Do an Internet search for jazz and baseball and you’ll get no shortage of citations. Some of them are fascinating, most of them are sentimental and nearly all of them the are work of older men—further evidence that the once-“National Pastime” and “America’s Classical Music” (scare quotes intentional) are strictly for the AARP set. Enter Lucas Apostoleris a 31-year-old drummer who responds to that notion the way Jose Ramirez does to a hanging curve over the plate. Track, wall, gone!
Don’t look now, but baseball has become a young man’s game, at least on the field, and the athletic young band Apostoleris will bring to BOP STOP Sunday are a Futures Game-level lineup of talent on the rise.
Saxophonist David Mason and pianist Connor Rohrer, a finalist at the 2023 Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz International Piano Competition, were drafted to play in the band of Samara Joy, the 24-year-old vocalist who might be the most talked-about name in jazz at the moment. With young bassist Mike Ramos, a five-tool player who is everywhere on Miami’s bubbling music scene, the quartet brings quick-twitch reflexes, solid musicality and big-swing daring.
And here’s the pitch . . .
The parade of baseball metaphors is here for a reason: Apostoleris is crazy about the game. “I learned about baseball and started studying guitar and drums around the same time, seven years old,” Apostoleris said by phone from his home in Miami with the enthusiasm of a kid who just caught a foul ball at a big-league park.
“I knew that when I was older, I only wanted to do music or baseball. That’s all I care about. That’s all I’ve ever cared about, music and baseball. And that’s all I do. That’s all that has employed me in my adult life.”
Apostoleris has contributed analysis and essays to Baseball Prospectus, one of the geekiest publications pored over by baseball obsessives, but these days, he said, “I do behind-the-scenes data work for them just because I love baseball stats so much.”
A two-way player
But before baseball, there was music–not just drums, but classical guitar, about which, Apostoleris says, “I could have gone into it as my thing. I practiced a lot and I love the music, but it was just so intense. Not my scene.”
The drums were more his scene and growing up near Worcester, Massachusetts, Apostoleris was fortunate to enter the orbit of Mike Connors, a teacher in a community music program that prepared his students in a most unusual way. “You learn the Charlie Parker Omni Book by learning the solos by ear. You have to know how to sing all of them and then you have to learn how to play them on the drum kit. I did that when I was 11 years old.”
That gave the budding drummer a grounding in jazz fundamentals that you can still hear in his crisp stick work and gentle but insistent forward motion. “I love Bill Stewart and Brian Blaide because I really get that kind of aesthetic in their playing,” Apostoleris said, “except it’s a lot more flexible than the players of the original bebop era.”
Getting hot at Frost
But Apostoleris is also a composer; an interest that was honed in the master’s degree program at the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami. Frost not only introduced the drummer to BOP STOP director Bryan Kennard, a classmate, but it was also the gateway to the vibrant Miami music scene. Apostoleris’ bandmates are all Frost alumni on that scene.
But the drummer also logged time with respected elders such as legendary Ira Sullivan, the patriarch of the South Florida scene for six decades. “I was the last drummer that he ever played with before he passed away,” Apostoleris said. “I think the last the last gig we played was in February of 2020 and then things got shut down and he passed away in September at 89.”
Sullivan, who played alto saxophone and trumpet with equal mastery, would have been much better known had he been willing to leave South Florida for the road. Apostoleris, too, has found a comfortable situation in the sun, playing six nights a week in various contexts. He also has a new recording, It’s Been Good, and the record release tour that brings him to Cleveland will be his first as a leader.
Leaving the warmth of Spring Training in Florida for the big crowds in the big stadiums up north is an accepted rite of passage for ballplayers, and it’s the same for Apostoleris.
“Going out for 10 days, it’s a big thing for me in my life that I’m able to kind of put that together [and] showcase my music,” Apostoleris said.
Lucas Apostoleris Quartet, Sun., July 21, 7 p.m., BOP STOP at the Music Settlement. 2920 Detroit Ave., Cleveland, tickets $20 available here
NOTE: This article was written by a real human being. No artificial intelligence or generative language models were used in its creation.
Red beans and ricely yours,
jc
