Skip to content

Tag: Keith Jarrett

Bring Back The Time: Jamey Haddad Plays The Music Of Keith Jarrett

Published 16 August, 2023 By John Chacona
Keith Jarrett Jamey Haddad
photocredits: Rose Ann Colavito ECM Records/Jackson Clark

Sometime in the mid-70s, percussionist Jamey Haddad was in a studio in Beachwood for a session that concluded a bit early, so he asked engineer Dale Peters (yup, the James Gang’s bassist) to keep the tape rolling while he played drums along with a record that he was particularly taken with. That record was The Köln Concert, the 1975 ECM double album that became bestselling piano album and solo recording in jazz history, and arguably vaulted its creator, Keith Jarrett, to jazz stardom.

Two generations later, Haddad has lost none of his love for Jarrett’s music and this weekend he will play it with a quartet of guitarist Jonah Ferguson, bassist Kip Reed and saxophonist Bobby Selvaggio at four venues in Northeast Ohio and Pittsburgh.

Continue ReadingBring Back The Time: Jamey Haddad Plays The Music Of Keith Jarrett
Comments closed

Javier Red’s Imagery Converter Illustrates Life Under The Umbrella

Published 12 June, 2023 By John Chacona
photocredit: Eugenio Resendiz

Pianist Javier Red was in his mid-40s and had been a working musician for years, both in his native Mexico and in the United States, when he arrived at a musical crossroads.

It happened at a workshop in 2015 with saxophonist and composer Steve Coleman at the University of Chicago. “I told Steve that I’ve got two options. I can deny everything that I saw there and keep my music flowing in a comfortable way, or I can accept that what Steve was saying is a completely new and different conception of music,” he remembered. “I said, ‘Man, what I’m losing? Nothing!’ And I decided to go that way.”

He’s still going that way on a musical and life journey that will bring Red and his Chicago quartet Imagery Converter to BOP STOP Thursday for a New Ghosts concert that will have meaning well beyond music.

Continue ReadingJavier Red’s Imagery Converter Illustrates Life Under The Umbrella
Leave a Comment

At Bop Stop, An Accompanist To The Stars Accompanies Himself

Published 28 February, 2023 By John Chacona

Tamir Hendelman

 

Pianist Tamir Hendelman’s gifts as an accompanist have led to recording projects by some of the most iconic soloists of our time: Natalie Cole, Gladys Knight, Sir Paul McCartney and Barbra Streisand among them. Yet his Sunday’s concert at Bop Stop Sunday will present him with the challenge of accompanying a different sort of soloist: himself.

Continue ReadingAt Bop Stop, An Accompanist To The Stars Accompanies Himself
Leave a Comment

Roll Call: April 8, 2022

Published 8 April, 2022 By John Chacona

I get a lot of music for my consideration, already more than 220 new releases so far this year. Almost all of them are notable for something, and I’d like to give them their due. So, when I’m not previewing live events in Northeast Ohio, I’ll offer hot takes on recent releases. Like these.

TheYuval Amichai - My 90s Summer - cover title cut from Yuval Amihai‘s My 90s Summer (Fresh Sound Records) begins with the leader’s warm-toned guitar over dewdrop Rhodes and a head-nodding backbeat rhythm. Where have I heard this before?

Continue ReadingRoll Call: April 8, 2022
Leave a Comment

Noah Haidu Returns to Bop Stop with a New Trio and a New CD

Published 19 November, 2021 By John Chacona

To the jazz fans of northeast Ohio, pianist Noah Haidu‘s September 28, 2020 appearance at Bop Stop was as important for its symbolism as for its musical interest.  The concert, which premiered his “Doctone” CD, was the first in six months at the Hingetown club by touring national musicians. The message was, emphatically, music is back.

“That was really a great gig,” Haidu said Sunday from his home in New York. “That was actually the first time the three of us got on stage together, [drummer] Rudy Royston and  [bassist] Eric Wheeler. We had a chance to record it and listen back. Yeah, it was a beautiful set.”

Fifty-nine weeks later, Haidu is back with a new trio of legendary bassist Buster Williams and drummer Carl Allen touring behind a new recording, “Slowly: Song For Keith Jarrett” (Sunnyside Records). It’s a record that was in the works at the time of his last Cleveland visit, though not exactly in the form that it eventually took.

Continue ReadingNoah Haidu Returns to Bop Stop with a New Trio and a New CD
Leave a Comment