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Local fans of rock, r&b, hip-hop and pop might wonder why northeast Ohio seldom gets the big-name tours anymore. Point taken, but please forgive the region’s jazz fans for gloating a bit as two of the biggest names in their favorite genre aim high-profile tours right at Cleveland this week.
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For centuries composers as varied as Handel and Hancock, Elgar and Ellington have drawn inspiration from the majesty and power of the world’s great bodies of water. Stephan Crump has been surrounded by water for nearly his entire life, but the large-scale composition he will bring to the Cleveland Museum of Art on April 24, examines the aquatic from a very different point of view.
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Tigran Hamasyan is a man with a foot in each of two worlds, both geographically and temporally.
“Basically, I love telling stories,” Hamasyan told me to begin our interview. “And throughout my discography, there’s this aspect that each song tells a story through music.” It’s the kind of thing you might expect to hear from any musician, but the fact that Hamasyan said this from his home in Yerevan, Armenia, one of the oldest continuously inhabited settlements in the world, gives his comment the weight of an ancient culture steeped In stories.
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Summer’s sudden arrival in northeast Ohio has everybody emerging from their deep-winter isolation and hitting the streets. Cabin fever is breaking for national and touring jazz artists, too, and they are hitting area stages en masse this week.
With so many worthwhile shows in the next seven days, I’ll offer a kind of consumer’s guide to where to go and who to hear. There’s a wide range of music on offer this week; you really can’t go wrong with any of these shows.
Countdown . . .
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Like many older fans, I’ve been waiting for a movement among jazz musicians to respond to the civil unrest and uprisings that have roiled the country for the last six years or so. The time seemed right for a new generation to follow the example of artists such as Archie Shepp, Max Roach and Abbey Lincoln and make strong, forthright statements decrying injustice and state-sanctioned violence.
On Friday night at BOP STOP, Civil Disobedience, a quintet assembled by bassist David Ambrosio, will keep the flame of the ’60s alive, not just rhetorically, but musically as well.
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