The 2026 Rubber City Jazz & Blues Festival, which begins Thursday, is big: three days, five venues and 18 events. It has a big-name headliner, too in contemporary jazz master Gerald Albright who will top a double bill with Althea René at Lock 3 on Saturday, Sept. 12. But the biggest noise of the festival presented by Open Tone Music might be the one that a pair of big—or biggish—bands will make in the normally hushed confines of Akron’s Main Library.
The bands are under the leadership of trombonist and composer Sam Blakeslee, who will present music from his Large Group’s recording, New Blood, which will be released Sept. 25 on BJU Records, and Chris Coles, who has convened an 11-piece orchestra to play “The Way of The Sly Man,” a multi-part work composed by the late bassist and educator Dave Morgan.
The two events are connected by lineage. Morgan was an early mentor to both Blakeslee and Coles. Echoes of Morgan’s saturated orchestral colors, rhythmic momentum and intricate but approachable section writing are all over New Blood.
It’s complex music that the Ohio squad of Blakeslee’s Large Ensemble will have to learn quickly. “We’re rehearsing Wednesday before everyone gets tied up at the festival. So we’ll get a good chance to reacquaint ourselves,” Blakeslee said on a video call last month. “For the performance on Friday, we’ll do about five tunes [of the seven] from the record, and then, I think I’m going to throw in either one from the suite ‘Flowers for Rubber City’ that was commissioned by University of Akron a few years ago; whenever I come back to Akron, I feel like I need to play something from. And if there’s time, I’d love to include Dave Morgan’s ‘Moon Palace’ as a tribute to him, which I think is just, it’s one of his most stunning, stunning works.”
The 5:30 p.m. concert at Akron’s Main Library will feature some of the regions most capable players. “It’s a lot of the original members,” Blakeslee said: Bobby Selvaggio, Nathan-Paul Davis, Chris Coles, Johnny Cochran and Max Schlenk, saxophones; trombonists Mark Mauldin, Chris Anderson, Zach Warren, and Amber Forrer; Scott McKee, Garrett Folger, Jack Schantz and Ephraim Miller on trumpets and a rhythm section of guitarist Dan Bruce, Theron Brown on piano, bassist George Delancey, and Zaire Darden on drums. “So it’ll be a good squad,” Blakeslee said with considerable understatement.
Anderson, Blakeslee, Brown, Coles, Davis and Schantz will be in the 11-piece ensemble that will perform “The Way of the Sly Man” at 6:45 p.m. “The band that I put together is mostly musicians that studied with Jack or Dave,” Coles told me last month. They include bassist Aidan Plank (“He was one of Dave’s first students in Ohio,” Coles said), drummer Dustin May and Coles himself. Saxophonist Justin Evangelist, a student of Schantz’s and the new classical saxophone professor at the University of Akron, and Pittsburgh guitarist Colter Harper round out the ensemble. “Jack is going to play and kind of lead it because he commissioned Dave to write it,” Coles said.
By introducing Morgan to the Fourth Way concepts of the Greek-Armenian esoteric philosopher, mystic and composer G.I. Gurdjieff, Scahntz also seeded the idea for the suite’s theme.
“My initial idea was to have four movements that would capture musically the Four Ways, namely the Way of the Monk, the Way of the Bhakti, the Way of the Yogi, and the Way of the Sly Man.” Schantz told me. “Dave took that concept and turned it into a nine-movement suite based on the Enneagram, which [Gurdjieff’s colleague] Ouspensky drew from the teachings of Gurdjieff.”
It’s a suite rich with color and come of the mystic perfume of Ouspensky’s book. Brought to the stage by students of Morgan’s, players who know the work–and in the cases of Schantz and Anderson, played on the 2010 recording—makes for a fitting tribute.
Summing up his Fourth Way, Gurdjieff wrote “Man is a plurality. Man’s name is legion.” Jazz is like that, too, and this weekend the proof is in Akron.
2026 Rubber City Jazz & Blues Festival
Thu., Sept. 10
7 p.m. University of Akron Jazz Group led by Sam Ross
8:15 p.m. Nathan-Paul Davis
9:30 p.m. jam session led by Chris Coles
All events at BLU Jazz+, 47 Market St.
Fri., Sept. 11
5:30 p.m. Sam Blakeslee Large Group
6:45 p.m. Chris Coles presents Dave Morgan’s “The Way of the Sly Man,” feat. Jack Schantz
Akron Main Library, 60 South High St,
8 p.m. Rachel Osherow & The Hangout
9:30 p.m. Resolve
BLU Jazz+
Sat., Sept. 12
10:45 a.m. Ellet High School Jazz Group – CLPA at The Water Wheel, 57 W. North St.
11:30 a.m. Open Tone Group – CLPA at The Water Wheel
12:30 p.m. Nate Yingling Trio feat. Steve Kortyka – CLPA at The Water Wheel
1 p.m. University of Akron Steel Drum Group – Akron Art Museum, 1 S. High St,
1:45 p.m. Esther Fitz – CLPA at The Water Wheel
2:30 p.m. Liz Bullock – Akron Art Museum
4 p.m. Aaron Smith’s Project 6 – Akron Art Museum
5:30 p.m. Umojah Nation – Akron Art Museum
7 p.m. Gerald Albright, Althea René – Lock 3, 200 S Main St.
7:30 p.m. Helen Welch & Friends – BLU Jazz+
9 p.m. Vanessa Rubin and the Cliff Barnes Organ Trio – BLU Jazz+
For the most complete listing of jazz and jazz-adjacent events., look to Jim Szabo’s essential, weekly Northeast Ohio jazz calendar.
