New York - John Chacona writes

Sam Blakeslee Returns To Akron With Charts & ‘Flowers’

Published 17 October, 2023 By John Chacona

In the midst of a recording session with his New York big band, Columbus-born, Brooklyn-based trombonist, composer and arranger Sam Blakeslee noticed an interesting dynamic among the players.

“On the first take everyone in the band was like, ‘Who are these people? Why are they playing like this, because it just sounds so different? Why haven’t I heard stuff like this before?’” Blakeslee’s answer: “Because it’s Cleveland.”

“These people,” saxophonists Chris Coles and Nathan-Paul Davis, and the cream of Northeast Ohio’s jazz community, will join Blakeslee on the stage of BLU Jazz+ this weekend for a homecoming so packed with music that it will take two nights to play it all.

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Countdown: What To Do, Where To Go & What To Hear, Oct. 12-18

Published 12 October, 2023 By John Chacona

Birth Josh Smith, Jeremy Bleich Joe Tomino

It’s a week for celebrations with a birthday, an anniversary and a chicken or pasta dinner on the musical menu for your mid-October listening and dining pleasure. Add a penetrating talk by one of musicology’s preeminent thinkers and public intellectuals and watch your calendar fill up. It all starts here.

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Exile on East Boulevard: Arooj Aftab, Shazad Ismaily and Vijay Iyer Bring Magic To CMA

Published 2 October, 2023 By John Chacona

Someone once said that all music, even at its most abstract, is about something, and that is the passage of time. That might be, but there are musicians who can transcend time to enter other dimensions in music. Vocalist Arooj Aftab, multi-instrumentalist Shahzad Ismaily and pianist Vijay Iyer who, as Love In Exile, will come to the Cleveland Museum Of Art Wednesday, are among them.

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Countdown: Your Guide To Jazz in NEO, Sept. 20-26

Published 20 September, 2023 By John Chacona

Attention Swifties: ya girl is coming to Cleveland tonight. No, it’s not a previously unannounced stop on the Eras Tour, but you wouldn’t expect to find that kind of scoop in this column, would you? The Swift in question is Veronica, who kicks off a late-September clambake of jazz and adjacent musical revelry this week, one that could launch a million crossover dreams.

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No Obstacles For Saxophonist Chris Speed’s BOP STOP Debut

Published 12 September, 2023 By John Chacona

When saxophonist Chris Speed began his slow-motion move from New York to Los Angeles in the middle of the last decade, he arrived just as Kamasi Washington and the Brainfeeder crowd were making LA the hot new jazz scene.

But Speed, who will appear Sunday at BOP STOP leading a trio of bassist Chris Tordini and drummer Dave King, was no bandwagon jumper. “I don’t really know the scene,” he averred. “I’m just kind of focused on what I’m doing, and when I’m in LA I’m just more of a homebody.”

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Tag: New York

Sam Blakeslee Returns To Akron With Charts & ‘Flowers’

Countdown: What To Do, Where To Go & What To Hear, Oct. 12-18

Exile on East Boulevard: Arooj Aftab, Shazad Ismaily and Vijay Iyer Bring Magic To CMA

Countdown: Your Guide To Jazz in NEO, Sept. 20-26

No Obstacles For Saxophonist Chris Speed’s BOP STOP Debut