World of Music

Jazz Orchestra explores Holst’s Planets

Verizon Hall, Philadelphia
Jazz Orchestra of Philadelphia
Terell Stafford, conductor
The Planets: An HD Odyssey <I> Joseph Block (Venus); Tod Bashore (Mars & Mercury); Jack Saint Clair (Jupiter); Mark Allen (Saturn & Uranus); Nick Lombardelli (Neptune)</I>
Duncan Copp, filmmaker
Jazz Orchestra of Philadelphia: trumpets- Nick Marchione, Jon Shaw, Tony DeSantis, Joe Magnerelli; Saxes- Dick Oatts, Chris Oatts, Mark Allan, Chris Farr, Tim Warfield; Trombones- Randy Kapralick, jarred Antonacci, Max Seigel, Joe McDonough; Rhythm- Greg Kettinger (guitar) Lee Smith (bass), Josh Richman (piano), Steve Fidyk (drums)

Gustav Holst composed The Planets for symphony orchestra a century ago, and it became his most celebrated work, yet he balked at its popularity. He dubbed it “a series of mood pictures.” And it did indeed prove very cinematic outside the concert hall as source material by film composers John Williams and Hans Zimmer in blockbusters movies like Star Wars and Gladiator.

Jazz Orchestra of Philadelphia music director-conductor reimagines Holst’s mood pictures score through a jazz lens, with five composers reimagining the entire score without whole cloth sampling or vamping the composer’s sonics.

The Planets: An HD Odyssey was a centerpiece premiere of the 2018 Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts, co-commissioned by the Kimmel Center and the Houston Symphony. And it had its own claim to the cinema in a film by Duncan Copp that was synced to the live performance. It was comprised of montages of stunning images from NASA and Jet Propulsion Laboratory of the Solar System and of the Rover landing and its filmed exploration on Mars.

JOP’s performance was musically HD too.

Each of the seven movements proving to be a uniquely different jazz take, and so cohesively delivered by this orchestra. The composers – Joseph Block, Todd Bashore, Jack Saint Clair, Nick Lombardelli and Mark Allen who was on the bandstand with the other players- were all in attendance in a near sold out Verizon Hall.
Among the many musical highlights

~‘Mars’ established the jazz transcendence right from the start, composer Bashore, wisely doesn’t’ try to compete with a jazz transcription that reached for the grandeur of Holst’s symphonics. Later, Bashore showing a completely different orchestral contours, later on his variations of Mercury, the quicksilver celestial jazz messenger.

Joseph Block swoops in with a sultry atmospherics for Venus, the bringer of Peace, with a voluptuous orchestral backdrop as Soprano Sax virtuoso Dick Oatts plays the St. Louis blues lead then it gives way to the famous serenading passage that blooms so voluptuously, pianist Josh Richman weighing in rhythmically on the piano and the inestimable artistry of Lee Smith on double bass.

A stunning passage comes in Jack Saint Clair’s Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity. Holst’s surging string anthem, the fanfares and rumbling orchestral by Holst, adapted a raucous progressive big-band orchestral that Saint vanquishes into a lingering dissonant bass line from Smith then the leading into Stafford stargazing clarion solo rendition of Jupiter’s cathartic central theme.

Indeed, the five composers admirably evoking different jazz eras, theories and genres- building it with power and depth, it careens from big band symphonics ala Ellington to Basie Band swing, to orchestral blues, hard bop and most impressive, the thrilling drive of its classical-jazz fusion.

In just five years, JOP under conductor Stafford is already among the most musically accomplished and innovative big jazz bands in the US. They have collaborated with top musicians in jazz, vanguard and veterans including Wynton Marsalis, Jimmy Heath, Pat Martino, Benny Golson, Larry McKenna, Bootsie Barnes and John Faddis, et. Al. This performance tapped a whole new galaxy of possibilities.

The concert opened with a few standard numbers by the superb Jazz Ambassadors of the United States Army Field Band, a jazz forward quintet inspired by the vanguard artistry of Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers. One hopes that JOP can have them back for a full session down the road.

Who knows what Gustav Holst would think of JOP’s jazz take of his Planets, meanwhile, the audience in Verizon Hall on this night was positively over the moon about it.

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Pasión y Arte~ Flamenco vanguards

 

Elba Hevia y Vaca in My Voice, Our Voice | Mi Voz, Nuestra Voz. Intercultural Journeys and Pasión y Arte, Friday, May 18, 2018. Photo: Aidan Un.

Jeanne d’Arc Casas in My Voice, Our Voice | Mi Voz, Nuestra Voz. Intercultural Journeys and Pasión y Arte, Friday, May 18, 2018. Photo: Aidan Un.

Pasión y Arte is choreographer-dancer Elba Hevia y Vaca’s Philadelphia-based flamenco troupe with international reach in their concerts, café tablao and collaborations that continues to explore traditions and new expression in flamenco dance and music. Hevia y Vaca’s collective has a feminist sensibility that in fact has always been an integral aspect of the art form.

Past and present came stunning together in Pasion y Arte’s concert last weekend titled My Voice, Our Voice | Mi Voz, Nuestra Voz a co-presentation with Intercultural Journeys presented at the majestic basilica at the Episcopal Church in West Philly May 18-19. The program quotes a poem by Virginia Woolf’ as the thematic key “The history of most women is/Hidden either by silence, or by/flourishes and ornaments that amount to silence.”

The concert explored traditional flamenco forms and flamenco fusion in collaborations with improvisational choreographer Annie Wilson, next to more traditional and free-form flamenco choreographed by Hevia y Vaca in collaboration with dancers Sarah Candela and Jeanne d’Arc Casas.

The musicians performing a fusion of contemporary classical music led by German composer-guitarist Andreas Arnold who specializes in flamenco guitar from Andalucia, Juilliard trained percussionist Jeremy Smith and virtuoso cellist and percussionist Adam Maalouf. Maalouf also switched from strings to percussive instruments, including a Pan-tam a flying saucer looking instrument just invented in year 2000 and one that Maalouf has clearly mastered. Venezuelan opera singer Barbara Martinez, also a virtuoso flamenco singer.

Among the many performance highlights at the May 19 performance~

‘Compas –solea por bulerias’ a percussive a capella duet with dancers Sarah Candela and Jeanne d’Arc Casas. They use ‘compas’ (hand clapping) to establish the rhythms as they dance  solos and unison patterns. They also move in close to the audience, establishing an intimate synergy with the audience.

Next was the first musical interlude by the band, an altogether transporting composition ‘Odisea’ the first of Arnold’s original music in the concert. Followed by ‘Bulerias’ a fiery solo by Candela, which she dances and also sings. Candela conveys a more improvisational, almost conversational artistry with less theatrical phrases, her personality expressive and non-intense, even as she polishes off phrases with classic flamenco moves.

Singer Barbara Martinez enters in a stunning champagne flamenco dress with cascades of fringe ala the jazz age, and starts to sing and dance. Pasion generally uses male cantors with the husky (affila) vocals. Martinez at the other end of the vocal spectrum, with a golden center soprano, both earthy and ethereal, so expressive and sublime with these musicians.

‘Manton’ showcases Elba Hevia y Vaca and Annie Wilson’s fusion choreography. The beautiful embroidered silk shawl with long fringe, the manton, is symbolic of many things in flamenco. Wilson has an iridescent white one that she is curled up under as Hevia y Vaca enters, peering  mysteriously  over a black and red floral one.  This is a modern duet in bare feet and they free dance around each other.  They lock eyes and Hevia y Vaca’s strikes a flamenco pose, she drapes her manton over Wilson’s and it becomes a hand puppet dancing to the wending guitar and percussion lines.

‘Bata de Cola’ is the ruffled train of a flamenco dress, and Wilson unceremoniously comes onstage and climbs a red dress flamenco one as Elba enters in a maroon cola. They pull the ruffles up and their face and bodies are swallowed in, protection, symbolic of power, sexuality and dignity, it frames their inviolate dignity even as they crash down and scrub the floor with the train, then lay on it as if it were a field of flowers, then curl in it as if in a cocoon.

Costume designer Patricia Claire Dominquez use of traditional (and stunning) flamenco dance dresses, with contrasting contemporary unadorned dance togs, is inspired. In the after talk with the audience, Hevia y Vaca speaks of women having to hide themselves in clothes for society’s approval.

‘Tangos de Granada’ with Martinez singing dancing with lyrical upper body expression and flamenco hand choreo (florea) and her soaring vocals.  She is joined by Candela in a flirty lyrical dance with a silk fan, sweeping over the floor in elegant, fiery patterns and splitting atoms with her footwork. D’ Arc Casas enters in a stunning red and blue dress with a voluptuous cola she whips around her body during forceful turns and she kicks up defiantly. Candela also performed a thrilling segment with a pink Manton she flared around her body like a matador cape. Their choreography movements becomes more intricate and their interplay with the musicians simply spellbinding.

The musicians and dancers form a circle for their bows and  with a joyous free dance, each taking an exit solo, included Jeremy Smith flashing a few body percussion moves.

A co-presentation with Intercultural Journeys, a performing arts organization whose mission is to bring together diverse artists and audiences. Pasion y Arte’s concert was the finale of their current season, with the ironic theme “Borders and Boundaries.”  Of course, the point being both those world realities are vaporized by these stellar artists through the universal languages of music and dance.

For information about upcoming performances and events check their websites-

http://www.pasionyarteflamenco.org  &  http://www.interculturaljourneys.org

ClassicalPhilly~

 

Turkjazz & Russian Musical liberation

The Philadelphia Orchestra

Lahav Shani, Conductor

David Bilger, trumpet

Verizon Hall, Philadelphia March 24

conductor-pianist Lahav Shani

(photo: Marco Broogreve)

 

In March, Israeli conductor Lahav Shani made an impressive Philadelphia Orchestra debut with a substantive program that showed, among other things, his interpretive range of repertory, in this case Stravinsky’s Firebird and Prokofiev’s 5th Symphony, already ambitious, and a piece by classical-jazz fusionist composer Christian Lindberg. Based on his concerts here it is no surprise that  29- year old conductor  is succeeding Yannick Nezet-Seguin this year as chief conductor of the Rotterdam Philharmonic and is also conductor designate of the Israeli Philharmonic and following the towering tenure  Zubin Mehta in 2020-21.

Swedish composer Lindberg’s Akbank Bunka for trumpet and chamber orchestra, transcribed here for the full Philadelphia Orchestra with principle trumpet David Bilger the soloist. Lindberg has faint echoes of from Miles Davis’ Sketches of Spain to Ravel and risks a pastiche quality. During Akbank, the first movement, the solo trumpet seems in its own zone, and Bilger projecting a pristine, even studied precision. The work bursts open up midway through, with staccato note runs and steely voicings by Bilger that just engulf the concert hall and soar in concert with the orchestra, with driving interlocks and sonic vaults and blue note eloquence. Then Lindberg’s second and third movements, Turkjazz, just break out into a rowdy percussive soundfield and Bilger’s blazing horn as cool as the midnight sun.

From the first rumbling basso architecture of Stravinsky’s ‘Firebird Suite’  Shani summoned Stravinsky’s earthy, atmospheric symphonic power. The ballet score has lost none of its luster 100 years later  in this 1919 ‘Suite’  when it is conjured in such vivid and seductive orchestral magic.  Shani brings out its dynamic rhythmic drive, clearly and subtly, there is translucence that reveals feral flight of  The Firebird that soars on the lushness of the Philadelphia Orchestra’s famous strings. Jeffrey Khaner flute igniting this Firebird with mythic purpose and luminous power.

Prokofiev’s 5th Symphony, composed during WWII, when Sergei was under the complete control of Stalin’s music union aka his board of censors dispatched to kill works for being too polluted with western ideas and condemning composers out of favor, based on dictates by Stalin. Prokofiev was in favor having produced film scores to Eisenstein’s films Ivan, the Terrible and Alexander Nevsky, and was under state commission to write the nationalist opera adaptation of War And Peace.

The 5th was an immediate hit and like the other works of this period Prokofiev was able to subvert the restrictions on ‘Western’ music. His music of this era had USSR requisite Nationalist bombast to cover for Prokofiev’s inner humanist and emotionally expressive ideas roiling below the surface, a tucked into the chamber mise-en-scenes. A hidden artistic statement aimed at freeing the hearts and souls of the Russian people, beyond the tyrant Stalin and his oppressive regime.

In this performance, the first movement struck as a bit diffuse. But the Allegro and Adagio movements were crystalline and engulfing Verizon Hall with Prokofiev’s soulful narrative, which Shani brought in its full dimensions.

August poem

  

     Serō^               {fr Days of Mercury}

                               

Wind tide
scarred sometimes
By dust spikes
blinding
pulverized
trajectories exhaled
in coarse flight bolted
bloodier feral heart
iridescent
dodgy
tracks
soars
scape unlocks
as waters trisect
frieze northward
to an invisible gorge
balancé
shimmer
trace^untouched
geo quantum
finally along the promontory

Mercury
at vanishing point
embark
It is all over for now
Iron eyes obliterating
light years
cataloguing the isles of the dead
Hermes  ignites
winged temples to
eclipse the
eternal outlier
blood Venus
unguarded in the
ice basilica
its innards collapsed into
the fevered expanse
a tether
a theory
a twitch
that recalls
thought
but Mercury still dreams
With the
disappeared
Liberated
Reconvened in mighty silence
It is all water music
heard inside
energy concussed
hovers at azimuth
sometimes a dusk reveals
that all his missions had
been vaporized as
Mercury enters the cobalt fury of Olympus

 

& poetries

Chet plays the Mercury L

Before the rain
Tore off
some baleful heart
in private pictures
Of sordid songs
beat to alley footfalls
other shadows
that quit the sounds
in the stolen cornet
A dreamer’s dream
of lost memories
In abandon hotels
hand on that shattered
note

sepia note cards
lipsticks bleeds/one onyx cufflink
silver clips/crushed flasks
discarded jacks/lovers under

blue smoke
faced away

prenatal twins

clutching cold promises
night sweats
in whispers
through a calypso coma

dreams back

Driving red ’55 Alfa

your blonde hair &

silver scarf  catching wind tide
against my neck
& you made me sing’Where or When’
& you cradle my horn/like it was our boy

in your arms & laugh

& kick your shoes out
the window to feel
your arch
to the wind, and my

toes curl around the gas petal

that day somehow became nothing/yes, I pissed you off bad

over the fucking moon bad/cue

thegaddamnmusic, the end.

 

You can’t chase him down
in that torn door
To that empty hall
that lullaby street
our condemned psalm
of sexless escape
shadow in shadow bleu
let the puddles bust open
onto that pocked room
Lapel against the mangled collar
Clinging to fevered hair.
Then he shoots the stars
into that vanquished nirvana

pictures of godless eyes
Of mercury wings
On the wounded heart
Crouched over blue scorched notes
Ash, smack, whiskey, burn, whiskey, more

just whiskey Chet
honey notes flowing’

all over the bed
smothering my trumpet

DanceMetros

Cracking the Nutcrackers

Russian expat George Balanchine choreographed The Nutcracker for New York City Ballet in 1954. Balanchine danced several roles in the ballet at the Maryinsky Theater created by Lev Ivanov’s 1892. He streamlined the story with a mix of neoclassic balletics and pantomime dance for American audiences. The Balanchine artistic trust only permits certain companies permission to dance Balanchine’s Nutcracker and there are plenty of other interpretations that re-imagining the story, some sticking closer to the ballet’s Russian origins.

When The Moscow Ballet’s ‘Great Russian Nutcracker’ swung into Philly for two nights at the Annenberg Center in Philly just nights after the Pennsylvania Ballet’s Balanchine production opened, I thought it would be interesting to compare the choreographic templates, lineage and impact on contemporary audiences.

PB principal Alexander Peters leads the Candy Canes

PB Principals Ian Hussey & Amy Aldridge as Sugar Plum & her Cavalier

PB Corp de Ballet in Snowflake scene

MoscowBallet Arabian Variation Sergey Chumakov & Elena Pretrachenko

MB’s Harlequin scene

Pennsylvania Ballet’s production of George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker

Academy of Music, Dec. 9-31

Pennsylvania Ballet Artistic Director Angel Corella continues to sharpen the company’s production of George Balanchine’s Nutcracker and since the Balanchine trust keeps tight reins on the few companies that are licensed to perform Mr. B’s, PAB’s attention to the smallest details make all of the difference, dusting off ACT I of ballet, which is can drag on if not fueled with enough performance energy.

Child dancers Claire Smith and Rowan Duffy as siblings Marie and Fritz, Both young dancers have natural stage presence and are strong dancer-actors, a key element in focusing the opening scenes. And this energy extends to all of the children at the Holiday party, which can often look like seasonal pageantry.

Corella is making sure that both the children and adult dancers are defining characters in their pedestrian and gestural movement.

PAB’s new dance master Charles Askgard portrays Herr Drosselmeir, and is a study of detailed pantomime dance. Even Balanchine’s lumbering mouse battle moves swiftly along.

The Act I solos commence when Drosselmeir animates the Harlequin dolls in their cute pointe patterns, but Balanchine saves the fireworks for the toy soldier solo, a precision dance, with precision flatfooted jumps and limb moving in sharp opposite angles- In this performance danced by Peter Weil with haunted eyes executing the drill steps.

After the faux mouse battle, Marie and the Nutcracker Prince are transported to the snowy forest where Snowflakes perform vintage Balanchine choreography full of geometric configurations and requiring tight esprit de corps. At this performance the corps’ ensemble had the pulse but veered off with some blurry unison pacing and scrambled transitions.

Amy Aldridge as the Sugar Plum Fairy among the little angel gliding over the floor to open Act two and Aldridge who has danced this role many times and this performance can be counted as among her most radiant performances.

In the Act II divertissment Lillian DiPiazza smolders as Coffee in the Arabian Dance and Jermel Johnson slices through the air with saber leg splits for Tea. Alexander Peters and his battalion of Candy Canes getting through those hoops with jaunty flair. Making the most of their flash tarantella in the Spanish Dance are newcomers Sterling Baca and Nayara Lopes.

But it was Dayesi Torriente dancing the lead in Marzapan Shepardess that stood out. This is a deceptively simple looking mid-tempo choreography, is actually very tricky and easily scuttled. Balanchine’s counterpoint patterning can loose technical clarity and merely look pretty. In this performance Torriente commanded with thrilling artistry and her Shepardesses- Adrianna deSvastich, Jacqueline Callahan, Yuka Iseda and Ana Calderan, were completely in sync.

The corp de ballet looked sharper than in the Snowflake scene, with precision and attack in Dewdrop Flowers dance. Principal Mayara Pineiro set the highest mark with her fiery lead solo. Pineiro can just hang on point arabesque and her transition steps flawless entrances and exits to diamond centered turns, airy jetes and luminous pointe work.

The finale pas de deux is all Balanchine fireworks and tests the mettle of even the most technically proficient dancers. Aldridge not missing a moment to thrill with her solid technical prowess from every angle. Aldridge and principal dancer Ian Hussey as her Cavalier with palpable chemistry throughout highlighted by their consistent fluency Balanchine’s difficult lift sequences. Hussey’s solos highlighted with centered turns and solid tours en l’air.

It can’t be understated how vibrant conductor Beatrice Jona Affron’s tempos, detailing and orchestral thrust of Tchaikovsky score are key. In Act I, among the outstanding soloists are Luigi Mazzocchi’s violin solo just engulfing the Academy and harpist Mindy Cutcher floating gorgeously crystal strings first as the first snowflake piques on the floor.

Moscow Ballet’s Great Russian Nutcracker

Annenberg Center, Philadelphia

Dec. 12-13

The Moscow Ballet version of the Nutcracker is a more classic Russian version, without doubt and is a choreographic update by the directors after Imperial Ballet period versions by Russian choreographic masters Vaganova, Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov.

At the Moscow Ballet’s Great Russian Nutcracker, you pick up right away that the story is much different, with Uncle Drosselmeyer, in a wonderfully danseur lead character part performed by Maksim Bernadskyl. Uncle is Christmas Eve magician who conjures the young girl Masha’s Nutcracker dream escorts us through the whole ballet.

Drosselmeyer Anastasiya Terada is hypnotic in her mechanical moves in a multi-colored ribbon tutu ‘Kissy Doll’ and Konstantin Vinovoy’s Harlequin (the prototype for Balanchine’s Soldier) equally spellbinding. Not transcribed by Balanchine are the Moor Dolls.

Where Balanchine leans heavily on just pantomime and gestural acting to carry Act I, here there is much more dancing including a waltz for the adults, and an officer saber dance.

The Nutcracker Doll & Prince is danced by Mykhailo Syniavskyl throughout (Balanchine turned it into a mostly pantomime role for a young male dancer).

The mice battle is a much more interesting scene, than Balanchine’s limp and comedic version. Here Sergyl Merzlyakov is not a fat cartoon rat, but a scary Rat King in red and black dyed tights stylishly sinister headpiece. The fight choreography has Merzlyakov slicing through the air or in thrilling sword dances with Nutcracker Prince.

Elena Petrichenko and Sergey Chumakov were flash dancing ‘Moor Dolls’ in the first act, but they emerge as virtuoso dance – acrobats to open Act 2 as the Dove of Peace, each with a majestic wing and they cleave together in a series of lifts that keep moving to various symbolic and sculpted positions. Later, the couple appears in an even more dramatic tableau in the Arabian Dance (a lengthier transcription of the Arabian music from Tchaikovsky’s score.)

Balanchine made this a solo dance and one of the highlights of his version for a smoldering solo for a principal ballerina. This has an equally entrancing quality and these two make the most of it.

Balanchine was skimpy on his version of The Spanish Dance even though he has four couples animated in a stylized tarantella, with fancier footwork for the leads pair. Moscow Ballet’s duet for Boris Yastrub and Olga Aru is more interesting in its variation; this couple has wonderful presence and flair in this dance, though their technique flagged.

Moscow Ballet’s ‘Chinese Variation’ (Tea) is much more developed than Balanchine’s flash dance version with glittering repeated phrases. MB’s is much more a character dance, however un-pc with ‘Orientalism.’ Juliya Verian and (stealing the show again) Sergyl Merziyakov’s playful patterns transition steps to technically dazzling double tempo grand pirouette and razor sharp aerial splits.

The reverse is true in The Snowflake ensemble dance at the end of Act I, Moscow’s Snowflakes are exemplar of Russian ballet decorousness, whereas in Balanchine’s turns the heat way up for the Snowflake scene to cap off Act I.

Moscow Ballet’s ‘Russian Variation’ is an expanded Czardas dance with Anton Romashkevych and Anna Bogatyr in traditional Ukrainian dress exuberant in high stepping patterns. Romashkevych in robust barrel rolls and Cossack plies, around Bogatyr, who is twirling like a top. Balanchine turned this into the Candy Canes hoop dance, which is just as effective as a scene, but doesn’t have this folkloric flavor.

Mykhilo Syniavskyi and Veronika Hordina have great chemistry and refinement in the central pas deux that define their characters and unfolds in dramatic finales for both acts.

So Moscow Ballet’s Great Russian Nutcracker has a lot to offer in contrast to Balanchine’s distillation of Russian aesthetics. Even with techniques among this large cast erratic, particularly in the corp de ballet scenes, it should be noted that dance schools and companies in Russia have gone through drastic reduction of state sponsorship over the last 20 years and that is a classic Russian story for another cold winter’s dance night.

BooksBooksBooks

Rediscovering Kerouac

The Library of America’s definitive collections of Jack Kerouac’s writing continue to reveal the full impact of his work on the American literary landscape. In 2012 they published a complete collection of his poetry and have followed up with “The Unknown Kerouac” a volume of previously unpublished private journals and newly translated stories written originally in French-Canadian patios, Kerouac’s first language.

By the 60s Kerouac was decidedly out of the spotlight and admitting his disdain for the “On The Road” myths that clung to him, as well as his image as the leader of the glamorous Beat generation writers. He was much more concerned about being judged on the merits of his entire literary legacy.

“The Unknown Kerouac” goes a long way in revealing the full scope of Kerouac’s artistic ambitions. Editor Todd Tietchen deftly introduces each story in context of Kerouac’s life, and details how some of these early writings anticipate his later, more famous books. Jean-Christophe Cloutier, in his introduction, explains the precision and artistry of translating the patios manuscripts.

Born Jean-Louis Kérouac in Lowell, Massachusetts in 1922, Kerouac was the second son Joseph Alcide Leon Kerouac and Gabrielle-Ange Levesque. His parents spoke French at home and Jack did not learn any English until he was five. Kerouac’s brother Gerald died at age ten, and the author wrote about their immutable bond in ‘Visions of Gerald.’

Jean-Louis was a star student and athlete in high school and entered Columbia in 1940, excelling in French and literature courses. He was sidelined in a football accident and a year later he was in US Navy boot camp at Newport, disastrously it turned out, sent psychiatric observation for repeated “insubordination.” During the 40s in New York, Kerouac becomes friends Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, John Holmes, Lucien Carr and other writers and poets of the so called ‘Beat Generation.’

Kerouac’s “Journal 1951″ written during his time at a Veteran’s hospital and a trove of personal he personal journals, full of full of confessionals, poems and musings and is his blueprint for the kind of American writer he wanted to be. His literary heroes included Dostoyevsky, Melville and especially Marcel Proust. Among other things, he formulates his theories of his so called ‘spontaneous’ aesthetic, inspired in part by jazz improvisation.

This volume includes the first time English translations of Kerouac’s novellas ” The Night is My Woman” (‘La Nuit est ma femme’) and “Old Bull in the Bowery” (‘Sur le chemin’). ‘Night’is exemplar of Kerouac sensualist atmospherics and visceral dialogue. “Bull” is his 1952 memoir of the “escapade of mistakes” as it recounts Kerouac and Neal Cassady as kids in 1935 along for the ride with male relatives on a desperate trip in New York. This surreal retelling stylistically is, Kerouac writes Cassady “the solution” to the Road plots.

The altogether astounding “Memory Babe,” written in 1957, is his verite memoir of his family life in Lowell, written in 1957, he summons the 13- year old Kerouac’s “Versailles of the child mind.” Tietchen rightly cites the memoir as part of Kerouac’s “comprehensive literary ethnography” of French-Canadian life of that era “mapping and preserving a lost world.”

“I Wish I Were You” is a noir portrait of his New York contemporaries in the 40s was published posthumously in 2008. It is his first portrait of what Kerouac’s “found” generation of New York Bohemia. Startling in its psychosexual frankness, Kerouac rewrote the 40s version he co-authored with William Burroughs.

This new collection is an essential volume for Kerouac fans, for those who have only read his most famous book; this volume is a chance to rediscover a brilliant writer before, during and after that mythic trip On the Road.

The Unknown Kerouac | RARE, UNPUBLISHED & NEWLY TRANSLATED WRITINGS
Todd Tietchen, editor, Jean-Christophe Cloutier, translator http://www.loa.org

JazzPhilly

Four years ago Painted Bride music curator Lenny Seidman commissioned composers Josh Lawrence, Anwar Marshall and Jason Fraticelli to form a homegrown jazz band for the Painted Bride’s From the Vine series which champions new music. T

he 10-piece Fresh Cut Orchestra was born and hit the ground running and since then they have just recorded three albums and have been playing top venues including Lincoln Center’s Dizzy’s Club. Introducing the band for their Bride return to launch concert for their new CD “Mind Behind Closed Eyes” released late August and already getting heavy play on WRTI, Lawrence told the crowd it was “Great to be home where we started.”

This is a young band has joyous camaraderie and a sense of musical occasion and adventure. For well over two hours they traversed a number of jazz genres, including their prowess that is steeped in big-band legacies.

FCO ignites jazz fusion, created by Miles Davis 45 years ago and mostly out of fashion since. This band weighs in with new compositional structures and ideas with especially aggressive jazz funk/ rock experimentation. They are equally exploratory with Latin jazz and America classicism and all along you get the distinct impression that their artistic prism is not only musically substantive but borderless. One of the connecting themes of this orchestra is that they careen into different jazz genres even in one number and it still makes all musical sense.

Among the random musical highlights on this night

To kick off the concert Jason Fraticelli ambled on stage playing a simple ballade he composed “My Summer in Puerto Rico” on the Cuatro, a four string folk guitar (an heirloom from his musician grandfather). Then drummer Anmar Marshall and percussionist Francois Zayas joins him and eventually, the rest of the band as the song builds to a gushing orchestral stream. Then the electric string percussive jazz rock jam of Fraticelli’s “Mind Behind Closed Eyes” followed by “Gallo Y Gallina” an raucous adaptation of a Puerto Rican folkloric dance tune.

Fresh Cut conjured the jazz ‘cool’ atmospherics of the early 60s on “An Uptown Romance” from their first album “From The Vine” which features Lawrence’s golden tones and lustrous phrasing on muted trumpet that hands off to Brian Marsella solo on piano goes stride blues territory and at several points with electric segues on his Rhodes keyboard. Later, on Lawrence shows equal compositional range with his Latin tune “Frederico,” a rowdy horn and percussion salsa laced with Marsella’s delirious piano runs and Mark Allen’s lusty baritone sax.

The first set concluded with Anwar Marshall’s compositions “Indecision” and “New Expectations” also from “Mind Behind Closed Eyes” Marshall fires the rhythmic engine with Zayas and Marsella into a dynamic matrix of sound.

Meanwhile, Lawrence leads the horns- Mike Cemprola (alto sax) and Mark Allen (baritone sax), Brent White (trombone) and all a four players at various times in fiery exchanges, their combined chemistry one of the defining qualities of this orchestra.
In the second half of the concert guitarist Tim Conley (originally from the West Coast) commands on electric bass, when he isn’t unleashing sonic effects on his laptop, which has been dubbed ‘Starship.’

The orchestra was invited to perform at the Sinatra Centennial event at Lincoln Center last year and Lawrence said they performed Sinatra’s standard “It Was a Very Good Year” because it embodied Frank’s vocal artistry. The opening orchestral lushness gives way to an intimacy (ala Sinatra) but then Frank’s voice is heard in a voiceover joking about growing up a skinny kid in his family’s 5th floor walkup in Hoboken. Conley then distorts this shtick with Starship effects, and then he blasts off into acid jazz guitar riff worthy of Monterey circa ’67. Wonder what Sinatra would have said about this version- bet ‘New York, New York’ Sinatra would have hated it, but big-band sousy Frank would have loved the ride. Meanwhile, the Bride crowd was enthralled.

Lawrence then announced that the concert closer would be a piece they had recorded the day before call “Life Mosaic” a piece jointly composed by Lawrence, Fraticelli, Marshall and Conley. The work previewed two years ago at the Kimmel Center’s jazz residency programming and it sounds like a signature piece already. It is a sprawling, four-movement piece, with each musician weighing in and the full effect closer to a concerto for full jazz orchestra.

A great night of jazz and another auspicious sign that the Philadelphia is doing more than reclaiming its great jazz history, but investing in a jazz renaissance which seems to be in full vanguard swing.

For future dates & album links check <a href=”http://www.freshcutorchestra.com/&#8221; target=”_hplink”>http://www.freshcutorchestra.com/</a&gt;

fr Right before I met Vincent

endlessly, from last night

the pulse
blue echo

the concussive
murmurings earlier
spying my belly button
in a drawer between
with shredded  biker socks

still molting at 7:42

rusty gaze

as marble sinews pulse
from vodka/quaalude
vision

geometric ink

butterfly on your left shoulder

that danced the night away out of our minds
lusting off
to eternity
this trail of whispers & clothes
ending in a
glitteringly butch
shadows
dreamt only once before now hover in
diamond movement
à l’après-midi d’un faune
Angling over a
busted wall
-when did you
share me
with candy-
from the other club last night
it is time to go out to dance, no?
is it still 3:20
1972 drenched
In sex forgotten in a flash with  all the
beautiful ones inhabiting the
Atlantis Galleria
busted open in the rumbling
strata of debris a

glorious
anonymous  basilica liberated from any former crime
in faith knowing we
we are giving our bodies to each
other

unlost resplendent present mighty

human havoc sane all the same
sounds of falling onyx
&crystals
dripping
from cracks below
Leaves scrapping branches
blue mercury running through
Fingers onto
the temples
we hear
sonic psalms
La la la Sacre du Printemps
to escape the sound
Of the blood pulsing together

of the blood of ancestors

of the blood of ideas

of the blood of body mind & soul

We witness to live

inside a
Coldest room
waiting for scarred
voices down here, below
Flamingo tangerine fucshia
Dahlia darling ascending
soul & sugar
Paul&Assotto
Larry&Paul
Keith&Timmy&

Ted&Pearl&

SarahVaughan&Joey&Christopher
Georgio&Alberto&JohnAnthony&Michael&Marcel&Menage&PeterMiguelJimmy

Andywasthereoncewethink
et. fuckin’ al. baby
nobody walked away
empty hearted
the corners
of the rooms folded up
not inside shadow
on bluer shadow
pulsing resonance
concussive dissonance
as the body starburst
endlessly through that smashed atom
still dancing with Shiva we dance for you&we dance for with you perpetuo molto

on ink-night beholden to our rainbow warriors
                                                                                                                          so mighty real

 

for Sylvester & all warriors

Delphinium a gay garden May 2000 (revisited)

Delphinium ~ a gay garden, revisited
May 2000

‘Till the shadows
on his past
In a separate garden.

Except that we were
laughing
they too
were full silhouettes

in bloom

& not to bother

to intrude on mindless
heads thrown back for
That late brunch
sun mocking itself
meanwhile
a frond noir
Tricking the eye into
Thinking that it is

reseeing a day of youth
the shade of shadows
in shadows
we don’t really remember
even 20 years ago before

the last fall
When everyone was
subsumed
vortex
justanothermonster
million-rooted blood hydra
just another monster
to be melted

who were we but
all of us

to be still here

on this day buried
behind black purple
Siberian irises
splashed with cheap mimosas
or aubergine

sweated morning glories
all flora

staying out for a long
nevermore luxuriant

Lurching
fox gloves
slap each

other with tired lilies
forgetting a century
of black Pagliaci tears)

Spilled over lips
With winds swirls
making us blink vs
red or violet afterburns
to champagne
pink fade
blades
running
once,
leaves of grass
swat and sway
all afternoon
Trying to dance against
the lazy chorus of chive hammers
the entrada of
blurviolet organza
brushing by
Spiked feathers
Tripped over bowl of clover
Whispered over
villainous amaryllis

accidental
camaraderie
loitering
With such beautiful intent

Snapdragons in
snarky venereal poses
Under arc of skid row
rails repopulated with lilac clematis
(ear-ringed, dreadlocked)
And Camille

ignores

enough to
Descend.
On neon Medusa

granite dragon
ignored
unbloomed with doubt
certain of the galaxy
chrysanthemum
if it survives
Root map of the ants
cotillion next door to
The red speck-flies
Amok on mauve silk belles
willow

spiraled in
gnarled beauty
because of the early heat
and forget-me-nots
lost on other endless afternoons
the amber showdown
vaporized our outfits
reassemble from last
night
unforced bloomed
in the twilight

of blue roses
we’ve never

knew the worse

The lovers gone
Friends silenced
out of the
heroic sea
of unwanted souls
What we
were once
& need to be again
Will always be

kept like the
Ghosts of the gardens at Versailles.
Those forgotten blooms
still lost in someone else’s time

no we did not
remember promises not to
fall in love
Have sex
Not to cheat on our lovers
Or press leaves between
The pages of the pact that
We are finally
loving witness for each other
that is our sanctified root
the perpetual motion

on this last day

So the light changed
there is laughter
same larkspur
flying out of Troy
To drown out
cry for the next rain
soaring in this
dank metropolis
so supple
so fetid sometimes
she soars
in the field of
Delphinium

So instead do not
turn our back
On the blinded warriors
going back in
to say goodbye
unforeshadowed

Queens of the Garden

(For Jack & those beautiful men gathered

May 2000)

 

 

annual revisit & some replanting to Delphinium, A Gay Garden