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Today, the 99th anniversary of John Coltrane’s arrival on Earth, seems like a good time to remind ourselves that music, for all the wondrous sophistication of its scales and structures, is about the people who make it.
That point was reinforced eloquently by DUO, the new independent release by trumpeter Garrett Folger and bassist Aidan Plank, which will be celebrated by a release show Sunday at Negative Space Gallery.
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Silent, Listening, Fred Hersch’s affecting new recording, begins with a moody cover of “Star Crossed Lovers,” an Ellington/Strayhorn composition that was also on Hersch’s first trio recording as a leader, Horizon (Concord Jazz,1985). But don’t read too much into the programming. In music and in life, Hersch, who will play a solo concert at the Treelawn Music Hall on Friday, takes things a day at a time.
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The term “spiritual jazz” seems to be everywhere these days. It’s a label that has more value for marketers than for music fans, an empty coinage that’s more meme than meaningful. It might be easier to say what “spiritual jazz” is not, for instance the music made by pianist and composer Lynne Arriale, who comes to BOP STOP Saturday night.
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In the Japanese martial art of aikido, awase, is a state of harmonious movement with one’s partner. Little wonder that Swiss pianist, Nik Bärtsch, a skilled aikido practitioner, chose Awase as the title of the 2018 ECM Records release by his RONIN quartet, which will return to BOP STOP Sunday night.
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The improvising violist Mat Maneri recalled a conversation with his ECM Records producer, Steve Lake about the nature of music. “
“He thought it was all religious and I said, ‘No, it can’t be that.’ But there is something sacred about that stage and your relationship with the audience that once you’re onstage,” Maneri told me by phone last week.
There’s something sacred about the music that Maneri and his quartet will offer at BOP STOP Wednesday in a concert presented by Cleveland’s essential New Ghosts organization. Drawn from the violist’s latest recording Ash (Sunnyside Records, 2023), the music is a memory project that casts an oneiric spell that is simultaneously elusive and completely absorbing.
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