Skip to content

Tag: Bop Stop

Joe Lovano’s Hometown Band Offers A Hero’s Welcome

Published 3 May, 2023

Joe Lovano

If there were a Mount Rushmore of Cleveland jazz, maybe on the bluff overlooking the West Flats, who would be on it? Albert Ayler and Tadd Dameron for sure, and maybe Eddie Baccus, too. Joe Lovano is still very much with us, but it’s not too soon to reserve a place for him up there, too.

Lovano’s career accomplishments, including his tenure with Bill Frisell in Paul Motian’s enormously influential trio, loom so large that it’s easy to forget that the saxophonist’s first big gig was with the Woody Herman Orchestra.

Trombonist Scott Garlock, the executive director of the Cleveland Jazz Orchestra with whom Lovano will play two concerts this weekend, remembers.

Continue ReadingJoe Lovano’s Hometown Band Offers A Hero’s Welcome
Leave a Comment

Dan Wilson Celebrates ‘Things Eternal’ With An Intimate Trio Show

Published 18 April, 2023
Dan WIlson
photocredit: Shane Wynn

How much love does Akron guitarist Dan Wilson have for his hometown? His forthcoming release Things Eternal, out Friday, is an all-Akron affair with compositions by Akron composers, featuring Akron and NEO musicians recorded in Akron.

When he celebrates the release of that record Friday at Bop Stop, it’ll be Akron-style and family-style, too, with an just vocalist Jessica Yafanaro and bassist Kip Reed joining him onstage. Warm, intimate and swinging: that’s Dan Wilson’s style, too.

Continue ReadingDan Wilson Celebrates ‘Things Eternal’ With An Intimate Trio Show
Leave a Comment

A Master Improvisor Launches A New Tour With A New Band At BOP STOP

Published 13 April, 2023
Lily Glick Finnegan, Ken Vandermark, Beth McDonald
Lily Glick Finnegan, Ken Vandermark, Beth McDonald

In all manner of settings, from solo concerts to large group situations, multi-instrumentalist Ken Vandermark has proven his mettle as a fearless and resourceful improvisor. So when two-fifths of his new Edition 55 band were not available to tour, he added a new piece to the remaining players and rechristened the band Edition Redux.

But the story doesn’t end there. The new player, keyboardist Erez Dessel, couldn’t make the tour’s first gig, Vandermark did the math and made 3=2+1. Call it new math or even New Addition, but any way you look at it, Saturday’s New Ghosts concert at BOP STOP—one set by drummer Lily Glick Finnegan with tubist Beth McDonald and a solo set by Vandermark—adds up to an intriguing look at the ever-dynamic Chicago scene.

Continue ReadingA Master Improvisor Launches A New Tour With A New Band At BOP STOP
Leave a Comment

The Music Of John Coltrane Once Saved His Life. Now It’s Our Turn

Published 11 April, 2023
Keith LaMar and Albert Marqués
Keith LaMar and Albert Marquès

Keith LaMar has said that listening to John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme” helped save his life. Yet for all its power and magnificence, Coltrane’s music cannot literally save LaMar’s life, which is scheduled to end Nov. 16 when he is to be executed for murders he says he did not commit.

Even if music can’t bring justice for LaMar, it can help keep his case in the public eye and perhaps forestall his execution. That is the purpose behind two concerts this week by a project called Freedom First that has attracted some of New York’s finest musicians.

Continue ReadingThe Music Of John Coltrane Once Saved His Life. Now It’s Our Turn
Leave a Comment

A Venerable Free Improv Showcase Finds Its Way Back

Published 28 March, 2023
Togishi
Togishi (from left): Mike Sopko, Joe Tomino, Dan Wenninger

After the cultural extinction event of 2020, some lifeforms re-emerged sooner than others. You would expect the ones with the most funding to be among the first to return, though perhaps not at their previous strength. And you might imagine that the more DIY scenes, the ones for which precarity is an ongoing fact, would also survive.

The 1Way at the Go Factory series of free improvisation shows curated by saxophonist Dan Wenninger, is one of the survivors, though it’s more like a cicada than a hardy cockroach. It hasn’t been dormant for seven years; there were a few scattered comebacks last fall. When the series resumes March 28 at the Go Factory loft, with Togishi and the Folger/Bruce/Martinez Trio, it will mark what Wenninger hopes will be a second beginning, a 1Way 2.0.

Continue ReadingA Venerable Free Improv Showcase Finds Its Way Back
Leave a Comment