Jazz this week: Tony Bennett, two Miles Davis tributes, U City Jazz Festival, and more

This week's calendar of live jazz and creative music in St. Louis includes the return of a legendary vocalist; two different events paying tribute to this city's most influential jazz musician ever; several free outdoor events featuring live jazz, and more.

Let's go to the highlights...

Wednesday, June 7
Singer Tony Bennett (pictured, top left), who remarkably is still touring regularly as a nonagenarian, returns to perform at the Fox Theatre. Some tickets are still available as of this writing; for details, visit the "rush" section of the Fox's website. To when your appetite with some live performance videos of Bennett, check out this post from last Saturday.

Also on Wednesday, the weekly Grand Center Jazz Crawl continues with live music at four different venues in the district; and the Route 66 Jazz Orchestra performs at First Unity Church of St. Louis.

Thursday, June 8
Pianist Adam Maness returns with his trio to Thurman's in Shaw.

Friday, June 9
Keyboardist Adaron Jackson, guitarist Eric Slaughter, saxophonist Ben Reece (pictured, center left) and drummer Montez Coleman, doing business as Jackson, Slaughter, Reece & Coleman, will revisit the sounds of some of the classic organ/tenor soul-jazz combos of 1950s and '60s for the first of two nights at Jazz at the Bistro.

Also on Friday, trumpeter Randy Holmes leads his quintet in the first of two nights of the "St. Louis Miles Davis Festival," performing music associated with Davis at the Webster Groves Concert Hall (formerly the Ozark Theatre).

Elsewhere around town, Sarah Jane and the Blue Notes will play for dancers at the Casa Loma Ballroom; ; and saxophonist Paul DeMarinis and guitarist Dave Black, collaborators in several past bands, will debut a new group called Breathtet, also featuring bassist Mark Wallace and drummer Kevin Cheli, in a show at The Focal Point,

Saturday, June 10
It's a good day to hear some jazz at a free outdoor festival, with three different events happening in the afternoon and evening.

Starting in mid-afternoon, the U City Jazz Festival will feature music from drummer Demarius Hicks, pianist Ptah Williams (pictured, bottom left), guitarist Dave Black, Bach to the Future, and the St. Louis Jazz All-Stars, continuing through the evening at Heman Park,

A little later in the afternoon and just a few miles away, the City of Clayton Music + Wine Festival will include performances from The Gaslight Squares, Sarah Jane and the Blue Notes, and Miss Jubilee as part of a free outdoor concert at Carondelet Plaza.

At the same time a little further to the east, the Central West End Cocktail Party will include a stage at Euclid and McPherson with live performances from bands including the Twin Cities' Gatsby Gang and St. Louis' own Funky Butt Brass Band.

Also on Saturday, the Alton Museum presents the 12th annual Miles Davis Jazz Festival in the town where the iconic trumpeter was born, featuring music from blues singer Big George Brock Jr. and the NGK Band, piano/vocal duo Bob and Me, guitarist Tim Jarden, and saxophonist Fred Walker at the Jacoby Arts Center.

Sunday, June 11
The St. Louis Symphony presents a "Tribute to Ella Fitzgerald and the Ladies of Swing" featuring singer Dee Daniels at Powell Symphony Hall; the St. Louis Jazz Club's monthly show will feature John Gillick and the Impacts with pianist Bob Row at the DoubleTree Hotel; and the Ambassadors of Swing return to Kirkwood Station Brewing Company.

Monday, June 12 
Trumpeter Jim Manley will play his weekly gig serenading diners and drinkers at Momo's Greek Restaurant.

Tuesday, June 13
Saxophonist Adam Larson will be in town to present a free masterclass and performance at Saxquest, backed by guitarist Matt Sewell, bassist Bob DeBoo, and drummer Matt Wilson.

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: June 4, 2017

Diana Krall

Here are some interesting music-related items that have landed in StLJN's inbox over the past week:

* Rod Argent: A 50 Year Odyssey - The Zombies Odessey and Oracle (Tape Op)
* Trouble No More: Allman Brothers Biographer Alan Paul Reflects on 25 Years of Interviewing Gregg Allman (Billboard)
* Don't Worry, Your MP3s Are Safe: A Frank Discussion On The Future Of A Format (NPR)
* In A Lost Concert, Jaco Pastorius Sounded The Rhythm Of The City (WBGO)
* Philadelphia's music legacy is vast but hard to find (Charlotte Observer)
* For Video Soundtracks, Computers Are The New Composers (NPR)
* Thundercat: Drinking Songs (Jazz Times)
* Saxophonist Sonny Rollins On His Colossal Archive (NPR)
* The Checkout: The Irrepressible Ingenuity of Cooper-Moore (WBGO)
* Allman Brothers Manager Bert Holman Talks Band Archives in Wake of Gregg Allman's Death: 'There's a Great Deal of Material' (Billboard)
* Sax Sonics, Guitar Phonics at FIMAV (DownBeat)
* Frustrated by Trump, D.D. Jackson rekindles his passion for jazz (Ottawa Citizen)
* Four innovations in classical music (MusicXTechXFuture.com)
* Keeping the Flame Alive: The World of Deep Funk Archival Compilations (Bandcamp.com)
* Have We Reached the End of the FM Dial? (Billboard)
* 21st Century Bebop? (Ronan Guilfoyle)
* First Listen: DeJohnette, Grenadier, Medeski & Scofield, 'Hudson' (NPR)
* Kamasi Washington Leads a New Guard in Jazz  (SevenDaysVT.com)
* La La Means � What Exactly? (Jazz Times)
* Why Catchy Songs Get Stuck in Our Brains: New Study Explains the Science of Earworms (OpenCulture.com)
* Luxembourg�s �Like a Jazz Machine� Fest Lives Up to Spirited Name (DownBeat)
* Bern Nix, Guitarist Steeped in Ornette Coleman's Harmolodic Language, Dies at 69 (WBGO)
* Prince�s death has given rise to a ghoulish new tourism business in Minnesota (Chicago Reader)
* Hear Diana Krall Play an Exclusive Session, and Talk About Her Sleek New Album (WBGO)
* Vanishing: Where Is The Music Of The Impending Apocalypse? (TheQuietus.com)
* Inside the quietest place on earth (BBC)
* Jazz Icons Lend Music and Vocals to Wilson�s Poetic Sandburg Tribute (DownBeat)

StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: Steppin' out with Tony Bennett

This week, let's check out some videos featuring singer Tony Bennett, who will be returning to St. Louis to perform next Wednesday, June 7 at the Fox Theatre.

Bennett, still remarkably active for a 90-year-old, has stayed newsworthy into the 21st century, thanks most recently to the Duets albums pairing him with currently popular singers ranging from Lady Gaga to Carrie Underwood.

On his own in concert, Bennett's distinctive voice inevitably is showing some effects of age, but his performances continue to please audiences who appreciate his taste in songs, superb timing, choice of musicians, and continued craftsmanship as a singer and showman.

Today's collection of videos shows off those attributes as they have evolved over the last 40 years, from the present day back to the mid-1970s. To start, you can get a sense of Bennett's approach to a song circa 2015 in the first video up above, a duet with pianist Bill Charlap on "The Way You Look Tonight" as recorded on their album The Silver Lining: The Music of Jerome Kern.

After the jump, you can see Bennett and one his most storied duet partners, pianist Bill Evans (who's also an important inspiration for Charlap), in Together Again, a half-hour television special recorded in 1976 for the Canadian TV network CBC. While this period may have been a low point in history for Bennett in terms of commercial appeal and critical notice, the performances provide clear evidence that he was still singing very well.

Below that, there are four more recent live shows, recorded over a 20-year period beginning as Bennett's career entered a second act, nearly unprecedented in pop culture, in which he became more popular than ever.

The first complete show is from 1991 at the Prince Edward Theatre in London, England, followed by Bennett's set from the 2002 Newport Jazz Festival.

Next, in a performance that foreshadows those Duets projects, you can see Bennett joined by singer k.d. lang for a 2002 concert in San Francisco. The final video is from Bennett's 85th birthday concert in 2012 at the London Palladium, and includes guest performances from British singers Cleo Laine and Leona Lewis.

For more about what Tony Bennett has been up to recently, check out his interview from last November on the Boston radio station WBUR, and his video interview from April 2017 with PBS' Tavis Smiley.

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:

* Michael Lazaroff, the CEO of St. Louis based Jazz Cruises LLC, was interviewed by Jazz Times magazine

* Blues pianist Ethan Leinwand (pictured) and his St. Louis Piano Festival, which will include stride and ragtime pianists as well as blues, are the subjects of a feature story from the Riverfront Times' Christian Schaeffer.

* The Post-Dispatch's Kevin Johnson talked to some members of the local music community to get their reactions to the death of BB's Jazz, Blues and Soups co-owner Mark O'Shaughnessy.

* The photography exhibit "The Music Seen: Beyond the Stage,� which opens next week at Bullivant Gallery in Grand Center, was previewed by the Ladue News' Bryan A. Hollerbach.

Recently on Heliocentric Worlds

With the start of another new month, 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 from 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:

Hot 8 Brass Band - "New Orleans"
Bill Evans & Tony Bennett - Together Again
The Soul Rebels - "I Heard It Through the Grapevine"
Average White Band - Live in Germany
The James Gang - "Walk Away"

Other recent posts include videos featuring Morris Day and The Time, Sonny Rollins, Abdullah Ibrahim, The Kinks, Muddy Waters, Kidd Jordan Quintet, J.J. Johnson & Kai Winding, Clark Terry and the Oscar Peterson Trio, Mulgrew Miller Trio, Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, Maynard Ferguson, Ralph Towner, George Benson, Steps Ahead, Mavis Staples, Amina Claudine Myers Quartet, Steely Dan, Richard "Groove" Holmes, Joe Henderson Trio, Stanley Cowell, Matthew Shipp, Mary Halvorson Octet, Esperanza Spalding, Jimmy Smith & Jimmy McGriff, and Dennis Coffey.

If you've somehow missed out on all this up until now, you still can see all these videos, plus thousands more from the archives, by going to http://heliocentricworlds.blogspot.com/.

Mark O'Shaughnessy 1952 - 2017

Funeral services are set for Mark O'Shaughnessy, founder and co-owner of the St. Louis venue BB's Jazz, Blues and Soups.

O'Shaughnessy, a longtime advocate for St. Louis music and musicians who opened the first of the club's three incarnations back in 1976, died Saturday, May 27 in his apartment above BB's of complications of diabetes. He was 65.

Visitation will be from 4:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. this Thursday, June 1 at Kutis Affton Chapel, 10151 Gravois Road. A funeral will be held at 9:15 a.m. Friday, June 2 at Affton Chapel, followed at 10:00 a.m. by a Mass at Immaculate Heart of Mary, 4092 Blow Street.

BB's operations manager and partner John May told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's Kevin Johnson that the club will continue business as usual. While O'Shaughnessy (pictured) had announced plans to retire this year, negotiations to buy his share of the BB's business were still underway at the time of his death, May told StLJN.

On a personal note, I knew Mark for more than 35 years, first meeting him when I was one of about 15 audience members for a show by the great singer Betty Carter during BB's second chapter in the early '80s. Although we weren't close friends, he was very encouraging of my efforts in music and journalism over the years - as he was for countless others - and it was always good to see him and talk, however briefly. The St. Louis music scene and the musicians who inhabit it certainly owe him a "thanks" and a debt of gratitude, and though he'll be missed, he'll be remembered fondly.

Mark O'Shaughnessy is survived by his mother, Frances M. O�Shaughnessy of St. Louis; four daughters, Heather O�Shaughnessy of Maui, HI, Kerensia Blackman of Jefferson County, and Kelly Slavin and Megan Steen of St. Louis; a son, Richard VanGelder of Omaha, NE; and five grandchildren.

Moon Hooch to perform Friday, October 13 at Old Rock House

The saxophones-and-drums trio Moon Hooch will return to St. Louis to perform at 10:00 p.m. Friday, October 13 at the Old Rock House.

After spending most of this summer in Europe, Moon Hooch (pictured) will be touring the US in the fall in support of their upcoming album Live At The Cathedral, a three-CD/DVD package recorded in 2015 at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City that will be released on Friday, June 30.

Tickets are $15 in advance, $17 day of show, and are on sale now.