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Tag: Cleveland jazz

Moto Perpetuo Drummer Anthony Taddeo’s Next Project: Recording Alla Boara Live

Published 5 July, 2023 By John Chacona

Alla Boara

 

If drummer Anthony Taddeo were a piece of music, he’d be marked Allegro vivace con brio é giocoso. Here’s a bit more Italian to represent the bilingual Taddeo: preso dalla testa ai piedi, an idiom for being in constant motion from head to toe.

This weekend finds the  in-demand sideman, dependable session musician and busy bandleader in the familiar setting of Hingetown’s Bop Stop with his Alla Boara project for a two-night engagement that will be recorded for audio and video release.

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Local Musicians Add Flavor To the Sauce At Tri-C JazzFest

Published 20 June, 2023 By John Chacona

For fans of improvised music in the Black American tradition, the arrival of Tri-C JazzFest to Playhouse Square with a roster of artists including Herbie Hancock, Christian McBride and phenomenal shooting-star vocalist Samara Joy is hands down the biggest week of the year.

The touring artists whose shelves are heavy with Grammy Awards and other honors deservedly grab the clicks and dominate the buzz, but for dozens of musicians from throughout Northeast Ohio, JazzFest will be the biggest gig of their year. For some of them, it will be the biggest opportunity of their young careers.

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Javier Red’s Imagery Converter Illustrates Life Under The Umbrella

Published 12 June, 2023 By John Chacona
photocredit: Eugenio Resendiz

Pianist Javier Red was in his mid-40s and had been a working musician for years, both in his native Mexico and in the United States, when he arrived at a musical crossroads.

It happened at a workshop in 2015 with saxophonist and composer Steve Coleman at the University of Chicago. “I told Steve that I’ve got two options. I can deny everything that I saw there and keep my music flowing in a comfortable way, or I can accept that what Steve was saying is a completely new and different conception of music,” he remembered. “I said, ‘Man, what I’m losing? Nothing!’ And I decided to go that way.”

He’s still going that way on a musical and life journey that will bring Red and his Chicago quartet Imagery Converter to BOP STOP Thursday for a New Ghosts concert that will have meaning well beyond music.

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Solo Or In Ensemble, Brandon Lopez’s Bass Is An Uncommon Sound

Published 30 May, 2023 By John Chacona
Brandon Lopez-TAK Ensemble
Brandon Lopez and TAK Ensemble

Despite the increasing numbers of creative improvising musicians who play it, the double bass in a solo context—on record or in performance–remains a comparatively uncommon sound.

Yet Brandon Lopez, with a new recording and a showcase at this weekend’s Re:Sound festival presented by the Cleveland Uncommon Sound Project, is the exception that proves the rule.

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