Concert Previews - John Chacona writes

Re-Birth: The Iconic Cleveland Improvising Trio Returns to the Happy Dog

Published 27 March, 2022 By John Chacona

Birth Josh Smith, Jeremy Bleich Joe Tomino — *from left: Josh Smith, Jeremy Bleich, Joe Tomino*

If you were born any time after 1975, you couldn’t avoid Jefferson Starship’s spectacularly dreadful “We Built This City on Rock ‘n’ Roll.” Even if that lyrical flex were true, it pales before the real-life exploits of the band Birth, who built the stage at one of the city’s great rock landmarks, literally. Next Saturday, the Cleveland-born band will return to that stage for the first time in many years, not with power tools, but with their instruments, for a long-overdue homecoming gig at the Happy Dog.

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A Man A Plan: Michael Formanek Brings A Palindromic Trio To Bop Stop

Published 22 March, 2022 By John Chacona

Michael Formanek Drome Trio: Vinnie Sperazza, Chet Doxas, Michael Formanek — *from left:* Vinnie Sperazza, Chet Doxas, Michael Formanek

When you think of the tradition of getting together to play music on the back porch, you probably imagine a bunch of guys with guitars and fiddles and maybe a washtub bass deep in a backwoods hollow. But when the back porch is in suburban North Jersey, things look a little different.

So when Chet Doxas and Vinnie Sperazza joined bassist Michael Formanek outdoors last summer, they brought saxophones and a drum kit respectively. And though the gatherings started as a way to make music collectively in those dark, pre-vaccine days, they ended as the Michael Formanek Drome Trio, a new band that makes its Cleveland debut Tuesday, March 29 at Bop Stop.

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Trefoil, An All-Star Team of Ambrose Akinmusire, Gerald Cleaver & Kris Davis, Come To Bop Stop

Published 16 March, 2022 By John Chacona

When the final buzzer sounded at the NBA All-Star Game on February 20, it was the end of All-Star weekend in Cleveland but it was the opening bell for an all-star month of jazz. First came the March 3 appearance at Tri-C of the Jazz Gallery All-Stars (previewed here), a band that in every way lived up to its name. Starting Sunday, the action shifts to Bop Stop at the Music Settlement where Ambrose Akinmusire and Dr. Eddie Henderson, two of the leading voices of the jazz trumpet will appear in a three-day span. And that’s not all.

Akinmusire will be in Cleveland as part of a new trio, Trefoil, of pianist Kris Davis and drummer Gerald Cleaver, all-stars in their own right. The term supergroup is overused, but there’s no other way to describe this collaboration.

The Jazz Gallery All-Stars Finally Land in Cleveland for a March 6 Concert

Published 1 March, 2022 By John Chacona

Back in the 1980s, listings of events in The New Yorker’s Goings On About Town section were introduced with this charmingly worded caveat: Musicians and night-club proprietors live complicated lives that are subject to last-minute change; it is therefore always advisable to call ahead.

For presenters and musicians who ply their trades during winter on the Great Lakes, that advice goes double, especially when high winds and more than a foot of snow arrived to slam the door on the Feb. 3 concert by the Jazz Gallery All-Stars at Cleveland’s Tri-C Auditorium. Yet when Tri-C JazzFest director Terri Pontremoli canceled that show, it wasn’t a double bar, but only a fermata.

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Mostly Other People Do the Killing Finds the Laughter in “Disasters” At Bop Stop

Published 23 February, 2022 By John Chacona

If you can’t figure out why the song titles at tomorrow night’s Bop Stop concert by Mostly Other People Do the Killing might provoke laughter among some audience members, don’t worry. They’re just Pennsylvanians who are in on the joke.

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Category: Concert Previews

Re-Birth: The Iconic Cleveland Improvising Trio Returns to the Happy Dog

A Man A Plan: Michael Formanek Brings A Palindromic Trio To Bop Stop

Trefoil, An All-Star Team of Ambrose Akinmusire, Gerald Cleaver & Kris Davis, Come To Bop Stop

The Jazz Gallery All-Stars Finally Land in Cleveland for a March 6 Concert

Mostly Other People Do the Killing Finds the Laughter in “Disasters” At Bop Stop