a home for my content writing, journalism and let's call this blog
On the surface, Perpetual Pendulum, the new release by the trio of organist Larry Goldings, guitarist Peter Bernstein and drummer Bill Stewart who will appear Sunday at Tri-C follows the comfortingly familiar path established by generations of organ trios. But spend some time with this recording and a world of subtleties reveals itself.
Comments closed
If you were born any time after 1975, you couldn’t avoid Jefferson Starship’s spectacularly dreadful “We Built This City on Rock ‘n’ Roll.” Even if that lyrical flex were true, it pales before the real-life exploits of the band Birth, who built the stage at one of the city’s great rock landmarks, literally. Next Saturday, the Cleveland-born band will return to that stage for the first time in many years, not with power tools, but with their instruments, for a long-overdue homecoming gig at the Happy Dog.
Comments closed
When you think of the tradition of getting together to play music on the back porch, you probably imagine a bunch of guys with guitars and fiddles and maybe a washtub bass deep in a backwoods hollow. But when the back porch is in suburban North Jersey, things look a little different.
So when Chet Doxas and Vinnie Sperazza joined bassist Michael Formanek outdoors last summer, they brought saxophones and a drum kit respectively. And though the gatherings started as a way to make music collectively in those dark, pre-vaccine days, they ended as the Michael Formanek Drome Trio, a new band that makes its Cleveland debut Tuesday, March 29 at Bop Stop.
Comments closed
“It’s not what you know, it’s who you know” the familiar saying goes. True enough, but sometimes it’s not who you know, but who they that matters. Take rising vocalist Céline Iris who asked an all-time trumpet great, Dr. Eddie Henderson, to join her on the bandstand for a show Tuesday night at the Bop Stop.
Henderson was delighted to help his former Oberlin Conservatory student and convinced high-profile drummer Greg Bandy to join them. When Bandy had to bow out, the 81-year-old Henderson quickly stepped in with a more than suitable replacement.
Comments closed
When the final buzzer sounded at the NBA All-Star Game on February 20, it was the end of All-Star weekend in Cleveland but it was the opening bell for an all-star month of jazz. First came the March 3 appearance at Tri-C of the Jazz Gallery All-Stars (previewed here), a band that in every way lived up to its name. Starting Sunday, the action shifts to Bop Stop at the Music Settlement where Ambrose Akinmusire and Dr. Eddie Henderson, two of the leading voices of the jazz trumpet will appear in a three-day span. And that’s not all.
Akinmusire will be in Cleveland as part of a new trio, Trefoil, of pianist Kris Davis and drummer Gerald Cleaver, all-stars in their own right. The term supergroup is overused, but there’s no other way to describe this collaboration.
Leave a Comment