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Tag: Cleveland jazz

Looking Backward and Forward At Once, Saxophonist Jim Snidero Returns to Bop Stop

Published 14 February, 2023 By John Chacona
Jim Snidero
photo by John Rogers

Saxophonist Jim Snidero was born in May, but a January birthdate would have provided an appropriate mythological backstory for his career. Like the two-faced god who gave the month its name, Snidero’s alto saxophone style looks forward and backward simultaneously.

Perhaps that is inevitable for the native of the Maryland suburbs who, at 65, has aged out of young-lion status but is a long way from being considered a wizened master. When he returns to the Bop Stop Saturday, Snidero will demonstrate how a mastery born of more than 40 years on the scene can be endlessly refreshed by restless musical curiosity.

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Cabaret Crooner or Jazz Singer? Dane Vannatter Is A Man of Two Worlds

Published 8 February, 2023 By John Chacona
from left: Joe Hunter, Bryan Thomas, Dane Vannatter and Ricky Exton

The legendary Patti LaBelle has been on stages large and small since Dwight Eisenhower was in the White House. As a performer, she’s done it all and seen it all, but she couldn’t have expected what happened at her 2015 performance at the Ohio State Fair in 2015.

“She called a group of guys [on stage] as a thing in her show,” Dane Vannatter wrote me in an exchange yesterday. “She asks them to sing, they can’t, and the audience laughs when she says, ‘Well then dance!’”

Vannatter was one of those guys, but when he opened his mouth to sing, the great soul diva fell silent. She couldn’t have known that Vannatter had been on a few stages himself, and when she gathered herself to address her unexpected guest, all she could say was, “You better sing, fool! My God!”

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New Composers Collective Lays Down the Law at Bop Stop

Published 25 January, 2023 By John Chacona

Third Law CollectiveWhat’s the second-most exciting day in a composer’s life? The day of the first performance of a new piece, of course. So, what’s the most exciting day? The day of the second performance. World premieres are exciting, but many compositions are heard once and then disappear. A second performance confers a bit of staying power.

This is especially true in the concert music world, but composers of creative music in the Black American tradition face many of the same challenges in bringing their work to the stage. Enter The Third Law Collective, a gathering of local composer/players whose project to present and support new composition in northeast Ohio gets underway Jan. 26 at Bop Stop.

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Blowing In From Chicago: Tim Daisy and Ken Vandermark Friday at Convivium 33

Published 10 January, 2023 By John Chacona
Tim Daisy Ken Vandermark
Tim Daisy, Ken Vandermark

Being a creative musician in Chicago almost demands a willingness to play anything, everywhere with everybody. Percussionist Tim Daisy and saxophonist Ken Vandermark, who will appear at Convivium 33 Friday, Jan. 13, embody that imperative as well as anyone, having collaborated with hundreds of musicians, movement and visual artists on both sides of the Atlantic. Yet despite lengthy resumes that suggest an affinity with musical speed dating, the two are just as committed to long-term relationships, especially their own.

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Bop Stop Rings In 2023 With Tim Mirth’s Night Terrors Band

Published 6 January, 2023 By John Chacona

Tim Mirth has been experimenting with guitars for a long time. “As a 10-year-old, I found my dad’s guitar, this Gretsch Corvette,” he remembered. “I would sneak it out after school, play with it, try to figure it out. One day my dad comes by, and I thought, I’m not going to get to play with this anymore, but he totally knew me. He showed me a couple of things and ever since I haven’t been able to put it down.”

Thirty years later, he still has the Gretsch. one of the 20 or so guitars in his arsenal. Mirth will select a couple of them to the concert by his Night Terrors band that will open Bop Stop’s 2023 schedule, Wednesday, Jan. 11.

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