Review: Craig Taborn: “When Kabuya Dances“ All About Jazz, 14 December, 2025
Comments closedTag: Geri Allen
For more than a century Detroit’s factories have sent tens of millions of vehicles into the world. That’s remarkable, but so too is the city’s assembly line of great jazz pianists: Hank Jones, Barry Harris, Tommy Flanagan, Alice Coltrane and Geri Allen. Lesser-known, but equally polished are figures such as Terry Pollard, Johnny O’Neal, Bob Neloms and Kirk Lightsey. Add 69-year-old David Janeway, who will appear at BOP STOP on Friday with Robert Hurst and Billy Hart, to that distinguished list.
Comments closed
“When I went to undergrad, I kind of did jazz in secret, like on the side,” said Ellie Martin. “I remember a teacher telling me once that jazz was going to ruin your voice. You’re not really supposed to do that. A lot of singers did though. You did it on the side and you didn’t say anything.”
Martin’s jazz hobby is no secret anymore. And with a new album, Verdant (self released, 2023), and a Midwest tour that concludes Saturday with an engagement at Akron’s BLU Jazz+, singing jazz has become more than a side hustle for the Toledo-based vocalist.
Leave a Comment
Saxophonist Jim Snidero was born in May, but a January birthdate would have provided an appropriate mythological backstory for his career. Like the two-faced god who gave the month its name, Snidero’s alto saxophone style looks forward and backward simultaneously.
Perhaps that is inevitable for the native of the Maryland suburbs who, at 65, has aged out of young-lion status but is a long way from being considered a wizened master. When he returns to the Bop Stop Saturday, Snidero will demonstrate how a mastery born of more than 40 years on the scene can be endlessly refreshed by restless musical curiosity.
Leave a Comment
Review: 2021 Tri-C JazzFest Cleveland AllAboutJazz.com, 21 September, 2021
