POEMJAZZ featuring renowned poet Robert Pinsky and Grammy-winning jazz pianist Laurence Hobgood performs on Thursday, September 27th and Friday September 28th at 8pm. POEMJAZZ is a conversation between the sounds of poetry and music, treating a voice speaking poetry as having a role like that of a horn: speech with its own poetic melody and rhythm with the music. POEMJAZZ is also a hot new CD, just recorded by Robert Pinsky and Laurence Hobgood on the Circumstantial Productions label. The limited edition CD with booklet of poems will be available at www.circumstantial.us and at Robert and Laurence’s POEMJAZZ performances.
Click below to hear a February feature on POEMJAZZ from WBUR.
Photos & Videos
Credits
Robert Pinsky, the only three-term United States Poet Laureate, brings an innovative energy to all he does. In 2011, his acclaimed Selected Poems appeared. In 2010, his libretto for Tod Machover’s opera Death and the Powers: The Robots’ Opera had its world premiere in Monaco and premiered in the U.S. at the A.R.T in 2011. Next year, his adaptation of Friedrich Schiller’s Wallenstein will be presented by the Shakespeare Theater of Washington, D.C. As Poet Laureate, Robert Pinsky founded the Favorite Poem Project, in which thousands of Americans — of varying backgrounds and ages, from every state — shared their favorite poems, as documented by the video segments, seen on PBS and now at www.favoritepoem.org. Connecting all of these projects is Pinsky’s conviction—clear to anyone who has heard him read a poem— that poetry is a vocal, bodily art, closely allied to music. For that reason, his collaboration with Laurence Hobgood, expresses what is at the core of his art. “In jazz, as in poetry,” Pinsky told The Paris Review in an interview, “there is always that play between what’s regular and what’s wild. That has always appealed to me.”
Best known for his collaboration with vocalist Kurt Elling, multiple Grammy-nominee and 2010 Grammy-winner Laurence Hobgood has enjoyed a multi-faceted and dynamic career. Musical Director for Ellingsince 1995, he’s played on, composed, arranged and co-produced all of Elling’s CDs (six for Blue Note and three for Concord), each Grammy-nominated. 2009’s Dedicated To You: Kurt Elling Sings The Music Of Coltrane and Hartman, recorded live at Lincoln Center, won the 2010 Grammy Award for Best Vocal Jazz Record. Hobgood met Kurt Elling in 1993 and began a collaboration that resulted in Elling’ssigning with the storied Blue Note label, with Hobgood as his co-producer and musical director. The two became great friends and were named 1995 Chicagoans of The Year in the Arts by the Chicago Tribune. In 1996, Hobgood joined with Paul Wertico and bassist Brian Torff to form a new trio called Union, whichreleased two CDs on the Naim label. Since then he has found time, amidst almost constant touring, writing and recording projects with Elling, to record three further headlining projects for Naim. And Elling’s third Concord CD, The Gate, co-produced by Elling and Hobgood with music legend Don Was, received a 2012 Grammy nomination for “Best Vocal Jazz Album.”