In the circular economy of jazz, new recordings are supported by album release tours or shows and those performances in turn create a market for the recordings. Just how this works is on display this week as concerts by pianist Ben Tweedt and saxophonist Matthew Alec, two artists with ties to northeast Ohio, celebrate the releases of their latest recordings.
Ben Tweedt Trio
Though he is just 30 years old, pianist Ben Tweedt is a familiar presence on the NEO scene as a sideman with Dan Wilson, in the big band of Stephen Philip Harvey and in a small group led by Jamey Haddad. As a leader, he brought a trio to BOP STOP two years ago with Justin Dawson on bass and drummer Tom Buckley that recorded Life Cycle, released last month.
It’s a record with an extended life cycle of its own. As a student at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, Tweedt said, “I didn’t take any formal composition or arranging classes. So I’d come in with something and be like, well, that doesn’t work. When I was in graduate school my teacher, Steve Alee, was like, Man, you know, you’ve been writing all this music. You should make a record, and I’m like, That’s a great idea. Then seven years later, I finally made a record.”
All nine compositions on Life Cycle are Tweedt originals that display the pianist’s sure command of the post-bop vocabulary. That’s perhaps inevitable given the discriminating nature of his early listening, which included Bill Evans’ short-lived trio with bassist Chuck Israels and drummer Larry Bunker and Herbie Hancock’s probing work on Wayne Shorter’s “Witch Hunt.”
“The oldest tune in the [trio’s] book, ‘Flow Out,’ was one that I wrote while I was still in school that reflected my life and my relationships and what my life was,” Tweedt said. “I feel like my compositions really matured as I started focusing in more on that. I didn’t have to do anything consciously, like, oh, I’m gonna try to be more melodic, or oh, I’m gonna try to do this or that. I just want to write music that’s reflective of what is happening in my own life, and since then, that really marked a turn in my improvising.”
Tweedt grew up in Council Bluffs, Iowa, across the river from Omaha, but he spent his first five years in Brunswick. “I have I have some memories of Brunswick for sure,” he said. “I still remember the neighborhood I grew up in.” After graduation, Tweedt made his home in Cincinnati where he is a full-time musician, and he finds his native state to be a rich place to live and work.
“Ohio has this really interesting cross section of a lot of different American cultures. We have like a tinge of the South, a tinge of the East Coast, some of the Midwest–even a little bit of, once you get into northern Ohio, more like a Michigan or Wisconsin kind of culture. There aren’t a lot of places that have this meeting of all those different cultural elements, and I think that’s a really interesting aspect of living here.”
Ben Tweedt Trio with bassist justin Dawson and drummer Phillip Tipton, Thursday, July 24, 7 p.m,, BLU Jazz+, 47 Market St., Akron, Tickets $20, available here., and Friday, July 25, 8 p.m., BOP STOP, 2920 Detroit Ave., Cleveland, Tickets $20, available here.
Matthew Alec and The Soul Electric
Old timers might recall that the location of the infamous Richfield Colosseum was chosen because it was roughly equidistant from Cleveland and Akron. Saxophonist Matthew Alec, 41, is a native of Richfield, whose record label is called Cleveland Time Records. He also resides in Akron, which raises the question: Why did he title his latest release A Bad Rep in the Rubber City?
“I don’t want to go too into details on it and I will not mention names, but there were some people on the scene many years ago that did not like me very much and I know who some of them are. So the title references some of the bad blood that was experienced some years ago, but I think their feelings have changed.”
Does that make Bad Rep an album-length diss track?
“Yeah, kind of,” he said. “I think the reason I titled it the way it did [was] I thought it had a nice ring to it.”
In conversation, Alec has the kind of casual brashness that one expects from rappers or politicians of a certain persuasion, and it extends to his music, which tosses elements of blues, R&B, rock and hip-hop into the musical Vitamix. Stir in some Red Bull-style energy and you have a nine-pack of Soul Electric tracks.
This is good-time music, not to be taken too seriously—even by its creator. “It’s a nice group of covers, more or less, with a couple of originals, but aside from that, it’s not like a groundbreaking release or anything,” Alec said. “I’m writing the next studio album, and I wanted to have a release to promote this year while I finish writing that and recording it to release next year.”
Joining Alec on the stage of BLU Jazz+ will be keyboard player Brian Woods, newcomer Corey Conway on guitar, bassist Miguel Tarin Torres and the percussion duo of Drew Parent and Jeremiah “The Franchise” Hawkins with Minus the Alien contributing vocals. All are near contemporaries of Alec’s, but the band’s other saxophonist, Greg Banaszak, is a generation older and was Alec’s teacher at Kent State 20 years ago.
I asked Alec if the student/teacher dynamic still plays out on the bandstand and he laughed the notion away. “No, he is the coolest dude in the world,” Alec said. “I love that man. He is truly one of my very, very good friends. So he will defer to me on just about everything–and if anything, he asks me if he’s doing anything wrong.”
Matthew Alec and The Soul Electric Friday, July 25, 8 p.m., BLU Jazz+, 47 Market St., Akron, Tickets $20, available here.
NOTE: This article was written by a real human being. No artificial intelligence or generative language models were used in its creation.
Don’t comply in advance,
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