There’s no point in burying the lede: if you’re a jazz fan living in Northeast Ohio, Tri-C JazzFest is a circle-the date event. And now it’s here.
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When Reggie Watkins came on screen for our video interview last week he wore a Pittsburgh Pirates baseball cap. When I jokingly expressed my sympathy for his devotion to the once-proud team now seemingly committed to mediocrity, Watkins would have none of it. He’s a Pittsburgh ride or die, but intercity rivalries aside, he also loves Cleveland jazz and returns to a familiar stage at BOP STOP for a gig Friday.
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Dan Weiss is a no-compromises guy. He doesn’t jog occasionally for his health; he trains hard and races. He turned an interest in South Asian music into a decades-long immersion with tabla master Samir Chatterjee. When I suggested to the drummer last week that he struck me as slightly obsessive, his response was unequivocal: “Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. Totally!”
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The billing of Sax Battle Cry, the pair of concerts that Nathan-Paul Davis and Johnny Cochran, Jr. will present this week, evokes the classic two-saxophone tussles of the past: Dexter Gordon and Wardell Grey, Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis and Johnny Griffin, the various cage matches that were a trademark of the Jazz At The Philharmonic road show. But don’t believe the hype. The meeting of Davis and Cochran is more friendly competition than mano á mano combat.
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Q: What is a Kneebody?
A: It’s the name of a band whose amalgam of jazz, funk, electronica, beats, progressive rock and unheard sounds is so unclassifiable that no known word could adequately describe it.
On paper, the band, which returns to BOP STOP for a Sunday performance, has the canonical jazz formation of trumpet, tenor saxophone, keyboards, bass and drums. On stage Kneebody explodes genre categories.
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