Friday, October 24, 2014

So What: Local News, Notes & Links

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

* Singer-guitarist John Pizzarelli, in town to perform 
through Saturday at Jazz at the Bistro, was a guest yesterday on John Carney's program on KTRS.

* Saxophonist Oliver Lake has a new album, What I Heard, out on his Passin' Thru label. Available any day now via the usual outlets, it's the third release from his organ quartet with trumpeter Freddie Hendrix, drummer Chris Beck, and organist Jared Gold, and features all original compositions by Lake.

* Keep On Keepin' On, the new documentary featuring trumpeter Clark Terry and his student Justin Kauflin, got a favorable review in this video from New York Times film critic A. O. Scott.

* Saxophonist Eric Person has put on YouTube a new video of his big band playing the original composition "And Then There Was Light."

* Actor/director Don Cheadle talked with Variety about completing and searching for a distributor for his Miles Davis movie, Miles Ahead.

* Speaking of Davis, NPR's new program "Jazz Night in America" debuted last week with trumpeter Wallace Roney's set from the Detroit Jazz Festival in which he performed a series of recently "rediscovered" works written for Davis and orchestra by saxophonist Wayne Shorter

* Meanwhile, the controversy over Mostly Other People Do The Killing's note-for-note remake of Davis' Kind of Blue continues, with another review of the album, by AllAboutJazz.com's Bruce Lindsay, while over at his blog Do The Math, pianist Ethan Iverson of The Bad Plus weighs in with some interesting thoughts about the project as a work of conceptual art.

* Ladue News has party pics from the recent opening of Jazz St. Louis' new HQ.

* And in a related development, JSL's executive director Gene Dobbs Bradford has been named the St. Louis American's Nonprofit Executive of the Year. Bradford will be honored at the American's annual awards luncheon on Friday, November 14 at the Four Seasons Hotel St. Louis.

* Following a recent series of thefts of equipment and valuables from touring bands that had their vehicles broken into, St. Louis police were scheduled to meet yesterday with owners and managers of several rock music venues in the city to come up with plan to catch the thieves.

* There's bad news this week for the Palladium, as artist, author and preservationist Kevin Belford reported on Twitter that the historic building in Grand Center, once the site of shows by numerous touring jazz and blues performers, has been tagged with a Notice of Condemnation. No word yet as to if this is truly the end of efforts to save the structure; please stay tuned...

* St. Louis Volunteer Lawyers and Accountants for the Arts continues their efforts to get "Every Artist Covered" by health insurance with two workshops, about the Small Business Health Options Program for not-for-profit organizations and "Navigating Health Care Reform" for individuals, on Tuesday, November 11 at the Regional Arts Commission. VLAA also will offer individualized, in-person help with health insurance enrollment during four sessions in November and December. For more details, visit the VLAA website.

* Jazz radio update: This Saturday on Radio Arts Foundation - St. Louis' “Somethin’ Else,” DJ Calvin Wilson pays tribute to the late pianist Mulgrew Miller. Right after that on "The Jazz Collective," host Jason Church will remember singer Tim Hauser of Manhattan Transfer, who passed away this week, and spin tracks from Johnny Britt, Jonathan Butler, Dan Siegel, Rick Braun, Herb Alpert, Larry Carlton, Donald Byrd, Erin Bode, The Funky Butt Brass Band, Chris Hazelton's Boogaloo 7, and Tim Cunningham.

Wilson's program can be heard at 8:00 p.m., followed by Church at 9:00 p.m., on 107.3 FM, 96.3 HD-2, and online at http://www.rafstl.org/listen. 

No comments: