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The Keys And Strings Hour (Compositions of Sonny Rollins) + New Music

Jazz Unlimited for February 26, 2017 will be “The Keys and Strings Hour + New Music.”  The Keys and Strings Hour,” or the quieter side of jazz will feature Sonny Rollins compositions played by Joe Pass, Junko Onishi, Grant Green & Sonny Clark, Phineas Newborn, Jessica Williams, Tommy Flanagan, Fred Hersch and Mal Waldron.  New music will feature a new release of a 1980 concert with Dizzy Gillespie and some bebop cohorts, Pedrito Martinez, the Ben Marklee Big Band playing Cedar Walton compositions, our own Fred Tompkins, Branford Marsalis & Kurt Elling, Jeremy Udden, Theo Bleckman, Michael Zilber, Gustavo Cortinas, and a group called Harriet Tubman.

The Slide Show contains my photographs of some of the artists heard on this show.

Here is a video of Kurt Elling (vcl), Ingrid Jensen (tp), Branford Marsalis (sop), Tia Fuller (as) Joey Calderazzo (p) Eric Revis (b) and Justin Faulkner (d) playing St. James Infirmary at the 2016 Monterey Jazz Festival.

Dennis Owsley has broadcast a weekly jazz show for St. Louis Public Radio since April 1983. He holds a Ph.D. in organic chemistry and is a retired Monsanto Senior Science Fellow and college teacher. His show, Jazz Unlimited, airs every Sunday from 9:00 p.m. to midnight. The show has the largest jazz audience in St. Louis and was named Best Jazz Radio Show in St. Louis for the years 2005-2007 and 2009 by the Riverfront Times. In celebration of his 25 years on the air, January 24, 2008 was proclaimed Dennis Owsley Day" in the City of St. Louis. He is the 2010 winner of the St. Louis Public Radio Millard S. Cohen Lifetime Achievement Award. Dennis is also a noted photographer, and his exhibit, In the Moment: Photographs of Jazz Musicians, ran from September 23, 2005 to January 21, 2006 at the Sheldon Art Gallery. He is a lifetime student of jazz history and teaches short courses on the subject. Dennis is the author of the award-winning book City of Gabriels: The History of Jazz in St. Louis 1985-1973, published in 2006.