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Tag: Count Basie

Bounceback: Akron’s Rubber City Jazz & Blues Festival Is Back In A Big Way

Published 5 September, 2023 By John Chacona

It could just be a case of wishful thinking, but the terrific things I’m hearing about this past weekend’s inaugural Hingetown Jazz Festival show what can happen when top-flight musicians, welcoming venues and tireless, community-minded organizers come together to meet audiences where they are. Who wouldn’t be stoked for the future?

And you won’t have to wait to get a glimpse of what that future might look like, because this weekend brings Akron’s annual Rubber City Jazz and Blues Festival Sept. 7-9.

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Dan Weiss’ Trio Made One Of The Year’s Best Recordings. Hear Them At Bop Stop Sunday

Published 2 December, 2022 By John Chacona
(from left) Thomas Morgan, Jacob Sacks, Dan Weiss

Dan Weiss talks a lot like he plays the drums. When I spoke with him about his Sunday concert at Bop Stop, his answers to my interview questions were short. To the point. Nothing wasted. Next question?

Yet forward momentum, essential for any drummer, is just one part of his game. Color, an original voice as a composer and a keen ear for texture are in there. They’re all present on Dedication (Cygnus Records), the stunning new release by Weiss’ longstanding trio with pianist Jacob Sacks and bassist Thomas Morgan.

Given his many musical associations with artists as diverse as the saxophonists Jon Irabagon and Lee Konitz, pianist Sylvie Courvoisier and vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Jen Shyu, it’s kind of amazing that he’s only appeared in Cleveland twice. The trio played Bop Stop in November 2019, and 19 months earlier he was at the Hingetown club with saxophonist Chris Potter band.

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Yo NYO! Carnegie Hall’s Young Jazz Orchestra Begins Its First U.S. Tour at Tri-C

Published 27 July, 2022 By John Chacona
NYO 2022
NYO Jazz 2021 with Sean Jones

My friends in the “jazz is dead” camp often pose two rhetorical questions in defense of their position:  Who will want to listen? and Who will want to play this music?

The answer to the first is unknowable, but the second question will be answered in the most unequivocal way Saturday when NYO Jazz makes Tri-C’s Metropolitan Campus Auditorium the first stop on its inaugural U.S. tour.

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Chris Hovan’s Quartet Brings Generations Together at Bop Stop Gig

Published 25 January, 2022 By John Chacona

Jazz has so many dialectics, you’d think it was invented by Socrates or Hegel. Inside/outside, written/improvised, traditional/avant-garde: all are ways of arriving at the truth about jazz.

As a journalist as well as a player, Cleveland’s Chris Hovan is surely familiar with these admittedly reductive categories and more–like this one: young/old. It’s implied in the name of his Generations Quartet, which will appear Thursday night at Bop Stop at the Music Settlement.

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