When you think about the greats of Pittsburgh jazz the first names that come to mind might be the pianists, an incredible legacy that stretches from Earl Hines through Mary Lou Williams, Errol Garner, Ahmad Jamal, and Sonny Clark.

That’s pretty hard to beat—until you consider the drummers: Kenny Clarke, Art Blakey Beaver Harris, and Jeff “Tain” Watts. And smack dab in the middle of that roll call is Roger Humphries, who will make his BOP STOP debut at 82 on Friday.

He’ll be powering a sextet assembled by trombonist Reggie Watkins called Indestructible. That was the title of the 1964 release by Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers that would end the band’s association with Blue Note records, and it’s a classic, maybe my desert island jazz recording. But the band’s name also nods to Humphries’ outsized presence on the Pittsburgh scene.

“[The band] came together because I transcribed the record, but the idea was to do the record, do the music, and feature Roger on drums,” Watkins said on a video call from his Pittsburgh home. “He’s our obvious connection to the music, a living legend. He was mentored by Art Blakey, and went on to play with Horace Silver, the other founder of the Jazz Messengers. Roger did some serious, legendary work with Horace. So it just makes so much sense and so many ways to have him in the drum chair for the presentation of that album.”

Even people who know nothing about jazz have heard Roger Humphries. That’s him driving Silver’s “Song For My Father,” a jazz tune heard in coffeeshops and retail stores everywhere.

That 1965 recording might have been the high-water mark of Humphries’ fame, but his presence on the Pittsburgh scene is where his influence will be felt. “His history and the people he’s played with give him credibility,” Watkins said. “But beyond that, his presence, his vibe, his mantra is all about giving back and being grateful for the music.”

In many ways, Humphries is the living embodiment of Pittsburgh jazz. Asked to describe his city’s approach to the music, Watkins said, “It’s got a lot to do with swinging hard. It’s got a lot to do with blues. You have to consider the audience 100%. It’s not about us at all. It’s not about trying to make an artistic statement, [that] if you don’t like it, leave. It’s a communal thing. And that’s what makes it really special.”

If that sounds a lot like what makes northeast Ohio jazz special, you won’t be surprised to find trumpeter Tommy Lehman and tenor saxophonist Chris Coles on the front line with Watkins, and Jordan McBride on bass in the rhythm section with Steel City pianist Howie Alexander.

That’s a great lineup, but don’t take your eyes—and your ears—off the drummer.

“The people he’s played with give him credibility,” Watkins said. “But beyond that, his presence, his vibe, his mantra is all about giving back and being grateful for the music. “If you talk to Roger for five minutes, you’ll realize that this is his main message, is that life is beautiful, we’re here to take care of each other, the music is a gift from God, and to be on either side of the microphone is an absolute blessing.”

Indestructible, Friday, July 31, 8 p.m., BOP STOP, 2920 Detroit Rd., Cleveland. Tickets $25, available here.

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Even at 83, saxophonist and composer Howie Smith remains an endless fount of surprises. You might even call his concert Friday night at BOP STOP a veritable Russian doll of surprises.

Start with the instrumentation, Smith on reeds, pianist Theron Brown and Aidan Plank on bass--great players all, but no drummer. Not unprecedented, maybe, but let’s call it novel.

But here’s where things get unusual: the concert is all ballads, start to finish—and not your usual Gershwin/Kern/Great American Songbook ballads you might expect to hear. Smith has reached back--a-waaaaaaaay back as Guardians Hall of Fame Announcer Tom Hamilton might say--to the Great European Songbook composers, Frankie Schubert and Jack Puccini. You know, The Cats.

“The thing I enjoy doing most is playing ballads all night long,” Smith told me by phone while he was grilling salmon last week. “There’s also a lot of really good material that, as a quote-unquote jazz musician, you don’t get a chance to play.”

Like what? Smith mentioned the aria from Alfredo Catalani’s opera “La Wally” that was a crucial plot element in Jean-Jacques Beineix’s 1981 art house film “Diva,” which Smith described as, “a beautiful thing. I said, ‘Man, that’d be a great tune to play,’ but I never followed through on it.”

So the idea for Friday’s concert had been marinating for a while, but when Smith saw Brown and Plank recently, it was ready for the grill, so to speak. “I mentioned it to them again, because I’ve mentioned it to them a number of times before, and they were enthusiastic about it. And so I went to Bryan [Kennard of BOP STOP] and he liked the idea. So he got us a date.”

You might be surprised that Brown and Plank will be covering classical composers. Yet you shouldn’t be. Plank has sat in the bass section of orchestras, including the Cleveland Orchestra, throughout his career, and as Smith reminded me, “Theron did the ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ with the Akron Symphony, I think it was last year.”

Smith calls this trio Nous, which is a Russian doll of meaning in its own right. In classical philosophy, nous is a kind of divine, primordial intelligence. In French, nous is the first-person plural pronoun, the equivalent of “we” or “us” and pronounced like “new.” So the trio’s name can be read as a super-intelligent “we” that’s brand new. Makes sense.

But Smith has a third surprise in store and it’s a good one. “I really don’t want people to know what they’re going to hear ahead of time because they may have preconceived ideas of what it’s going to sound like,” he said.

That’s a bold gambit, but longtime followers of Smith’s career might recognize it as nothing nous. His annual “Concerts In Progress” at Cleveland State University used the same conceit.

“Everybody who goes to a concert hears a different piece,” he explained, moving from Neoplatonism to the Buddhist Dhammapada. “That has to do with what music they’ve heard before, what they’ve been thinking about before they got there and when they’re there, they’re each sitting in a different place in the space where the music is being made. So acoustically it’s a slightly different experience for everybody as well.”

Fair enough, but with the exception of Smith, Brown and Plank, can we agree, entre nous, that everybody will have the same experience on one fundamental level? They won’t know what’s about to hit them. Let’s call it something old, something Nous, a few things borrowed, and--who knows?--maybe some blues.

Nous (Howie Smith, Theron Brown, Aidan Plank), Friday, July 24, 8 p.m., BOP STOP, 2920 Detroit Rd., Cleveland. Tickets $25, available here.

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Though clarinetist Virginia MacDonald released her debut recording In Search Of… (Cellar Music Group) only a few weeks ago, the jazz community has been quick to take notice—and well they should. It’s an assured effort shot through with ample personality, high-wire virtuosity and a shrewd compositional sensibility, a delight from start to finish.

But don’t take my word for it. You can hear it for yourself Saturday when MacDonald makes her BOP STOP debut as a leader in support of the new release.

You might remember MacDonald as part of a two-clarinet front line in a quintet led by Baltimore bass clarinetist Todd Marcus that played BOP STOP in 2023 and again in 2025, both times in mid-July (you can hear the 2023 set on the Live at the BOP STOP podcast here).

She has also made numerous appearances in North America as part of the Canadian Jazz Collective where she was joined on the front line by her tenor saxophonist father Kirk, a longtime fixture on the Toronto scene, and an obvious early influence.

“My dad had laid out a bunch of different instruments for me to think about choosing as my main instrument,” she said on a video call last month from her New York apartment. “Of course, there’s the option of saxophone. We had a piano in our apartment at the time. I think he had a flute. We had a guitar, maybe, but when I saw the clarinet, I was just like, ‘Oh my God, what is that?’ I just fell in love with it.”

Growing up in a musical household had other benefits, too. “I think that getting those opportunities to play next to my dad was something that really fostered my own voice and fostered my own musical development because he’s someone who, to this day, is always pushing to be better at his craft and to be better at what he does.”

While MacDonald’s instrumental voice is fluent and beguiling, it’s her range as a composer that makes the strongest impression on In Search Of… Six of the album’s eight compositions are hers, including a post-bop banger (“Last Call At Dimitri’s”), a driving, Coltrane-influenced vamp tune (“Hope”), an additive-meter workout “Eternal Return Of The Same,” and a balmy bossa (the title cut). MacDonald sails through them all with confidence and aplomb, and she seems not at all daunted by the high-octane band she assembled for the date: former Art Blakey pianist Geoffrey Keezer, bassist Ira Coleman and fellow Canadian Curtis Nowosad on drums.

“It feels for me, like a journey through time over the past decade of my life,” she said about the album’s compositions. “In terms of ‘Dimitri’s,’ that was a leaping off point where I was going to try to write what I hear—and I guess in a way that’s still what I’m doing.”

Saturday at BOP STOP, she will be joined by Alex Goodman on guitar, rising Philadelphia drummer Maria Marmarou, and Mark Lewandowski on bass.

The arrival of In Search Of… comes at an auspicious time, with the field wide open for a fresh new voice on clarinet. “I think there’s a tradition for more Dixieland or big-band swing styles of playing on our instrument,” MacDonald said. ”There’s not a huge tradition for people who are playing contemporary, maybe post-bop, styles of music.

“Some of my favorite musicians are the ones whose voice as composers lends itself to their voice as musicians and players and vice versa,” she said. “It feels like there’s a connection there. So that’s something that I try to aim for as much as possible.”

Virginia MacDonald Quartet, Saturday, July 18, 8 p.m., BOP STOP, 2920 Detroit Rd., Cleveland. Tickets $25, available here.

In Search Of... is available from Bandcamp at this link.

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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 Solon High School whose international career is just beginning.

On the bandstand, though, they’re a perfect pair, and that’s where you will find them Friday at BLU Jazz+ and Saturday at BOP STOP for what is a reunion tour of sorts.

Like a lot of relationships, theirs began in a bar when Borges, looking for a bite after a practice session dropped in on one of Preston’s gigs. “We had some mutual friends and they introduced me to you,” Preston said to Borges on a video call Sunday that you can see on my YouTube channel here. “Then we started jamming together for some bossa nova things.”

“I was like, wow, this girl can do it! Really nice,” Borges recalled. “After she finished singing, we talked and realized that we could actually work on something together.”

Work they did—a lot—especially during the COVID years when very few musicians had gigs.

“We called it the Front Lawn Concert Series,” Borges said. “It was pretty much like a community event because the host would get together with a couple of neighbors to put a little money down and invite other friends and neighbors.”

Borges estimated that he and Preston played as many as 150 of the outdoor house concerts. “and because of COVID,” Borges added, “all the musicians were available. So we could have any band we want. That was nice.”

On Saturday, the pair will be joined by drummer Liam Smith, bassist Gary Aprile and saxophonist Chris Burge. “I couldn’t ask for any better,” Borges said. “Chris and Ava have this chemistry of solos on stage. They do this little ‘battle’ that is amazing.”

Preston can count on the stages getting bigger following her win at the 2026 International Ella Fitzgerald Jazz Vocal Competition held at Washington, D.C.’s storied Blues Alley.

“I was able to perform with Sachal Vasandani, and I love him so much. It was an incredible experience, and I’m so honored,” Preston said. “I also graduated from Juilliard in May. So it was a big year for me.”

For the record, her Juilliard degree is a masters, a heady achievement for someone who until last October, couldn’t legally buy a drink in the clubs where she sang. With that glossy credential in hand, Preston has opted to stay in New York after graduation and dive into the city’s mad musical scene.

“There’s a lot of talent,” she said of her new home base. “There’s a lot of clubs too, but it’s, different to start from a place where nobody really knows you. So, I’ve had to sort of forge my own thing again.”

Don’t count her out. This is an artist who annually booked 80 to 100 of her own gigs while she was still in high school. Still, her own thing might mean the chances to savor the great warmth, respect and rapport that Preston and Borges have developed on northeast Ohio stages could be fewer and farther between. Best to savor them while you can.

This weekend opens a window of opportunity to do so. “We have four dates that me and Moises are doing while I’m in Ohio for a little bit, but then I’m going right back to New York,” Preston said.

There’s a lovely Brazilian expression, saudade, that can’t be accurately translated, The best way to apprehend the meaning, which lives at the nexus of sadness, nostalgia and longing, is by listening to bossa nova.

“We’re going to celebrate the legends of bossa nova music, juxtaposing the Portuguese with the English lyrics and it’s all about connecting with the audience too,” Borges said. “The show is called A Very Special Bossa Nova Night, and it’s going to be a special night.”

Moises Borges Quartet Featuring Ava Preston, Friday, July 10, 8 p.m., BLU Jazz+, 47 E. Market Street, Akron. Tickets $25 available here, and Saturday, July 11, 8 p.m. BOP STOP, 2920 Detroit Rd., Cleveland. Tickets $25, available here.

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When the book is closed on the year’s most satisfying recordings, don’t be surprised to find among the big-budget productions, glossy all-star tributes and high-profile collabs, an intimately scaled solo cello recording on the tiny Out Of Your Head Records label. It’s called REX and its creator Christopher Hoffman will bring the music he wrote for it to a solo concert at The Treelawn Social Club Wednesday evening.

The recording has the affect of a household craft project, which is almost literally true in this case; the 13 compositions of REX, were recorded, mixed and mastered in the home where Hoffman lived. But the notion of craft was more than an incidental detail of the project’s creation. Craft—how it is honed and where it is practiced--might be REX’s animating idea.

Hoffman lived in a home that once belonged to Rex Brasher, a self-taught artist who painted every bird species in North America from life. Brasher was both prolific and meticulous. Not satisfied with the color printing technology available in the 1930s, Brasher insisted on painting by hand the 88,200 color illustrations for 100 sets of his encyclopedic,12-volume “Birds and Trees of North America.”

Wandering the 116-acre estate, Hoffman was moved to create what he called in notes for the recording, “not a portrait, but an echo—of a person, a place, and a way of seeing the world—” a way of seeing that in its specificity, generosity and close observation, mirrored Hoffman’s own.

The compositions offer resonances of the places where the painter worked, the birds that were the subject of the more than 1,200 watercolors he created, and touching portraits of Brasher’s beloved wife Marie and his dog Pal. It’s an extraordinarily intimate evocation of a man who died some 18 years before Hoffman, who turned 48 last Friday, was born in Chicago.

Hoffman has impressive credits in American vernacular music and with bands such as Iron & Wine, but it was his association with fellow Chicagoan Henry Threadgill’s Zooid ensemble that brought the cellist to the attention of The Treelawn’s Eric Hanson.

“Threadgill has been a personal hero of mine since I was in college and discovered his music,” Hanson wrote in an email. “Christopher had only the greatest things to say about his experience with him. So many things jumped out at me that were of interest in what Christopher does. Being an improvising cellist to start with of course, but also the range and depth of his associations in the music world is both unusual and impressive.”

Christopher Hoffman: REX, July 1, The Treelawn Social Club, 15335 Waterloo Rd., Cleveland. Tickets $12, available here.

REX is available from Bandcamp at this link.

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It's so high, you can't get over it, so low you can't get under it. It's the Tri-C JazzFest, the biggest weekend on the Cleveland jazz calendar that begins Thursday, June 25 when Sheila E. takes the stage at the State Theatre.

This might be the one time all year that traditional media pay attention to jazz in Cleveland. That’s a good thing, so there’s no point in me yelling “Go Team!” from my little corner of the internet.

Still, this one feels a little different, and that’s worth noting.

For the first time since 2010, Terri Pontremoli will not be at the helm, and new executive director Orlando Watson has wasted little time in putting his stamp on the three-day extravaganza. At 34, Watson is the youngest director in the festival’s 47-year history, and on the evidence of this year’s lineup (you can see it here), his programming philosophy reflects the fact that every generation answers the perennial question What is jazz? in its own way.

Notwithstanding his youth, Watson has seen and presumably learned a lot since he signed on as the JazzFest’s associate director in 2019. Changes in technology, media consumption, economics and the ways that people find, choose and consume (ugly word, but unavoidable) entertainment post-pandemic present a different set of challenges to Watson and his staff in 2026 than in past years. The music doesn’t stay still and neither does its audience.

So while your jazz purist uncle, the one with the “Kind of Blue” t-shirt and the collection of records (not “vinyls”), might wonder why there’s so little “jazz” in the Tri-C JazzFest lineup, Watson has other factors to consider.

Like how to fill the large, expensive houses in Playhouse Square that are home to JazzFest’s marquee ticketed events. Like how to afford artists fees nudged upward by skyrocketing touring costs. Like how to attract corporate and philanthropic support at a time when political and economic pressures are increasing the competition for sponsorships. Like how to select artists the public wants to hear when algorithmic media can create stars seemingly overnight. Watson has a lot to think about as he plays the long game.

On his Substack in January, Matt Merewitz, who is one of the smartest guys in the business and a pitiless observer of the scene, wrote this:

Essentially, for every act the average festival goer has never heard of, there is an artist or two booked that needs to be there for the lights to stay on; for enough people to come out each night so that everyone can get paid and the whole thing happens.

If you’re one of the jazz purists, No. 47 might not resemble your fantasy draft JazzFest lineup (give me truth serum and I’d admit that it’s not mine, either). But, consider that The Ohio Players or Durand Bernarr or MonoNeon (who puts on a great show, by the way—just ask your kids), are there to keep the lights on and maybe bring 84-year-old master Kenny Barron to JazzFest 48. One can dream, anyway.

Why not check these shows out? You might just run into a good time.

Alas, I cannot. I will be out of town this weekend, but I’d love to hear your impressions. Jazz fans are never sort of opinions. The comments are wide open.

Have fun and enjoy the show.

The 47^th annual Tri-C JazzFest Cleveland, June 25 – 27, Playhouse Square. The full schedule of free and ticketed events, and purchase links, can be found here.

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And ears, as it turns out, are what makes the trio of Crump, Darius Jones on alto saxophone and drummer Eric McPherson so extraordinary.

Listen to Otherlands Trio, at Thursday’s New Ghosts concert at BOP STOP or on Star Mountain and you won’t hear chord changes. You won’t hear conventional song forms, either. The band, Crump told me in that interview, “is all spontaneous composition. We just move into the music without any kind of plan. It’s about ego dissolution and trusting each other and going, moment to moment, where the music needs to go.”

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In lesser hands, this approach can be a recipe for tedium and self-indulgence, but the trio’s deep empathy, quick-twitch reflexes and commanding individual voices give you something substantial to chew on at every turn.

About those voices. Crump’s has been frequently and gratefully heard in Cleveland, most recently in April when he brought his Slow Water project to the Cleveland Museum of Art, a concert I previewed here. In Otherlands he’s a bit like a basketball player who excels off the ball, always in the right place at the right time, making things happen.

Jones, who last played Cleveland in 2018 with Omaha drummer Dana Murray, has a huge, room-filling tone (I know this from experience having heard him send waves of sound into San Francisco’s vast Taube Atrium Theater in 2021). It’s hot and thick, a steaming and often spicy gravy. Jones never plays patterns or licks. What billows from his horn is wave after wave of pure emotion.

In Otherlands, he and McPherson often play a two-man game, volleying ideas back and forth like touch passes on a basketball fast break. The drummer has great court vision. He hears everything, yet his moment-to-moment responsiveness always happens within the broader rhythmic flow of the music.

All three players share this trait, which makes the music of Otherlands Trio a high-risk, high-reward proposition. “It’s about ego dissolution and trusting each other and going, moment to moment, where the music needs to go,” Crump said. “It’s so deep and rich.”

No matter where it goes, there’s this powerful magnetism to it. It’s always grooving, it’s both always expanding and evolving and developing yet magnetically charged and grooving at the same time. It’s very special.”

New Ghosts presents Otherlands Trio, Thursday, June 18, 7 p.m., BOP STOP, 2901 Detroit Ave. Cleveland, tickets $25 available here

You can buy your own copy of Star Mountain at this Bandcamp link.

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For the last five years, I’ve written a love letter most every week. The object of my affection is the community of musicians, presenters, organizers, supporters and fellow listeners (Anthony Braxton calls them “friendly experiencers”) who make up the jazz scene in northeast Ohio.

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This scene has given me so much in experiences, friendships and knowledge, and I want to celebrate it and surface the people and events that make it

great, especially because larger media organizations around here pay little attention to it.

The love letters have dropped on Tuesdays at my blog on a medium that was once the channel of the moment. I’ve had this site for 30 years, but times chance and platforms change and now I’m here, thanks to the encouragement and help from Substacker friends (shouts to Michelle Mercer, Rick Lopez, Matt Merewitz, Tom Hudak and others).

So, what am I going to do with this?

Probably some of the same things I do at the blog, which is also named let’s call this (the name of a Thelonious Monk composition, and a description of the journalistic project in a nutshell).

I’ll cover the notable concerts occurring in the week following publication, talk to the region’s musicians, both established and rising, listen to their newest recordings and hopefully give you a window into the teeming, dynamic music scene that rarely receives the flowers it deserves.

What I won’t do—or won’t do often—is put on a critics hat. I occasionally do such writing, but I do it elsewhere, mostly at All About Jazz and PostGenre. My intent here is to be an advocate and to start a conversation about something I love. If you’re reading this, chances are you might love it, too—or might want to.

As I stumble toward getting comfortable with the platform, I’ll probably just mirror my blog content here. The readership numbers there are not encouraging, so if this one does better, great. If not, there are plenty of other worthwhile Substackers who could use your eyeballs (maybe too many; I’m often overwhelmed myself).

Most of all, I’m trying to build a community around another community—the jazz community in northeast Ohio. I want let’s call this to be like an epic, post-show hang, a conversation about what’s great, who’s doing what, spill a little tea—that sort of thing.

Let’s count it down. First post drops tomorrow.

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"For a good chunk of my 20s, I've been learning how to write in Third Law. So this is, in some ways, a dedication to the people in that group."

The post Garrett Folger’s Week Of Music ‘In Summer’s Arms’ first appeared on John Chacona writes.

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"I feel like I need to go out and tour a lot to also provide that to people who need music all across the country that don't live in big metropolitan areas."

The post One Night In The Midwest: Stein/Smith/Shead Meet The Moment first appeared on John Chacona writes.

All over northeast Ohio, the flowers are starting to pop, and on the area's stages, so is the music scene.

The post Flowers Around Cleveland (and Akron too) first appeared on John Chacona writes.