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Author: John Chacona

Such A Good Vibe! The Hingetown Jazz Festival Returns

Published 26 August, 2025 By John Chacona

If you were to ask ChatGPT to design an ideal jazz festival, how would you write the prompt (stay with me here; every online article these days has to refer to AI in some way)?

You’d have to start with a great venues, easily accessible and welcoming, make some of them outdoors and order great weather. A nearby body of water makes a nice addition, so throw that in. Affordability is essential, so why not make it free? And any great music festival has to start with great music, so that’s table stakes. And the vibe. It has to have a great vibe.

Of course, ChatGPT doesn’t know from vibes or great music, so this exercise is strictly hypothetical, but let me give you the answer nonetheless: Saturday’s third edition of the Hingetown Jazz Festival is pretty close to ideal.

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Get Ready, Northeast Ohio Jazz Fans. It’s Szn Preview Szn!

Published 19 August, 2025 By John Chacona

Back when I wrote for a daily newspaper (kids, ask your parents what those were), the page-turn from August to September always called for a big roundup of the coming seasons of the performing arts organizations I covered. In those days that meant classical music presenters. Dependent on a subscription model, they typically planned a season well in advance and publicized it relentlessly. That model doesn’t work for the way we live anymore and for jazz, my beat, never worked at all. Still, a few jazz orgs plan a full season. You’ll find three of them below, each in their different way giving us a wish to dream on. Open your calendar app and let’s go.

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Newcomer Emma Hedrick Is Making A Career On Her Own Terms

Published 5 August, 2025 By John Chacona
Emma Hedrick

If jazz is dead, as so many fans like to think, somebody forgot to tell the singers, so many of who have lately emerged on the scene. For years, their playbook was simple: record an album of songbook standards with a trio, preferably with some name players, and wait for the phone to ring.

Not Emma Hedrick who will make her BOP STOP debut Thursday. All 10 songs on Newcomer, her debut recording released last Friday, are original compositions. Aside from producer Peter Eldridge who appears on two selections, the biggest name among the 16 musicians credited might belong to Connor Rohrer, 25, whom cognoscenti might recognize as Samara Joy’s pianist at Cain Park last August.

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A Big Week In NEO For Little Big Bands (And A Big Big Band)

Published 29 July, 2025 By John Chacona
Bobby Selvaggio and Stephen Philip Harvey

Why are these men smiling?

At the poker table a pair of eights is nothing to get excited about, but on the jazz calendar it’s a winning hand. And NEO is holding it this week thanks to a pair of concerts–both tied to upcoming recordings–featuring dynamic octets led by Stephen Philip Harvey and Bobby Selvaggio.

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Two Bands + Two New Releases = Three Shows in NEO

Published 22 July, 2025 By John Chacona

In the circular economy of jazz, new recordings are supported by album release tours or shows and those performances in turn create a market for the recordings. Just how this works is on display this week as concerts by pianist Ben Tweedt and saxophonist Matthew Alec, two artists with ties to northeast Ohio, celebrate the releases of their latest recordings.

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