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John Chacona writes Posts

One Night In The Midwest: Stein/Smith/Shead Meet The Moment

The improvising trio of bass clarinetist Jason Stein, double bassist Damon Smith and drummer Adam Shead released a three-CD set last Friday of recordings from a December tour recorded at venues in Milwaukee, Indianapolis, Lafayette, Indiana, St. Louis and Bloomington, Illinois entitled Five Nights in the Midwest (Irritable Mystic Records). Sharp-eyed readers might notice the absence of a Midwestern city close to our hearts. But fear not. The trio rolls into Waterloo Arts Sunday for a New Ghosts concert that comes at the two-third point of an 18-concert tour.

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Flowers Around Cleveland (and Akron too)

Back in the 1980s I became obsessed with the saxophonist David Murray and set out to collect his entire recorded oeuvre. This was a problem because the man recorded almost indiscriminately, sometimes releasing five or six records a year. I was a racing greyhound chasing the mechanical rabbit of his ever expanding discography, and I gave up at 54 items. But not before scoring a French rarity called Flowers Around Cleveland (Bleu Regard, 1995).

Looking out at Signora’s newly colorful rosebushes, that title came to mind when I checked Jim Szabo’s jazz calendar of events, which is my go-to guide in making the lets call this editorial calendar. All over northeast Ohio, the flowers are starting to pop, and on the area’s stages, so is the music scene.

So this week I bring you a spring bouquet of concerts by local and touring artists that includes a Napoleonic invasion, a throw-down at Lock 3 and a rare appearance by a notable big band. It’s a beautiful thing.


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On “Diavola” Singer Gabrielle Cavassa Gets Close To The Fire

Gabrielle Cavassa
photocredit: Roeg Cohen

Gabrielle Cavassa is not a gloomy person. When we talked yesterday about the record release tour that brings her to Edwin’s on Thursday, she was animated and charming. And she made it clear that the Diavola, from which her compelling new Blue Note debut recording takes its title, is just a character.

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For Bassel Almadani, Planting Roots In NEO Is (Super)natural

photocrediit: Graham Images

At times during my conversation with Bassel Almadani that I conducted on his front porch in a leafy Lakewood neighborhood, his adorable daughter crawled into his lap to share a confidence, or just to get a hug. That conversational, one-to-one style of communication is in his music, too and will be offered Saturday when Bassel and the Supernaturals return to BOP STOP.

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Stephan Crump’s Music Aims To Be Like Water

photocredit: Nathan James Leatherman

For centuries composers as varied as Handel and Hancock, Elgar and Ellington have drawn inspiration from the majesty and power of the world’s great bodies of water. Stephan Crump has been surrounded by water for nearly his entire life, but the large-scale composition he will bring to the Cleveland Museum of Art on April 24, examines the aquatic from a very different point of view.

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