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The Compositions Of Jerome Kern

Jazz Unlimited for Sunday, November 6, 2016 will be “The Compositions of Jerome Kern.”  Composer Jerome Kern was one of the first to bring jazz rhythms and harmonies to theater music.  Paradoxically, he did not like jazz musicians arranging his music for their own performances.  But, jazz musicians like his tunes and are still using them as a basis for improvisation up until today.  We will hear music from Art Pepper, Ella Fitzgerald, St. Louis’s own Jay Hungerford, Coleman Hawkins, Count Basie, Woody Herman, Dawn Clement, Blue Mitchell, the Ray Brown Trio with Gene Harris, the Keith Jarrett Standards Trio, Johnny Griffin, Alan Broadbent, Howard Johnson and Gravity, Karrin Allyson, David Liebman, Cannonball Adderley, Jimmy Knepper, the Bill Evans Trio, A trio of Paul Motian, Bill Frisell and Joe Lovano, Gerald Clayton, Sheila Jordan and Anthony Braxton.

The Slide Show has my photographs of some of the musicians heard on this show.

The Archive of this show will be available until the morning of November 14, 2016.

Here is Dave Liebman (sop), Jeff "Tain" Watts, (d), Vic Juris (g) and Tony Marino (b) playing "Autumn Leaves" at Building 24 on January 17, 2015.

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.