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Tag: Grammy

Kurt Elling and Dan Bruce Turn Up The Musical Voltage This Week

Published 25 September, 2023 By John Chacona

Kurt Elling and SuperBlue at Cleveland Museum of Art

In his 30-odd years on the scene, Grammy-winning singer Kurt Elling has topped the Down Beat Critics Poll 13 times and has received the Jazz Journalists Association Male Singer of the Year award eight times. He’s done this while singing texts written by Theodore Roethke and Walt Whitman, a Monkees hit, one of Brahms’ Liebeslieder Waltzes. Whitney Balliett might have had Elling’s musical choices in mind when he wrote his famous characterization of jazz as being “the sound of surprise.”

Yet none of Elling’s neck-snapping musical eccentricities was as shocking as SuperBlue, which will come to Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art Wednesday.

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Terence Blanchard and the Turtle Island Quartet Ride A Second Wave To Tri-C On Saturday

Published 13 October, 2022 By John Chacona

David Balakrishnan-Terence Blanchard

To be an improvising musician at the highest level means being ready for anything that might happen. Still, nothing could have prepared violinist David Balakrishnan for the call he received in February 2020.

It’s just an amazing story,” said Balakrishnan, 68,the founder and first violinist of the Turtle Island Quartet, the rare string quartet expert in improvisation. “I got a call from a friend of mine who worked for a booking agency. He said, ‘Do you want to record with Terence Blanchard in two weeks?’”

If you’ve heard Blanchard’s double-Grammy-nominated Blue Note release Absence, you already know how Balakrishnan answered. And if you want to hear how that music sounds live, you’ll have a rare opportunity to do so when Blanchard and his five-piece E-Collective ensemble and the Turtle Island Quartet visit Tri-C Saturday evening to perform music from Absence.

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June Busts Out In Cleveland with a Cuban Piano Powerhouse and an All-Star Band

Published 1 June, 2022 By John Chacona

Hilario Durán/Andy James

Friday: Hilario Durán Trio at Bop Stop

GENTLE READERS, Here’s a note from the Bop Stop: “DUE TO HEALTH AND SAFETY PROTOCOLS AND AN ABUNDANCE OF CAUTION, TONIGHT’S SHOW WITH HILARIO DURAN HAS BEEN CANCELED. WE ARE WORKING TO RESCHEDULE THIS DATE FOR THE FALL. ALL TICKET PURCHASERS WILL BE NOTIFIED ABOUT REFUNDS.”

If a nation’s stature were ranked by great pianists per-capita, Cuba would surely lead the world. With a population comparable to Ohio’s, Cuba has produced keyboard lions Fabian Almazan, Harold López-Nussa, Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Omar Sosa, Manuel Valera, David Virelles and the pianistic Valdés dynasty whose currently represented by Chucho and Cuchito. On Friday, a Cuban-born pianist who is squarely in the lineage of these lions of the keyboard will visit Cleveland.

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