The Best Concerts in L.A. This Weekend

Leni Stern -- See Sunday

Kurt Rosenwinkel
KIRK DOUGLAS THEATRE
Kurt Rosenwinkel's playing is richly complex and challenging, and while he is smarter than most of us, smart people also feel. Thus, to label this guitarist as "intellectual" or "cerebral" does him a disservice. He is more poet than scientist, more John Lennon than Stephen Hawking. For his music, rife with the innovations that have inspired a generation of jazz musicians, is defined by lyrical beauty and emotive soul. It is this union of head and heart that elevates Rosenwinkel over others to a place among the hallowed. The band tonight is the same as on his recent iTunes No. 1 jazz album, Star of Jupiter, with Eric Revis and Justin Faulkner on bass and drums (both just in L.A. with Branford Marsalis) and the superb Aaron Parks on piano and keyboards. --Gary Fukushima

Victor Wooten
EL REY THEATRE
Béla Fleck & the Flecktones bassist Victor Wooten is thought of by many as one of, and in many cases the, finest electric bassist in the world, having now picked up a total of five Grammy Awards. Wooten likes to take on unusual musical projects, and tonight's stop at the El Rey showcases his latest as he plays in support of album releases Words and Tones and Sword and Stone. The seven-person band features four bassists, two drummers (including longtime Wooten bandmate Derico Watson) and a vocalist, Krystal Peterson. All the musicians play multiple instruments, including Peterson, who will be found on drums, keyboards or flute at various times during the show. --Tom Meek

Moris Tepper
TAIX
Maybe you remember Moris Tepper from Captain Beefheart & the Magic Band, gnawing at his guitar on "Hot Head" and "Ashtray Heart." Maybe you remember when he popped up at the Echo with PJ Harvey as his bassist. Maybe you never had a clue this guy existed until the two sentences just before this one, and you're frothing at the mouth with pain and regret because you've yet to hear a note by this true and righteous animal man. Don't worry -- we can fix you. Tepper's new album, A Singer Named Shotgun Throat, is traditional and original all at once, familiar at first listen but revealing something subtle and unexpected and sad and beautiful and real every time through. Maybe that's why Beefheart liked him; maybe that's why PJ liked him. I don't know, but I do know that's why I like him. -- Chris Ziegler

Saturday, February 23

Lloyd Price
MCCABE'S
When 19-year-old Lloyd Price cut his 1952 masterpiece "Lawdy Miss Clawdy," the kid likely had no idea just how far the track would take him. An epochal blast of grinding, funkenized New Orleans rock & roll it was, one mightily enhanced by the all-star Dave Bartholomew-led band that backed him. It was the teenager's loose, luminous, declarative pipes, though, that elevated the song to a positively celestial level. A slew of choice chart-toppers followed, and Price swiftly ascended to status as a rhythm & blues royal. Price went MIA for a long spell starting in the 1970s, when he spent a great deal of time in Africa, tending to diamond mines and co-producing, with Don King, the soul-funk music festival held in conjunction with the infamous 1974 Ali-Frazier fight known as the Rumble in the Jungle. This appearance, Price's first Los Angeles date in decades, really is a must. Price, apart from our own Big Jay McNeely, is one of the very last surviving stars from R&B's golden age. As such, this opportunity must not be squandered. --Jonny Whiteside