Sam Blakeslee Large Group at BLU Jazz+

Sam Blakeslee Large Group
BLU Jazz+
Akron, OH
December 20, 2024

In December, flowers bloomed in northeast Ohio, but climate change had nothing to do with it. The sudden blossoming was the work of Sam Blakeslee who returned to his home state to celebrate the holidays with family and friends, 18 of whom joined him on the stage of Akron's BLU Jazz+ for a performance of his "Flowers for Rubber City" suite.

The work is a collection of musical portraits of figures who have been important in Blakeslee's career or the region's musical life. Sometimes it was both at once as in "The Pugilist," a dedication to the late Akron tenor saxophonist Waymon "Punchy" Atkinson, Jr. Blakeslee's swaggering shuffle blues set the scene at the basement club with counterpunching section riffs and haymaker solos by Pittsburgh trombonist Reggie Watkins and alto saxophonist Bobby Selvaggio.

For jazz players, there are few more common practices than improvising on "Stella By Starlight." The standard was a favorite of the late Roland Paolucci, founder of the jazz program at the University of Akron, Blakeslee's undergraduate alma mater. Blakeslee's contrafact, "Tres Estrellas," draped Victor Young's elegant changes over a flowing samba rhythm and featured the composer's trombone solo and piquant orchestration, including Chris Coles' clarinet lead.

Though it has been played a few times, including a complete performance at September's Rubber City Blues & Jazz Festival, "Flowers for Rubber City" is a work in progress. A recent addition is "The Cup That's Always Pouring," a commission by Cleveland jazz club Bop Stop that Blakeslee dedicated to Akron educator, community leader and 2024 Jazz Journalists Association Akron Jazz Hero Chris Anderson. Blakeslee's tribute to a fellow trombonist glowed with affection in an arrangement for himself and rhythm, an intimate musical portrait framed by a pretty melody and ennobled by bassist Kip Reed's warm-toned solo.

"Frequency Fluctuations" received only its second performance for full band at BLU. The dedicatees were a pair of tenor players: Akron's Jimmy Noel and the eminent Joe Henderson, who practiced together while growing up in Lima, Ohio. Noel spent time in the Count Basie band and Blakeslee's composition was a thought experiment imagining what that band might have sounded like had Henderson's harmonic innovations made it into the Basie book. The answer was just to the outside of Frank Foster's brawnier charts, an impression enhanced by featured tenor saxophonist Johnny Cochran who bulled through the thick orchestration like a running back for the region's beloved Cleveland Browns American football team.

Jack Schanz is best known for his 15-year run as artistic director of the Cleveland Jazz Orchestra and a near-concurrent tenure as director of jazz studies at the University of Akron. Music was the family business; Schanz's father headed the Schanz Organ Company, now in its 152nd year. "Parables of Truth" drew on that legacy with a rich, full-throated sonority over a stately 6/8 gospel rhythm. Appropriately for a dedication to a northeast Ohio trumpet legend, Ephraim Miller's declamatory solo and an all-stops-out shout chorus brought the first set to a rousing close.

And that is where this review ends. Though flowers may have been blooming in the hothouse that was BLU Jazz+, winter is unavoidable outdoors in the Great Lakes region and an approaching snowstorm necessitated an early start to our party's one-hour drive north. Though the music started at 8 p.m., Blakeslee generously ceded the evening's first set to a quintet of accomplished college students, all of whom came through Dominick Farinacci's Tri-C Jazz Academy program, a fitting gesture in an evening of tributes.

They were: alto saxophonists Alexander Lahti-Thiam (University of Michigan) and Thomas Schinabeck {Peabody Institute), pianist Liam Speaks (Ohio University), bassist Eli Leder (William Paterson University) and drummer Drew Hoschar (Manhattan School of Music) and vocalist Ava Preston (Juilliard School). Remember those names. This won't be the last time you encounter them.

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