Skip to content

Tag: Cain Park

Countdown: Your Planning Guide for Music August 24-31

It’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.

George Benson, Friday, Aug. 25, 8 p.m., Cain Park, Cleveland Heights

Given his chart success as a vocalist, it’s easy to forget just how much jazz guitar George Benson can play when the spirit moves him. Whether that spirit will be with him at Cain Park is an open question. The smart money will be on a medley of hits with maybe one familiar burner to remind us all that the old man (Benson is 80) can bring the fire that lit up Pittsburgh’s Hill District six decades ago.

Cleveland Jazz Orchestra, Friday, Aug. 25, 8 p.m., BOP STOP, Cleveland

All of a sudden, it seems like every musician on the Cleveland Scene is in the studio (watch for my forthcoming Street Date column at AllAboutJazz.com on just this topic). Friday it’s the turn of the Cleveland Jazz Orchestra, which will convene to record the music of one of its own, Chas Baker. The trombonist and director of the Kent State University Jazz Ensemble goes back a long way with this band, having been present at the creation of the ensemble in 1985. While we’re on the topic of time passing, it’s worth noting that the CJO has not recorded for five years, which makes Friday’s live date something of an event.

Sunny Tabler

Sunny Tabler’s Trap Jazz, Saturday, Aug. 25, 8 p.m., BLU Jazz+, Akron

What you make of the term trap jazz will likely depend on which side of 30 you find yourself on. My guess is that notwithstanding the issue of age, Sunny Tabler can have it both ways, being both a big-eared musician who is familiar with trap music and a practitioner of the trap set. That’s the seat from which Tabler will direct an ensemble of some of the region’s most accomplished jazzers: electrifying alto saxophonist Ronell Regis and trombonist Zach Warren on the front line with Theron Brown on piano, guitarist Jonah Ferguson and bassist Jordan McBride forming an A-list rhythm section.

1WAY @ THE GO FACTORY, Tuesday, August 29, 8 p.m., Go Factory, Cleveland

The last monthly 1Way presentation of the summer offers improv two ways. At 8 p.m. it’s WELL, a project that joins 1Way ringmaster Dan Wenninger with guitarist Evan Moran and Mat Weisman on drums. The publicity materials promise that they will “thread together composition and improvisation in a manner that balances structure with spontaneity and weight with constant motion,” which seems like a pretty good thesis statement for the entire 1Way project. At 9 p.m. or thereabouts, they give way to Black Island Condors, another trio comprising Vincenzino DiFranco (guitars), Alfredo Guerrieri (bass) and the wonderfully named drummer Mike Bashur.

I couldn’t live without Jim Szabo’s essential, weekly Northeast Ohio jazz calendar , NEO’s most complete list of jazz and jazz-adjacent events. If you haven’t visited it lately, what are you waiting for?

NOTE: This article was written by a real human being. No artificial intelligence or generative language models were used in its creation.

Red beans and ricely yours,
John Chacona

 

Comments closed

Countdown: Your Planning Guide for Music August 17-23

It’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.

 

Keigo Hirakawa Trio, Thursday, Aug. 17, 7 p.m., BOP STOP, Cleveland

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.

Comments closed

This Is New: Trading Fours

Friendly Experiencers,

Because my interview with this week’s feature artist fell through, I decided to improvise and do something different. Instead of stuffing the Trading Fours roundup of capsule event previews at the end of a 700-word feature article, today they’re the main event. Short and sweet. I’m going to open the comments for this post so you can tell me if you like it or think this should be a one-and-done. 

Dan Bruce :beta collective with Alyssa Boyd, Cain Park, Tuesday, July 25

In the language of software developers, a beta project is one that is in development. That’s a pretty good description of the jazz playbook, too, especially as practiced by Lakewood guitarist Dan Bruce. His :beta collective balances a mutable blend of electric and acoustic instruments, composition and improvisation, jazz and prog rock influences. For the latest iteration of his tinkerer’s project in sound, Bruce has added a new wrinkle: the voice of Alyssa Boyd. That makes for an intriguing proposition for us musical beta testers, and as part of the free concert series supported by the Local 4 Music Fund, you can’t beat the price.

Leave a Comment

Singer Barbara Knight Brings Jazz On A Summer’s Day To Cain Park

Barbara Knight

 

Barbara Knight doesn’t consider herself a jazz singer, though you wouldn’t know it from the swinging, rhythmically alert performances she’s lavished on northeast Ohio audiences through the years. But hear her out.

“I’ve always called myself a big band singer, rather than a jazz singer,” she said by phone from her home in nearby western Pennsylvania. “If you listen to me, you’ll hear that I am more traditional with my presentation of songs. I’m not using vocal pyrotechnics to do all kinds of crazy things with the melody. I think the people that I sing for are more interested in hearing the melody.”

When Knight and her quintet, John Orsini (saxophones), Phil Lantry (keyboards), Tim Powell (bass) and Glenn Schaft (drums) take the stage at Cain Park for a free concert Sunday, Aug. 14 at 1 p.m., you will certainly hear the melody, but you’ll also hear the wisdom of a singer with hundreds of songs in her repertoire and decades of exploration into their subtleties.

Comments closed

Joy To the World: Vocalist Samara Joy Returns to Cleveland This Week

EDITOR’S NOTE: LET’S TRY THIS AGAIN. When my laptop was sent for emergency repairs last week, I lost access to my editorial calendar for this blog. For some reason, I assumed Samara Joy’s engagement at Bop Stop was December 10, and I rushed a post to preview the gig, never thinking that I could check Bop Stop’s site to confirm the date. The correct date, of course, is December 17, which gave me enough time to rewrite the preview to incorporate my conversation with Ms. Joy, and you can read it all below. Seriously folks, don’t miss this show. She’s extraordinary and you’ll be able to say you saw her when.

The walk to the stage at Cain Park for this year’s Tri-C JazzFest was longer than I expected, but I was still able to hear the opening act, albeit long before I could see the stage. The tricky changes of the verse of “Stardust” sailed out into the early autumn afternoon like a warm breeze, pitch-perfect and phrased with uncanny grace. Comparisons are invidious, but here was a singer with the vocal lushness of a young Sarah Vaughn and Ella Fitzgerald’s preternatural musicality, as delusional as that description might sound.

Leave a Comment