Articles by John Chacona

Live Review

Adam O'Farrill's ELEPHANT at BOP STOP

by John Chacona
September 26, 2026

Adam O'Farrill's ELEPHANT BOP STOP at the Music Settlement Cleveland, OH September 9, 2026 What might have been on the minds of listeners who considered attending a concert by Adam O'Farrill's ELEPHANT, but who didn't know quite what to expect? Since the band had a name and not a generic description (it could have been called the Adam O'Farrill Quartet), would it play rock-inspired music? A little research into the leader's distinguished lineage ...

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Two Views Of A Masterpiece

by John Chacona
September 15, 2026

As a jazz composer is it better to be a hedgehog or a fox, to write music that is so irreducibly singular that there is only one way to perform it or do be so embracingly universal that one's genius spreads like pollinator bees? Arguably Wayne Shorter, fairly unanimously embraced as the greatest jazz composer of the immediate past, has been seen as a hedgehog, the composer of brilliantly idiosyncratic music that has failed to escape the shadow of his ...

Live Review

Hingetown Jazz Festival 2026

by John Chacona
September 14, 2026

Hingetown Jazz Festival BOP STOP, Jukebox and Saucy Brew Works Cleveland, OH September 5, 2026 Birds flyin' high, you know how I feel Sun in the sky, you know how I feel Breeze driftin' on by, you know how I feel Beloved Cleveland vocalist Evelyn Wright knew what she was doing when she chose “Feeling Good," the bluesy Anthony Newly song, to be the first music heard at the 2026 ...

Interview

Ava Preston And Moises Borges Play And Sing Across Borders

by John Chacona
July 15, 2026

On paper, Moises Borges and Ava Preston are an odd match. He's a guitarist from Bahia, the cradle of Afro-Brazilian culture, who has been a welcome fixture on northeast Ohio's musical scene for decades. She's a vocalist just a couple of years out of high school whose international career is just beginning. On the bandstand, though, they have a charming and effortless musical chemistry that dissolves notions of age, borders and styles. Though Preston was just 21 when ...

Live Review

Otherlands Trio at BOP STOP

by John Chacona
July 4, 2026

Otherlands Trio BOP STOP at the Music SettlementCleveland, OHJune 18, 2026 Cleveland's New Ghosts presenting organization was named in honor of Albert Ayler, perhaps the city's most notable jazz player. That said, any notion that the astonishing, two-hour concert by Otherlands Trio--bassist Stephan Crump, Darius Jones on alto saxophone, and drummer Eric McPherson--was intended as a tribute concert is pure speculation. But at times, one had to wonder. Start with Jones, whose sound ...

Meet the Staff

Meet John Chacona

by John Chacona
June 14, 2026

I currently live in: Lakewood, Ohio, an inner-ring suburb of Cleveland, Ohio, USA that some have described as having “a San Francisco vibe." Don't laugh. That's pretty accurate. I joined All About Jazz in: I dunno, maybe 2020 or 2021. Maybe 1999. I don't remember. Why did you decide to contribute to All About Jazz? Honestly, because a music industry figure whom I respect greatly told me that the site is, by some measures, the most ...

Interview

Virginia MacDonald: In Search Of A New Clarinet Renaissance

by John Chacona
June 8, 2026

The clarinet occupies an unusual space in jazz in the 2020s. Once a lead instrument with advocates who graced the covers of fanzines for music and popular culture, the clarinet now stands 20 Feet From Stardom as the title of the 2013 documentary film about background singers described. It's a common enough double for reed players, but seldom a star. That might be changing, thanks to a new generation of players who are respectful of the clarinet's lineage ...

Interview

David Ambrosio Honors The Spirit of the '60s With Civil Disobedience

by John Chacona
May 19, 2026

Social activism and jazz have a long mutual history that arguably reached an apex with the resistance music of the '60s. On record, that music found a home at labels such as Impulse! and ESP-Disk. At the same time, artists in the Blue Note Records stable were assembling a body of work that was inspired by the social and political upheavals of the decade. For a number of reasons, this music has remained somewhat obscure despite its high quality and ...

Interview

Tigran Hamasyan’s Manifeste Destiny

by John Chacona
May 11, 2026

Tigran Hamasyan does not shy away from the big gesture. His fearsome keyboard technique, compositional ambition and improvisational daring have defined his international career, which ignited at age 18 with the release of his first album, World Passion (Plus Loin Music, 2006). Two decades later, these qualities have been refined and expanded with the results on display on his 2026 Naive Records release Manifeste. Yet in conversation, Hamasyan was thoughtful, reserved, and deeply in touch with the culture ...

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Jamile and Vinicius Gomes: Endangered Species

by John Chacona
April 6, 2026

The musical exchange between Wayne Shorter and Brazil yielded some of the great man's most indelible compositions. Happily, the conversation happens in the other direction, as Jamile and guitarist Vinicius Gomes demonstrate on “Endangered Species." With its wide intervallic leaps and skylarking melodic trajectory, the song is for virtuosos only; notably, only Esperanza Spalding seems to have attempted it. On Boundless Species (La Reserve Records, 2025), Jamile also takes on Herbie Hancock's “Actual Proof" (wordlessly), and Guinga's “Mingus Samba," sailing ...