. Louis connection.

Johnson's report is based on "a private meeting Thursday attended by organizers and potential investors of the festival." One of the reported investors is Entertainment Cruise Productions, formerly Jazz Cruises LLC, the company sponsoring Sanborn's concert with Brian Culbertson here next month at The Pageant.

StLJN will have more on this story as further details are revealed.

Entertainment St. Louis announces plans for downtown blues, jazz festivals

The production company Entertainment St. Louis has announced plans to stage a blues festival this summer in downtown St. Louis and also to take over and move an existing (but as yet unnamed) jazz festival to an unspecified downtown location.

The Riverfront Times' Nick Lucchesi was at the news conference on Thursday at which these and several other downtown events were announced, and posted about it on the A to Z blog here.

"Mike Kociela and K. Sonderegger, who collaboratively operate Entertainment St. Louis (and) who also organize the three-day Taste of St. Louis festival each October, couldn't confirm the date of the (blues) festival, but Kociela said more information would be released in the next two to three weeks," Lucchesi's post said. "The group plans to take on (but not "Shanghai," they note) a pre-existing jazz festival in St. Louis, and also move it downtown. Kociela wouldn't name the jazz festival in question."

So, to which local jazz festival could Entertainment St. Louis be referring? Let's ponder that for a moment and make some semi-informed guesses.

Given that there's a strong element of hometown promotion to them, events such as the Old Webster Jazz and Blues Festival, Belleville's Wine Dine and Jazz Festival, the Glendale Jazz Festival and the Miles Davis Jazz Festival in Alton all would seem to be bound tightly to their present communities.

With its emphasis on jazz education, the Greater St. Louis Jazz Festival seems right at home on the UMSL campus, with the Touhill Performing Arts Center as its primary venue.

The Whitaker Music Festival at the Missouri Botanical Garden is a weekly series, not a one- or two-day festival like as the others, and also features other musical styles in addition to jazz. It's also quite popular, drawing large crowds to the Garden, and seems an unlikely candidate for a move unless the Garden no longer wants it.

The KMOX Jazz and Wine and Jazz Festival, held previously at Faust Park and Forest Park, lacks strong ties to a particular location and thus could conceivably be a candidate for a move. Given that KMOX's studios are located downtown, moving the event downtown would make a certain amount of sense.

As for the St. Louis Jazz and Heritage Festival, held from 2001 - 2008 in Clayton's Shaw Park, calling it "a pre-existing festival" might be a bit of stretch at this point. The last word from its organizers came way back in November 2008, when they announced they were "going on hiatus" for 2009. Since then, there have been no further public announcements about the event's fate; the website at www.saintlouisjazzfest.com has gone 404; and the website of producers Cultural Festivals, Inc, no longer makes any mention of the Jazz and Heritage Festival whatsoever.

To most observers, those signs would seem to indicate an event as dead as the Norwegian Blue parrot in that old Monty Python sketch. (For those unfamiliar with this paradigm, see the embedded video window below.) Perhaps someone somewhere might feel that the phrase "St Louis Jazz and Heritage Festival" has some value due to residual name recognition, but given the event's checkered history - click here for StLJN's past coverage - they might do better just to start over from scratch.

StLJN will have more details on this story as they are revealed. In the meantime, what do you think, dear readers? Please feel free to add your thoughts in the comments section.

St. Louis Stompers headed to Iowa for Bix Fest

The St. Louis Stompers once again will be one of the featured bands at the Bix Beiderbecke Memorial Jazz Festival, which is scheduled this year for Thursday, July 23 through Sunday, July 26 in Beiderbecke's hometown of Davenport, Iowa.

The event is one of the longest-running and best-known traditional jazz festivals in the country, and the Stompers even merited mentions in preview stories about the event in both the local Quad Cities paper and the Chicago Tribune. For more information on BixFest, check the event's Web site.

St. Louis American's Chris King reporting from Montreal Jazz Festival

Via email, St. Louis American editor Chris King has alerted StLJN to the fact that he was in Montreal for that city's just-concluded jazz festival, and filed a series of online dispatches for the paper, including an account of Ornette Coleman's concert and the saxophonist's acceptance of the fest's Miles Davis Award.

You can read King's other online missives here and here, with more coverage to come in this week's print edition, which will be out Thursday.

More road work ahead for Erin Bode

It's just a coincidence that the pronunciation of Erin Bode's last name rhymes with "roadie," but the St. Louis-based singer and her group very well may need an on-tour helper or two if their travel schedule gets any busier.

This weekend, Bode and band will be headed to Chicago for a gig Sunday as part of the Wine Festival at the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe, IL. The following weekend, they're off to Rochester, NY to perform Saturday, June 13 at a restaurant called Max of Eastman Place as part of the Rochester International Jazz Festival.

Bode also got some favorable press coverage in a recent article at the online news site MinnPost.com as part of a feature story looking at former Twin Cities residents who are doing well in the music business. Bode grew up in Minnesota before moving to St. Louis to attend Webster University. You can read the MinnPost article here.

Notes from the Net: More Miles Davis news; a new solo CD from Rick Braun; NEA names 2010 Jazz Masters; and more

Though it's a bit smaller than usual, thanks to some slow news days over the holiday weekend and a still somewhat-gimpy computer here at StLJN HQ, here's the latest compilation of assorted news briefs and links related to jazz, improvisation, and creative music in St. Louis, including news of musicians originally from the Gateway City, recent visitors, and coming attractions, plus assorted other items of interest:

* Though we've had a couple of Miles Davis-related items already during his birthday week, there's even more, starting with this review from Popdose.com of That's What Happened, a new DVD release of a 1987 Davis concert in Munich with a band featuring Kenny Garrett on sax and flute and go-go/funk master Ricky Weltman on drums.

Courtesy of Miles Davis Online, we also have news of a Miles "50th Anniversary T-Shirt; a brief audio interview Davis did with UK musician and broadcaster Jools Holland; and an essay about The Complete Columbia Recordings: Miles Davis & John Coltrane by Horace Mungin of BlogCritics.com

* Opening the "recent visitors" file, trumpeter Rick Braun (pictured), who was here in April with Jazz Attack at the Ameristar Casino's Bottleneck Blues Bar, will release a new solo CD called All It Takes in July. It's Braun's first solo release in four years.

* To round out this installment of NFTN, we've got some items of general interest to jazz fans. The National Endowment for the Arts has named eight Jazz Masters for 2010, including pianists Muhal Richard Abrams, Kenny Barron and Cedar Walton, composer/arranger Bill Holman, vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson, saxophonist Yusef Lateef, singer Annie Ross, and, for his work as a "jazz advocate," producer, manager, critic and educator George Avakian. Congratulations to all the honorees.

* If it's really true that misery loves company, then perhaps St. Louisans who are lamenting this year's "hiatus" of the St. Louis Jazz and Heritage Festival will take some small solace in the fact that even the jazz capital of the world is having festival troubles right now, as seen in this New York Times article "New York Loses its Jazz Festival": "Around this time of year, posters for the JVC Jazz Festival would be appearing on the streets of New York, and jazz tourists would be finalizing plans to arrive in the middle of June for two weeks of bragworthy shows. But for the first time in 37 years, there will be no major summer jazz festival in New York. Nor will there be related series in Miami or Chicago, as the concert company behind them is suffering a financial crisis."

* Closing out on a somewhat more hopeful note, if you're an independent musician who'd like to make more money and sell more recordings, you may find some useful information over at Music Think Tank, which seems to have lots of ideas about marketing music in the digital age. You can see a list of some of the site's most popular posts here.

Notes from the Net: Rare Miles Davis photos online; Greg Osby, Bela Fleck reviewed; plus interviews, festival news, and more

Here's our weekly compilation of news and links related to jazz, improvisation, and creative music in St. Louis, including news of musicians originally from the Gateway City, recent visitors, and coming attractions, plus assorted other items of interest:

* There's some tasty Miles Davis-related material this week, courtesy of Lockwood & Summit, the staff blog of Euclid Records (and a site yr. humble editor hereby resolves to visit more frequently). Store owner, co-blogger and jazz fan Joe Schwab has written about Davis several times since the first of the year, most recently posting part one of the audio of a 1953 radio interview of the trumpeter by DJ Harry Frost on East St. Louis radio station KXLW.

L&S also has run some rare photographs of Davis, including a picture of him at Lincoln High School in 1944, and a number of photos shot by Bernie Thrasher, a St. Louis jazz fan and amateur photographer who took pictures at many jazz shows here, mostly during the 1950s. Two posts document a Davis gig (with John Coltrane on tenor) at the St. Louis club Peacock Alley, and several others show off previously uncirculated vintage photos of Gerry Mulligan, Chet Baker and others.

In more Miles-related news, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Davis' landmark album Kind of Blue, Stanford University is presenting “50 Years of Kind of Blue: A Live Jazz Laboratory” on Saturday, April 18 on the Stanford campus, and Doug Ramsey's Rifftides had a compilation of Miles Davis quotes last week.

* Saxophonist and St. Louis native Greg Osby's composition "The Single Petal of a Rose" from his St. Louis Shoes CD was reviewed by Jazz.com as part of their ongoing series of reviews of single tracks (as opposed to entire CDs). Osby will be in St. Louis in two weeks for an educational residency with Jazz St. Louis and performances on April 10 and 11 at Jazz at the Bistro .

* And speaking of saxophonists, here's a recent video interview with former Webster University student turned tireless avant garde composer, performer and impresario John Zorn.

* Turning to the "coming attractions" file, AllAboutJazz.com has an interesting piece in which pianist Eric Reed discusses the impact of religious faith on his career as a jazz musician. Reed has recorded for the St. Louis-based label MAXJAZZ, and will be here next week to perform in "The Genius of Eddie Jefferson" at the Bistro.

* Here's a review from JamBase.com of a March 19 show at Yoshi's in Oakland pairing banjo master Bela Fleck and kora player Toumani Diabante on . Both men will perform at the Sheldon Concert Hall this Wednesday, April 1 as part of Fleck's Africa Project tour.

* Trumpeter Sean Jones, who's set to perform at the Bistro from April 15-18, has released a new CD, The Search Within.

* Guitarist and singer John Pizzarelli recently went on Seattle NPR affiliate KPLU to perform a few songs and talk about Richard Rodgers, George Gershwin and the "Great American Songbook." You can listen to an online stream of the broadcast here. Pizzarelli will be in town on Saturday, April 18 as part of the Greater St. Louis Jazz Festival at the Touhill Performing Arts Center.

* Guitarist John Jorgenson (pictured), who's bringing his Django Reinhardt-inspired quintet to the Sheldon in April, recently did an interview and live performance on a local talk show on the Washington, DC NBC affiliate. You can see a video of the segment online here. (Note: The link launches an embedded video player containing a .wmv (Windows Media) file.)

* Opening the "recent visitors" file, saxophonist Javon Jackson, seen here last fall at the Bistro with keyboardist Les McCann, was interviewed by DJ and blogger Leroy "The Jazzcat" Downs; you'll find the conversation in Downs' archives here.

* The Bad Plus, who opened 2009 at the Bistro, were in Philadelphia last week and were the subjects of two feature stories in the local papers.

* From the "Everybody likes free stuff" file: Down Beat magazine is offering online readers the chance to win free trips to the Telluride and Litchfield Jazz Festivals. The packages include airfare, lodging and tickets to the festival. The Telluride Jazz Festival in Colorado runs from June 5-7, and you can enter the Telluride contest here. The Litchfield Jazz Festival in Connecticut runs from July 31-August 2, and you can enter the Litchfield contest here

* And speaking of festivals, a recent article in the New York Times asked the question, "Will New York have a major jazz festival this summer?" It seems that "concert promoters, booking agents and others in the jazz world say that because of the economy and a rift between Festival Network and the impresario George Wein, it is possible that New York will lack a big festival for the first time in 37 years." You can read the whole Times article here, and Howard Mandel has more on the Wein-vs-Festival Network dispute here.

* NYC's festival woes notwithstanding, upstate in Rochester they've got big plans for the eighth annual Xerox Rochester International Jazz Festival, featuring headliners such as Smokey Robinson, Dave Brubeck, St. Louis native Michael McDonald and Taj Mahal as part of a nine-day event held June 12-20.

Impressively, the Rochester fest will include more than 800 musicians performing in 200-plus concerts, which raises a question: How is it that Rochester - which I'm sure is a nice place filled with fine folks, but is neither a major metropolis nor a particularly significant historic center of jazz activity - is able to successfully mount a festival on this scale, while the St. Louis Jazz and Heritage Festival, which actually began the year before the Rochester event, has been reduced to going "on hiatus" for 2009 because they were unable to marshal the necessary resources and/or moxie to organize a single day of programming? I'm just sayin'...

* Following up on last week's item about the possible demise of famed Detroit jazz club Baker's Keyboard Lounge, Clayton McDonnell of MAXJAZZ sent along a link to an item from the Los Angeles Times noting that long-running LA venue the Jazz Bakery has lost its lease. Fortunately, the Jazz Bakery's operators seem to have both the interest and the funding to re-open in a new location, though exactly where is unknown at this time. You can read the whole story here.

* Last, but not least, the UK newspaper the Guardian is running an ongoing series of articles about 50 key moments in jazz that defined the music's history. It';s the sort of thing that, even if you disagree with some of the specifics picks, provides some entertaining food for thought and/or discussion. The home page for the Guardian's "50 Great Moments In Jazz" series is here.

Notes from the Net: Gary Bartz on Miles Davis; more on Kind of Blue's 50th anniversary; plus news, reviews, and more.

It's time for this week's compilation of news and links related to jazz in St. Louis, including musicians from the Gateway City, recent visitors and coming attractions - plus assorted other items of interest:

* Here's another review of the deluxe 50th Anniversary edition of Miles Davis' landmark album Kind of Blue, from AllAboutJazz.com's Jeff Stockton, and, from Blogcritics, a review of the two-CD "Legacy" edition of KoB, which includes two discs of music but omits the 12" box and the fancy book.

* Ben Ratliff of the New York Times reviews a Jazz at Lincoln Center concert paying tribute to KoB and John Coltrane's Giant Steps, another jazz milestone that's also 50 years old in 2009: "The albums don’t need respectful glosses, performances that harden them into the status of luxury goods; they need challenging and taking apart. And Thursday night’s concert at Rose Theater, built around the albums (and repeated on Friday), did that rather elegantly."

* On another Davis-related note, the Jazz Video Guy (a.k.a. Bret Primack) recently posted an interview with Gary Bartz in which the veteran saxophonist talks about his time as a member of Miles' ground-breaking electric ensemble. You can see it in the embedded video window at the bottom of this post.

* Pianist and St. Louisan-turned-New Yorker Linda Presgrave (pictured) has a new CD, Inspiration, which features interpretations of songs from female jazz composers. Read a review here.

* St. Louis native, singer, dancer and actress Josephine Baker figures prominently in "The Jazz Century," a major exhibition opening next month in Paris that examines the influence of jazz on artists ranging from Baker to the Dutch modernist painter Piet Mondriaan.

* Saxophonist, composer and one-time Webster University student John Zorn is heading west in March for a run of shows at Yoshi's in San Francisco.

* The Bad Plus, who opened 2009 here at Jazz at the Bistro, recently were featured on the National Public Radio program "Jazz Set with Dee Dee Bridgewater." Also, from the Jazz and Blues Reviews blog, here's another review of their new CD For All I Care.

* With the St. Louis Jazz and Heritage Festival officially "on hiatus" for 2009, yr. humble editor's thoughts occasionally are wandering to the notion of how a resurrected St. Louis fest might be improved. Perhaps we could learn something from the Detroit jazz festival, a free event held every year over Labor Day weekend that will celebrate its 30th anniversary by commissioning a major new work about the city and its jazz legacy from its 2009 artist-in-residence, bassist and composer John Clayton. The Detroit fest is also making an effort to hire more local musicians and to involve other arts groups in town, two things I've repeatedly encouraged St. Louis' festival organizers to do. Read all about it here.

* Despite the efforts of Senator Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma) to bar any funding for the arts from the economic stimulus bill currently before the U.S. Congress, we learn via Alex Ross' The Rest is Noise that the final version of the legislation will indeed include $50 million in additional money to preserve jobs and programs at arts institutions that may be hurt by the economic downturn. As composer, bandleader and blogger Darcy James Argue notes here, score one for the good guys.

St. Louis Rivermen play McComb festival

The St. Louis Rivermen were one of the featured attractions at the Al Sears Jazz Festival held this past weekend in McComb, IL, and were quite the crowd pleasers according to the local paper's account of the event, which you can read here. The festival also included performances from the Craig Russo Latin Jazz Project, who were in St. Louis earlier this month to play Jazz at the Bistro; Chicago jazz violinist Diane Delin; and five other bands.

Old Webster Jazz and Blues Festival set for Saturday, September 20

The Old Webster Jazz and Blues Festival has announced the musical lineup for its eighth annual event, which will be held from noon to 11:00 p.m. on Saturday, September 20 in the Webster Groves Historic District at Gore and Lockwood Avenue.

A total of ten bands will be featured on two outdoor stages, with headlining sets from singer Erin Bode (on the Allen Avenue stage) and the New Orleans-style funk/R&B/zydeco band Gumbohead and special guests the Funky Butt Brass Band (on the Gore Avenue stage).

The event also will include jazz performances from guitarist Todd Mosby (pictured), the Pfeffer Trio with Debby Lennon, Anita Rosamond, the Webster University Faculty Jazz Band and the Webster Groves High School Jazz Band, as well as blues from the Soulard Blues Band, the SteamRollers, and Marquise Knox.

The Old Webster Jazz and Blues Festival is free and open to the public, and goes on rain or shine. For more information, visit their Web site.

Cornet Chop Suey, Jean Kittrell to headline Madison jazz festival's 20th anniversary party

Two St. Louis-based jazz groups are headed north to Madison, WI this week to headline the 20th anniversary celebration of the Capital City Jazz Fest there.

Traditional jazz festival circuit favorites Cornet Chop Suey and Jean Kittrell and the St. Louis Rivermen will be featured at the fest's birthday party on Thursday night, and also will perform this weekend. The three-day Capital City Jazz Fest is produced by the Madison Jazz Society.

Kittrell, Cornet Chop Suey to play jazz festival in Oregon

The St. Louis-based traditional jazz bands Cornet Chop Suey and Jean Kittrell and the St. Louis Rivermen will head to the West Coast next week to play the 25th Annual Oregon Dixieland Jubilee in Seaside, OR. The event takes place February 22 through February 24 at various venues around the city, and also will include bands from California, Washington, Connecticut, and North Carolina.

Another jazz festival for St. Louis?

Speaking of news in brief, while perusing the news section of AllAboutJazz.com this weekend, I ran across an item which I will reproduce here in its entirety:

"The Grant Green Jazz Festival is tentatively scheduled for July 4th to 6th 2009 in St. Louis, Missouri. St. Louis is Grant's hometown."

That's it; that's the entire article. With no further details of any kind, it's hard to know if this is legitimate, someone's wishful thinking, a joke, an attempt to gauge potential interest, or something else entirely. (I checked Google, and the only search result for "Grant Green Jazz Festival" led back to the same AllAboutJazz.com item.) Obviously, a lot can happen between now and July 2009; if and when more information is forthcoming, StLJN will, of course, be on the story.