This article originally appeared on St. Louis Jazz Notes.
Lucas School House has scheduled two shows in September that may be of interest of St. Louis area jazz fans. Drummer Stanton Moore (pictured), best known as a founding member of the New Orleans funk/jam band Galactic, will bring his Trio to the venue for a concert on Wednesday, September 3, followed by the Chicago Afrobeat Project on Saturday, September 6.
Moore’s recent trio CD Emphasis (on parenthesis), which features guitarist Will Bernard and keyboard player Robert Walter, has received good notices from the New York Times, AllAboutJazz.com, JazzReview.com and other media outlets. Moore has done a number of tour dates with the Trio this year in between gigs with Galactic, and the St. Louis show comes at the end of a string of dates for the group, so they should be well in the groove by the time they get to the Gateway City.
The Chicago Afrobeat Project is a nine-piece band that “keeps true to the mix of respect to the tradition and forward-thinking experimentation,” incorporating influences from funk, rock, jazz, afro-cuban, highlife and juju music. Group members include Graham Czach (bass), Kevin Ford (keyboards), Angelo Garcia (tenor sax), David Glines (guitar), Marshall Greenhouse (drum set), Garrick Smith (baritone sax), Mark Thomson (trombone) and Danjuma Gaskin (percussion). You can see and hear a sample of their work in the embedded video window below, which has a rough-but-watchable clip of them performing Fela Kuti’s “Palmwine Sound,” recorded just a couple of weeks ago on June 25 at a show in Boise, Idaho.