Jazz composer and bandleader Marty Ehrlich hasn’t lived in St. Louis since he left University City High School for college in 1972, but his hometown will deeply color his performance here 7:30 p.m. Friday, October 4 at the Kranzberg Arts Center, 501 N. Grand, as part of the New Music Circle’s 2013 series.
Ehrlich will lead the Rites Quartet, which features Michael Formanek on bass, Michael Sarin on drums, James Zollar on trumpet and himself on saxophone and clarinet. He owes the quartet’s name to a strong St. Louis connection, the brilliant late composer and bandleader Julius Hemphill, co-founder of the Black Artists’ Group (BAG) in St. Louis.
“I got the name ‘Rites Quartet’ from a composition by Julius Hemphill, ‘Rites,’ which refers back to his record Dogon, A.D.,” Ehrlich said.
“Along with working with Julius for many years while he was alive, after his passing I have done all I could to keep his music in the public eye, including trying to record a lot of the music he wrote that didn’t get recorded in his lifetime.”
After an initial performance with the Rites Quartet featuring previously unrecorded music by Hemphill, Ehrlich “liked it so much I kept it going,” he said. “I like the connection to ‘rites,’ in the religious sense, but when you hear it said, it also could be ‘rights,’ as in human rights. It’s an evocative word.”
At the New Music Circle gig, his Rites Quartet will feature music from a record of theirs that also has an evocative title with St. Louis roots: Frog Leg Logic.
“When I was in high school, there was an influential saxophone player in St. Louis named Jim Marshall of the Human Arts Ensemble. He was close to BAG, and in fact I met most of the guys from BAG at his apartment,” Ehrlich said.
“Jim had a poem about choosing to put on a Monk record versus a Mingus record. It had a line something like, ‘Mingus, you can never leave without taking the sky with you. Today, I want a child’s tale of frog leg logic.’ I heard him read that poem probably when I was 16.”
Evidently, it stuck with him.
“Separate from knowing the poem, it’s an evocative title,” he said, and he used it for a Rites Quartet record. “The music is springy,” he says, with a laugh. “The record is more upbeat, has a more outward-looking feel to me.”
So the public can expect some springy, upbeat, outward-looking music at the Kranzberg Center, though not only that.
“We’ll cover a lot of territory, a lot of musical directions, my compositions and improvisations with these great musicians,” Ehrlich said. “Some very rhythmic, some melodic, some textural.”
He hopes to have with him his newest record, A Trumpet in the Morning, a large jazz ensemble record which is officially due in November. It also has what he describes as “a strong St. Louis connection.”
“A Trumpet in the Morning is based on a poem by St. Louis poet Arthur Brown and narrated by a St. Louis musician, J.D. Parran,” Ehrlich said, “and has a cover – as do many of my records – with a painting by Oliver Jackson.” Jackson, a St. Louis native, is an internationally recognized visual artist associated with BAG, whom Ehrlich also met as a precocious musician growing up in St. Louis in the ferment of the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Ehrlich’s family moved away from St. Louis the year he left for the New England Conservatory of Music, so he only visits for “professional reasons,” such as this gig, which itself evokes early, positive memories.
“It will be a real pleasure to return to play as part of the New Music Circle,” he said. “It was in existence when I was in high school. I actually went to their concerts when I was in high school.”
In addition to the New Music Circle concert, there will be a free Q&A with Ehrlich at 7 p.m. Thursday, October 3 at the Regional Arts Commission, 6128 Delmar Blvd.
Tickets to the concert are $20, or $10 for students and “struggling music Lovers.” admission. Tickets may be purchased at the door with cash or check, or in advanced online at Brown Paper Tickets. For more information, visit NewMusicCircle.org.
