The two-year series of Eastern European and avant-garde jazz concerts that Walt Mahovlich has been running at Inside comes to a temporary halt this month, as the art gallery will be closing its doors. Mahovlich is looking for a new venue, but this performance -- one of the final shows there -- portends to be a great one. Almost 10 months from the day he made his Cleveland debut, clarinetist/saxophonist Joe Maneri will play with bassist Kurt Kotheimer and two members of the local jazz group Birth -- clarinetist/saxophonist Josh Smith and drummer Joe Tomino. Tomino's an expert at drum 'n' bass with Birth, but on this date the group will play more in Maneri's distinctive free-jazz style, in which the musicians perform out of tempo, but are governed by their internal metronomes as well. Maneri's arguably the greatest jazz innovator of the past decade, and Smith's work has been garnering national attention. The show will open with a performance by a quartet called Turli-Tava, which is the name of a spicy Macedonian mixed dish comparable to gumbo. Like that food, the music of the group has varied influences that are Slavic, Gypsy, and Turkish. In addition to Mahovlich, who will play clarinet and alto sax, Turli-Tava includes Sasho Dukowski on accordion and keyboards, Adam Good on plucked stringed instruments, and percussionist Jerry Kislinger on tapan and dumbek. Dukowski, a highly regarded musician in Bitola, Macedonia, grew up there and in Akron, and the band will be playing a style of improvisation called taxim that's indigenous to Eastern Europe and the Near East.
