Joe Tomino

A Venerable Free Improv Showcase Finds Its Way Back

Published 28 March, 2023

*Togishi (from left): Mike Sopko, Joe Tomino, Dan Wenninger*

After the cultural extinction event of 2020, some lifeforms re-emerged sooner than others. You would expect the ones with the most funding to be among the first to return, though perhaps not at their previous strength. And you might imagine that the more DIY scenes, the ones for which precarity is an ongoing fact, would also survive.

The 1Way at the Go Factory series of free improvisation shows curated by saxophonist Dan Wenninger, is one of the survivors, though it’s more like a cicada than a hardy cockroach. It hasn’t been dormant for seven years; there were a few scattered comebacks last fall. When the series resumes March 28 at the Go Factory loft, with Togishi and the Folger/Bruce/Martinez Trio, it will mark what Wenninger hopes will be a second beginning, a 1Way 2.0.

Cabaret Crooner or Jazz Singer? Dane Vannatter Is A Man of Two Worlds

Published 8 February, 2023

*from left: Joe Hunter, Bryan Thomas, Dane Vannatter and Ricky Exton*

The legendary Patti LaBelle has been on stages large and small since Dwight Eisenhower was in the White House. As a performer, she’s done it all and seen it all, but she couldn’t have expected what happened at her 2015 performance at the Ohio State Fair in 2015.

“She called a group of guys [on stage] as a thing in her show,” Dane Vannatter wrote me in an exchange yesterday. “She asks them to sing, they can’t, and the audience laughs when she says, ‘Well then dance!’”

Vannatter was one of those guys, but when he opened his mouth to sing, the great soul diva fell silent. She couldn’t have known that Vannatter had been on a few stages himself, and when she gathered herself to address her unexpected guest, all she could say was, “You better sing, fool! My God!”

Exploring the Unknown: Bassist Aidan Plank Arranges the Music of Carmen Castaldi

Published 16 November, 2022

Tribute concerts, for better or worse, are an established marketing hook for jazz presenters and an evergreen source of inspiration for musicians. The honors tend to cluster around past masters, and the bigger the name the batter. Living musicians who can actually appreciate the tribute aren’t often feted and even less often asked to play, but a tribute concert where the honoree is a sideman? Never happens.

Yet when bassist Aidan Plank’s octet takes the Bop Stop stage Thursday to present a program of music by Carmen Castaldi, the man of the hour will be seated where he can usually be found: behind the trap set.

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Rabbit, Rabbit! Owen Broder Puts Johnny Hodges Front and Center at BLU Jazz+

Published 25 October, 2022

Johnny Hodges is widely acknowledged as perhaps the preeminent alto saxophone player in the decades before Charlie Parker’s emergence. Yet unlike Parker, whose influence on saxophonists is apparent 68 years after his death, Hodges’ style is almost universally celebrated in print and online yet never heard on the bandstand.

Until now. Saxophonist Owen Broder is putting Hodges where he rightfully belongs: front and center with an ambitious recording project and a new band that swoops into BLU Jazz+ on Friday.

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Roll Call, August 19: Kyle Kidd, Russ Lossing, Pablo Moser and Nicolás Ojeda

Published 19 August, 2022

I get a lot of music for my consideration, more than 430 (!) new releases in 2022. Almost all of them are notable for something, and I’d like to give them their due. So, when I’m not previewing events in northeast Ohio or profiling regional musicians, I’ll offer hot takes on recent releases.

When I moved to Cleveland in late 2019, one of the bands I most wanted to hear was the Afrofuturist collective Mourning [A] BLKstar. You can probably guess why that remains on my to-do list nearly three years and several COVID subvariants later, but it’s taken on new urgency with the release of Soothsayer (American Dreams Records), the spellbinding solo debut of M[A]B vocalist Kyle Kidd (all pronouns).

Tag: Joe Tomino

A Venerable Free Improv Showcase Finds Its Way Back

Cabaret Crooner or Jazz Singer? Dane Vannatter Is A Man of Two Worlds

Exploring the Unknown: Bassist Aidan Plank Arranges the Music of Carmen Castaldi

Rabbit, Rabbit! Owen Broder Puts Johnny Hodges Front and Center at BLU Jazz+

Roll Call, August 19: Kyle Kidd, Russ Lossing, Pablo Moser and Nicolás Ojeda