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Tag: Ohio City

Flowers Around Cleveland (and Akron too)

Back in the 1980s I became obsessed with the saxophonist David Murray and set out to collect his entire recorded oeuvre. This was a problem because the man recorded almost indiscriminately, sometimes releasing five or six records a year. I was a racing greyhound chasing the mechanical rabbit of his ever expanding discography, and I gave up at 54 items. But not before scoring a French rarity called Flowers Around Cleveland (Bleu Regard, 1995).

Looking out at Signora’s newly colorful rosebushes, that title came to mind when I checked Jim Szabo’s jazz calendar of events, which is my go-to guide in making the lets call this editorial calendar. All over northeast Ohio, the flowers are starting to pop, and on the area’s stages, so is the music scene.

So this week I bring you a spring bouquet of concerts by local and touring artists that includes a Napoleonic invasion, a throw-down at Lock 3 and a rare appearance by a notable big band. It’s a beautiful thing.


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Horns and Things Is A Cleveland Musical Tradition

Horns And Things
(clockwise from top left) Ken LeeGrand, JT Lynch, Derrick James, Ray Harvin, Sakait Baksar

At the summit meeting of Cleveland saxophonists convened this past summer at the Tri-C JazzFest, Ernie Krivda, Ken LeeGrand and Howie Smith were to take center stage in a round robin. But host Dominick Farinacci announced that LeeGrand would play his featured material first. “He has to get to a gig in Fairlawn at 3,” Farinacci explained. It was shortly after 2 p.m.

I was there and reviewed the concert for All About Jazz (you can read it here), so when I spoke with LeeGrand earlier this month, I had to ask him if he made it. “Yes I did. I got there–it was probably, like, 3:07, and the guys that I had assembled to do that [gig] knew what was going on, so they had already started. I didn’t even take the reeds off the horns. I left my reeds on. So when I got there, all I had to do was put the necks on the saxophones and put my stand together and roll.”

When it comes to music, “roll” is what Ken LeeGrand does—as an educator, instrumentalist, bandleader, griot and inspiration. Now 73, LeeGrand has been on the scene for so long, he essentially is the scene. So it makes perfect sense that during this weekend of homecomings and family reunions, his most enduring band, Horns And Things, will be featured at Ohio City’s Irishtown Bend Taproom.

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“Local, Organic” Hingetown Jazz Festival Returns Saturday

Trumpeter Garrett Folger leads a quintet at the 2023 Hingetown Jazz Festival. photocredit: Amber Rogers, Local 4 Music Fund

Labor Day is a circle-the-date weekend for jazz in the Midwest with free festivals in Detroit and Chicago. The organizers of the Hingetown Jazz Festival would like to add their event to the list, and judging by the success of the inaugural all-day, all-free festival last year, they just might have a chance.

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