It’s getting to be a broken record, but one I love to play: Folks, this week is packed with great choices for lovers of improvised music in the Black American tradition (you can call it jazz if ya wanna).
Whereas the first week of the month belonged to eminent locals, this week is aswarm with internationally recognized touring artists representing an impossibly wide slice of the expanding musical tart tatine. It’s harvest season, after all, and for the next eight days, northeast Ohio can enjoy a bumper crop of musical delights, and every one a feast.
Jon Batiste at Blossom
Jon Batiste at Blossom? Not as far-fetched as you might think. The multi-Grammy, Emmy, and Oscar winner is a Juilliard grad and board member, after all, and he’s lately taken a deep immersion into the masters with the blockbuster release last Friday of three new albums in his ongoing Batiste Piano Series: Black Mozart (Vol. 2) (Decca Records US), and Monk Meditations (Vols. 3 and 4) (Verve Records). Batiste canceled three concerts last weekend citing “personal circumstances,” but at press time, this one, his Cleveland Orchestra debut, is a go. Jonathan Taylor Rush conducts.
Jon Batiste with The Cleveland Orchestra Thursday, August 20, 7 p.m., Blossom Music Center, 1145 W. Steels Corners Rd., Cuyahoga Falls, tickets available here.
Garaj Mahal at Irishtown Bend Taproom
It’s hard to get festies to head indoors during the summer festival season, but Garaj Mahal’s groove-forward masala of funk beats, fusion swag and Subcontinental tang just might do the trick. Call this band a true Millennial outfit; guitarist Fareed Haque put the original lineup on the road in 2000, and it immediately found a following on the jam band circuit. Aside from last year’s 25th-anniversary tour with Garaj Mahal, Haque, a guitarist of wide interests has appeared in Cleveland in jazzier contexts lately. Not to worry. There’s plenty of improvisational space in a Garaj Mahal set. Pairs well with glow sticks and face paint.
Garaj Mahal Thursday, August 20, 7:30 p.m., Irishtown Bend Taproom, 1849 W. 24 St., Cleveland, tickets $30-50 available here.
Bark Culture with Sam Yulsman at BOP STOP
In his notes for Bark Culture’s new album The Giant Is Awkward, vibraphonist Victor Vieira-Branco noted that the recording studio’s piano was slightly out of tune. He was prepared to scrap the session, but on listening, he found, “a human-like quality in the music that I find incredibly moving.” He’s right. Still VV-B shouldn’t expect such serendipitous microtonality from BOP STOP’s meticulously maintained Steinway when the trio, John Moran on bass and drummer Joey Sullivan, is joined by pianist and composer Sam Yulsman for a night of audacious and rhythmically propulsive music in the first of two concerts presented by New Ghosts this week.
Bark Culture with Sam Yulsman Thursday, August 20, 7 p.m., BOP STOP, 2920 Detroit Ave., Cleveland, tickets $20 available here.
Joshua Redman Quartet at Cain Park
It might be a stretch to declare that Joshua Redman loves playing for northeast Ohio audiences, but the record shows that Thursday’s concert by the eminent saxophonist will be his third in a 20-month stretch. Redman turned 57 in February, which by the standards of George Coleman (91) and Charles Lloyd (88)—to say nothing of the otherworldly Marshall Allan, still going strong at 101—makes the saxophonist a fresh young face. Nonetheless, his recent work glows with maturity and a lightly worn authority. The quartet featuring pianist Paul Cornish, bassist Philip Norris and drummer Nazir Ebo, now together for three years, is worth the price of admission in its own right.
Joshua Redman Quartet Friday, August 21, 8 p.m., Cain Park,14591 Superior Road, Cleveland Heights, tickets $39.65 to $79.65 available here.
Stephen Philip Harvey Trio at BLU Jazz+
Today’s preview leans heavily to the touring artists side of things. Yet even though he lives on the East Coast, Stephen Philip Harvey is such a ubiquitous presence on the NEO scene that we can regard him as an honorary local by now. Like Batiste and Bark Culture, SHP has a new recording, Golden Hour on his own Hidden Cinema Records, that will be released on Friday. It’s a compact (36 minutes) live date that features Harvey on tenor saxophone, Steve Arnold on bass and Jordon Stanley on drums, the band that he’ll bring to Akron. Listeners who can’t get enough—or who plan to graze elsewhere from Thursday’s loaded menu–are encouraged to catch him at the Trio’s hit in Youngstown Friday night.
Stephen Philip Harvey Trio Thursday, August 20, 8 p.m., BLU Jazz+, 47 E. Market Street, Akron, tickets $20 available here, and Friday, August 20, 8 p.m., Westside Bowl, 2617 Mahoning Ave., Youngstown, tickets $15 available here.
Keefe Jackson – Jakob Heinemann Quartet at BOP STOP
When it comes to cosmopolitanism, New York gets all the flowers, but no scene can compare with Chicago’s for intercontinental collabs. The Windy City has nurtured a long tradition of folding European improvisors into the mix, a tradition saxophonist Keefe Jackson and LA-based bassist Jakob Heinemann uphold by adding a reedist we’ll call “Andre Royston” to the trio with drummer Adam Shead. That’s right, the same Adam Shead who appeared on the New Ghosts stage a scant three months before with his own trio of bass clarinetist Jason Stein and bassist Damon Smith. Maybe it’s time to talk about the Chicago to Cleveland connection, and I am 100-percent here for it.
Keefe Jackson – Jakob Heinemann Quartet Wednesday, August 26, 8 p.m., BOP STOP, 2920 Detroit Ave., Cleveland, tickets $20 available here.
For the most complete listing of jazz and jazz-adjacent events., look to Jim Szabo’s essential, weekly Northeast Ohio jazz calendar.
