Carlo | June 6, 2011
I’m in Dallas working on two Hilton hotel stories, occupying a lovely, 19th-floor suite at the recently refurbished Hilton Anatole. It’s nearly 100 degrees, so I’m staying in, thank you. A month ago, I was in Shanghai on another Hilton story: Profiling the first Waldorf Astoria in Asia, recently opened on Shanghai’s Bund. I’ve been [...]
Carlo | March 30, 2011
It’s March 30, and it snowed. Just a few inches, but still. Goes against what I’m doing, which is reviving, getting a full head of steam: writing for Lodging Hospitality again, rejoining the Cleveland Jazz Orchestra board (there are some wrinkles to work out) and producing a lot for ohioauthority. I’m also developing a proposal [...]
Carlo | January 29, 2011
I went to a show at Beachland Ballroom Jan. 22 that made me think there are second chances, ways to start all over again. It starred the Hesitations, a nine-piece soul group from Cleveland’s 1960s. The singing Hesitations are in their 60s and are prime exponents of Northern Soul, a variant of Motown with a [...]
Carlo | December 30, 2010
I didn’t want the year to end without mentioning the Horse Flies, an upstate New York band I’ve been following for 20 years. The band played at Beachland Ballroom Dec. 17 and generated a gang of encores. They worked through material from “Until the Ocean,” their latest album, and they’re beginning to focus on a [...]
Carlo | November 7, 2010
Musings of a peripatetic thinker. Ponderings without a point. Catching up. Intellectual laziness. Call it what you will, I figure I should capture some mind wanderings, given the week past, last night’s entertaining Cleveland Jazz Orchestra concert “The Cleveland Scene,” and upcoming travels. I’ve never been great at headlines. I’m depressed about the elections, though [...]
Carlo | March 29, 2010
I just started Week Two of mental stimulation marked by seeing six movies at the dazzling Cleveland International Film Festival, a great, too-short concert by John Zorn’s Masada Sextet (here’s my preview) and, this morning, reading “Atomic Age,” Martin Benjamin’s first, long-overdue book of photography. Karen and I went to the film festival for the [...]
Carlo | February 10, 2010
I’ve been neglectful of my website. It’s been nearly a month since I updated. I’ve been very busy, but it’s time to catch up. In mid-December, my wife suggested I e-mail as many people as I could think of to tell them I wanted to engage more. Being semi-retired can be lonely, even when there’s [...]
Carlo | November 6, 2009
Weird to think of “Leonard Cohen Live in London” alongside “Allman Brothers at Fillmore East,” but both are paradigms of the live album, capturing artists at the peak of their powers. Cohen’s was recorded in 2008 when he was 73, near the start of his nearly two-year-long tour; the American leg this fall was his [...]
Carlo | November 6, 2009
Sophie Milman is a 26-year-old Toronto chanteuse who may be the hottest Canadian export since Diana Krall. Not only is Milman, a Russian native and a kind of wandering Jew, fluent in English, she sings jazz with an authority common to far more seasoned performers. Backed by Paul Shrofel on piano and Mark McLean on [...]
Carlo | October 14, 2009
Call Amsterdam-based group Fra Fra Sound’s CD “Dya So” world music, call it jazz, call it anything you want. Formed 25 years ago, the septet takes its name from the Surinamese “Fra Fra,” meaning “mysterious” or “hybrid.” “Dya So,” its latest CD, blends high-life, rai, island chickenscratch, funk, percussion virtuosity and an ever-shifting, ever-surprising front [...]
