Benjamin Boone - The Poets Are Gathering

ORIGIN RECORDS

£16.65

Cat. no: ORIGIN82808
Format: CD
Barcode: 0805558280825
Release Date: 26th February 2021
Genre: Jazz

“The Poets Are Gathering” is the third in a series of acclaimed recordings from saxophonist/composer Benjamin Boone that integrate the music & poems from some of America’s leading jazz musicians and Poet Laureates, Guggenheim fellows and Pulitzer Prize winners.

Where “The Poetry of Jazz” volumes offered the voice of the late U.S. Poet Laureate Philip Levine, here, notable contributors include Tyehimba Jess, Juan Felipe Herrera, Patricia Smith, T.R. Hummer, and Edward Hirsch, along with pianist Kenny Werner, guitarist Ben Monder and drummer Ari Hoenig, among many others. This recording possesses a visceral, in-the-moment force as the poetry responds to the roiling, insurgent energies against racism and other societal ills.

The themes of immigration, racism, homelessness, poverty, abuse, protests, and war can overwhelm and distress, but through the voices of some of the world’s great literary minds there are clues to be found to absorb the blows, summon the spirits, engage the moment and as Tyehimban Jess suggests, “murder the silence” that threatens to immobile us, to keep us away from the reasons to commit, to deal, to hope - and, above all, to imagine.

“There are incantations and supplications to be found here. Also: elegies and headlines, howls and mantras, reveries and outbursts. They instruct and affirm. They urge you to dance while offering road maps to reflection. They rouse you from deep slumber and offer solace for your worst nightmares.” - GENE SEYMOUR

Tracks: That’s My Son There (feat. Patricia Smith) / Marooning (feat. Patrick Sylvain) / Against Silence (feat. Tyehimba Jess) / Poem By Poem (feat. Juan Felipe Herrera) / Deconstruction Of Idols (feat. Dustin Prestridge) / Truths (feat. Lee Herrick) / The Poets Are Gathering (feat. Juan Felipe Herrera) / Song (feat. Edward Hirsch) / Spiral (feat. Marisol Baca) / The Sun One (Homage To Sun Ra) (feat. T.R. Hummer) / Your Man (feat. Patricia Smith) / Impervious Blue (feat. T.R. Hummer) / Black Man (feat. Donald Brown II) / Ports Of Sorrow (feat. Patrick Sylvain) / Branch Library (feat. Edward Hirsch) / These Current Events (feat. Kimiko Hahn)