Live jazz to see in Minneapolis-St. Paul: This week’s picks

Are you in your car or near a radio at 8:30 CST on Friday mornings? Tune to KBEM to hear me and Mr. Jones—Jazz 88 "Morning Show" host Ed Jones—talk about these events and more. 88.5 FM in the Twin Cities, streaming live on the Web.

The temperatures are plummeting (25 below this morning? Seriously?), but the jazz calendar is heating up. The Loring Theater (formerly the Music Box Theater) is booking jazz performances worth going out for: last week’s Dave King Trucking Company, and the forthcoming (Feb. 4) solo appearance by avant-garde pianist Matthew Shipp. The “Musique Mystique Dans La Chambre Rouge” (Mystical Music in the Red Room) series at the Loring Pasta Bar (no relation) is well underway, with Tim Sparks scheduled to appear with Connie Evingson on Jan. 31. Roberta Gambarini closes out this month at the Dakota and starts the next. Grammy winner Kurt Elling comes to town for two nights (Feb. 9-10) right after the release of his new CD, The Gate, on Concord. Later that month (Feb. 27), you can hear Branford Marsalis and Terence Blanchard at Orchestra Hall. In between, on Feb. 12, the Israeli guitarist Roni Ben-Hur performs at the St. Paul JCC. See the calendar at right for details.

Meanwhile, dress warm, check your wiper fluid, and get out there. If the artists can brave the weather (often carrying their own gear), so can we.

Nellie McKay at the Dakota

As I write this, I’ve just returned from Thursday night’s performance, and as many times as I’ve seen Nellie McKay perform, I’m still astonished. She combines stereotypical ditsy blonde shtick with a savage intelligence, wicked wit, and genuine sweetness (her version of "Midnight Sun" is enchanting). She sings Jobim and Doris Day, reggae and original tunes, jazz standards and tongue-in-cheek screeds (“Feminists don’t have a sense of humor…They have a tumor on their funnybone”). Her voice is unremarkable, her piano playing passable, but she defines originality. Club owner Lowell Pickett introduced her as “fresh out of rehab.” Surely that was her idea.

7 p.m. Friday, Dakota ($32). Tickets online or call 612-332-5299 (JAZZ).

Jaleel Shaw

When: 3/7 and 3/8/08
Where: Artists’ Quarter
Who: Jaleel Shaw (alto saxophone), Chris Lomheim (piano), Billy Peterson (bass), Kenny Horst (drums)

After a blistering performance on Thursday 3/6 with the Roy Haynes Quartet, saxophonist Jaleel Shaw moved to the Artists’ Quarter for the weekend. I previewed his Twin Cities shows for MinnPost last week and had the chance to interview him by phone when he was still in NYC.

When he told me one of his goals for his own playing was to stay rooted, like Roy Haynes has, I asked him, “Who are your roots?”

Charlie Parker, Bobby Watson, Grover Washington, Johnny Hodges, Sonny Stitt. Right now I’m listening to a lot of tenor players, like Sonny Rollins, Coltrane, Dexter Gordon, Von Freeman, Dewey Redman, Joe Lovano, Joe Henderson. I always try to keep my ear open, to keep everything open. I’m listening to a lot of piano players lately, like Lenny Tristano, Herbie Hancock, McCoy, Keith Jarrett, Brad Mehldau.

Shaw has been to the AQ before, both with Haynes and on his own. He has played with Kenny Horst but never with Lomheim or Peterson (whom he introduces as “Bill” on both evenings). The music is as fine as what Shaw has taught us to expect in his previous appearances: fresh, imaginative straight-ahead standards and original compositions, played with confidence and a clear, strong tone. Tunes include “I Remember April,” “Bemsha Swing,” “I Can’t Get Started,” “Darn This Dream,” Cannonball Adderley’s “Nardis,” Joe Henderson’s “Inner Urge,” and selections from Shaw's new CD, Optimism.

Shaw brings out the best in the other members of the quartet. Everyone seems to be enjoying himself, and Billy Peterson draws my attention again and again; each bass solo tells its own story. As does each of the shirts he wears, but that’s another topic.

Davis Wilson, beloved AQ doorman, introduces the second night by inviting us all to share in “the precarious beauty of producing beauty on demand, which is what jazz is!”



Photos by John Whiting.