Jazz is an unmistakably urban phenomenon.
Just saying the word summons images of a New York street teeming with swells in their snap-brim fedoras, cigarette rakishly dangling from their mouths with evening gown-clad women on their arms. A noir film come to life with the soundtrack of half a dozen bands beckoning from the doors of basement clubs. The last place you might expect to find jazz might be a place deep in the woods, maybe in the middle of a national park in the dead of winter.
Yet that is exactly where, on four nights between now and April, top-shelf jazz can be heard thanks to an innovative and welcome partnership between the Conservancy for Cuyahoga Valley National Park and the Rubber City Jazz and Blues Festival.
The first of the concerts at Happy Days Lodge is on Wednesday, Jan. 21, featuring Abstract Sounds, Cleveland-native, now Columbus-based saxophonist Jevaughn Bogard’s groove-oriented fusion band. Zaire Darden, a first-call drummer in many of the area’s most accomplished bands, brings a quartet to the stage on Feb. 18. Akron vocalist Rachel Osherow can be heard singing everything from jazz to Italian folk music to early music. With her band, the Hangout, she will appear on March 18, followed on April 15 by a little big band drawn from The Jazz Heritage Orchestra, the professional ensemble affiliated with the Cleveland State University Department of Africana Studies.
Heritage, as it turns out, is both the motivating theme behind the creation of the series and the major extramusical component of it. In parallel with the music series, the Conservancy will present an exhibition called Complex Chords, which explores the region’s jazz heritage.
Some of that heritage may surprise you.
The exhibition, said Lindsay Regan, vice president of visitor experience for the Conservancy, “highlights the rich jazz heritage of Northeast Ohio from Akron’s Howard Street to the jazz clubs of Cleveland. And we’ve noted that there were Black-owned places-of-leisure clubs here in Cuyahoga Valley that were also a part of that scene.”
Jazz was heard in those clubs, too, making music a national park as ordinary as clear streams and majestic stands of timber. “We at the Conservancy and in partnership with our colleagues at the National Park Service have always viewed our park as more than just trails and outdoor recreation,” Regan said. “It’s a gathering place for the community. And we’ve seen how arts experiences–and specifically live music–can connect people across neighborhoods, ages, and backgrounds.”
The Complex Chords project has also connected non-profit organizations, urban and exurban, to bring music and history alive for park visitors. Open Tone Music and the Rubber City Jazz and Blues Festival were crucial partners in enabling the music portion of the live programming, but later this year, a partnership with Karamu House will incorporate drama into the mix.
“They’re bringing their curatorial expertise and the artists’ networks. We’re bringing the place, obviously, the audiences, and the mission alignment,” Regan said. “We really want to let the region’s artists lead here, and we just hope that our room is the best room they play all season.”
Abstract Sounds Wednesday., Jan. 21, 6:30 p.m., Happy Days Lodge, 500 W. Streetsboro St, Peninsula, tickets $20-25 available here
For the most complete listing of jazz and jazz-adjacent events., look to Jim Szabo’s essential, weekly Northeast Ohio jazz calendar.
