The Baylor Project, featuring singer Jean Baylor and her husband, drummer and St. Louis native Marcus Baylor, has received two nominations in the 60th Annual Grammy Awards.
The Baylors (pictured) were nominated in the "Best Jazz Vocal Album" category for their debut album The Journey, and for "Best R&B Performance" for their song "Laugh and Move On."
Released in February of this year on the Baylors' Be A Light label, The Journey debuted at No 8 on the Billboard Jazz Chart, and got a favorable reception from media outlets including All About Jazz, Hot House, Soul Tracks, Soulbounce, Modern Drummer, The Chicago Defender, Revive Music, and more.
The 60th Annual Grammy Awards ceremony will take place on Sunday, January 28 at Madison Square Garden in New York City, with portions broadcast live on CBS. You can see the full list of nominees here.
The Baylor Project will perform in St. Louis from Wednesday, March 28 through Saturday, March 31 at Jazz at the Bistro.
Interestingly, the gig will come exactly 364 days after their last performance here at the Old Rock House, on Tuesday, March 28, 2017.
Since then, Wooten in September of this year released TRYPNOTYX, which is his first new recording in five years and features the trio (pictured).
Wooten also played here in June with his family band, the Wooten Brothers, headlining the Chesterfield Jazz Festival at the Chesterfield Amphitheater.
Tickets for the all-ages show are $32 and will go on sale at 10:00 a.m. this Friday, November 30 via the Old Rock House's website and all Metrotix outlets.
Lewis (pictured), an NEA Jazz Master who's known for groove-oriented hits from "The In Crowd" to "Sun Goddess" and more, will perform a program featuring his interpretations of the music of the Beatles, including songs such as �And I Love Her� and �A Hard Day�s Night,� plus some favorites from his own extensive catalog.
Lewis last played in St. Louis in November 2015 for The Sheldon's "ArtSounds" benefit. His most recent recording is 2011's Taking Another Look on the Hidden Beach label.
Tickets for the benefit gala are on sale now, starting at $500, and can be purchased by calling The Sheldon at 314-533-9900. Gala tickets include pre-concert cocktails and hors d�oeuvres, dinner, preferred concert seating, complimentary valet parking and a tax deduction. Proceeds from the event will benefit the concerts, gallery exhibitions and educational programs of the Sheldon Concert Hall and Art Galleries.
Concert-only tickets will be $45 orchestra, $40 front balcony, $35 rear balcony, and will go on sale at 10:00 a.m. Friday, March 2 via The Sheldon's website and from MetroTix.
Ewart, who's 71 years old, plays various saxophones and woodwind instruments, hand drums, and instruments of his own design. Born in Jamaica, he moved to Chicago as a teenager, and first gained wide attention as an early member of that city's Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, later serving as the AACM's president from 1979 to 1986.
He has led his own bands in a variety of instrumental configurations and multi-disciplinary performances, and has recorded as a leader and collaborator with many of the well-known musicians associated with the AACM, as well as with Anthony Braxton, Cecil Taylor, and various other creative improvisors and composers.
Given that Ewart and his St. Louis collaborators will be improvising most, if not all, of next Saturday's performance, there's no way to "preview" the show in terms of specific musical content. That said, today's collection of videos, drawn from various Ewart performances in the last eight years, should provide at least some idea of his sound and general approach to making music.
First up is an excerpt from Ewing's set at an observance of John Coltrane's 90th birthday in September 2016 at the Church of the Advocate in Philadelphia, in which he plays solo with two dancers, Jay Jao and Taiga Ultan.
After the jump, you can see a couple of excerpts from the set performed by Ewart and his band Inventions in September 2015 at the Chicago Jazz Festival in Millennium Park. Along with Ewart, the group includes Mankwe Ndosi (voice, poetry, percussion), Maggie Brown (voice, percussion), Duriel Harris (poetry, percussion), Dee Alexander (voice, percussion), Mwata Bowden (winds, percussion), Edward Wilkerson (winds, percussion), Jeff Parker (guitar), Dushun Mosley (drums), Darius Savage (bass), Kidd Jordan (saxophone), and Willie Pickens (piano).
The fourth clip is a piece called "Manalapho," written in 2013 in tribute to Trayvon Martin, the Florida teenager killed in a 2012 shooting that sparked outrage across the country.
That's followed by Ewart and another iteration of Inventions, as recorded in 2009 at the Vision Festival in NYC. This version of the group features Ewart, the Art Ensemble of Chicago's Joseph Jarman and St. Louis' own J.D. Parran on various woodwinds, along with pianist Donald Smith, percussionist Thurman Barker, and poet Amiri Baraka.
The final video is an interview with Ewart, recorded in 2011 on the occasion of the release of his album Songs of Sunlife on innova Recordings, in which he discusses the album, his life, and influences.
* The Sheldon Art Galleries will present a free gallery talk by Dr. Aurelia Hartenberger on the history of stringed instruments at 6:00 p.m. Tuesday, December 12.
The talk is presented in conjunction with the exhibit "The World of Spectacular Strings," which features more than 100 unique stringed instruments from around the world and continues until April 21, 2017. Admission is free, but you must reserve a seat in advance by calling Paula Lincoln at 314-533-9900 x 37 or emailing plincoln@TheSheldon.org.
* Another new episode of E.B. Stephenson's podcast "The Jazz Mixer" is online, featuring recordings from St. Louis musicians including the Sessions Big Band, Brett Stamps, Farshid Etniko, and more.
If you'd like some jazz and creative music to go with this year's Thanksgiving turkey and trimmings, here's what's happening on local stages over the next few days...
Wednesday, November 22 The weekly "Grand Center Jazz Crawl" will feature guitarists Jake Weisman and Eric Slaughter at Squatters Cafe/The Stage at KDHX, along with the weekly jam session led by bassist Bob Deboo at the Kranzberg Arts Center, and trumpeter Kasimu Taylor and band at The Dark Room.
Friday, November 24 Trumpeter and singer Jeremy Davenport, who grew up in U City and now resides in New Orleans, will be back in his hometown for the first of two nights at Jazz at the Bistro.
Davenport (pictured, top left) has a regular house gig at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in New Orleans, and generally only makes it home once a year to do these shows, so they should be well-attended, with advance reservations a must.
Sunday, November 26 The Webster Groves Concert Hall will host the musical equivalent of what used to be called a "day/night doubleheader" in baseball, with singer Wendy Gordon performing in the afternoon and drummer Chuck Kennedy and friends presenting "The Beatles Go Jazz" in the evening.
Tuesday, November 28 Erin Bode, Arvell Keithley, Brian Owens and Alan Ox will sing music by Al Hammerman in a benefit for the organization "Kids Rock Cancer" at the Ferring Jazz Bistro.
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.)
