The former Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky reads his poetry while accompanied by a small jazz ensemble.
Pinsky’s PoemJazz treats a voice speaking poetry as having a role like that of a horn: speech with its own poetic melody and rhythm, in conversation with what the music is doing. Pinsky creates a wholly simpatico artistic partnership with the jazz musicians. Both the music and the words are rife with improvisation, for Pinsky does not offer just a dramatic interpretations of his poems, but musical ones, focusing on cadence and harmony. The performance becomes richly spontaneous, worthy of both great jazz and great literature.
“The sympathetic reverberations between the music of poetry and the poetry of music have rarely been so fully amplified... I wish we could all hear new work like this all the time.”
Pinsky will be introduced by P. Scott Cunningham, Boca native, winner of the Miller Williams Poetry Series, and author of YaTe Ver. Cunningham is the founder of O Miami, which celebrates Miami and South Florida through poetry.