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Tag: BLU Jazz+

Trumpeter Peter Evans Has One Foot In Several Musical Worlds

Published 10 December, 2025 By John Chacona
Peter Evans


For anyone looking to map the frontiers of what is possible on the trumpet, BOP STOP was the place to be last June*. There, with the Dan Weiss Quartet, Peter Evans laid out all the landmarks: Olympic-level feats of circular breathing, splatters of 16th notes (or were they 32nds?) in a register beyond the Kuiper Belt, even playing rhythms by placing the microphone in the bell of his instrument and blowing unpitched thuds.

It was eye-popping, yet it was all in a day’s work for Evans, who returns to the Hingetown club Thursday for a solo set in the final presentation of the 2025 season of concerts presented by New Ghosts.

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At CMA, Guitarist Dan Bruce Makes A Mixtape While You Listen

Published 18 November, 2025 By John Chacona
(clockwise from top left) Jinari Kemet, Liz Bullock, Ray Flanagan, Gretchen Pleuss

Though hip-hop artists have made it a genre unto itself, the mixtape, a homemade cassette of songs, was the Spotify playlist of the 1980s and ‘90s. Mixtapes were playable, tradable declarations of musical allegiances and taste, a medium of exchange and sometimes winsome mash notes to crushes, delivering their message at 1 7/8 ips.

True, it’s hard to imagine jazz nerds assembling cassettes of favorite Maynard Ferguson cuts to give to romantic objects (harder still to imagine they had such objects). Still guitarist Dan Bruce liked the concept so much that he’s making a mixtape live and on stage by arranging songs performed by Liz Bullock, Ray Flanagan, Jinari Kemet and Gretchen Pleuss with an a-list jazz ensemble.

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Stephen Philip Harvey Is A Music Meister of the Multiversal

Published 21 October, 2025 By John Chacona

Stephen Philip Harvey is a composer, arranger, instrumentalist, label executive, educator and beginning several months ago, a radio host—a kind of superhero of music. He’s also a fan of superhero comics. So when I spoke with him recently, I asked him which superhero he most identifies with.

“There was this villain that was played by Neil Patrick Harris on ‘Batman: The Brave and the Bold,’” Harvey said from his office at the radio station. “His name was the Music Meister.” That character used the power of music to achieve world domination.

While Harvey acknowledged that, “that would be a cool power. I’d love that,” his superpower is bringing people together through music, which is what he will do Friday night at BOP STOP and Saturday at BLU Jazz+ when his Stephen Philip Harvey Jazz Orchestra celebrates the release of its latest album Multiversal: Live at BOP STOP.

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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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