Jamey Haddad - John Chacona writes

Friday At The Treelawn: A Major TRIAD Sounds

Published 23 July, 2024 By John Chacona

TRIAD - Christian Tamburr, Dominick Farinacci and Michael Ward-Bergeman with Jamey Haddad

You never know what might happen at a debut gig. Surprises are all but guaranteed when a band takes the stage for the first time, but for TRIAD, the collective of Dominick Farinacci, Christian Tamburr and Michael Ward-Bergeman, the biggest surprise came at load-in.

“Gianni Valenti, the owner of Birdland, gave me three nights,” Farinacci recalled. “I said, ‘I still want to do it under my name but have TRIAD because it’ll be a great experience.” Valenti agreed, but a few months later when the band arrived at the storied New York club, Valenti bellowed “What the hell is this instrumentation? Where is the bass player?”

There wasn’t one. And when TRIAD loads in to The Treelawn Music Hall Friday, there won’t be a bass player just Farinacci on trumpet, vibes and marimba by Tamburr and Ward-Bergeman’s accordion.

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Countdown: Where To Go & What To Hear In NEO June 6-13

Published 7 June, 2024 By John Chacona

Friendly experiencers,

Forget the headline of this post. The question this week is how to decide where to go & what to hear Friday night. Between an A-list Jamey Haddad quartet hit, a night of Roma jazz in beautiful CVNP and a powerhouse band led by saxophonist John Petrucelli, that’s a tall order. And that’s only if you won’t be at The Treelawn for Fred Hersch (see you there?). Still, this is a good problem to have and there is no wrong answer to this question. Whichever you choose, let me know what you heard and how you liked it. I’ll open the comments to this post, but please keep it clean and respectful.

Roll Call: Recent Recordings By NEO Artists

Published 7 May, 2024 By John Chacona

One of the great pleasures of this project is the opportunity to do a weekly temperature check of the NEO scene., with a focus on live performance where it surely belongs. No performances, no scene, right?

But NEO artists have lately been as active in the studios as they are on the area’s stages and bandstands. That’s a good thing, too. Some projects have been covered here, including Work and Song, the exultant live recording by Alla Boara made at BOP STOP last July, Lucas Kadish’s Tundra, which was a big part of this entry from 2023, and the forthcoming recording laid down two weeks ago by the Third Law Collective wsg Russ Johnson, a project I profiled here. A few more will get the in-depth treatment in future posts here and at All About Jazz.

Still it’s been a while since let’s call this has called the roll on recordings, and given the spring shower of recent releases, now’s the time.

Anthony Taddeo’s Jazz all’Italiana Band Alla Boara Sets Sail With A New Record And Tour

Published 18 January, 2024 By John Chacona

One of the highlights of a performance by Alla Boara, percussionist Anthony Taddeo’s jazz-meets-Italian-folk-music project, is “Mamma Mia Dammi Cento Lire.” It’s a musical setting of conversation between a young woman, wheedling 100 lire from her mother so that she can go to America to start a new life, and her mother who warns that if she leaves her village the feckless girl will drown when her ship sinks. All this is set to an earworm of a dancing melody. The words, brought to vivid life by Amanda Powell, a superb singing actress, have the sly worldliness and teasing insinuation of opera buffa.

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Countdown: Where To Go & What To Hear In NEO, Dec. 7-14

Published 7 December, 2023 By John Chacona

For music scribblers, the first two weeks of December are what the first two weeks of April are like for normies: a time of dread and foreboding. Like Tax Day, the holiday concert season comes for us all. But this might be your thing, and if it is, there is a Santa’s bag full of delights, holiday-themed and otherwise, to unwrap in the next week. So, drink deeply of the wassail cup and be merry and bright and all that.

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Tag: Jamey Haddad

Friday At The Treelawn: A Major TRIAD Sounds

Countdown: Where To Go & What To Hear In NEO June 6-13

Roll Call: Recent Recordings By NEO Artists

Anthony Taddeo’s Jazz all’Italiana Band Alla Boara Sets Sail With A New Record And Tour

Countdown: Where To Go & What To Hear In NEO, Dec. 7-14