So What: Local News, Notes & Links

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

* Record megalabel Columbia/Legacy last week announced the release of a sixth volume in their "Bootleg Series" of Miles Davis live recordings.

Miles Davis & John Coltrane - The Final Tour is a four-CD set (pictured) documenting five shows from Davis' 1960 tour of Europe, and is set for release on Friday, March 23, 2018.

* A story in UMSL Daily details the upcoming travels of the UMSL Big Band directed by Jim Widner, including a trip next week to Chicago for the annual Midwest Clinic and appearances in January at the Jazz Education Network convention in Dallas and the Missouri Music Educators Association conference at the Lake of the Ozarks.

* Singer, actor and Belleville native Lea DeLaria was the subject of a feature story on the website OutInStL.com. DeLaria, who's starred on Broadway and in cabaret, TV, and film, will make her debut at Jazz at the Bistro with shows on Wednesday, December 27 and Thursday, December 28 that also will feature singer Janis Siegel of Manhattan Transfer as a guest performer.

* The STL Free Jazz Collective has posted to YouTube a video of their complete performance with multi-instrumentalist Douglas Ewart earlier this month at the 14th St. Artist Community. 

* Also on YouTube, saxophonist Eric Person has posted a video from his show with fellow saxophonist Houston Person in March of this year at Dizzy's Club in NYC.

* The Sheldon has posted to Facebook a photo album from the Spanish Harlem Orchestra's performance there last week.

* Guitarist Dave Black's upcoming album, a collaboration with blues guitarists Tom Hall and Brian Curran, is previewed in a Riverfront Times story by Thomas Crone.

* Also in the RFT, the Funky Butt Brass Band's "Holiday Brasstravaganza" and their new Christmas album are the subjects of a brief feature story by Christian Schaeffer.

* Right Up On, saxophonist/composer Oliver Lake's recent recording in collaboration with the FLUX Quartet, made the New York Times' recently published list of "The 25 Best Classical Music Recordings of 2017."

* Singer Debby Lennon's latest theatrical role, as tone-deaf diva Florence Foster Jenkins in Max and Louis Productions' upcoming staging of the musical Souvenir, is the subject of a short feature by St. Louis Post-Dispatch theater critic Judith Newmark.

* Percussionist Moacyr Marchini of Samba Bom will lead a series of eight Brazilian percussion workshops for adult students beginning Wednesday, January 10 at Lucha in Grand Center. For more info about the workshops and how to sign up, go here.

* The venerable Edwardsville drinking spot Laurie's Place, which in recent months has featured a jazz jam session on Tuesday nights, will close at the end of this year.

Jazz this week: Houston Person, Nevermore Jazz Ball, Eric Marienthal, and more

This week's calendar of live jazz and creative music in St. Louis includes one of the most popular swing dance festivals in the Midwest, a couple of stellar saxophonists, and more. Let's go to the highlights...

Wednesday, November 1
Veteran tenor saxophonist Houston Person (pictured, top left) returns to lead a quartet for the first of four nights at Jazz at the Bistro.

Person, who will turn 83 in November, remains a canny master of bop, blues and ballads, and still works as a single in the old-school style, using local rhythm sections in each city he visits. He'll be accompanied for his four nights here in St. Louis by pianist Adaron "Pops" Jackson, bassist Bob DeBoo, and drummer Montez Coleman.

Also on Wednesday, the weekly "Grand Center Jazz Crawl" features the Jazz Troubadours at KDHX's Magnolia Caf�; a jam session at the Kranzberg Arts Center (minus its usual host Bob DeBoo, since he's playing bass with Houston Person at the Bistro); and trumpeter Kasimu Taylor at The Dark Room.

Thursday, November 2
Singer Denise Thimes will headline her annual show benefiting pancreatic cancer research in the name of her late mother, Mildred Thimes, at the Sheldon Concert Hall. 

Also on Thursday, the Jazz at Holmes series at Washington University will present "Voices of Freedom, Songs of Social Justice," a free concert featuring singer/guitarist Rick Schuler, multi-instrumentalists R. Scott Bryan and William Lenihan and pianist Jay Oliver performing music by Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Nina Simone, John Coltrane, and more.

Elsewhere around town, the annual Nevermore Jazz Ball - four days and nights of swing dancing and live music at various venues around town - gets underway with two performances by New Orleans' Shake Em Up Jazz Band (pictured, center left) featuring clarinetist and former St. Louisan Chloe Feoranzo.

They'll play a dinner-hour show at the Blues City Deli that's not officially part of the NJB schedule, followed by a ticketed dance at Treffpunkt, a recently opened event space at 3453 S Jefferson Ave on the south side. (While this post notes some of the highlights, you'll need to see the NJB website. linked above, for a complete schedule of the weekend's events.)

Friday, November 3
The Gaslight Cabaret Festival presents singers Farah Alvin and William Michals performing "Broadway's Greatest Hits of All Time" for the first of two nights at the Gaslight Theater.

Also on Friday, guitarist and singer Tommy Halloran begins a Friday residency that will continue through February at Das Bevo Underground, a new live music space that, as the name implies, is located in the basement of the venerable Bevo Mill, now re-opened under new management.

Elsewhere around town, the Nevermore Jazz Ball continues with a dance featuring Miss Jubilee at the Casa Loma Ballroom,  percussionist Herman Semidey and Son Montuno play salsa and Latin jazz at the Webster Groves Concert Hall; and The People's Key will offer their soul-jazz take on the music of Jimi Hendrix at The Stage at KDHX

Saturday, November 4
The Nevermore Jazz Ball has a full day and night of events, including the Cherokee Street Jazz Crawl, an afternoon of live music, from a half-dozen different local bands free and open to the public at various venues along Cherokee St.  and Jefferson Ave, and an evening dance with music by Michael Gamble and the Rhythm Serenaders at the Casa Loma. 

Also on Saturday, saxophonist Eric Marienthal (pictured, bottom left), who made his reputation in the 1990s as part of Chick Corea's Elektric Band and has gone on to a busy solo career, will team up with St. Louis' own Bach to the Future to perform in a benefit for the Dillon International adoption agency at Mandarin House Banquet Hall.

Sunday, November 5
The St. Louis Record and CD Collector's Show presents their last event of 2017 at the American Czech Educational Center, and the Friends of Scott Joplin will host their monthly "Ragtime Rendezvous" at the Scott Joplin House State Historic Site's Rosebud Cafe.

Also on Sunday, the Coleman Hughes Project plays an early evening show at Troy's Jazz Gallery;
and the St. Louis International Film Festival presents a screening of the documentary "Mr. Handy's Blues," at The Stage at KDHX, followed immediately by a live performance by singer Valerie "Miss Jubilee" Kirchoff, pianist Ethan Leinwand and cornetist TJ Muller.

Monday, November 6
Traditional jazz band Annie and the Fur Trappers will play at Das Bevo Underground.

Tuesday, November 7
Bassist Igor Saavedra, who's known for his prowess on extended-range bass guitar, will play a solo show at  Stringbean Coffee in Brentwood.

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.)

StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: Fall 2017 jazz preview, part three

Welcome to part three of StLJN's Fall 2017 jazz preview, presenting videos featuring noteworthy jazz and creative music performers who will be visiting St. Louis over the next few months. (You can see part one here, and part two here.)

Continuing in chronological order from where part two left off, today's first clip features singer and pianist Eric Comstock and singer Barbara Fasano, whose show "Downton Abbey Road: The Best of Britain" will be presented as part of the Gaslight Cabaret Festival on Friday, October 27 at the Gaslight Theater.

Although no excerpts of that show are available on video, you can see them up above performing "When In Rome (I Do As The Romans Do)" as recorded in April 2015 during the weekly "Cast Party" event at Birdland in NYC.

After the jump, there's a clip featuring guitarist, singer and St. Louis favorite John Pizzarelli, who's returning to headline the annual "ArtSounds" benefit on Saturday, October 28 at Sheldon Concert Hall.

Recorded last month at KNKX in Tacoma, WA, it features Pizzarelli and Daniel Jobim, the grandson of Brazilian music legend Antonio Carlos Jobim, performing "The Girl From Ipanema" from Pizzarelli's latest album Sinatra & Jobim @ 50.

The third video features saxophonist Houston Person, who will be back in town to perform Wednesday, November 1 through Saturday, November 4 at Jazz at the Bistro.

Person, who usually works with local rhythm sections on gigs like the one he's doing at the Bistro, is seen here in a video from March of this year that documents his team-up with fellow saxophonist and St. Louis native Eric Person for a gig at Dizzy's Club at Jazz at Lincoln Center in NYC. Along with the two Persons, the band includes pianist Zaccai Curtis, bassist Kenny Davis, and drummer McClenty Hunter.

Next, it's singers Farah Alvin and William Michals, who will join forces to present "Broadway's Greatest Hits of All Time" for the Gaslight Cabaret Festival on Friday, November 3 and Saturday, November 4 at the Gaslight Theater.

In their individual clips, Michals is performing "This Nearly Was Mine" from South Pacific, recorded last month at Feinstein's/54 Below in NYC, while Alvin is singing "Infinite Joy" as part of a show last month at the the Cape Playhouse in Dennis, MA.

Today's sixth video features a full set from singer C�cile McLorin Salvant, recorded in December 2016 at Dizzy's with a band including pianist Aaron Diehl, bassist Paul Sikivie, drummer Lawrence Leathers, and guest star Anat Cohen on clarinet.

Salvant has a new album called Dreams and Daggers coming out at the end of this month, and her tour in support of the record will include a performance on Saturday, November 11 at the Sheldon Concert Hall.

That same evening, electronic musician John Wiese will be headlining an event for New Music Circle at St. Louis University's Xavier Hall.

Billed as "a site-specific composition that includes over 20 local musicians, utilizing both traditional and non-traditional instrumentation," the performance can't really be previewed here, but you can get an idea of the sort of thing Wiese does in today's penultimate video, which documents a performance in August 2016 at the Artifex Guild in Bloomington, IN.

The final video features actress and singer Emily Skinner, who will perform "Broadway Her Way" for the Gaslight Cabaret Festival on Saturday, November 11 at the Gaslight Theater.

Word came down this week that Skinner already has sold out this single performance, but since this post was mostly written by the time that news reached StLJN HQ, you might as well enjoy a clip of her performing "Could I Leave You" last fall in the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis' production of Follies.

Look for part four of StLJN's Fall 2017 jazz preview next week in this space. You can see the rest of today's videos after the jump...