Results for "St. Louis"

Jun Iida: Evergreen

by Gary Fukushima
January 5, 2024

They are everywhere, dotting the undulating terrain of the great Pacific Northwest, from the winding, twisting shorelines of Puget Sound to the mountains that rise in the distance in every direction: the Olympics to the west, the Cascades to the east, Mt. Baker to the north and the majestic Rainier to the south. The trees are ...

Vincent Varvel

Born: June 14, 1962

Born and raised in St. Louis, Vincent Varvel started playing music early on, studying piano, clarinet, and organ. He began playing guitar at age 15 and attended college at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, where he had the opportunity to perform with jazz greats such as Michael Brecker, Peter Erskine, and Dan Gottlieb. He graduated in 1984 with a Bachelor's degree in Jazz Performance.

Varvel began his professional career while in college, freelancing with many different performers in the St. Louis area.   Since then he has toured the United States and Europe with various ensembles in addition to leading his own jazz group performing his original compositions.  Recently, he has performed classical music with the Kingsbury Ensemble, Chamber Project St

2022: The Year in Jazz

by Ken Franckling
December 29, 2022

Current events impacted the jazz world in significant ways throughout 2022. In its third year, the coronavirus pandemic continued to lurk in some settings, while others recovered in robust fashion. Russia's war on Ukraine was felt by musicians and triggered an outpouring of support for its victims. Initiatives to ensure greater equity in jazz advanced. The ...

Joe Lovano: Cleveland's Ultimate Jazz Titan

by Matthew Alec
December 20, 2022

Friday, June 24th, 2022, saxophonist Joe Lovano's group Sound Prints (alongside trumpeter and co-leader Dave Douglas) delivered a tour de force performance to spellbound audience members at the historic Mimi Ohio Theatre in Playhouse Square as a part of Cleveland's annual Tri-C JazzFest. Seasoned group interplay between drummer Rudy Royston, bassist Matt Penman, and pianist Leo ...

Hard Bop Messengers

Active since: 2018

Live At The Last Hotel, the upcoming release from John Covelli’s Hard Bop Messengers, is a jazz album that literally tells a story. The visionary, original, genre-defying musical journey that reminds you of what jazz can be, was born from a residency at the REAL Last Hotel in downtown St. Louis. Each song paints a picture with bounce and bustle, that takes you to a place and time that somehow feels both nostalgic and modern. The lyrics tell the story of the trials and tribulations of a fictional hotel through the eyes of its employees.

Covelli knew he had something special when he assembled this group and he gives them all room to shine. Nick Savage, Chris Meschede, Luke Sailor, and Ben Shafer are, like himself, of the esteemed Webster University jazz program. Matt Krieg, originally from St Louis, puts the vocals where they need to be to tell Covelli’s lyrical tale. Covelli has played in dozens of bands over the years and learned just as many styles.

Ryan Marquez

Born: August 11, 1986

Missourian Ryan Marquez’s music has been called many things but “accessibly out there” might be the keyboardist, producer, songwriter, arranger, and vocalist’s favorite description of his unique sound that is baptized in Blues, indoctrinated by Jazz and raised in Hip-Hop culture. “Passionate in everything he does” (WSIE 88.7, “The Sound''), he “truly embodies the creative collaboration...essential to moving St. Louis forward full steam ahead.” (Regional Arts Commission of STL) His music represents a diverse ecosystem of “feel good vibes” that he channels by infusing tasteful jazz piano chops, a Pop songwriter/arranger sensibility, with vocal flavors from Progressive R & B/Hip-Hop

Janet Evra

Janet Evra is a jazz vocalist, bassist, and composer from Gloucester, England now based in St. Louis, Missouri, USA. She blends traditional bossa nova, samba, and latin jazz with contemporary influences to produce a fresh sound. She perfroms across the United States and Europe.

Fred Tompkins

Born: May 26, 1943

Fred Tompkins was born in St. Louis in 1943. After high school he played tenor saxophone in and around his home town for several years before beginning the formal study of music at the St. Louis Insitute of Music, in 1964. By this time his strongest influences were jazz artists such as John Coltrane, Art Blakey, and the Jazz Messengers and the M.J.Q., and classical composers such as Paul Hindemith and Béla Bartók.

His earliest compositions, as originally recorded on the album, Compositions of Fred Tompkins, showed a natural tendency to combine those genres into his own style. Some of the pieces tended to exploit a dramatic contrast between genres, but soon the transitions became smoother and the styles more synthesized. The best of those early pieces and the best pieces from his subsequent and more fully developed album of 1975, Somesville, can now be heard on the compilation CD, FANFARE 8, The Early Works. [NOTE: The videos uploaded on AAJ represent Tompkins' free improv style of performance; to hear samples of his compositions, please visit the CD page on his website: http://www.tompkinsjazz.com/albums/]

Kevin Bowers

Nova is the soundtrack to a movie starring Fred Astaire and Lena Horne, directed by Federico Fellini. (Which is a strong contender for the best movie never made.) It’s the kind of record, at least, you make as one of St. Louis’ most respected drummers, featured in Modern Drummer, fresh from releasing a well-received album with soul-punk band The Feed and then lately inspired by a deep & deepening trip through Spain. In other words, it’s intoxicating, it’s invigorating, it’s joyous. Like Kevin Bowers himself, it knows why secrets are whispered. And how to throw a party. Kevin’s sketch of Spain is the story of two lovers meeting near the Mediterranean Sea

The Bosman Twins

Born: July 29, 1952

Florida A&M University music scholars, Dwayne Bosman and Dwight Bosman are composers, arrangers, jazz artists and music educators. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Dwayne’s and Dwight’s passion for jazz started at an early age. They grew up listening to the sounds of great jazz artists such as Earl “Fatha” Hines, Count Basie, Duke Ellington and their father Lloyd Smith, who was a well known businessman and a side man in Basie’s and Ellington’s orchestras. Paula V. Smith, the twins’ mother and the first African American Administrator of the Wage and Hour Division for the U.S