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Tag: G.A.R. Hall

Trumpeter Peter Evans Has One Foot In Several Musical Worlds

Published 10 December, 2025 By John Chacona
Peter Evans


For anyone looking to map the frontiers of what is possible on the trumpet, BOP STOP was the place to be last June*. There, with the Dan Weiss Quartet, Peter Evans laid out all the landmarks: Olympic-level feats of circular breathing, splatters of 16th notes (or were they 32nds?) in a register beyond the Kuiper Belt, even playing rhythms by placing the microphone in the bell of his instrument and blowing unpitched thuds.

It was eye-popping, yet it was all in a day’s work for Evans, who returns to the Hingetown club Thursday for a solo set in the final presentation of the 2025 season of concerts presented by New Ghosts.

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Countdown: Where To Go & What To Hear In NEO, Nov. 16-22

Published 16 November, 2023 By John Chacona
Kenny Washington, Bill Charlap, Peter Washington
photocredit: Keith Major

I look at let’s call this as a sort of chamber of commerce for the local scene. It’s important work, especially given the general indifference of the local media to improvised music in the Black American tradition and it’s great fun for me to do, a gateway for this NEO neophyte into the thriving local scene. But two posts a week takes a lot of time to crank out and with holiday travel, my anniversary and listening to catch up with before the yearend polls are due, the next couple of weeks will concentrate on these Countdown previews of upcoming events. Fortunately, there’s a lot to talk about, including more new releases, the first big event at a significant new venue and more. Buckle up. It’s going to be an interesting ride.

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At Severance, Julian Davis Reid Examines Both Sides of The American Dream

Published 17 May, 2023 By John Chacona

Julian Davis Reid

Like many Black musicians, pianist, bandleader and theologian Julian Davis Reid paid close attention to poet and essayist Amiri Baraka’s 1963 book “Blues People: Negro Music in White America.” Reid was particularly taken with, as he told me, “this idea that Black music is a place where people in this country, Black and otherwise, rest. But at the same time, the music emerges from our sense of homelessness, of not feeling welcomed.”

Baraka was a man of action as well as of ideas, and Reid, a graduate of Yale Divinity School, took his words as a call that Reid answered in words and music with “The American Dream, the American Nightmare, and Black American Music,” which he will present Thursday at 7:30 p.m. in Reinberger Chamber Hall at Severance Music Center. as part of the Cleveland Orchestra’s weeklong Mandel Opera & Humanities Festival: The American Dream.

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