This week, StLJN's video spotlight shines on musician, painter, poet, and former St. Louisan
Oliver Lake, who's coming to town to perform in a concert sponsored by the Nu-Art Series and St. Louis University next Friday, March 22 at
Xavier Hall on the SLU campus.
Lake will joined for the performance by pianist Greg Mills, trumpeter and Nu-Art Series impresario George Sams, and dancers Antonio Douthis-Boyd and Kirven Douthis-Boyd, and, in keeping with the "Jazz 'N Tongues" theme of Nu-Art's current slate of shows, he'll read some of his poetry as well as playing saxophone.
Though born in Arkansas, Lake grew up and spent his formative musical years here in St. Louis, helping co-found the famed Black Artists Group in the late 1960s before moving away to pursue his career. With fellow former BAG members Hamiet Bluiett and Julius Hemphill (plus tenor saxophonist David Murray), he then went on to found the critically acclaimed and influential World Saxophone Quartet, which brought new ideas about arrangements and rhythm sections (or the lack of same) from the avant-garde towards - if not fully into - the mainstream.
In the 1990s, Lake co-founded another significant ensemble, Trio 3, with bassist Reggie Workman and drummer Andrew Cyrille, and they've continued to reunite periodically for new projects to this day. But it is as a solo artist that Lake has been most prolific, releasing more than 40 albums as a leader with various ensembles, many on his own Passin' Thru label.
For many years a resident of Montclair, NJ, Lake also spends a good deal of time these days on his visual art, as described in the first video up above, a feature story about him produced last year for a local PBS affiliate.
After the jump, you can see a couple of videos from 2018 featuring Lake and his big band, recorded during the Vision Festival at Roulette in Brooklyn, NY and at the DC Jazz Festival in Washington.
Next are recently posted clips of Lake with two different trios - the Crash Band Trio, with drummers Bill McClellan and Reggie Nicholson, recorded during the Bang on a Can Marathon in May, 2017 at the Brooklyn Museum; and a set of music from October, 2014 with guitarist Vernon Reid and drummer Marlon Browden, recorded at John Zorn's venue The Stone in NYC.
Those are followed by two samples of Lake reading his poetry, a work called "Do you remember the time?" recorded in 2010 in Pittsburgh, and "Poem for Amiri Baraka" from the 2014 Vision Festival.
Finally, you can see a short video that Lake made last year for Jazz at Lincoln Center's education department, in which he discusses his process for composing and gives some advice to students.
For more about Oliver Lake, read
his 2017 interview with Bandcamp Daily, and the interviews published in 2015
on Revive Music and
on pianist Ethan Iverson's blog Do The Math.
You can see the rest of today's videos after the jump...
Here's StLJN's latest wrap-up of assorted links and short news items of local interest:
* Today is the release date for
The Sound of St. Louis - Jazz Compilation Volume 1, an album featuring original music from the nine participants in the Kranzberg Arts Foundation's
music artists-in-residence program.
The album
(pictured) will be available on streaming services, as a digital download, and as a CD, which will be sold locally at Vintage Vinyl, Music Record Shop, and Euclid Records, and at various KAF-affiliated venues such as Sophie’s Artist Lounge and The Dark Room.
* In more album-release news, singer
Erin Bode is reissuing her 2016 album
Here and Now as a vinyl LP, and will
perform on Thursday, April 11 at The Sheldon to commemorate the event.
* One of singer
Marilyn Maye's performances last week with the Jazz St. Louis Big Band was
reviewed by KDHX's Chuck Lavazzi.
* Singer and St. Louis native
Alicia Olatuja was
interviewed about her new album Intuition by the
St. Louis American's Kenya Vaughn.
* Also as
reported in the American, four branches of St. Louis County Library now offer musical instruments, including guitars, keyboards and hand drums, that can be checked out by library patrons for free.
* Multi-instrumentalist and singer
Tonina was
profiled for a new local website, TheSTL.com, by writer Daniel Durchholz.
* NPR once again this year is holding a contest for unsigned musical acts that would like to perform in a Tiny Desk Concert, filmed at the network's HQ in Washington DC. Local affiliate St. Louis Public Radio has details on the contest and how to enter
here.
This week's calendar of live jazz and creative music in St. Louis brings sounds from all over, including two prominent performers who each got their start in Chicago, one who made his name on Broadway, and three coming from Brazil via NYC. Let's go to the highlights...
Wednesday, March 13
Singer
Kurt Elling - one of the aforementioned Chicagoans, though he now lives in New York - performs for the first of five nights, continuing through Sunday at
Jazz St. Louis.
Elling
(pictured, top left) returns here for the first time since the release in 2018 of his most recent album
The Questions, so it seems likely that a good portion of material from that recording will be part of his sets here. You can see videos of live performances of several of those tunes, and find out more about what Elling has been up to more recently, in
this post from last Saturday.
Elsewhere around town, clarinetist and former St. Louisan
Chloe Feoranzo, now residing in New Orleans, will be back in town for a concert with her quartet at
Focal Point, and guitarist
Brian Vaccaro leads a trio at
Evangeline's.
Thursday, March 14
Pianist
Jim Hegarty returns with his quintet to the
The Dark Room; guitarist
Dave Black and singer
Erika Johnson perform at
The Pat Connolly Tavern; and pianist
Adam Maness' trio is back at
Thurman's in Shaw.
Friday, March 15
Pianist, singer and Tony Award-winning musical theater composer
Jason Robert Brown performs in concert at the
Grandel Theatre; and the
Original Knights of Swing play for dancers at
Casa Loma Ballroom.
Saturday, March 16
Flute player and composer
Nicole Mitchell’s Liberation Narratives, featuring poet
Haki Madhubuti, performs in a concert presented by
New Music Circle at
Xavier Hall on the St. Louis University campus.
A composer and conceptualist with wide-ranging interests, Mitchell
(pictured, bottom left) is a past president of Chicago's Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians and recently was appointed head of the jazz program at the University of Pittsburgh, succeeding the late Geri Allen.
Mitchell has been involved in a constantly evolving variety of musical projects over the years, with her latest collaboration with poet Haki Madhubuti offering "an unabashed take on the state of the nation" via her compositions and the poet's spoken word performances. For a bit more about that, plus some videos of Mitchell performing in various contexts, see
this post from a couple of Saturdays ago.
Elsewhere around town, pianist Peter Martin's
Open Studio will present a concert of Brazilian jazz featuring guitarist
Romero Lubambo, pianist
Helio Alves, and drummer
Edu Ribeiro, along with St. Louis' own Bob DeBoo on bass.
Also on Saturday, the
Coleman Hughes Project celebrates six years as a band with a gig at
Lowes Entertainment; and trumpeter
Jim Manley and keyboardist
Chris Swan will play at
One 19 North Tapas & Wine Bar.
Sunday, March 17
Friends have organized a
benefit for saxophonist Fred Walker, who no longer can perform due to recent health issues, for late Sunday afternoon at
BB's Jazz, Blues & Soups, with announced performers including Walker's former band Mystic Voyage, saxophonist Kendrick Smith, blues singers Kim Massie, Eugene Johnson, and Lady J Huston, and more.
Monday, March 18
Pianist
Carol Schmidt and saxophonist
Paul DeMarinis will team up for a concert of duets at
Winifred Moore Auditorium on the Webster University campus.
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.)
