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“My music is kind of intricate,” Marta Sanchez admitted. Then she quickly added, “It’s not that I’m not attracted towards intellectual music, but I’m attracted to beauty–in music and in art–but both at the same time.”
Listen to Sanchez’s bracing, elegant pianism as you can do Saturday at BOP STOP, and you’ll learn that intellectual rigor wrapped in beauty are magnetically attracted to her, too.
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When you think of all the challenges that have faced independent music venues for the past ten years, industry consolidation, soaring rents and the rise of streaming entertainment—then add the COVID-19 shutdown–it’s a miracle that there are any places left to hear live music. The jazz scene, which has lived on the economic knife’s edge for decades, was hit hard. Yet a few places survived, and that’s something to celebrate.
Welcome to BOP STOP, the little engine that could and the beating heart of Cleveland’s scene. This week the club marks its tenth anniversary in its third incarnation as part of the Music Settlement in Hingetown. There it cultivates a training ground for young musicians, brings the world’s most notable artists to northeast Ohio’s and connects our most notable artists to the world. Hell yeah that’s worth celebrating.
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Making improvised music in the Black American tradition means fixing your gaze firmly on the future while honoring the innovators of the past. 2024, with the centenaries of drummer Max Roach and pianist Bud Powell, has been a good year to do that. Yet while those two lions of bebop were deservedly celebrated for the way they redefined the language of their instruments, trombone master J.J. Johnson’s contributions have received less recognition—until now.
Trombonist John Fedchock is determined to see that his distinguished predecessor gets his flowers, and he’s put his money where his mouthpiece is on a Midwest tour that will bring him to Akron’s BLU Jazz+ and BOP STOP in support of his new Summit Records release Justifiably J.J.
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When Christopher Coles decides that it’s go time, he goes deep.
As a teacher, the Cleveland-born, Akron resident has teaching positions at both Oberlin Conservatory and the University of Akron. As a player, he seems to be on every bandstand, both as a leader and an essential sideman. And when Coles puts his pen to composition paper, he writes not just compelling tunes, but large-scale works, like his epic “Nine Lives” that was a triumph at last weekend’s Pittsburgh International Jazz Festival. with ambitions subjects. He’s got a new one that just might be his best.
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Public radio often talks about “driveway moments,” listening experiences that keep you in your car listening even after you’ve reached your destination. Trombonist and bandleader Joe Fiedler had one that changed his life and set him on a career path that brings him and his Open Sesame band to The Treelawn on Friday.
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