Indoor Lineup
Indoor Lineup
Cleveland Rocks - but in the summer, it SWINGS!
The artists on the 45th Lineup are prize-winning creatives, pushing the boundaries, advocating for social change, exploring the worlds of Broadway and Hollywood. But it’s when they hit the stage and play live, that the MAGIC begins! From the legendary Charles Lloyd to the amazing Cuban pianist Harold López-Nussa to reigning vocal queens Cécile McLorin Salvant and Ledisi, you’re going to love it! Come join us, where the music is better than ever!
Tickets are on sale NOW!
Learn more about our indoor lineup of artists below.
Take 6
Thursday, June 20, 2024
Mimi Ohio Theatre Playhouse Square 8 p.m.
Take 6 (Claude McKnight, Mark Kibble, Joel Kibble, Dave Thomas, Alvin Chea and Khristian Dentley), has been heralded by Quincy Jones as the “baddest vocal cats on the planet!”
With 10 GRAMMY® Awards, 10 Dove Awards, a Soul Train Award, and as Members of the Gospel Music Hall of Fame, this musical phenomenon has six virtuosic voices united in crystal clear harmony, against a backdrop of syncopated rhythms, innovative arrangements, and funky grooves that bubble into an intoxicating brew of gospel, jazz, R&B, and pop.
Take 6 has come a long way from their days at Huntsville, Alabama’s Oakwood College where McKnight formed the group as The Gentleman’s Estate Quartet in 1980. What makes the music and the group last this long? The answers are direct and simple: faith, friendship, respect, and love of music.
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Jason Moran and the Bandwagon
Friday, June 21, 2024
Allen Theatre Playhouse Square 5 p.m.
Jason Moran is a pianist, composer, and artist from Houston, TX. His groundbreaking trio, The Bandwagon (with bassist Tarus Mateen and drummer Nasheet Waits) is currently celebrating its 20th anniversary. Moran’s recent awards and fellowships include the MacArthur Foundation, US Artists, Doris Duke Foundation and Ford Foundation. He has composed scores for Ava DuVernay’s films Selma and 13th, and author Ta-Nehisi Coates’ staged version of Between the World and Me. Moran is currently the Artistic Director for Jazz at The Kennedy Center. He teaches at New England Conservatory and Jazz Ahead, and curates the Artist’s Studio series for Park Avenue Armory in New York City.
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Cécile McLorin Salvant
Friday, June 21, 2024
Mimi Ohio Theatre Playhouse Square 6:30 p.m.
Cécile McLorin Salvant, is a composer, singer, and visual artist. The Late Jessye Norman described Salvant as “a unique voice supported by an intelligence and full-fledged musicality, which light up every note she sings.” Salvant has developed a passion for storytelling and finding the connections between vaudeville, blues, and folk traditions from around the world. She is an eclectic curator, unearthing rarely recorded, forgotten songs with strong narratives, interesting power dynamics, unexpected twists, and humor. Salvant won the Thelonious Monk competition in 2010 and has received Grammy Awards for Best Jazz Vocal Album for three consecutive albums. She was nominated in 2014 for her album “WomanChild.” In 2020, Salvant received the MacArthur fellowship and the Doris Duke Artist Award. “Ghost Song,” Salvant’s debut for Nonesuch Records, was released in March 2022 to critical acclaim, and has gone on to receive two Grammy Nominations.
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Marcus Miller/Bob James Quartet
Friday, June 21, 2024
Connor Palace Playhouse Square 7:45 p.m.
Marcus Miller/Bob James Quartet
Grammy-winning artist Marcus Miller has dozens of movie scores and over 500 recording credits to his name across Jazz, R&B, and Opera. He has worked with Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, Luther Vandross, Wayne Shorter, and David Sanborn, among others. His instruments include bass, guitar, vocals, saxophone, clarinet, keyboards, and recorder. In 2012 Miller was appointed a UNESCO Artist for Peace, supporting and promoting the UNESCO Slave Route Project. In 2021, Bass Player magazine awarded Miller a Lifetime Achievement Award.
Grammy-winning jazz keyboardist Bob James is renowned for exploring different musical landscapes and breaking boundaries. In 1962, while in college, his band entered the Notre Dame Collegiate Jazz Festival, where the judges included Henry Mancini and Quincy Jones. The trio entered the competition playing avant-garde music in a contest promoting straight-ahead jazz. To the trio's surprise, they won the competition. Not long after, Jones signed James to an album deal with Mercury Records. Mercury released James's first album, Bold Conceptions (1963), a free jazz exploration that was produced by Quincy Jones and that differed from the smooth jazz for which he would later become known.
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Scary Goldings
Friday, June 21, 2024
Mimi Ohio Theatre Playhouse Square 10 p.m.
Supergroup Scary Goldings combines hard-hitting grooves and well-crafted parts to make for a truly fun and unique time. The group consists of funk ensemble Scary Pockets (anchored by guitarist Ryan Lerman and keyboardist Jack Conte) and Larry Goldings. With his signature Hammond organ style and versatility on many keyboards, Boston native Larry Goldings has traversed not only the wide spectrum of jazz where he is perhaps best known, but also the worlds of funk, pop, and electronic music.
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ARTEMIS featuring Renee Rosnes, Ingrid Jensen, Nicole Glover, Noriko Ueda & Allison Miller/Flying Home: A Trumpet Summit
Saturday, June 22, 2024
Mimi Ohio Theatre Playhouse Square 2:30 p.m.
The brainchild of pianist and composer Renee Rosnes, ARTEMIS is a powerful ensemble of modern jazz masters. Named for the Greek goddess of the hunt, the multinational, multigenerational group of women was founded in 2017 under the banner of International Women’s Day. The band’s performance at the 2018 Newport Jazz Festival was so compelling, Blue Note Records President Don Was signed them to the label. Tour dates followed across Europe and the US including festival performances in Saratoga, Monterey and Detroit, as well as at premier venues such as Carnegie Hall, SFJAZZ, Chicago Orchestra Hall, and the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. The collective released their debut recording in 2020 and their second album in 2023. Each member of Artemis is a bandleader and composer, and the repertoire draws on their distinctive personalities, from original music to imaginative arrangements of eclectic material. Artemis performs with joy, power, passion, and high-wire intensity. Rosnes will be joined by Ingrid Jensen (trumpet), Nicole Glover (saxophone), Noriko Ueda (bass) and Allison Miller (drums).
Flying Home: A Trumpet Summit celebrating 3 decades of Tri-C JazzFest Jazz Academy alumni with Sean Jones, Dominick Farinacci, Tommy Lehman, and Curtis Taylor. This is a special tribute to the outstanding educational program at Tri-C JazzFest in its 45th anniversary season. The rhythm section features distinguished alumni of the program as well, with Jonathan Thomas (piano), Graham Guerin (bass), Gabe Jones (drums) and Patrick Grainey (percussion).
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Harold López-Nussa: Timba a la Americana/Diego Figueiredo
Saturday, June 22, 2024
Allen Theatre Playhouse Square 5:15 p.m.
Cuban-born pianist and composer Harold López-Nussa begins an exciting new chapter of his career with his Blue Note debut Timba a la Americana, an album teeming with joy and pathos that was inspired by the pianist’s recent decision to leave his Cuban homeland. Produced by Snarky Puppy bandleader Michael League, Timba a la Americana unveils a brand-new sound performed by a tight-knit band featuring harmonica virtuoso Grégoire Maret, Luques Curtis on bass, and Harold’s brother Ruy Adrián López-Nussa on drums.
Harold traces the origins of Timba a la Americana to a day during his family’s first winter after leaving Cuba to live in Toulouse, France. Harold found himself flipping through voice memos on his phone, listening to jams and fragments of song ideas he’d documented years before. These seedlings of songs ported him back to the rhythmic communication that was part of his everyday life in Cuba.
Accolades abound for Brazilian guitarist Diego Figueiredo. In the words of jazz critic Scott Yanow “Diego has the rare ability of making everything sound beautiful.” George Benson has said “Diego is one of the greatest guitarists I’ve seen in my whole life!” Guitar Magazine wrote of a live performance “Seemingly effortless and totally fabulous.”
Diego Figueiredo lives in, with, and for the music. Born in 1980 in Franca, São Paulo State, he began playing music at four years old. By the age of twelve he had already attracted a local following, and when he was fifteen, he was drawing huge crowds around Brazil. Diego has recorded over two dozen albums and is the winner of several competitions including The Montreux Jazz Guitar Competition, and Brazil’s VISA Prize.
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Charles Lloyd Ocean Trio II featuring Gerald Clayton & Marvin Sewell
Saturday June 22, 2024
Mimi Ohio Theatre Playhouse Square 7:30 p.m.
The critical consensus is that Charles Lloyd has never sounded better. The depth of his expression reflects a lifetime of experience. Credited by many musicians with anticipating the World Music movement as early as the late 1950s, Charles Lloyd describes his music as having always "danced on many shores."
Over six decades, his compositions have punctuated the post-bop period, embraced the traditional music of a host of world cultures and enlivened the psychedelic 1960s with avant-garde improvisation. Lloyd was invited to guest on recordings with the Doors, the Birds, The Grateful Dead and the Beach Boys. He made his first recording for ECM Records, “Fish Out of Water” in 1989. Lloyd has long been a free spirit, master musician, and visionary. He has loomed large over the music world, and at 84 years old he remains at the height of his powers and as prolific as ever. Early on Lloyd saw how placing the improvised solo in interesting and original contexts could provoke greater freedom of expression and inspire creativity, and throughout his remarkable career he has searched for alternative ways to frame his improvisational skills.
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Ledisi
Saturday, June 22, 2024
Connor Palace Playhouse Square 9 p.m.
2021 Grammy winner, Ledisi is a twelve-time Grammy nominated vocalist with a career spanning almost two decades. Since arriving on the scene in the late 1990’s, she's garnered three Soul Train Music awards, an NAACP Theater Award and six NAACP Image Award nominations.
Born in New Orleans and raised in Oakland, CA, Ledisi has truly earned a place in the pantheon of the greatest singers of her generation. Ledisi has headlined two nationally sold-out tours, performed alongside Dave Matthews, Kelly Clarkson, Vince Gill and Maxwell as well as jazz greats Herbie Hancock and Patti Austin.
No stranger to the film and television world, Ledisi landed her first feature, singing in the George Clooney directed film Leatherheads. In 2015 she portrayed the great Mahalia Jackson in the Oscar-nominated movie, Selma. Ledisi secured her first major television role, playing the legendary Patti LaBelle on the hit BET series American Soul.
Ledisi helped workshop the Tony Award winning musical, The Color Purple and then began her recording career signing a deal with Verve/Universal Music Group. She returned to theatre in 2019 as The Ancestor, in the critically acclaimed off-Broadway musical, Witness Uganda by Griffith Matthews and Matt Gould, the role for which she received the LA Alliance Ovation Award nomination.
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