CHICAGO'S WEST END JAZZ BAND MAY 15!
New and old friends of ours will populate this fine 1920s & '30s dance band on stage at Makoy Center, as they stop in on the way home from their annual pilgrimage to the Coon Sanders Nighthawks fans bash down in Huntington. Interestingly, the affable and genial leader, cornet player and master of ceremonies, Mike Bezin, will double on drums for this performance and will rely on the very talented Andy Schumm, here with his own band last March, to handle cornet duties. Mike's wife, Leah (aka Leah LaBrea), a band leader on her own, will handle banjo, guitar and vocals, while our old friend and veteran tuba player, Mike Walbridge, pumps out the bass notes. Filling out the strong front line will be two fine Chicagoland musicians whose names will be familiar to most of us, John Otto on clarinet and alto sax, and Frank Gualtieri on trombone.
Past appearances here have been enthusiastically applauded by listeners and dancers alike as they expertly execute their arrangements of the hot jazz music that was all the rage as it developed in early 20th century dance halls, aided and abetted by the likes of Fletcher Henderson, Jelly Roll Morton, Bix Beiderbecke, Paul Whiteman, and countless other composers, arrangers and musicians that were very active at the time.See related blog post
NEW ADDITIONS FINALIZE COHJS FALL SEASON!
NORTHSIDE JAZZ BAND - September 11 -- On their way to the EarlyJas Fall Festival in
Strongsville, by way of the Rusty Nail in Kent, for a preliminary performance, warm-up, and jam session
with Northeast Ohio musicians on the following weekend.
GLENN CRYTZER'S SYNCOPATORS - October 9 -- A special for our dancers, the touring house
band from Seattle, Washington
For the Fall Harvest of Bands and Holiday Charity Event - November 13, these ever-popular Ohio groups:
- DAVE GREER'S CLASSIC JAZZ STOMPERS from the Dayton area
- RAY HEITGER'S CAKEWALKIN' JAZZ BAND from the Toledo area
- BUFFALO RIDGE JAZZ BAND (as previously announced) from Cincinnati
Mark calendars TODAY! No excuses for non-attendance!
Full 2011 COHJS Concert Schedule
ANDY SCHUMM CONCERT REPRISE
We offer these photographic mementos of the March 27 COHJS Bix Beiderbecke-themed concert by Andy Schumm and His Gang in the hope that it may trigger both animated visual, as well as audio, memories of
the experience for the many who were there, and a wish that they had been there among those who were unavoidably absent that day. It was truly a great presentation -- of "the good stuff" as Andy himself calls it!
