by Kevin McLaughlin
Good news for jazz lovers, or even the jazz-curious: the launch on February 26 of Ideastream Public Media’s full-time jazz channel. Featuring hosts Dee Perry, Dan Polletta, and John Simna, JazzNEO will broadcast on 90.3 HD2 and be livestreamed on JazzNEO.org.
Perry, who gladly came out of retirement to be one of the inaugural hosts, is excited about the venture. “Northeast Ohio has a vibrant culture of players, presenters, and students of jazz, and what really excites me is how JazzNEO can shine a spotlight on all that talent and connect it to listeners who are looking to nourish their ears, brains, and hearts,” she has said.
I sat down with Perry in Ideastream’s facility on Euclid Avenue to talk about JazzNEO and her love of jazz. I began by asking her about her first experiences with the genre.
Dee Perry: My dad built his own stereo set, and he had three albums: Miles Davis’s Flamenco Sketches, a Gloria Lynn album — I think it was Great American Songbook tunes done in a jazzy kind of way — and a third album of train sounds.
Last Friday morning, Canadian composer Tawnie Olson of the Hartt School of Music faculty in West Hartford, Connecticut — along with her four colleagues in the 2015 Iron Composer Competition at Baldwin Wallace Conservatory — accepted the challenge of writing an “instant” composition for recorders, celesta, and an overturned grand piano, to include this year’s “secret ingredient” of a board game. After five hours of creation and a brief rehearsal, Olson’s piece, called Subbeteo after the 1947 tabletop soccer game invented by Peter Adolph and published by Borras Plana SA, was declared the first prize winner during an evening concert in Gamble Auditorium. 