Articles by John Chacona
The Messthetics with James Brandon Lewis at the Beachland Tavern
by John Chacona
The Messthetics with James Brandon Lewis Beachland Tavern Cleveland, OH September 12, 2025 Cleveland, Ohio can lay a strong claim as one of the three mother cities, along with London and New York City of punk rock and culture (note: it took an act of will not to use the word gritty in that sentence). This should not be controversial. The forces of de-industrialization, disinvestment and alienation--the same ones that now dominate the ...
Continue ReadingPaul Cornish Trio at BOP STOP
by John Chacona
Paul Cornish Trio BOP STOP at the Music Settlement Cleveland, OHSeptember 5, 2025 Paul Cornish began his concert with a recording of a 1966 John Coltrane interview in Japan. Musicians invoke him all the time these days, but the great saxophonist/saint who ecstatically called the spirits makes an odd match with a pianist whose debut recording You're Exaggerating! (Blue Note, 2025) was measured, thoughtful and maybe a little cool. The first music ...
Continue ReadingHingetown Jazz Festival 2025
by John Chacona
Hingetown Jazz Festival Various venues Cleveland, OH August 30, 2025 It would surprise no one if this review of the third Hingetown Jazz Festival in Cleveland began, as such pieces often do, by noting how the festival has grown. But that would not exactly be accurate. By the most common measure of such things, the size of the audience, this year's audience looked a lot like 2024's (this writer was not at the ...
Continue ReadingDominick Farinacci & Friends / Taylor Eigisti & Christian Tamburr Celebrate Chick Corea and Gary Burton at Tri-C JazzFest 2025
by John Chacona
Dominick Farinacci and Friends Taylor Eigsti and Christian Tamburr Celebrate Chick Corea and Gary BurtonMimi Ohio Theatre Tri-C JazzFest Cleveland, OH June 28, 2025 Afternoon presentations at multi-day jazz festivals tend to be low key--and often low-pressure--events. So it was on the final afternoon of the two-day Tri-C JazzFest. Let us throw more generous in there, too, because Saturday's kickoff concert was a two-shows-for-one-ticket affair. The opening act, was billed as ...
Continue ReadingDanny Grissett: Whisper Not
by John Chacona
One of the enduring mysteries of jazz is also one of its most salient criteria: the hookup between bass and drums. Like Justice Stewart's quote about pornography, it is hard to define but impossible to miss when you hear it. By now, Vicente Archer and Bill Stewart have something very special going on, and Danny Grissett was wise to tap into it. Equally hard to define is what Ethan Iverson calls the “adult tempo." Whatever it means, it is surely ...
Continue ReadingSun Ra Arkestra at Tri-C JazzFest 2025
by John Chacona
Sun Ra ArkestraMimi Ohio Theatre Tri-C JazzFest Cleveland, OH June 27, 2025 When is a band not a ghost band? It is a question posed by a Cleveland jazz media figure after a performance by the Sun Ra Arkestra on the first full day of the Tri-C JazzFest, and it was a fair one on the surface. Here, after all, is a big band founded in the '50s that had no original ...
Continue ReadingDan Weiss Quartet At Bop Stop
by John Chacona
Dan Weiss Quartet Bop Stop at the Music Settlement Cleveland, OH June 6, 2025 In his liner notes to Phillip Golub's Abiding Memory (Endectomorph Music, 2024), Vijay Iyer coined a name for the kind of music made by a set of mostly young, genre-agnostic musicians in New York, “New Brooklyn Complexity," and named some of its more notable practitioners. Four of them were on stage at Cleveland's Bop Stop under the leadership of Dan Weiss ...
Continue ReadingThe Bad Plus at Bop Stop
by John Chacona
The Bad PlusBOP STOP at the Music SettlementCleveland, OHFebruary 7, 2025 Teachers of jazz--the good ones, at least--emphasize the importance of finding an individual sound. That goes for ensembles, too, and at their Friday appearance at Cleveland's Bop Stop, The Bad Plus demonstrated how, even with a radical overhauling of personnel and instrumentation, it can be done. For two decades, The Bad Plus brandished what might have been the most distinctive piano trio ...
Continue ReadingHolly Cole: Kiss Me Quick
by John Chacona
Hands up everyone who thinks there should be more vibes solos on Elvis Presley covers. Though press materials don't credit the player, they identify Kevin Breit as the guitarist (was there any question?) on this Western Swing-flavored chart of the 1961 Doc Pomus / Mort Shuman song. Holly Cole sings it with just the right proportion of winking insinuation and hormonal rush. Corny? Sure, but music-making this slyly intelligent is enough to get a fellow all shook up.
Continue ReadingTania Grubbs: The Sound of Love
by John Chacona
Meet a person from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and you are likely to get a Chamber of Commerce-worthy commendation of their city's greatness. When it comes to jazz, the civic pride is more than warranted; the Steel City was home to immortals such as Earl Hines, Mary Lou Williams, Art Blakey and Kenny Clarke. Vocalist Tania Grubbs grew up just over the state line in Ohio, but she has lived and worked in The 'Burgh, as natives affectionately call it, for some ...
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