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Play Like Where Your From: The University of Akron’s JazzFest Is Back

For a long time, jazz education was an oral tradition. Students learned at the feet of their master or in the adjacent chair in a section of a big band, a lineage that you could witness as well as hear. These days, that formerly oral tradition has largely moved to the university or conservatory classroom but the professionalism of jazz education hasn’t totally done away with the notion of lineage.

Sean Jones
Sean Jones

This week offers vivid proof in the form of the University of Akron Jazz Week an event that brings together three UA alumni, two of whom, Theron Brown and Chris Coles, are now teaching at their alma mater, with internationally prominent trumpet player and Warren Ohio native Sean Jones.

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Giant Step: Akron’s Rubber City Festival Returns to Live Performance

 

Right now, the northeast Ohio creative music scene is like the parent of a toddler walking barefoot in the dark trying to cross the room not knowing where the Legos might be. What will the size of audiences be like? What will they be willing to spend when inflation is eating away at buying power? How will ongoing health concerns play out?

For a multiday event at several venues, the peril increases. Still, if you’re looking for a music event that has bounce-back written all over it, Akron’s Rubber City Jazz and Blues Festival has to be the one.

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Smash! Stephen Philip Harvey and His Band of Superheroes Are Here

Stephen Philip Harvey

 

“I hate that a big band is so . . . big,” saxophonist, composer and arranger Stephen Philip Harvey said with a chuckle. “It’s financially a problem, but I just really like big band music.”

Harvey likes it so much that he’s putting aside the financial, organizational and logistical challenges of touring with a big band to bring the Stephen Philip Harvey Jazz Orchestra (SPHJO) to Cleveland’s Bop Stop Thursday night to support the release two weeks ago of the band’s debut recording, Smash! (Next Level, 2022).

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