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David Ambrosio Honors The Spirit of the '60s With Civil Disobedience
by John Chacona
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 ...
Tigran Hamasyan’s Manifeste Destiny
by John Chacona
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 ...
Jamile and Vinicius Gomes: Endangered Species
by John Chacona
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 ...
Obsolescence Quartet at The Treelawn Social Club
by John Chacona
Obsolescence QuartetThe Treelawn Social Club Cleveland, OH January 11, 2026 An evening of completely improvised music by top-level players is not an everyday thing in Cleveland. So the Sunday evening set by the cheekily named Obsolescence Quartet (an oblique reference to the effects on human creators of artificial intelligence) was ...
Dave McMurray Hears Himself In All Of Detroit's Music
by John Chacona
Saxophonist and composer Dave McMurray has much of the celebrated history of Detroit music in his memory and under his fingers. Now 70, and with four acclaimed releases on the storied Blue Note label, he is arguably at the pinnacle of a long and remarkably varied career. All the strands of that career are ...
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 ...
Aretha 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 ...
Carmen 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 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 ...
Paul 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 ...
