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Tag: Terence Blanchard

A Great Week in Cleveland, Part 1: Ben Wendel and Joel Ross

Ben Wendel Credit Anouk van Kalmthout
photocredit Anouk van Kalmthout

When I moved to Cleveland in late 2019, I was eager to plunge full-time into a jazz scene that looked like New York’s to me. That notion might be laughable to longtime citizens of The Land, but from the jazz desert of Erie, Pennsylvania, that’s how Cleveland looked to me. Consider this ten-day period in Sept. 2019 when Bop Stop presented a cavalcade of stars that would make even the most hardened New York booker bow in respect and awe.

Even with stars in my eyes I knew that such intervals are few and far between. But every rule needs an exception as proof, and one has arrived this week where in the course of three nights, Cleveland will host concerts by the brilliant tenor saxophonist Ben Wendel, vibes wizard Joel Ross and the mesmerizing poet, community activist and truth-teller Moor Mother.

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Terence Blanchard and the Turtle Island Quartet Ride A Second Wave To Tri-C On Saturday

David Balakrishnan-Terence Blanchard

To be an improvising musician at the highest level means being ready for anything that might happen. Still, nothing could have prepared violinist David Balakrishnan for the call he received in February 2020.

It’s just an amazing story,” said Balakrishnan, 68,the founder and first violinist of the Turtle Island Quartet, the rare string quartet expert in improvisation. “I got a call from a friend of mine who worked for a booking agency. He said, ‘Do you want to record with Terence Blanchard in two weeks?’”

If you’ve heard Blanchard’s double-Grammy-nominated Blue Note release Absence, you already know how Balakrishnan answered. And if you want to hear how that music sounds live, you’ll have a rare opportunity to do so when Blanchard and his five-piece E-Collective ensemble and the Turtle Island Quartet visit Tri-C Saturday evening to perform music from Absence.

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Vibraphonist Chris Dingman Brings His Journey of Healing to Cleveland’s Bop Stop

Chris Dingman

Listening to music has increasingly become a solitary, disembodied experience, these days. Yet an opposite if so far unequal reaction is rising: a new interest in music that serves a social purpose.

In the dim past, all music was social. It was used for celebration and worship, to lull children to sleep and to blunt the drudgery of hard, repetitive labor. The social music that Chris Dingman will bring to his solo concert at Cleveland’s Bop Stop on Thursday is similarly intentional yet with a somewhat different purpose: healing.

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Aaron Parks Returns to the road with a tour beginning at Cleveland’s Bop Stop

Aaron Parks had no problem filling the last 19 months of time once occupied by touring, recording and doing musician things. “We got a puppy in February 2020. And then we found out that we were pregnant in March 2020. And then everything shut down like 10 days after we found that out,” Parks said by phone last week. New fatherhood brings new challenges. “He just turned one, and he just discovered how to climb up the stairs, which is a little bit terrifying. He doesn’t walk yet, but he knows how to climb the stairs.”

That’s a big step for the little guy, but Parks Senior is a little more cautious about stepping out. When he kicks off his tour Friday at Bop Stop at the Music Settlement, it will be the pianist’s first touring gig since the lockdown.

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