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In the circular economy of jazz, new recordings are supported by album release tours or shows and those performances in turn create a market for the recordings. Just how this works is on display this week as concerts by pianist Ben Tweedt and saxophonist Matthew Alec, two artists with ties to northeast Ohio, celebrate the releases of their latest recordings.
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Have you noticed? After a cold and rainy June, all of a sudden, the garden has exploded with activity. The herbs have shot up. New roses bloom daily, a Jackson Pollock action painting of color.
The rain and the sun and the heat (sooooo much heat!) have done the same for the NEO jazz scene as the next seven days are a greenhouse of compelling shows, any one of which would be worth 600 words.. But I’ll spare you that and instead offer the first harvest (the second drops tomorrow) of a guide to the week’s bouquet of music.
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There’s a word you’re going to be hearing a lot more of in the next two weeks. It’s abundance, the title of a buzzy new book by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson that proposes something they call “the abundance mindset“ as a new basis for progressive politics. There’s no evidence that Klein and Thompson visited the campus of The University of Akron School of Music Jazz Studies Department before they wrote the book, but if they had they would have found that mindset in abundance . This week, April 7-11, that mindset will be on public display as UA kicks off JazzWeek 25: Abundance (Jazz Festival), featuring performances by Joshua Redman and Sean Jones in an illustration–and celebration–of music, community and lineage.
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I get a lot of records from publicists looking for a review, 788 last year. That’s way more than I can get to, but I try to check in on most of them. Last year I noticed that a lot of them had Troy Roberts on tenor saxophone, and even on records I didn’t care for–maybe especially those–I was drawn to his muscular sound. I missed his appearance last year with Pat Bianchi (a gig I previewed here), but I–and Cleveland—will get a second bite of the apple Sunday, Feb. 16 when the saxophonist returns to BOP STOP.
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With Labor Day in the rearview mirror, northeast Ohio returns to the comfortable (clambakes, sweaters) and maybe less comfortable (fretting about the Browns) routines of early autumn. Hey, traditions are traditions, and they don’t change much–unless you’re a NEO jazz fan in which case you’ll want to add the Rubber City Jazz & Blues Festival to your list.
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