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Tag: Anthony Braxton

It’s Three For The Keys At BOP STOP This Week

If you are searching for a glimmer of light in this dark and ominous hour, consider this. We are living in a golden age of jazz piano. There are more interesting pianists playing in a wider spectrum of styles at a high level of artistry and technique than at any time in the music’s eleven-decades of existence.

And it gets better. Three such pianists, Orrin Evans, Simona Premazzi and Philip Golub, can be heard in Cleveland over the next eight days. Though they might not have the name recognition of a Herbie Hancock or Jon Batiste, all are singular stylists who encounter the jazz piano tradition in idiosyncratic and brilliantly original ways.

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Can Three Shamans From New York Help Conjure A DIY Scene in Erie?

Three Shamans (clockwise from top left): Herb Robertson, Phil Haynes, Ken Filiano (photo by R.I. Sutherland-Cohen)

This week I’m taking a Thanksgiving break of sorts. Instead of my stated project of documenting the northeast Ohio scene I’ll cover something notable that’s happening in my old hometown of Erie, Pennsylvania: a concert Saturday evening headlined by New York improvising trio Three Shamans at Erie’s Grounded Printshop on a bill that also includes New American musicians from Syria and an experimental trombone and percussion duo.

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Reunion: Steve Swell and the Frode Gjerstad Trio from Norway Reconvene at Beachland

Steve Swell
Photo by Žiga Koritnik

With its wide dynamic range, speech-like articulation and capacity for playing off-the-scale notes, the saxophone would seem to be the perfect instrument for creative improvised music (some people call it “free jazz” or “avant-garde jazz” or “fire music”). Fine, but anything the saxophone can do, the trombone can do better. So why don’t we hear more trombones in creative music—or in mainstream jazz, for that matter?

It’s a question that Steve Swell, the trombonist who will appear at the Beachland Ballroom Sunday with saxophonist Frode Gjerstad, Jon Rune Strøm on bass and drummer Paal Nilssen-Love, has pondered for a long time.

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