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Tag: Oberlin Conservatory

Countdown: What To Do, Where To Go & What To Hear, Oct. 5-11


With the outdoor concert and festival season coming to a close, jazz and creative music returns to the small rooms where the music was born. This week’s most compelling shows all feature Northeast Ohio musicians, proving that football and clambakes aren’t the only autumn traditions to honor around here.

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Looking Backward and Forward At Once, Saxophonist Jim Snidero Returns to Bop Stop

Jim Snidero
photo by John Rogers

Saxophonist Jim Snidero was born in May, but a January birthdate would have provided an appropriate mythological backstory for his career. Like the two-faced god who gave the month its name, Snidero’s alto saxophone style looks forward and backward simultaneously.

Perhaps that is inevitable for the native of the Maryland suburbs who, at 65, has aged out of young-lion status but is a long way from being considered a wizened master. When he returns to the Bop Stop Saturday, Snidero will demonstrate how a mastery born of more than 40 years on the scene can be endlessly refreshed by restless musical curiosity.

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Blowing In From Chicago: Tim Daisy and Ken Vandermark Friday at Convivium 33

Tim Daisy Ken Vandermark
Tim Daisy, Ken Vandermark

Being a creative musician in Chicago almost demands a willingness to play anything, everywhere with everybody. Percussionist Tim Daisy and saxophonist Ken Vandermark, who will appear at Convivium 33 Friday, Jan. 13, embody that imperative as well as anyone, having collaborated with hundreds of musicians, movement and visual artists on both sides of the Atlantic. Yet despite lengthy resumes that suggest an affinity with musical speed dating, the two are just as committed to long-term relationships, especially their own.

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Trefoil, An All-Star Team of Ambrose Akinmusire, Gerald Cleaver & Kris Davis, Come To Bop Stop

When the final buzzer sounded at the NBA All-Star Game on February 20, it was the end of All-Star weekend in Cleveland but it was the opening bell for an all-star month of jazz. First came the March 3 appearance at Tri-C of the Jazz Gallery All-Stars (previewed here), a band that in every way lived up to its name. Starting Sunday, the action shifts to Bop Stop at the Music Settlement where Ambrose Akinmusire and Dr. Eddie Henderson, two of the leading voices of the jazz trumpet will appear in a three-day span. And that’s not all.

Akinmusire will be in Cleveland as part of a new trio, Trefoil, of pianist Kris Davis and drummer Gerald Cleaver, all-stars in their own right. The term supergroup is overused, but there’s no other way to describe this collaboration.

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