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Author: John Chacona

A vintage selection from the cellar

Published 13 January, 2025 By John Chacona

Today I’m getting my Muck Rack profile together before I pitch an article to a city/regional magazine. To this online portfolio of my work I added this piece I wrote in 2011 for a city/regional title in Erie, Pennsylvania that is no longer published. It’s a scan of the page because, like the magazine itself, its digital archive also disappeared, maybe during a server migration some years ago or more likely when the publisher was acquired. Capitalists gonna capitalist I guess.

I’m especially fond of this piece, a bittersweet chronicle of a rich time in my life. But that’s not the only attraction it holds for me. It has a happy ending, and not just in the glass. You see, dear reader, the woman I obliquely and, I hope, generously alluded to in the opening graf, married me in 2019.

Cheers!

NOTE: This article was written by a real human being. No artificial intelligence or generative language models were used in its creation.

Don’t comply in advance,

jc

John Chacona

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At BOP STOP: Grease and Grace Combine In Pat Bianchi’s Organ Trio

Published 12 November, 2024 By John Chacona
Pat Bianchi
photocredit: Aidan Grant

It was a simple question that I asked Pat Bianchi: Which is your dominant hand? His answer was more complex than I expected.

“I’m kind of both,” he said. “I write with my left hand. I can write with my right hand, too, so it kind of flips back and forth.”

Ambidexterity is a useful trait for a keyboard player to possess, and because Bianchi’s primary instrument is the Hammond B-3 organ, his feet are also involved.

The lack of a dominant hand is an interesting footnote for sure but it’s also a metaphor for the absence of a dominant aesthetic in Bianchi’s musical choices, something that makes his Friday appearance at BOP STOP an unusually compelling event.

Read moreAt BOP STOP: Grease and Grace Combine In Pat Bianchi’s Organ Trio
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For Versatile Max Johnson, There’s A Play At Every Bass

Published 5 November, 2024 By John Chacona
Max Johnson
photocredit: Aidan Grant

For something a little different today, let’s talk politics. Not electoral politics; we’ve all had enough of that. No, let’s talk musical politics, which can be just as divisive and irrational. Just ask Max Johnson. He plays bass in various jazz contexts, including a trio with saxophonist Neta Raanan and drummer Eliza Salem that makes stops at BLU Jazz+ and in Avon Lake this weekend. But he also plays and composes bluegrass and concert music. It could drive a gatekeeper mad.

Read moreFor Versatile Max Johnson, There’s A Play At Every Bass
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