Po'Jazz: Takin' It To The Hollow

About the Artist
Po’Jazz: Takin’ It To The Hollow has over 20 unique perfomers. Included are the bios for only 6 of them.

BERNARD "PRETTY" PURDIE, known as “The World's Most Recorded Drummer” has been on the music scene for 40+ years and is included on more than 4,000 recordings! His Favorites of those are Nina Simone's The Blues, James Brown's Cold Sweat, B.B. King's The Thrill Is Gone, Steely Dan's Aja, and Aretha Franklin's & King Curtis' Live At Fillmore West. More credits include recordings with Miles Davis, Hall & Oates, Al Kooper, Herbie Mann, Todd Rundgren, Cat Stevens, Isaac Hayes, Donny Hathaway, The Brecker Brothers, Lou Donaldson, Joe Cocker, Hank Crawford, Louis Armstrong… (and this just scratches the surface!) Bearnard just produced a 3-volume educational video set entitled The Most Educational Function. His most recently released CD is Masters of Groove Meet Dr. No.

GARY SMULYAN is a critically acclaimed baritone saxophonist who currently performs with the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, Carnegie Hall Jazz Band, the Three Baritone Saxophone Band, the Tom Harrell Octet and the George Coleman Octet, as well as his own projects. His most recent CD, Gary Smulyan with Strings, was selected as one of the 10 best CDs of 1997 by the Boston Globe. Dr. Herb Wong says of him, "Smulyan blisters with an enormous, ferocious sound, without vibrato; he articulates notes with uncompromising clarity and facility, giving each note its full value."

TOM AALFS, violinist, composer and arranger, is a featured soloist on Etta Jones' and Houston Person's two recent CDs and has performed at many New York City venues including the Blue Note, Sweet Basil, Birdland, and the Museum of Modern Art. He has been with Po'Jazz at the Center since the series' inception, and as its Music Director. His latest CD, Group 15, all Thelonius Monk compositions, was recorded with Jay Leonhart on bass and Peter Bernstein on guitar.

PATRICIA SMITH , an award-winning poet, playwright, journalist and performer, has toured the world performing her poetry, as well as performing in numerous American venues including the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, St. Mark's Poetry Project, Bumbershoot, and on tour with Lollapalooza. Selections from Smith's poetry volumes were adapted for the theater and presented as a one-woman show produced by Nobel Prize winner Derek Walcott. A short film of Smith performing the poem "Undertaker" won awards at the Sundance and San Francisco film festivals as well as a prestigious Cable Ace Award.

REGIE CABICO, co-editor of Poetry Nation, an anthology of fusion poetry, says, "The only rule I know is you can't bore people". From his solo performances such as "RegiSpective" at The Kitchen and Joe's Pub to his "Rant Without Whining" poetry classes, he is a master performer, teacher, and supporter of new artists. His poetry team, Mouth Almighty, Manhattan, has won the National Poetry Slam competition, and he was a 1997 recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship. He is director of the prestigious Friday night series at the Poetry Project, St. Mark's Church, New York City.

GOLDA SOLOMON is a communications and theatre arts professor, producer, poet, spoken word performer, and project director of Po'Jazz -- an innovative jazz and poetry series at the prestigious Hudson Valley Writers' Center in historic Sleepy Hollow, NY. Po'Jazz features many of New York's acclaimed musicians, established, award-winning and emerging poets. Golda also produces and performs with the Brooklyn Poetry Choir, an exciting large ensemble of poets and musicians. Her chapbook, Flatbush Cowgirl was published in 1999. Along with Bernard Purdie and Joe Exley, she recently produced a companion CD to her chapbook entitled First Set.

Product Description
Po'Jazz is "Poetry in Partnership with Jazz". The CD "Po'Jazz: Takin' It To The Hollow" is a compilation of cuts from poet/producer Golda Solomon's "Po'Jazz at the Center" performance series -- featuring many notable NYC jazz musicians combined with award winning, established and emerging poets. The CD is a unique combination of poetry alone, poetry combined with improvised jazz, and just good jazz alone.

Po'Jazz: Takin' It To The Hollow,Various Artists,JJCD,Po'Jazz, the one-of-a-kind jazz and poetry series in Greenwich Village, NYC, occurs every third Thursday evening of the month at The Cornelia Street Café; master poets, new talent, master musicians, new talent.

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Average customer rating: Po'Jazz is a Sound Investment

Po'Jazz: Takin' It To The Hollow Golda Solomon , and Po'jazz Manufacturer: JJCD ProductGroup: Music Binding: Audio CD General | Jazz | Styles | Music General | Poetry, Spoken Word & Interviews | Miscellaneous | Styles | Music Spoken Word | Poetry, Spoken Word & Interviews | Miscellaneous | Styles | Music General | Jazz | Indie Music | Stores | Music ASIN: B00005V3EO Release Date: 2002-01-01

Tracks:

1. Intro-Jazz In New York Air Now!
2. Building Nicole's Mama [Patricia Smith - poet] (Tom Aalfs - violin, Uli Frost - drums, Ron Jackson - guitar, Nicki Parrott - bass, Ray Turull - percussion)
3. Letting Go [Veronica Golos - poet]
4. Prologue [J.D. Parran] (J.D. Parran - clarinet)
5. You [Ron Jackson] - Tom Aalfs - Violin, Ron Jackson - guitar, J.D. Parran - flute, Nicki Parrott - bass)
6. On Labor and Love #3 [Malaika Adero - poet]
7. Of the First Born [Peggy Ann Tartt - poet] (Essiet O. Essiet - bass, Nasheet Waits - drums)
8. Dona Maria Greets Her Comadre Dona Luna at the Balcony Window [Rigoberto Gonzalez - poet] (Uli Frost - drums, Nicki Parrott - bass, Ray Turull - percussion)
9. Bending Light [Tom Aalfs](Tom Aalfs - violin, Ron Jackson - guitar, J.D. Parran - flute, Nicki Parrott - Bass)
10. Sex Fugue [Golda Solomon - poet] (Bernard Purdie - drums)
11. Cantaloupe Island [Herbie Hancock] (Tom Aalfs - violin, Uli Frost - drums, Ron Jackson - guitar, Nicki Parrott - bass)
12. Celebration Dance [Sonilius Smith] (Tom Aalfs - violin, Joe Exley - tuba, Ron Jackson - guitar, J.D. Parran - Sop. Sax, Nicki Parrott - bass)
13. I Am A Black Woman Song [Shirly LeFlore - poet](J.D. Parran - percussion)
14. Bodacious Cowgirls [Stephen D. Coleman - poet](Tom Aalfs - violin, Essiet O. Essiet - bass, Nasheet Waits - drums)
15. Pent-Up House [Sonny Rollins](Tom Aalfs - violin, Ron Jackson - guitar, Debbie Kennedy - bass, Gary Smulyan - bari sax)
16. Blue Nights [Nicki Parrott] (Tom Aalfs - violin, Uli Frost - drums, Ron Jackson - guitar, Nicki Parrott - bass, Ray Turull - percussion)
17. Bluebird [Anthony Costantini - poet]
18. Broken Ends, Broken Promises [Mariposa - poet](Tom Aalfs - violin, Ron Jackson - guitar, Debbie Kennedy - bass)
19. Jazz Spirit I-excerpt [Golda Solomon - poet](Tom Aalfs - violin, Debbie Kennedy - bass, Gary Smulyan - bari sax)
20. Just In Time [Betty comden/Adolph Green/Jule Styne](Tom Aalfs - violin, Essiet O. Essiet - bass, Ron Jackson - guitar, Nasheet Waits - drums)
21. Fancy [Barry Wallenstein - poet] (Tom Aalfs - violin, Debbie Kennedy - bass, Gary Smulyan - bari sax)
22. Happy Birthday, Louis Armstrong [Elizabeth Conrad Dispenza - poet/ MUSIC: "What A Wonderful World" - R. Theile/G.D.Weiss] (Tyrone Henderson - vocals, Tom Aalfs - violin, Ron Jackson - guitar, Nicki Parrott - bass)
23. So What [Golda Solomon - poet/MUSIC: "So What" - Miles Davis](Tom Aalfs - violin, Joe Exley - tuba, Bernard Purdie - drums)
24. tribute: the poet is shiva isis mothermary nefertiti & judy garland [Regie Cabico - poet/MUSIC: "Over the Rainbow" - Harold Arlen/E.Y. Harburg](Tom Aalfs - violin, ron Jackson - guitar, Nicki Parrott - bass)

Album Description

Po'Jazz is "Poetry in Partnership with Jazz". The CD "Po'Jazz: Takin' It To The Hollow" is a compilation of cuts from poet/producer Golda Solomon's "Po'Jazz at the Center" performance series -- featuring many notable NYC jazz musicians combined with award winning, established and emerging poets. The CD is a unique combination of poetry alone, poetry combined with improvised jazz, and just good jazz alone.

Customer Reviews:

Po'Jazz is a Sound Investment.......2002-03-26

"Takin' it to the Hollow" is an hour well spent. Any fan of the spoken word and good solid small combo jazz needs to brew up a strong pot of black coffee, slip this in the CD player and laugh, tremble, toe-tap and gasp along with the fortunate audience who were present for these recordings. This is the next best thing to a live Po' Jazz happening and the great thing about it is you can replay it over and over.

Track 2, "Building Nicole's Mama" is set to a hypnotic hard bop undercurrent that bursts from its rhythmic confines at key points in a harrowing narrative, harrowing because it is read with unapologetic verve in spite of its tragic irony: children can know death without sentiment. Patricia Smith puts us in the classroom with children who have been baptized into the brutality of urban violence. The children's grim housing project reality (ýthey have seen the reaper/ grim in his heavy robe/ pushing the button for the dead project elevatorý) is juxtaposed with an homage to the power of language to rescue us from apathy, "So let us bless the sixth grade class/ forty cracking voices, forty nappy heads/ and all of them raise their hands when I aský.forty fists punch the airýme! me!".

Track 4, "Prologue", a solo piece on clarinet by J.D. Parran, is a pensive respite from words, affording the listener a rest just long enough to absorb the first two spoken pieces. The appetite is whetted. The subsequent "You" joins flute and violin in a soothing melody that ends too soon. By now the listener is hungry.

Track 7 demonstrates the sonic link between poetry and jazz and is proof enough that Po'Jazz-style performances should be the norm, not the exception. Poetry is about sound and meaning, and the content of "Of the First Born", a poignant slice of conversation between mother and daughter, is lent depth and power by the "talking" bass behind it. We donýt just hear about the conversation, we hear it as it occurs.

On track 8, the breathless reading of "Dona Luna" by Rigorberto Gonzalez is outpaced only by the tropical pulse of rich percussion beside it.

The pulse-quickening effect of percussion hits a crescendo with Golda Solomon and Bernard Purdie's collaboration on Track 10's "Sex Fugue", an elegy to jazz, its erotic referent, and the sexiness of syncopation, all in forty-six seconds of breathy anticipation. You'll want a cigarette after this piece, and that's what the Po'Jazz combo's "Cantaloupe Island" feels like, a toe-tapping trip to a nicotine fix. This is another piece that's too short.

Stephen D. Coleman's "Bodacious Cowgirls" is a fun tribute to the fair sex, and it elicits audible laughs from the live audience, reminding us mid-CD that these recordings do indeed happen in a room full of human beings, whose guffaws and giggles future recordings might more consciously and conspicuously include. It's the interaction between performers and audience that makes these events lively and inviting and unique, especially in the sad silence of cyber-places like Amazon.com. After all, Bill Evans' "Live at the Village Vanguard" is more endearing, not less so, for all the tinkling glasses, low murmurs and scattered applause captured on tape.

A version of Sonny Rollins' "Pent-Up House" really cooks, thanks to Gary Smulyan's confident sax work and Debbie Kennedy's exuberant bass.

One of my favorite moments in this collection is Anthony Costantini's reading of his poem "Bluebird". The very, very young sounding Costantini brings the whole show down to flat earth and sweeps away any suspicion of pretense with a simple, not simplistic, short poem that takes us all back to why we dug poetry on day one.

Track 21, Barry Wallenstein's "Fancy" is the track to listen to first if youýre stuck in the whole "I've seen Beatniks on TV" vision of jazz-poetry fusion. Get it out of your system with this piece and before you get through the first stanza you'll stop snapping your fingers like an idiot and realize Wallenstein is riffing with words. You'll be listening hard. There's something very cool happening here that's older than clichés. This is ancient Greek, not Hollywood Beat.

"Happy Birthday, Louis Armstrong" is a beautiful spoken-sung Satchmo salad. If you have to aský

But my favorite piece has to be Golda Solomon's "So What", an asphalt corner-court basketball poem overlayed with stage scenes of Miles and his Quartet at the Vanguard. The poem digs into Miles' angry cool; the tense grace of playground ball; the very audacity of the words "so what"; the trash-talkin' bravado of jazz and poetry. They all become one big athletic slam dunk, thanks to the fearless vocal jukes and shimmies of Golda Solomon and the smoky, funky grooves laid down by Bernard Purdie, Joe Exley and Tom Aalfs. This track needs to by played to poetry students in high schools and colleges, and it's worth the price of the CD all by itself.

Do yourself a favor and order this CD now. If CD's aged like old LP's used to, this would be cracking, hissing and popping in just a couple weeks. If you like jazz or poetry at all, you'll wear it out.

Jazz Music:

1. Quietly There
2. Red in Bluesville
3. Rockit (2002 Remix) [CD-single] [Import]
4. Saxxy Love Songs
5. Sermon [Limited Edition] [Original recording remastered] [Import]
6. Songs of Our Fathers
7. Sonny Rollins With the Modern Jazz Quartet
8. Sound of Surprise [Import]
9. Steamin' [Original recording remastered]
10. Step on The Gas

Jazz Music

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