The recent reopening of Jazz at the Bistro now known as the Harold and Dorothy Steward Center for Jazz has made me think of what a great jazz city St. Louis is.
According to Jazz St. Louis's executive director, Gene Dobbs Bradford, St. Louis is known around the country as the center for jazz from the Gaslight Square Days until now and the new Steward Center has made the new jazz center a real game changer for jazz and the community.
Olivia Lahs-Gonzales, director of The Sheldon Art Galleries, talks of the jazz galleries at the Sheldon which were founded in 1998 having had such important exhibitions as Dennis Owsley's, "City of Gabriels, The History of Jazz in St.Louis,1895-1973,” “Ralston Crawford and Jazz,” and a gallery wide exhibition on Josephine Baker.
The Sheldon Art Galleries has also featured photographs and art works by nationally known artists influenced by or performing jazz music such as Larry Fink, Herman Leonard and Lee Friedlander and has also featured such local artists and photographers such as Stan Strembicki, Lou Bopp, and Dennis Owsley.
And not only is Dennis Owsley a photographer, he has since 1959 been an avid jazz record collector and scholar of the music, and taught at UMSL for years and has a radio career on 90.7 with his show "Jazz Unlimited" which is a favorite of many.
In Owsley's book, "City of Gabriels" he says, "St. Louis area trumpeters, from Charles Creath to Miles Davis and Lester Bowie, changed the way we think about music. Davis changed the course of jazz four times during his career, while Bowie was part of an avant-garde movement in the Midwest that challenged the way jazz has been played."
Professor Gerald Early of Washington University is an American cultural critic and has written much about jazz. He was actually an advisor to Ken Burns who produced a famous documentary on jazz. Early says, "When they study our civilization two thousand years from now, there will only be three things that Americans will be known for: the Constitution, baseball and jazz music. They're the three most beautiful things Americans have ever created."
Opera Theatre presented Scott Joplin's "Treemonisha" a few years back and last year presented a world premiere of a commissioned opera entitled, "Champion" which was a wonderful collaboration of Opera Theatre of Saint Louis and Jazz St. Louis. Grammy Award winner and virtuoso trumpet player Terence Blanchard scored the opera and really put St. Louis on the world map.
And we're leading the pack in jazz education and performance of our young folks with Philip Dunlap of Jazz St. Louis's "Jazz U" and the "Jazz St. Louis All Stars" group, and Jim Widner of UMSL and his yearly "Greater St Louis Jazz Festival" is well known throughout the country for his big band jazz camps. Widner is a professor at UMSL and the director and founder of the St. Louis Jazz Orchestra.
The University High School Jazz Band has produced such greats as Peter Martin on piano and Neal Caine on bass and of course, Jeremy Davenport on trumpet and vocals, and the East St. Louis Jazz Band is nationally known.
We all know of Miles Davis and we're still going strong right here in town with Jeannie Trevor who has been a star since the Gaslight Square days and St. Louis ' native and Jazz Hall of Fame inductee, Clark Terry. His career spans more than 60 years and according to HEC Magazine, Terry holds the record for the most recorded trumpet player ever. These are just two of St. Louis's shining jazz stars. And speaking of HEC, don't forget to tune in to Don Wolf's "I Love Jazz" program on the station.
We really are a jazzy jazz town--“I hate to see that evening sun go down” (St. Louis Blues vocal)--Oh whoops that's the blues and needs its own separate commentary!!
Nancy Kranzberg has been involved in the arts community for some thirty years on numerous arts related boards.