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Tag: jazz CD

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

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.

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Javier Red’s Imagery Converter Illustrates Life Under The Umbrella

photocredit: Eugenio Resendiz

Pianist Javier Red was in his mid-40s and had been a working musician for years, both in his native Mexico and in the United States, when he arrived at a musical crossroads.

It happened at a workshop in 2015 with saxophonist and composer Steve Coleman at the University of Chicago. “I told Steve that I’ve got two options. I can deny everything that I saw there and keep my music flowing in a comfortable way, or I can accept that what Steve was saying is a completely new and different conception of music,” he remembered. “I said, ‘Man, what I’m losing? Nothing!’ And I decided to go that way.”

He’s still going that way on a musical and life journey that will bring Red and his Chicago quartet Imagery Converter to BOP STOP Thursday for a New Ghosts concert that will have meaning well beyond music.

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Vocalist Ellie Martin Cultivates A Verdant Career With A New Recording And Tour

ELLIE MARTIN
photocredit: Jeff Dunn

“When I went to undergrad, I kind of did jazz in secret, like on the side,” said Ellie Martin. “I remember a teacher telling me once that jazz was going to ruin your voice. You’re not really supposed to do that. A lot of singers did though. You did it on the side and you didn’t say anything.”

Martin’s jazz hobby is no secret anymore. And with a new album, Verdant (self released, 2023), and a Midwest tour that concludes Saturday with an engagement at Akron’s BLU Jazz+, singing jazz has become more than a side hustle for the Toledo-based vocalist.

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Solo Or In Ensemble, Brandon Lopez’s Bass Is An Uncommon Sound

Brandon Lopez-TAK Ensemble
Brandon Lopez and TAK Ensemble

Despite the increasing numbers of creative improvising musicians who play it, the double bass in a solo context—on record or in performance–remains a comparatively uncommon sound.

Yet Brandon Lopez, with a new recording and a showcase at this weekend’s Re:Sound festival presented by the Cleveland Uncommon Sound Project, is the exception that proves the rule.

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