Articles by John Chacona
Craig Taborn: When Kabuya Dances
by John Chacona
With every passing year, the genius of the late Geri Allen increasingly comes into focus. “When Kabuya Dances" has all the hallmarks of her style: memorable melodies, a sophisticated approach to rhythm and formal audacity. Allen had left Detroit for Howard University shortly before Craig Taborn arrived at the University of Michigan, but he might have learned about “When Kabuya Dances" from the eminent Motor City rhythm team of bassist Jaribu Shahid}] and drummer {{Tani Tabbal, who recorded the composition ...
Continue ReadingAretha Tillotson: Sad Junie (to Highway Jake)
by John Chacona
If the average fan living south of the 49th Parallel knows anything about jazz in Canada, it might begin and end with Oscar Peterson and Diana Krall. Yes, Toronto is emerging as a great jazz city and there are all those players from Nanaimo, but in between, nothing, right? Bassist Aretha Tillotson is here to explode that notion (politely, of course; she's Canadian). Her second release, wryly entitled Kinda Out West, is a valentine to the prairie provinces by way of ...
Continue ReadingCarmen Staaf: Monk's Mood
by John Chacona
There is an iconic image in Charlotte Zwerin's 1988 documentary film Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser that shows Monk, cigarette in hand, silently contemplating a misty Manhattan skyline. As heard on her recording Sounding Line (Sunnyside Records, 2025), Carmen Staaf's arrangement of “Monk's Mood" that begins with Dylan Vado's spectral bowed vibes perfectly captures the soft-focus melancholy of the image. That Staaf's piano style bears little resemblance to Monk's speaks to the enduring influence of his music, the ...
Continue ReadingThe 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 ...
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