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Friendly experiencers,
It’s Thursday and the Countdown is back on its normal schedule. Order has been restored. The concert lineup was thinned a bit by the cancellation of the Christian Sands gig at The Treelawn, but just look at the variety of offerings below: a big band session with vocalist, hard-blowing sextet and a free improv legend. Who says the NEO scene is one-dimensional?
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One of the great pleasures of this project is the opportunity to do a weekly temperature check of the NEO scene., with a focus on live performance where it surely belongs. No performances, no scene, right?
But NEO artists have lately been as active in the studios as they are on the area’s stages and bandstands. That’s a good thing, too. Some projects have been covered here, including Work and Song, the exultant live recording by Alla Boara made at BOP STOP last July, Lucas Kadish’s Tundra, which was a big part of this entry from 2023, and the forthcoming recording laid down two weeks ago by the Third Law Collective wsg Russ Johnson, a project I profiled here. A few more will get the in-depth treatment in future posts here and at All About Jazz.
Still it’s been a while since let’s call this has called the roll on recordings, and given the spring shower of recent releases, now’s the time.
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I look at let’s call this as a sort of chamber of commerce for the local scene. It’s important work, especially given the general indifference of the local media to improvised music in the Black American tradition and it’s great fun for me to do, a gateway for this NEO neophyte into the thriving local scene. But two posts a week takes a lot of time to crank out and with holiday travel, my anniversary and listening to catch up with before the yearend polls are due, the next couple of weeks will concentrate on these Countdown previews of upcoming events. Fortunately, there’s a lot to talk about, including more new releases, the first big event at a significant new venue and more. Buckle up. It’s going to be an interesting ride.
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In the midst of a recording session with his New York big band, Columbus-born, Brooklyn-based trombonist, composer and arranger Sam Blakeslee noticed an interesting dynamic among the players.
“On the first take everyone in the band was like, ‘Who are these people? Why are they playing like this, because it just sounds so different? Why haven’t I heard stuff like this before?’” Blakeslee’s answer: “Because it’s Cleveland.”
“These people,” saxophonists Chris Coles and Nathan-Paul Davis, and the cream of Northeast Ohio’s jazz community, will join Blakeslee on the stage of BLU Jazz+ this weekend for a homecoming so packed with music that it will take two nights to play it all.
Comments closedIt’s going to be a great weekend for music in NEO, but where to start? Countdown gets you ready with a roundup of some of the most notable music events that you might want to check out. Think of it as your every-Thursday planning guide to a weekend of music and good times.
It would be convenient to describe Keigo Hirakawa as an academic who plays piano as a hobby, but after one listen to Dr. Hirakawa (he’s professor of electrical and computer engineering college at the University of Dayton) charge through postbop changes, it’s apparent that he could have gone pro in jazz. And he has with a new record, Pixel (Origin Records), that dropped in June. To celebrate the release, Hirakawa will rip it up with bassist Eddie Brookshire and drummer Reggie Jackson.
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