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Tag: Pittsburgh Jazz Festival

‘Nine Lives,’ Chris Coles’ Magnum Opus, Gets New Life

Chris Coles

After my freelance music gig for a newspaper in Erie, Pennsylvania had vanished in 2020 and I had moved to Cleveland, I resolved to document the local jazz scene, one that was all but ignored by media outlets in northeast Ohio. Good people making interesting music is catnip to a culture reporter, and I found a subject right away.

This was Chris Coles whose “Nine Lives” project became the first post in my documentary project covering the local scene. That was November 2021. Now, 30 months later “Nine Lives” is back for a performance Friday at Tri-C. And just like a familiar melody that is transformed by a master improvisor, Coles’ magnum opus returns reimagined as a new work.

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Chris Hovan’s Quartet Brings Generations Together at Bop Stop Gig

Jazz has so many dialectics, you’d think it was invented by Socrates or Hegel. Inside/outside, written/improvised, traditional/avant-garde: all are ways of arriving at the truth about jazz.

As a journalist as well as a player, Cleveland’s Chris Hovan is surely familiar with these admittedly reductive categories and more–like this one: young/old. It’s implied in the name of his Generations Quartet, which will appear Thursday night at Bop Stop at the Music Settlement.

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