| PoemJazz
with Robert Pinsky & Laurence Hobgood WHERE: NJPAC, One Center St., Newark
WHEN: Friday, April 22nd. 8:00PM
TICKETS: $15
Buy Tickets Here! Three-time United States Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky is joined by Grammy-winning pianist, composer and arranger Laurence Hobgood for an evening of jazz and spoken word. PoemJazz, which the two performed at the Dodge Poetry Festival at NJPAC in 2014, is neither poetry set to music nor merely poems recited to musical accompaniment. In this unique collaboration, a voice speaking poetry has a role like that of a horn: speech, with its own poetic melody and rhythm, is in conversation with the melody and rhythm of the music. Robert Pinsky, born and raised in Long Branch, N.J. and a graduate of Rutgers, is the author of several collections of poetry, including Gulf Music: Poems, Jersey Rain and The Figured Wheel: New and Collected Poems 1966-1996, which received the 1997 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize and was a Pulitzer Prize nominee. During his tenure as U.S. Poet Laureate, he founded the Favorite Poem Project, a program dedicated to celebrating, documenting and encouraging poetry’s role in Americans’ lives. Pianist, composer, arranger, Grammy winner and multiple Grammy nominee Laurence Hobgood is perhaps best known for his nearly 20-year collaboration with vocalist Kurt Elling. His “Dedicated to You: Kurt Elling Sings the Music of Coltrane and Hartman,” recorded live at Lincoln Center, won the 2010 Grammy for Best Vocal Jazz Record. Pinsky and Hobgood’s PoemJazzrecording was released in 2012 and a second PoemJazz recording is forthcoming. |
