Piano phenom Eldar to perform at the Bistro on November 9

Jazz St. Louis has announced that 19-year-old piano phenom Eldar Djangirov, known professionally by just his first name, will come to St. Louis on Thursday, November 9 for a one-night stand at Jazz at the Bistro.

A native of Kyrgystan who was just 11 when he arrived in the United States in 1998, Eldar caused an almost immediate sensation, in short order appearing on pianist Marian McPartland's radio program Piano Jazz, CBS' Sunday Morning news program and the Grammy Awards telecast. He released his debut CD for Sony Classical in 2005 and a followup earlier this year, and also has been performing at major festivals, concert halls and clubs while continuing his education at the University of Southern California. Like his contemporary Taylor Eigsti, Eldar's style is rooted in some serious classical chops, and critics often have compared his playing to the florid, highly ornamented pianistics of musicians such as Art Tatum, Oscar Peterson and Phineas Newborn Jr.

For his St. Louis gig, he'll perform sets at the Bistro's usual times of 8:30 p.m. and 10:15 p.m.. Tickets are on sale now. In the meantime, you can get a little preview of Eldar by checking out the two video clips accompanying this post. The first shows the young pianist and his trio performing "Point of View," a song from his first CD, at a concert last year in Moscow, Idaho, and the second is from March 2006 and was recorded in Amsterdam.

Jazz this week: Luciana Souza's Brazilian duos and more

With the Cardinals facing off with the New York Mets for the National League championship and a possible trip to the World Series, baseball-loving St. Louisans - and that's a fairly substantial portion of the city's population, your humble editor included - are understandably in the full grip of pennant fever. However, it should be noted that there's plenty of good music happening in St. Louis this week, too.

Brazilian singer Luciana Souza (pictured) is the main touring jazz attraction visiting the Gateway City, performing two sets a night through Saturday at Jazz at the Bistro. Souza is working with just her longtime collaborator and guitarist Roberto Lubambo on this tour, exploring the same format used on her most recent Grammy nominated CD, Duos II, which itself was a sequel to her 2002 CD Brazilian Duos. She's a critical favorite, having earned two previous Grammy nominations as well as awards from the Jazz Journalists Association, the Down Beat Critic's Poll, and others. As good as Souza is, some might find the duo format a bit monochromatic. But if you like the more subtle, intimate side of Brazilian music, this show should be right up your alley.

As for St. Louis-based musicians, there are a number of noteworthy shows this week, starting on Thursday when singer Valerie Tichacek and Friends are at Cookie's Jazz and More and the always suave Hugh "Peanuts" Whalum holds forth at Brandt's. On Friday, tenor sax master Willie Akins gets a relatively rare club date in his hometown of Webster Groves as he performs with bassist Willem Von Hambrecht at Crossings Taverne and Grille, while fellow saxophonist Tim Cunningham will be bringing his smooth jazz sound to Finale Music and Dining.

Finale sticks with a contemporary flavor on Saturday, presenting the funk and hip-hop-inflected sounds of multi-instrumentalist Lamar Harris. If you're more in the mood for a piano trio that night, head to Brandt's for mainstream favorites Trio Tres Bien or to Crossings to catch Carolbeth True.

As usually happens, time and space limit us to listing just a few of the available options for St. Louis jazz fans, but you can see a more complete menu of this week's gigs by visiting the St. Louis Jazz Notes Calendar.

(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. No attachments, please.)

Trading trumpets: Payton out, Douglas in for SF Jazz Collective's Spring 2007 tour

Call it a classic bad news/good news scenario. The bad news, as passed along to StLJN by Jazz St. Louis operations director Bob Bennett, is that the very fine trumpeter Nicholas Payton (pictured at left) will not be appearing with the SF Jazz Collective when they perform in St. Louis at Jazz at the Bistro next spring.

The good news? The adventurous and acclaimed trumpeter Dave Douglas (pictured below) will be filling the trumpet chair for the band on the entire tour, including their St. Louis dates. From the information sent to JSL by the SF Jazz Collective's booking firm, International Music Network:

"We regret to inform you that Nicholas Payton will be not be a part of the SFJAZZ Collective tour this March.

But we are pleased to announce that we have added trumpet virtuoso Dave Douglas in his place. Dave won best trumpeter this year in the Down Beat magazine readers poll. Dave Douglas is widely recognized as one of the most important and original American musicians to emerge from the jazz and improvised music scene of the last decades.

We are very excited to have Dave on the tour and look forward to his contributions to this incredible ensemble of musicians."

For me, this makes what was already a must-see gig into even more of a must-see, if that makes any sense at all. While I'll admit to being familiar with only a small fraction of Douglas' extremely large recorded output, I was most impressed with his quintet's performance at the 2005 US Bank St. Louis Jazz Festival, and look forward to the chance to see him perform live again, especially with a group of excellent musicians like those who make up the SF Jazz Collective.

Finale presenting Person, Jordan, Chestnut and Adair this fall

Since our last "coming attractions"-type post, Finale Music and Dining has confirmed bookings this fall for several touring acts, starting with saxophonist and St. Louis native Eric Person (pictured), who will appear at Finale with his band Meta-Four on Saturday, October 28.

Following Person in quick succession are guitarist Stanley Jordan, who's playing on Wednesday, November 1 and Thursday, November 2, and pianist Cyrus Chestnut, who will perfom on Friday, November 3 and Saturday, November 4. Finale has also confirmed another date for pianist Beegie Adair, who will return to St. Louis to play the club on Saturday, December 9.

And speaking of Person, the versatile saxophonist seems positively psyched about how things are going on his current tour, which is winding its way through the Midwest and Southwest this month and next. From an email he sent on Tuesday:

"My band Meta-Four had an exciting masterclass and concert at Knox College. It so exciting to hear this music transform itself from nite to nite. On Thursday we were at Bard College doing the tune-up to the tour. Saturday was Indianapolis.The surprises seem endless. This is what great music is all about. The experience, magic, passion and the flight to another place. This band has it all.

Many of you saw the band last year during our Midwest Tour 2005. That was just the beginning, cause in 2007 (sic) we ventured out to Cali, and then back to the Midwest. Now we have a new piano player. A fantastic player named Jarod Kashkin. He replaces Meta-Four's longtime pianist John Esposito. We had some great gigs over the years with John, but this is a new era. There's a new vibe in the air."

To see a complete list of Person's tour dates, visit his Web site.

MAXJAZZ releases new Russell Malone CD

The St. Louis-based label MAXJAZZ has a new release this week, Live at the Jazz Standard, Volume One by guitarist Russell Malone. Malone is familiar to St. Louis audiences from his appearances in recent years at Jazz at the Bistro - he even recorded a live CD there for another label with pianist Benny Green - and this is his second CD for MAXJAZZ, following up on 2004's Playground. The label is offering some sample excerpts from the new CD in an online "E-card," which can be accessed here.

MAXJAZZ also continues to offer a discount on purchases made via the Web. If you buy one CD at the regular $16.99 price, you can get up to four more at $12.99 each and get free shipping in the U.S.. For details, visit the MAXJAZZ Web site

Free downloads of Bowie, Davis and Zorn included in "Beginner's Guide To Free Jazz"

The fine folks who run the avant-jazz weblog Destination Out are offering free downloads of tracks by the Art Ensemble of Chicago (with St. Louis' Lester Bowie, pictured at left), Miles Davis and John Zorn as part of their "Beginner's Guide to Free Jazz."

The Guide is described by the authors as "our humble attempt to make Free Jazz (aka Avant Garde Jazz aka Adventurous Jazz aka That Horrible Racket) more understandable to folks who don’t normally listen to much jazz at all," and they've included some good stuff from the likes of Don Cherry, Archie Shepp, Herbie Hancock and many others as well. Download the tracks, read the commentaries, and/or follow the supporting links offered here.

StLJN Saturday at the Movies: A little Night Music from Dizzy and David

This week, we're featuring a couple of clips from the television series Night Music (aka Sunday Night), a late night program that originally aired on NBC for two years in the late 1980s and has since attained near-legendary status for its eclectic mix of musical guests. St. Louis native David Sanborn was one of the hosts of the program, and in the first video you can see him performing "Ooh Shoobie Doobie" with trumpeter (and, not incidentally, entertainer extraordinaire) John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie. This one is worth watching just to see Dizzy's facial expressions as he delivers the nonsensical yet catchy lyric and the band members grinning maniacally as they join in on the chorus.

The second clip features Diz clowning a bit with co-host Jools Holland before settling in for a version of his bebop-era classic "Tin Tin Deo". Sanborn and Gillespie are backed on both numbers by the program 's house band, which at this juncture consisted of Omar Hakim on drums, Marcus Miller on bass, Phillipe Saisse on keyboards and Hiram Bullock on guitar.

With so many old television programs being reisussed on DVD these days, I find it hard to understand why Night Music has languished in the vaults. Perhaps there are clearance or rights issues with some of the performances or compositions; perhaps there are other business reasons for not issuing the shows on DVD. I don't know enough about the economics of DVD sets to guess at how many units a Night Music/Sunday Night set would need to sell to turn a profit, but given how fondly the program is remembered by those who saw it when it first aired originally, it would seem that there's definitely some sort of market for the material. In the meantime, it's nice to have clips like these which, though they may have a few technical flaws, are still fun to watch and give those who missed it a reasonably good idea of what the program was like.

Jazz this week: Good 4 The Soul, San Gabriel Seven and more

Apologies to regular readers for the relative dearth of posts recently. Various personal and business concerns and some computer problems here at StLJN HQ have conspired to cut severely into my Internet time, but things should be easing up a bit soon, allowing for more discretionary posts as well as breaking news.

In the meantime, let's consider what's happening in St. Louis jazz his weekend. While the past two weeks were filled with various headliners and special events, things are a bit quieter this week on the touring artist front.

Jazz at the Bistro is spotlighting Good 4 The Soul, a group of veteran musicians from East St. Louis who will be playing at the club in Grand Center on Friday and Saturday. I've not heard them perform in this particular configuration, but have been impressed by the work of the individual players, particularly keyboardist Adaron Jackson, when I've heard them with other groups.

At Finale, singer Erin Bode performs tonight and Friday night, and on Saturday the club will host the St. Louis debut of the San Gabriel Seven (pictured), a Latin/jazz/funk band out of Pasadena, CA. With a couple of Berklee grads in the lineup and three band members who have day jobs at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, one is tempted to make some sort of crack about "space age jazz," but judging from the sound samples on their Web site, they're a bit more conventional than that, often taking a brassy, mini-big band approach that, for fans of the genre, is no less enjoyable for being somewhat derivative.

Elsehwere in town, there's live jazz on stage this weekend at Cookie's, Brandt's, Crossings Taverne and Grille, Spruill's, Mangia Italiano and a number of other spots. For a more extensive listing, please consult the St. Louis Jazz Notes Calendar.