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.)

Sunday Session: April 8, 2018

Cecil Taylor

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:

* Spotify Is Killing Song Titles (Medium.com)
* Branford Marsalis talks jazz, classical and playing with Miles Davis, Grateful Dead, Public Enemy (San Diego Union Tribune)
* Did Simon & Garfunkel Write The Jewish ‘Sgt. Pepper?’ (The Forward)
* Arcade Fire: 'People have lost the ability to even know what a joke is. It’s very Orwellian (The Guardian)
* You Can’t Find What You Don’t Look For: Spotify, Google, Pandora Can’t Find Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler and Joe Perry–but what about Martha Stewart (MuscTechPolicy.com)
* The Festival Legend: George Wein – 64 Years Of Producing Festivals From Newport To New Orleans And Far Beyond (Pollstar.com)
* At Roulette, Admirers Gather To Honor John Abercrombie (DownBeat)
* The Lofty Optimism of Spotify and the Influence of the Streaming Revolution (The New Yorker)
* Instrumental Listens to 30,000 New Songs a Day to Find the Next Hit. So Why Do We Need A&R People, Again? (DigitalMusicNews.com)
* The sample legacy of Sly And The Family Stone (TheVinylFactory.com)
* The Day Herbie Hancock Met the Electric Piano (OZY.com)
* Q&A with Norma Winstone: The Consummate Voice (DownBeat)
* Stream a 144-Hour Discography of Classic Jazz Recordings from Blue Note Records: Miles Davis, Art Blakey, John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman & More (OpenCulture.com)
* How a Calypso Anthem Became the Surreal Centerpiece of Beetlejuice (Pitchfork)
* Inside Jimi Hendrix’s blood-spattered record collection (NME)
* Venture Beyond a Walking Bass Line with the All-American Walter Page, in Deep Dive (WBGO)
* Can Biomusic Offer Kids With Autism a New Way to Communicate? (Smithsonian)
* Love, London, and an enormous Moog: how Simon & Garfunkel made Bookends (The Telegraph)
* How much will artists get paid from the major labels’ Spotify profits? (MusicBusinessWorldwide.com)
* Avant-Garde Pianist Cecil Taylor Dies at 89 (DownBeat)
* Cecil Taylor Dies at 89 - Piano titan pioneered the jazz avant-garde with an utterly unique sound, technique and approach to improvisation (Jazz Times)
* Cecil Taylor (1929 - 2018) (The Free Jazz Collective)
* Cecil Taylor, Jazz Icon Of The Avant-Garde, Dies At 89 (NPR)
* Cecil Taylor, Pianist Who Defied Jazz Orthodoxy, Is Dead at 89 (New York Times)
* How The #VinylRevival Is Paradoxically Threatening Record Shop Survival (TheQuietus.com)
* What’s Up Tiger Lily?: The wild story of the tax scam record label run by the notorious Morris Levy (DangerousMinds.net)

StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: Abdullah Ibrahim & Ekaya

This week, let's check out some videos featuring pianist Abdullah Ibrahim, who will be appearing with his band Ekaya in a concert next Saturday, April 14 at the Sheldon Concert Hall.

Born in 1934 in Cape Town, South Africa, Ibrahim grew up under his country's apartheid system of segregation, which was in place from 1948 to 1993. After briefly studying music at the University of Cape Town, in 1959 he formed the Jazz Epistles, a septet that featured the young Hugh Masekela on trumpet and recorded the first-ever jazz album by black South African musicians. Although the group was relatively short-lived, the influence of their music - a variant on the hard bop of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, garnished with a bit of local flavor - was significant in their home country.

Moving to Europe in 1962, Ibrahim would be mentored by Duke Ellington, who helped him sign his first record deal in the USA with Reprise Records, and would go on to a major career as a pianist, composer and bandleader, touring the world and recording more than 70 albums over the next six decades.

Now 84, Ibrahim for the last couple of years has been revisiting his early years with a touring show paying tribute to the music of the Jazz Epistles. While Hugh Masekela originally was intended to be part of the proceedings, his failing health and eventual death in January of this year have led to Ibrahim employing several substitute trumpeters in his place, including Wadada Leo Smith, Terence Blanchard, and Freddie Hendrix, who will perform with Ibrahim in St. Louis.

You can see one of the Jazz Epistles tribute shows featuring Blanchard in its entirety, recorded at last summer's Jazzaldia festival in Spain, in the first video embed up above.

After the jump, there's a collection of various other clips featuring Ibrahim. The first two videos, both from the 2011 Jazzaldia festival, featuring the pianist and Ekaya performing "Water from an Ancient World" and "John."

Next is a video of another full show, featuring Ibrahim leading a trio in December 2016 at the Library of Congress, where he was a designated "Jazz Scholar" that year.

That's followed by two solo piano performances, "Triste - My Love" and "Blues For A Hip King," both recorded in June 2016 in the studios of KNKX Public Radio in Tacoma, WA.

Last but not least, as a lagniappe you can see some of the earliest existing footage featuring Ibrahim. The video of the song "Jabolani" ("Joy") was recorded in 1968 for German television, and features the pianist with saxophonists John Tchicai and Gato Barbieri, bassist Barre Phillips, and drummer Makaya Ntshoko.

For more about Abdullah Ibrahim, check his 2011 interview with Marc Myers' Jazzwax blog, and his 2016 interview with the Irish Times.

You can see the rest of today's videos after the jump...

So What: Local News, Notes & Links

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

* More reviews of the just-released box set Miles Davis and John Coltrane: The Final Tour - Bootleg Series, Vol 6 are surfacing online, including one from AllAboutJazz.com's Doug Collette,
one from Slate's Fred Kaplan, and one by Jeff Tamarkin for Relix.

* The St. Louis Post-Dispatch/STLtoday.com has put online an "iParty" gallery of photos from Ken Page's performance Wednesday night at Jazz at the Bistro, shot by the P-D's Jon Gitchoff. 

* Trumpeter Russell Gunn (pictured) this week announced the release date for his next album. Get It How You Live, the debut recording of Gunn's Royal Krunk Jazz Orkestra, will be out on Ropeadope Records on Friday, July 13.

* Drummer Allison Miller talked about her gigs this weekend at Jazz at the Bistro with the Post-Dispatch's Calvin Wilson.

* Organizers of the Nevermore Jazz Ball have announced the event's dates for 2018. The annual celebration of swing dancing and music will take place from Thursday, November 1 through Sunday, November 4 at various venues around town, with tickets going on sale on a date this summer TBA.

* North County is getting a new musical instrument store in a familiar location, as Low Key Music will open next Monday, April 9 at 6235 N. Lindbergh, the former site of Dale's Music. The store's Facebook page also has announced an "open house" for musicians and band directors from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. tomorrow (Saturday, April 7).

* The St. Louis American's inimitable Delores Shante offered her impressions of one of last week's performances by The Baylor Project at the Bistro.

* St. Louis will be represented at this year's North Sea Jazz Festival, as saxophonist David Sanborn and trumpeter Keyon Harrold are among the musicians announced this week who will be heading to Rotterdam, the Netherlands, in July for the three-day event.

* Voting is now open for the next group of prospective inductees to Jazz at Lincoln Center's Ertegun Jazz Hall of Fame, and one of this year's 10 nominees has a local connection. That would be the innovative bassist Jimmy Blanton, who gained fame playing with Duke Ellington's orchestra before his tragic death from tuberculosis at age 23. Blanton's very first professional job was in St. Louis, playing with the Jeter-Pillars Orchestra for a year before joining Ellington.

You can see the whole list of nominated musicians and cast your vote here. Voting ends at 11:59 p.m. EDT on Saturday, April 28, and the three nominees who receive the most votes will be inducted in 2018.

* Keyboardist and Metro East native David Garfield, best known for his work with guitarist and singer George Benson, has a new tune on, of all places, the country charts. According to a press release,  “I Lied,” a "power pop" ballad written by Garfield with Motown's Smokey Robinson and sung by vocalist J. Paris, has reached No. 60 on the Music Row singles chart this week and gained New & Active status on the Billboard Indicator chart. The song will appear on Garfield’s upcoming album Vox Outside the Box, release date TBA.

Jazz this week: Ken Page, Miller, Mulkerhar & Lefkowitz-Brown, C. Spencer Yeh & Andrew Lampert, Mark Lettieri, Anat Cohen & more

It's a busy week for live jazz and creative music in St. Louis, with performances in styles ranging from cabaret to vintage jazz to fusion to experimental intermedia and beyond.

Let's go to the highlights...

Wednesday, April 4
Singer, actor and St. Louis native Ken Page, now living back in his hometown after a distinguished career on Broadway and in film, will perform his cabaret show for the first of two nights at Jazz at the Bistro .

Page (pictured, top left), whose resume includes the original casts of Ain't Misbehavin' and Cats, will be making his debut at the Bistro with these shows, and the demand for tickets should be high, so advance reservations are strongly suggested.

Also on Wednesday, the weekly "Grand Center Jazz Crawl" features saxophonist Austin Cebulski and guitarist Tom Byrne at The Stage at KDHX; the jam session led by bassist Bob DeBoo at the Kranzberg Arts Center; and trumpeter Kasimu Taylor's band at The Dark Room.

Thursday, April 5
Roya and the High Timers perform vintage jazz and swing for the monthly "Koken House Shout" at Koken Art Factory; saxophonist Dave Stone brings his trio to The Dark Room; and pianist Adam Maness' trio will be back at Thurman's in Shaw.

Friday, April 6
Drummer Allison Miller, trumpeter Riley Mulherkar and saxophonist Chad Lefkowitz-Brown wrap up a week-long educational residency for Jazz St. Louis with the first of two evenings of performances at Jazz at the Bistro. (As with past occasions when JSL has assembled an ad hoc band from among visiting clinicians,  the three NYC-based musicians presumably will be supported by local players on bass and piano or guitar, but as of this writing Jazz St. Louis hasn't shared any information as to who they'll be.)

Also on Friday, singer Ken Haller will reprise his cabaret show "Song by Song by Sondheim" for the first of two nights at the Kranzberg Arts Center, and Miss Jubilee plays for dancers at the Casa Loma Ballroom.

Saturday, April 7
New Music Circle presents musician C. Spencer Yeh and artist, filmmaker and St. Louis native Andrew Lampert (pictured, bottom left) in a collaborative performance at The Luminary.

You can find out more about both men and see some related videos in this post from last Saturday.

Also on Saturday, guitarist Mark Lettieri, known for his work as a member of Snarky Puppy, leads a trio at The Ready Room; singer and actor Norm Lewis will perform music from Broadway and the Great American Songbook at the Sheldon Concert Hall; and trumpeter Jim Manley leads at trio at the house concert venue KindaBlue Club.

Sunday, April 8
The Arcadia Dance Orchestra will perform vintage pre-war jazz in a matinee at Christ Church Cathedral, and the Coleman Hughes Project with singer Adrianne Felton-King will present a "Tribute to Sade" at The Signature Club.

Monday, April 9
Dizzy Atmosphere plays for diners at The Shaved Duck; the Webster University Jazz Collective will perform in concert at Winifred Moore Auditorium on the Webster campus; and singer and impressionist Dean Christopher brings his "Rat Pack & More" show back to One 19 North Tapas and Wine Bar.

Tuesday, April 10
Clarinetist Anat Cohen brings her Tentet to McKendree University's Hettenhausen Center for the Arts in Lebanon, IL (which, for those contemplating the drive, is roughly the same distance from the Gateway Arch as Chesterfield.)

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.)

Jim Widner wins 2018 "Jazz Hero" award from Jazz Journalists Association

The Jazz Journalists Association has named Jim Widner of St. Louis as one of its local "Jazz Heroes" for 2018.

In a press release announcing the award, the JJA defines Jazz Heroes as "advocates, altruists, activists, aiders and abettors of jazz who have had significant impact in their local communities.” There are 22 individuals in this year's group of award winners, chosen from 20 cities across the USA.

A bassist, bandleader and educator, Widner (pictured) has worked with the Stan Kenton Orchestra, Woody Herman Big Band, and the Glenn Miller Orchestra directed by Buddy DeFranco, as well as leading his own Jim Widner Big Band. Building on his experience working for Kenton, he founded and has run his own summer jazz camps for more than 30 years, with annual sessions in St. Louis and Omaha, NE. Widner has served since 2003 as director of jazz studies at the University of Missouri - St. Louis, where in 2004 he also founded the Greater St. Louis Jazz Festival.

Widner is the fourth St. Louisan to win the "Jazz Hero" award. The late Don Wolff, a longtime jazz broadcaster, MC, and advocate for the music, won in 2015; Dennis Owsley - author, photographer, and host of "Jazz Unlimited" on St. Louis Public Radio - was a winner in 2016; and Richard Henderson, mentor to many young St. Louis musicians and an impresario and presenter with the local organization Crusaders for Jazz, won in 2017.

The JJA award will be presented to Widner in a ceremony in St. Louis, details TBA.

Recently on Heliocentric Worlds

It's the start of a new month, and so it's time once again to check in on StLJN's sibling site Heliocentric Worlds, where each day there's posted a new online music video, drawing on genres including jazz, blues, soul, funk, classic rock, prog rock, experimental and more.

The five most-watched videos added to the site last month were:

Carmen McRae - Live at the Newport Jazz Festival
George Coleman & Ahmad Jamal - "My Foolish Heart"
Sun Ra Arkestra - Live at the Kongsberg Jazz Festival
Bonnie Raitt - Live on The Old Grey Whistle Test
Keith Jarrett - Live at the Molde Jazz Festival

Other recent posts have included videos featuring Ruben Blades, Frankie Beverly & Maze, Albert Collins, Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band, Hermeto Pascoal Group, The Baylor Project, Bob James Quartet, Dexter Gordon, Vijay Iyer Trio, The Who, Maynard Ferguson, Wet Willie, Billy Cobham, Stanley Clarke, Levon Helm, John Klemmer, Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings, Tom Scott and the LA Express, Marc Ribot's Ceramic Dog, Talking Heads, Taj Mahal & Keb' Mo', Bootsy Collins, Santana, Roy Buchanan, and the Cecil Taylor Group.

If you're just now tuning in, don't worry - you still can see all these videos, plus thousands more from the archives, by visiting http://heliocentricworlds.blogspot.com/.

Sunday Session: April 1, 2018

Lionel Loueke

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:

* Spring arts 2018: Meet musician Anthony Davis (San Diego Union Tribune)
* At 93, Roy Haynes Remains a Nuanced Drummer (DownBeat)
* Roxy Music: Legendary LA Shows Catch Zappa And The Mothers At Their Most Inventive (UDiscoverMusic.com)
* Mud Morganfield Honors the Past and Chases the Future (AmericanBluesScene.com)
* A Tom Waits Listening Primer (Bandcamp.com)
* Can One Company Catalog Every Record Ever Made? (Paste)
* How Wes Anderson Perfected the Music-Nerd Soundtrack (Pitchfork.com)
* Physical music outsold digital downloads in the US last year (FactMag.com)
* SXSW: Music Journalism Panel Illuminates Streaming’s Impact on Editorial Decisions (Variety)
* Sony Music Overhauls Legacy Label to Adapt to Streaming World (EXCLUSIVE) (Variety)
* The MPS Label Celebrates a Resurgence (DownBeat)
* Jazz's Bleeding Edge? You Can Find It, Briefly, In Eastern Tennessee (WBGO)
* Chad Lawson Wants To Revive Piano For The 'Spotify Generation' (NPR)
* Experimental music's reliance on Facebook is counterintuitive – but there are alternatives (The Guardian)
* Q&A with Guitarist Lionel Loueke: Signature Sound (DownBeat)
* 'It's like being a prizefighter': the busker who went viral on his new chance at fame (The Guardian)
* How Steinway's $133,000 Spirio self-playing piano engineered a symphonic turnaround (USA Today)
* Going to concerts helps you live longer, according to new research (The Independent)
* Jazz Legend Sonny Rollins Can No Longer Play His Horn, But He's Still Searching for His Sound (People)
* David Byrne on the Music That Made Him (Pitchfork.com)
* Musicians hit by 'management scam' (BBC)
* 'I'm 100 per cent myself': Fred Hersch's life is an open book (CBCMusic.ca)
* Cal Tjader: San Francisco to Portland with Seattle a Bust (Jazz Profiles)
* Braxton Issues 11-disc Rumination on Charlie Parker (DownBeat)
* iTunes Announces All Music Downloads Will Be Shut Down and It's Not a 'Black Mirror' Episode (BaebleMusic.com)
* Timeless New York Tribute As All-Star Line-Up Gathers In Celebration Of John Abercrombie (Jazzwise)
* The Roots Of Van Morrison's 'Astral Weeks' (WBUR)
* Learning Through Listening: Shabaka Hutchings Favourite LPs (TheQuietus.com)
* The Bad Plus: Goodbye, Hello (Jazz Times)
* Q&A with Matthew Shipp: ‘Out of Nothingness’ (DownBeat)
* Wynton Marsalis Reflects on 30 Years of Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra (Billboard)
* Mere Virtuosity - Variations on a Slippery Idea (VQRonline.org)
* Organ Grinding - When the audience revolted at Carnegie Hall (The American Scholar)
* The Defiant Ones’ Jimmy Iovine on the future of streaming and “stepping back” from Apple Music (FactMag.com)
* Treasure unearthed from late Houston jazz legend (Houston Chronicle)