Archive for January, 2010

Third Stream

Saturday, January 23rd, 2010

On Saturday, January 30, at 7:30pm, the New Music Circle will host a benefit concert at the Kranzberg Arts Center, 501 N. Grand for Zimbabwe Nkenya.  Zimbabwe, one of our community’s most beloved and respected musicians, suffered a stroke last Fall. We hope that by taking voluntary donations at the door we will be able to aid in the payment of his medical expenses and his physical recovery, 100% of the proceeds going to support this cause.

Zimbabwe Nkenya http://www.myspace.com/zimbabwenkenya has pursued a musical career as one of the more accomplished and adventurous double bass players, but his aspirations were never limited to instrumental performance. Before coming to St. Louis in 2007, he spent 20 years in New Mexico as an educator of young children, clinician, visual artist and radio announcer. His tireless devotion to community projects has led him to collaborate with a wide variety of musicians, poets and even visual artists.

So…. now it’s our turn to show him that we can rally together in his time of need and come out as the strong community that we are!

Performers at the benefit will be myself, Jim Hegarty and Deb Summers, representing NMC; Baba Mike Nelson, Bobo Shaw, Dave Cheli’s group “Tribal Chicken”; percussionists, Thomas Zirkle & Matt Henry; poets, Michael Castro and K. Curtis Lyle and others TBA. To stay up do date, visit the New Music Circle website: http://www.newmusiccircle.org

Third Stream

Monday, January 18th, 2010

To help  SAVE KFUO!, scroll down 5 entries.

Starting this Wednesday, 1/20, the Vijay Iyer Trio will be performing at Jazz at the Bistro and playing through Sat. I’ve heard most of his groups recently, and they really shine, with very creative ideas coming in from all members of the group.

I especially like the way the group will lock into certain rhythmic ideas and transform the whole texture of the ensemble; and you know those interesting altered scales and chord substitutions that the more exciting and advanced pianists exploit occasionally? Well, Vijay will often use those structures as merely the starting point for his explorations; and it gets more involved as it goes along. The rhythm section flows, and the music has form, but it’s intense, so don’t think you’ll be able to catch up on your favorite column in the N.Y. Times from breakfast.

Enjoy, I’ll see you at the Bistro!

Third Stream

Sunday, January 3rd, 2010

To help SAVE KFUO! scroll down 4 entries.

For those of you who ask where the new cutting music will be coming from in the next decade, look no further than the St. Louis New Music Circle! Our opening concert for the ’09 – ’10 season was the (apparently)  quite controversial Larry Ochs Sax and Drumming Core. An article from the 12/13/09 New York Times describes an encounter with the group by a man who probably thought he was living on the edge just because he happened to be a jazz fan. I’ll quote, enjoy:

“Is contemporary music grounds for arrest? An angry purist attending the Sigüenza Jazz Festival in Spain called the police last week to protest the appearance of the Larry Ochs Sax and Drumming Core, the Guardian of London reported. His doctor had told him that listening to anything but jazz was ‘psychologically inadvisable’. The Civil Guard showed up, armed, and passed the complaint along to a judge. The festival director, Ricardo Checa, told the newspaper El Pais that the jazz purist didn’t get a refund. ‘The question of what constitutes jazz and what does not is obviously a subjective one,’ Mr. Checa said, ‘but not everything is New Orleans funeral music.’ “