Tri-C JazzFest -

Local Musicians Add Flavor To the Sauce At Tri-C JazzFest

Published 20 June, 2023 By John Chacona

For fans of improvised music in the Black American tradition, the arrival of Tri-C JazzFest to Playhouse Square with a roster of artists including Herbie Hancock, Christian McBride and phenomenal shooting-star vocalist Samara Joy is hands down the biggest week of the year.

The touring artists whose shelves are heavy with Grammy Awards and other honors deservedly grab the clicks and dominate the buzz, but for dozens of musicians from throughout Northeast Ohio, JazzFest will be the biggest gig of their year. For some of them, it will be the biggest opportunity of their young careers.

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

Published 20 March, 2023 By John Chacona

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.

Yo NYO! Carnegie Hall’s Young Jazz Orchestra Begins Its First U.S. Tour at Tri-C

Published 27 July, 2022 By John Chacona

NYO 2022 — NYO Jazz 2021 with Sean Jones

My friends in the “jazz is dead” camp often pose two rhetorical questions in defense of their position: Who will want to listen? and Who will want to play this music?

The answer to the first is unknowable, but the second question will be answered in the most unequivocal way Saturday when NYO Jazz makes Tri-C’s Metropolitan Campus Auditorium the first stop on its inaugural U.S. tour.

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Smash! Stephen Philip Harvey and His Band of Superheroes Are Here

Published 2 July, 2022 By John Chacona

Stephen Philip Harvey

“I hate that a big band is so . . . big,” saxophonist, composer and arranger Stephen Philip Harvey said with a chuckle. “It’s financially a problem, but I just really like big band music.”

Harvey likes it so much that he’s putting aside the financial, organizational and logistical challenges of touring with a big band to bring the Stephen Philip Harvey Jazz Orchestra (SPHJO) to Cleveland’s Bop Stop Thursday night to support the release two weeks ago of the band’s debut recording, Smash! (Next Level, 2022).

The Jazz Gallery All-Stars Finally Land in Cleveland for a March 6 Concert

Published 1 March, 2022 By John Chacona

Back in the 1980s, listings of events in The New Yorker’s Goings On About Town section were introduced with this charmingly worded caveat: Musicians and night-club proprietors live complicated lives that are subject to last-minute change; it is therefore always advisable to call ahead.

For presenters and musicians who ply their trades during winter on the Great Lakes, that advice goes double, especially when high winds and more than a foot of snow arrived to slam the door on the Feb. 3 concert by the Jazz Gallery All-Stars at Cleveland’s Tri-C Auditorium. Yet when Tri-C JazzFest director Terri Pontremoli canceled that show, it wasn’t a double bar, but only a fermata.