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Tag: Midwest

Two Bands + Two New Releases = Three Shows in NEO

In the circular economy of jazz, new recordings are supported by album release tours or shows and those performances in turn create a market for the recordings. Just how this works is on display this week as concerts by pianist Ben Tweedt and saxophonist Matthew Alec, two artists with ties to northeast Ohio, celebrate the releases of their latest recordings.

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Kevin Robert Martinez’s Reclamation Band Is Back On These Roads

Reclamation Band

Kevin Robert Martinez‘s Reclamation Band released a recording in 2023 called These Roads, but since that time, the road is a place you’d have been hard pressed to find them. This summer, though, the sextet returns to the stage, including two concerts this weekend, and Martinez couldn’t be happier.

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Collective Action: A New Player Brings Benny Benack III Back to NEO

Benny Benack III

How many times have you heard this—or said it yourself—when leaving a great concert by a touring musician: Why can’t we get more shows like this here?

Kyle Knoke, a graphic designer and concert promoter found himself asking that question and decided to answer it by creating the Midwest Jazz Collective, a consortium of 13 clubs and presenting organizations that will bring  Emmy-nominated trumpeter and vocalist Benny Benack III  to BOP STOP March 25 and BLU Jazz+ the following night.

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Poetry: It’s What Composer and Multi-Instrumentalist Aaron Irwin Is (after)

photocredit: Aleks Karjaka

Before the comments section, before digital sampling, before AI large language models, there was after.  As seen in titles, it signals the venerable practice of a poet responding or replying to, elaborating on, refuting or outright imitating the work of another poet. And it’s the organizing principle behind the music that multi-instrumentalist Aaron Irwin will bring to BOP STOP Sunday.

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Stars Align For Fred Hersch at The Treelawn

Fred Hersch
photocredit: Roberto Cifarelli

Silent, Listening, Fred Hersch’s affecting new recording, begins with a moody cover of “Star Crossed Lovers,” an Ellington/Strayhorn composition that was also on Hersch’s first trio recording as a leader, Horizon (Concord Jazz,1985). But don’t read too much into the programming. In music and in life, Hersch, who will play a solo concert at the Treelawn Music Hall on Friday, takes things a day at a time.

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