Like thousands of northeast Ohio students this week, the Hingetown Jazz Festival is headed back to school adding student ensembles from four area colleges and universities to the lineup of Saturday’s all-day, all-local free festival.
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In the days following the death of Dave Morgan on August 15, the outpouring of love for the man has been overwhelming. Among the musicians on the Cleveland music community that I cover here, few, It seems, have been untouched by his influence in some way. A remarkable number have credited Morgan with changing the course of their careers and even lives.
I never met Dave Morgan. I got to Cleveland in late 2019, a bit too late for that. So what I know of him is through the testimony of others. Every time his name comes up in conversation, it is with a lot of gratitude, reverence, and even awe. To know the details of his career, his website is the place to start, and there’s an obituary that you can read here. But to really get the measure of musician and the man, it’s best to see him through the eyes of the people who knew him and whose lives were transformed by his presence.
It’s an honor to present some of them here.
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It’s getting to be a broken record, but one I love to play: Folks, this week is packed with great choices for lovers of improvised music in the Black American tradition (you can call it jazz if ya wanna).
Whereas the first week of the month belonged to eminent locals, this week is aswarm with internationally recognized touring artists representing an impossibly wide slice of the expanding musical tart tatine. It’s harvest season, after all, and for the next eight days, northeast Ohio can enjoy a bumper crop of musical delights, and every one a feast.
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The notion that a new recording began with a surprise hug might sound like the premise of a rom-com pitch deck or a Modern Love headline, but in the case of the Nate Yingling Trio’s Welcome To Lunaryth, it’s all true.
The recording, to be released Friday and celebrated by a show at the BOP STOP, is a milestone in the collaboration between keyboard whiz Yingling and engineer (and BOP STOP Swiss Army knife) Darren Thompson that began with that hug.
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Tradition might call this week the Dog Days of Summer, but for jazz fans around northeast Ohio, it’s time for The Cats. That’s the name that serious practitioners of the art of improvised music in the Black American tradition give to the ones who can really play.
By any measure, the musicians listed below fit that description and all are on bandstands around the area this week. Here’s what you can expect:
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When you think about the greats of Pittsburgh jazz the first names that come to mind might be the pianists, an incredible legacy that stretches from Earl Hines through Mary Lou Williams, Errol Garner, Ahmad Jamal, and Sonny Clark.
That’s pretty hard to beat—until you consider the drummers: Kenny Clarke, Art Blakey Beaver Harris, and Jeff “Tain” Watts. And smack dab in the middle of that roll call is Roger Humphries, who will make his BOP STOP debut at 82 on Friday.
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