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Original image by Plastic Sax.
*Alex Abramovitz’s band is featured in the latest episode of Kansas Public Radio’s Live at Green Lady Lounge program.
*A television news broadcast touts the construction of a parking garage in the Jazz District.
Chalis O'Neal raps that his music is “hip-hop meets swing with a little bebop” on The Influence. The Kansas City trumpeter’s new album has a bass-heavy mix that might please fans of Lil Baby but would horrify the mainstream jazz audience.
The oppressively leaden sound field smothers O’Neal and his locally based collaborators. Saxophonist Ernest Melton, keyboardist Desmond Mason, bassist Nsikoh Bébé Làlà and drummer Jaylen Ward are far more vibrant in live settings.
The powerhouse band is further hampered by a brutal song selection. Opening with “Misty” and closing with “Cherokee,” The Influence is a dreary compendium of overplayed jazz standards and tired pop hits. The omission of “My Funny Valentine” and “Uptown Funk” is a saving grace.
“The Terminator” is the freshest track. Each man’s aggressive solo is unencumbered by an enervated melody. Yet what sounds corny on a recording can kill in a club. O’Neal and his cohorts are best experienced live.
The music component of the 2025 edition of the Boulevardia festival consists entirely of locally based artists. Rap veteran Tech N9ne is the headliner. Jackie Myers, Chalis O’Neal and Back Alley Brass Band are the jazz-oriented acts at the June 14 event. The latter ensemble kicks off its set in the embedded video with a Rebirth Brass Band staple.
Original image by Plastic Sax.
*DownBeat magazine considers the Midwest Jazz Collective touring initiative that visited Kansas City in April.
All Night Trio may be Kansas City’s best band. The wavy convergence of Matt Villinger, Peter Schlamb and Zach Morrow applies elite jazz chops to funky electro-pop. What could be better? Why, the addition of Hermon Mehari, of course! The trumpeter appears on “Echo Cycle,” the second track on the new album Yeah Sun. The gloriously woozy title track is a worthy follow-up to All Night Trio’s 2022 banger "All Faded". “The Next Gen” is centered on Morrow’s uplifting rap. The title of “Thunder Step” seems to be a nod to the crossover star Thundercat. A thirty-minute party, Yeah Sun is contemporary club music for people who collect Bobby Timmons records on vinyl.
Brenna Whitaker, a vocalist raised in Kansas City and based in Los Angeles, will be the guest of The Kansas City Jazz Orchestra at the Folly Theater on Saturday, May 31. The theme of the final concert of the big band’s 2024-25 season is “Glamour of Old Hollywood.”
Original image by Plastic Sax.
Seemingly generated by artificial intelligence, the album art for Dream Dancing, Hot Club KC’s debut album, is buoyant. Yet the attractive image is a misleading representation of the Kansas City band’s variation on gypsy jazz. Asking a bot to generate a confluence of mellow late-’60s psychedelia and a pretty Parisian boulevard may have produced a more appropriate visual match for the music.
Hot Club KC is as indebted to the Grateful Dawg stylings of David Grisman and Jerry Garcia as it is to the gypsy jazz progenitors Stéphane Grappelli and Django Reinhardt. Slightly wavy interpretations of familiar melodies such as “Gee Baby Ain’t I Good to You,” “With a Little Help From My Friends” and “Lil Darlin’” swirl around bandleader Adam Galblum’s endearingly frail voice.
Everyone who has been charmed by a Hot Club KC performance already knows they’ll want to spend time with Dream Dancing. And outsiders attuned to gypsy jazz need to hear the original song “Renji.” The album opener is an ingratiating companion to the 1937 classic “Minor Swing.” Grappelli and Reinhardt-inspired bands around the world won’t need artificial intelligence to recognize that “Renji” would be an excellent addition to their repertoires.
Smooth jazz saxophonist Jazmin Ghent is the opening act for crooner Dre Scot at the at the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum’s Jazz & Jackie concert at the Gem Theater on Saturday, May 24.
Original image by Plastic Sax.
*Justin Wilson, an accomplished producer of Kansas City jazz recordings, has died.
*An appearance by Anat Cohen is among the highlights of the Kansas City Jazz Orchestra’s 2025-26 season.
*Dan White told Steve Kraske about his Jazz KC Portraits photo exhibit at the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum.
*Michael Pagán chatted with Joe Dimino.
*Trent Austin is among the business owners concerned about the potential impact of tariffs on their musical instrument businesses in a KCUR feature.
*From a press release: Spotlight: Charlie Parker 2025 celebrates the jazz icon’s 105th birthday with jam sessions and musical tributes, tours, lectures, exhibits, panel discussions, workshops, and concerts... The month-long celebration will take place in August 2025 at various locations, including The Folly Theater, 18th & Vine Jazz District, including the American Jazz Museum and the Gem Theater, and Kansas City-area jazz clubs. Details are available here.
Basie’s Beatle Bag and Basie on the Beatles are degrading totems of a cultural changing of the guard. The very existence of the crass 1960s albums belittles the legacy of a Kansas City jazz institution. Even so, the recordings aren’t half bad.
In a similar fashion, Basie Rocks!, a new release by vocalist Deborah Silver and The Count Basie Orchestra, often overcomes a tacky premise. Eleven classic rocks staples are given campy makeovers. Interesting arrangements, Silver’s enthusiastic crooning and a procession of A-list guest stars make the project listenable.
The push-and-pull of Elton John’s 1973 hit “Bennie and the Jets” lends itself to the concept. A guitar solo from Bill Frisell adds a touch of gravitas to the Steve Miller Band staple “Fly Like an Eagle.” Kurt Elling brings star power to “Tainted Love.”
Only a cover of the Three Dog Night hit “Joy to the World” featuring Trombone Shorty is entirely cringey. The inclusion of Bob Seger’s “Old Time Rock and Roll” is appropriate. Now that rock has joined jazz as a subordinate form of popular music, the nostalgic cross-genre alliance is bittersweet rather than demeaning.
The esteemed Kansas City keyboardist Charles Williams performs in First Baptist Church’s Jazz Vespers series on Sunday, May 18.
Original image by Plastic Sax.
*Kansas Public Radio presents audio and video of Stan Kessler and three pianists performing material from Kessler’s 2024 album Two’s Company.
*Joe Dimino shares footage of the Mitch Towne Trio’s gig at the Blue Room.
*The Columbia Daily Tribune reports that a $30,000 National Endowment of the Arts grant designated to the We Always Swing concert series has been retracted.
Inspired musical partnerships have characterized the signature sound of Kansas City for a century. Among the fruitful pairings featuring one or two notable Kansas City musicians are Count Basie with Eddie Durham, Andy Kirk with Mary Lou Williams, Pat Metheny with Lyle Mays and more recently, Bobby Watson with Curtis Lundy.
Hermon Mehari and Tony Tixier have enjoyed a similarly productive artistic relationship for the past 15 years. Upon forging a friendship with the French pianist, the trumpeter invited Tixier to Kansas City in 2011.
The old friends deepen their bond on Soul Song, a duet album recorded in France on November 12, 2024. With Tixier on Fender Rhodes, the duo investigates four compositions from the 1970s- Stanley Cowell’s “Maimoun,” George Duke’s “The Black Messiah,” Bobby Hutcherson’s “Now” and Marius Cutler’s “Laini.”
A pair of original pieces and two improvisations round out the impeccably spartan and sensitively performed set of spiritual jazz. As the careers of Mehari and Tixier continue to ascend the duo is likely to continue refining an artistic pact that’s an estimable extension of a hallowed Kansas City tradition.
The Omaha based organist Mitch Towne performs at the Blue Room on Friday, May 9. “Steepian Faith,” the selection featured in the embedded video, is the fifth track on Towne’s new album Refuge.
Original image by Plastic Sax.
*A feel-good story about an elderly Count Basie fan is shared by a TV reporter. Joe Dimino offers his perspective and documents portions of the Count Basie Orchestra’s concert at the Music Hall.
*Bassist Chase McRoy is featured by In Kansas City magazine.
*A television news outlet reports on the latest Jazz District redevelopment project.
Original image by Plastic Sax.
I scoured area thrift shops and used bookstores for Andy Kirk’s Twenty Years on Wheels for more than a decade without success. Conceding defeat, I recently borrowed the single well-loved copy of the out-of-print book available in the Kansas City Public Library system.
I was surprised by the brevity of the book published by the University of Michigan Press in 1989. The often stilted as-told-to format assembled by Amy Lee is also a bit disappointing. Yet the 147 pages of Twenty Years on Wheels contains plenty of essential material of interest to Kansas City jazz history completists.
Thanks in part to the contributions of Mary Lou Williams, Kirk’s Clouds of Joy was one of the country’s biggest acts during the commercial zenith of Kansas City jazz. Following a happy childhood in Denver, Kirk came to Kansas City with a unique perspective, partly because his career in music commenced prior to the jazz age.
Catering to white audiences, Kirk’s territory band usually played in the “sweet” format. Even so, he was mandated to record uncharacteristic “race” music like 1929’s "Mess-a-Stomp". He eventually cajoled a reluctant record label to record and release a song for the white market. His instincts were correct- “Until the Real Thing Comes Along” was a nationwide hit in 1936.
Kirk’s accounts of Kansas City’s nightclubs correspond with the colorful stories told by T.J. English in the 2022 study Dangerous Rhythms: Jazz and the Underworld. Twenty Years on Wheels concludes with Kirk’s disappointment upon visiting Kansas City in 1975 after years of living in New York. Kirk called the disrepair of the Jazz District “the saddest thing.”
By then the big band era was long over and Kirk was no longer able to make a living through music. Yet Twenty Years on Wheels is suffused with joy. Just one caveat: library patrons should be advised that the coffee and food stains throughout the book aren’t mine. I wouldn’t dream of defacing the sacrosanct Kansas City relic.
Formed 51 years ago in Buffalo, New York, Spyro Gyra is one of the most commercially successful jazz fusion bands. “Morning Dance,” the song featured in the embedded video, was in radio rotation alongside hits by Elton John and Kenny Rogers in 1979. Spyro Gyro appears at Knuckleheads on Friday, May 2.
Original image by Plastic Sax.
*Aarik Danielsen reports on Bobby Watson’s International Jazz Day performance with the Columbia Jazz Orchestra.
*Scotty Barnhart and Will Matthews promoted tonight’s Count Basie Orchestra concert at the Music Hall on KCUR.
*The American Jazz Museum is one of seven jazz museums in the United States highlighted in a travel guide.
*A television news outlet reconsiders Kansas City’s place in the global music scene.
*In Kansas City magazine highlights free area concerts by Airmen of Note.
An area music enthusiast recently insisted my embrace of new music necessarily meant that I no longer cared about the mainstream jazz performed in Kansas City. It’s simply not so. Plastic Sax consistently covers conventional, swing-oriented jazz.
Nonetheless, the April 4 release of Orchid validates my big ears. The tenacity of a small coterie of Kansas City renegades reasserts Kansas City’s status as a meaningful contributor to the adventurous fringe of improvised music. An outline of the album’s backstory follows.
The Extemporaneous Music and Arts Society has hosted dozens of concerts in Kansas City by touring musicians since its formation about four years ago. The collective presented separate concerts by two renowned California based musicians- trumpeter and violinist Dan Clucas and woodwind master Vinny Golia- in 2023. St. Louis percussionist Kevin Cheli of St. Louis is a more frequent participant at these events.
Seth Andrew Davis, a co-founder of the collective, joins those musicians on Orchid, an exhilarating session recorded in Los Angeles 20 months ago. The Kansas City based Mother Brain Records released the album. The mastery of the improvisors make much of Orchid seem composed. Passages of “Cloud” even echo Eric Dolphy and Freddie Hubbard.
Confidently issuing electric glurts and skizzles, Davis clearly belongs among the rarified company. While the free jazz of Orchid is decidedly an underground phenomena, the album is a significant milestone in the annals of Kansas City’s artistic counterculture.