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Tag: Bop Stop

Cleveland: This Is The Week Of Jazz You’ve Been Waiting For

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No burying the lede here: the next eight days might offer the most extraordinary lineup of jazz concerts Cleveland has seen in years.

Starting with the pianists, you can hear Cuban piano great Omar Sosa (Sept. 10), Michael Wolff, Dan Wall (both Sept. 13), Theron Brown and Matt Mitchell (both Sept. 14) this week. Prefer saxophonists? Then how about James Brandon Lewis (Sept. 12), Anna Webber (Sept. 13) and Branford Marsalis (Sept. 16). Add the unpredictable chemistry of The Uninvited (Sept. 11) and, well, you’ve got some choices to make.

Any one of these events would merit the full 700-word feature treatment at let’s call this, but don’t worry. I’m going to keep this short and snackable, though I might publish more nutritious fuller versions later, here or elsewhere, and I’ll let you know about those if and when they happen.

For now, though, let’s shine a light on three mindblowingly exciting shows that will make your muso friends in New York wish they lived in Cleveland.

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Get Ready, Northeast Ohio Jazz Fans. It’s Szn Preview Szn!

Back when I wrote for a daily newspaper (kids, ask your parents what those were), the page-turn from August to September always called for a big roundup of the coming seasons of the performing arts organizations I covered. In those days that meant classical music presenters. Dependent on a subscription model, they typically planned a season well in advance and publicized it relentlessly. That model doesn’t work for the way we live anymore and for jazz, my beat, never worked at all. Still, a few jazz orgs plan a full season. You’ll find three of them below, each in their different way giving us a wish to dream on. Open your calendar app and let’s go.

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Newcomer Emma Hedrick Is Making A Career On Her Own Terms

Emma Hedrick

If jazz is dead, as so many fans like to think, somebody forgot to tell the singers, so many of who have lately emerged on the scene. For years, their playbook was simple: record an album of songbook standards with a trio, preferably with some name players, and wait for the phone to ring.

Not Emma Hedrick who will make her BOP STOP debut Thursday. All 10 songs on Newcomer, her debut recording released last Friday, are original compositions. Aside from producer Peter Eldridge who appears on two selections, the biggest name among the 16 musicians credited might belong to Connor Rohrer, 25, whom cognoscenti might recognize as Samara Joy’s pianist at Cain Park last August.

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A Big Week In NEO For Little Big Bands (And A Big Big Band)

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

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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