JAZZ! Geri Allen & Trio 3 Geri Allen, Piano Andrew Cyrille, Drums Oliver Lake, Saxophone Reggie Workman, Bass

POETRY!   Irakli Kakabadze, Georgia Khet Mar, Burma Soheil Najm, Iraq Milos Djurdjevic, Croatia Meena Kandasamy, India

Jazz-Poetry is a great concert and a unique event that has begun to attract international attention.  The Concert brings poets and writers to Pittsburgh from many countries. They collaborate and perform with world-class jazz musicians on a closed North Side alley.  The musicians also perform a full concert of avant-garde jazz.  2007’s concert was called “#1 Jazz Concert of the Year” by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.  2008’s concert was reviewed by Bob Hoover in the Post-Gazette as “exciting, stunning, moving, eye-opening…a great evening.”
 

PRODUCTION CREW!

Dave Bjornson
Kristin Carrigan
Jim Mueller

 

ARTIST BIOS!

MUSICIANS

GERI ALLEN:     Geri Allen is both an exceptionally talented jazz musician and jazz educator.  She also has Pittsburgh ties, having earned a Masters in Ethnomusicology at Pitt, where she also worked with Nathan Davis.  Allen's musical world has always been characterized by collaboration and study. In addition to teaching as an Assistant Professor of Music at Howard and garnering such honors as that university's Distinguished Alumni Award, the SESAE Special Achievement Award, the Eubie Blake Award from Cultural Crossroads, and recognition as the top Talent Deserving Wider Recognition in Down Beat magazine's 1993 and 1994 Critics Polls, Allen has amassed a stunning resume of musical collaborations. Her colleagues have included M-BASE musicians as well as modern greats such as saxophonists Oliver Lake, Julius Hemphill, Arthur Blythe, and Dewey Redman, trumpeter Lester Bowie, flutist James Newton, bassist Charlie Haden, and drummer Paul Motian.
ANDREW CYRILLE:     Andrew Cyrille has performed with jazz artists ranging from Coleman Hawkins, Illinois Jacquet and Mary Lou Williams to Kenny Dorham, Muhal Richard Abrams, Horace Tapscott, John Carter, Mal Waldron, Archie Shepp, Henry Grimes, and David Murray. In 1964 he formed and association with pianist Cecil Taylor that would last for 11 years.  He was artist-residence and teacher at Antioch College and is currently a faculty member at the New School University He has been the recipient of many grants and awards, including NEA, Meet the Composer, and a Guggenheim Fellowship for composition.
OLIVER LAKE:      Oliver Lake is the musical host of Jazz Poetry and has appeared in each concert since 2005, with a varying cast of accompanying musicians-- including the World Saxophone Quartet, his own Jazz Quintet, and Flux Chamber Quartet.  Composer, musician, poet, painter and performance artist, Lake is a featured artist on more than 50 recordings. He is an explosively unpredictable soloist, known for his piercing, bluesy saxophone trademark. Lake has created chamber pieces for the Arditti and Flux String Quartets, arranged music for Bjork, Lou Reed and A Tribe Called Quest, collaborated with poets Amiri Baraka and Ntozake Shange, choreographers Ron Brown and Marlies Yearby and actress/author Anna Devere Smith. He is co-founder of the World Saxophone Quartet and Trio 3 and leads his Steel Quartet and Big Band.
TRIO 3:       Trio 3 is made up of Oliver Lake (saxophone), Andrew Cyrille (drums), and Reggie Workman (bass). Virtuosos on their own instruments and playing together for over twenty years, the musicians in Trio 3 “talk” together musically with uncanny communication.  They appeal to a broad spectrum without watering anything down.  All About Jazz wrote recently that “Trio 3's collective development finds each member commonly orbiting the others' contributions with empathy solidified over two decades. …one of the best small groups performing.”
REGGIE WORKMAN:    Reggie Workman has long been recognized as one of the most original and technically gifted of all bassists in modern music. His versatile style spans Post-Bop to Futuristic. He has played with a Who’s Who of jazz greats, including Art Blakey, Cecil Taylor, Red Garland, Roy Haynes, Eric Dolphy, Max Roach, Abbey Lincoln, Mal Waldron, Andrew Hill, and John Coltrane, with whom he participated in several landmark recordings. Workman’s awards and recognitions include Meet the Composer and the Eubie Blake Award. He has been on the faculty at several universities and for 20 years the New School University, where he has been the recipient of a Distinguished Teaching Award.

POETS

MILOS DJURDJEVIĆ (Croatia)     Milos Djurdjevic published three volumes of poetry, with the fourth forthcoming in 2010.  His poems have been included in anthologies of contemporary Croatian poetry, and translated into English, Hungarian and German. The editor of Croatian domain at the PIW – Poetry International Web, a recipient of a fellowship from the Ledig House in New York and Civitiella Raniery Center in Italy, Djurdjevic has also translated the work of Raymond Carver, Leonard Cohen, Charles Wright, Lou Reed, John Fante, Annie Proulx and Don Paterson. He participates courtesy of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Exchange at the US Department of State.
IRAKLI KAKABADZE     Irakli Kakabadze is currently the writer-in-residence in the Ithaca City of Asylum program, in exile from the Republic of Georgia (formerly the Soviet Union).  He is a multifaceted artist and has collaborated with a number of other writers and performers to establish ongoing projects such as the Polyphonic Blues Band and the theater group Theater for Change. At the age of 20, he was the youngest member of the National Forum of Georgia, the leading national liberation movement.  In 2006 one of Kakabadze's collaborative partners died under mysterious circumstances and Kakabadze was arrested three times for voicing his criticisms of the government. Kakabadze holds an M.S. degree in Conflict Analysis and Resolution from George Mason University in Virginia.
MEENA KANDASAMY (India)    Meena Kandasamy debuted with the poetry collection Touch (2006), and has since published in  The Little Magazine, the Quarterly Literary Review, Singapore, and elsewhere. A former editor of  The Dalit  that reflects the voice of India's ex-untouchables, she has also translated the writings of the Tamil Eelam leaders. In 2007 she was selected for 21 under 40: New Fiction for a New Generation, the Zubaan Anthology of Young Women Writing in South Asia.  Her collection of short-stories Black Magic will be published later this year. She is a contributing editor to Muse India and writes for the feminist blog Ultra Violet.  She participates courtesy of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Exchange at the US Department of State.
KHET MAR     Khet Mar is currently the exiled writer-in-residence in the City of Asylum/Pittsburgh program. She is a journalist, novelist, short story writer, poet, and essayist from Burma and an important humanitarian figure in Burma, active in feminist, environmental, and educational programs.  Author of one novel, Wild Snowy Night, as well as several collections of short stories, essays and poems, her work has been translated into English and Japanese, been broadcast on radio, and made into a film.   In the fall of 2007, she was a visiting fellow at the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa.  She and her husband Than Htay, a visual artist, have created the third “house publication” on the façade of the house at 324 Sampsonia Way.  Please take a look!
SOHEIL NAJM (Iraq)    Soheil Najm has published four books of poetry, Breaking the Phrase (1994), Your Carpenter O Light (2002), No Window Outside the Window (2008), and the anthology Flowers in Flame (2008).  In addition, he has translated selections of work by Nikos Kazantzakis, Alasdair Gray, Ted Hughes, and Jose Saramago.  Najm is currently the editor of the Althaqafa Alajnabia "Foreign Culture" journal in Baghdad.  He participates courtesy of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Exchange at the US Department of State.

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