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Overjoyed wasn’t the first choice for the theme of this year’s University of Akron Jazz Week ’26 that begins today. “At first we said gratitude, but there was something about it that wasn’t as killing,” said Chris Coles, who curates the four-day celebration and festival with his fellow UA faculty member and frequent musical collaborator Theron Brown.
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When saxophonist Russ Gershon put his Either/Orchestra together 40 years ago, he had a concept in mind. “I wanted the band to feel like a territory band, or like a working band of the past,” Gershon said on a video call. The 11-piece band fully realized Gershon’s conception though he couldn’t have imagined that the band’s territory would one day include Ethiopia.
Today the Either/Orchestra is recognized globally for its advocacy of Ethiopian music, a project that has led to appearances at two of the nation’s most prestigious music festivals, and this weekend, to Cleveland for a pair of free concerts, Friday at Trinity Cathedral and Saturday at BOP STOP.
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The release last week of Red Rhinoceros, the debut recording by Bobby Selvaggio’s octet of the same name, completes a narrative right out of “Jurassic Park,” the Michael Crichton novel and blockbuster Steven Spielberg film about long extinct species recreated out of ancient DNA.
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If you are searching for a glimmer of light in this dark and ominous hour, consider this. We are living in a golden age of jazz piano. There are more interesting pianists playing in a wider spectrum of styles at a high level of artistry and technique than at any time in the music’s eleven-decades of existence.
And it gets better. Three such pianists, Orrin Evans, Simona Premazzi and Philip Golub, can be heard in Cleveland over the next eight days. Though they might not have the name recognition of a Herbie Hancock or Jon Batiste, all are singular stylists who encounter the jazz piano tradition in idiosyncratic and brilliantly original ways.
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Hands up: did you have a meteorite explosion on your St. Paddy’s Day bingo card this morning? That was a sound the likes of which I’ve never heard–which, in broadcasting is called a smooth segue to the topic at hand: music.
To say that this week’s constellation of concerts descended from the heavens is a reach, but starry? For sure!
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Tigran Hamasyan is a man with a foot in each of two worlds, both geographically and temporally.
“Basically, I love telling stories,” Hamasyan told me to begin our interview. “And throughout my discography, there’s this aspect that each song tells a story through music.” It’s the kind of thing you might expect to hear from any musician, but the fact that Hamasyan said this from his home in Yerevan, Armenia, one of the oldest continuously inhabited settlements in the world, gives his comment the weight of an ancient culture steeped In stories.
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