Hingetown Jazz Festival 2025

by John Chacona
September 4, 2025

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 ...

Dominick Farinacci & Friends / Taylor Eigisti & Christian Tamburr Celebrate Chick Corea and Gary Burton at Tri-C JazzFest 2025

by John Chacona
July 18, 2025

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. ...

Sun Ra Arkestra at Tri-C JazzFest 2025

by John Chacona
July 13, 2025

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 ...

46th Annual Tri-C JazzFest

by C. Andrew Hovan
July 8, 2025

46th Annual Tri-C JazzFest Playhouse Square Cleveland, OH June 26-28, 2025 Jazz festivals occupy a precarious space these days. Pressured by financial constraints, too many have drifted toward booking artists with only a passing connection to the jazz tradition. Cuts to both public and private funding have only compounded ...

Dan Weiss Quartet At Bop Stop

by John Chacona
June 22, 2025

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," ...

Matthew Alec And The Soul Electric - New Release Of Modern Jazz Fusion!

May 7, 2025

Nominated as Cleveland's “best jazz" for 2024 by the Cleveland Music Awards, explosive fusion supergroup Matthew Alec and The Soul Electric bring old school swagger to their fresh, exciting, and innovative blend of jazz, pop, and funk. Led by All About Jazz's #19 “Favorite Living Jazz Saxophonist" for 2024 Matthew Alec, the 7-piece collective is blazing ...

Prescribing Jazz: A Top Ten

by Artur Moral
March 30, 2025

National Doctors' Day is celebrated unevenly across our mistreated planet. It is absent in most countries, while it is observed as a holiday in a few. Coinciding (in the United States and Australia) with this day of recognition for a vital profession, this article is especially directed to the entire jazz-loving medical community, focusing on six ...

Jim Snidero at the Bop Stop

by C. Andrew Hovan
March 24, 2025

Nate Smith at The Cleveland Museum of Art

by C. Andrew Hovan
March 2, 2025

Nate Smith Cleveland Museum of Art Cleveland, Ohio February 19, 2025 When it comes to drummers who can seamlessly traverse multiple genres, Nate Smith stands in a league of his own. Effortlessly shifting from hard-swinging jazz to the tightest hip-hop grooves, he makes it all look easy. His musical journey accelerated ...

The Bad Plus at Bop Stop

by John Chacona
February 14, 2025

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 ...