This looks to be a really solid evening to please and tease your ears — poetry by a writer (with strong MT ties) who's solid enough that Kevin Killian sings his praises, and then sound by a musician who releases music on the excellent ECM label and is beloved by the New York Times.
It's this Saturday, September 12, and is called "Poetry/Jazz Interface". Reading by George Tysh at 7:30 pm, free; Performance by Craig Taborn at 8:30 pm; $10-$20 suggested.
2015 Kresge Artist Fellow, Detroit poet George Tysh launches his new book, The Slip (from BlazeVOX) followed by a solo performance by ECM jazz master, pianist Craig Taborn, who is flying into Detroit specifically for this event. From 1980 to 1991, George Tysh directed LINES: New Writing at the Detroit Institute of Arts, and (with poet Chris Tysh) edited In Camera, a project devoted to works of the sexual imaginary. He teaches film studies and poetics at the College for Creative Studies, Detroit.
— "For much of George Tysh's remarkable collection The Slip, especially the haunting title poem, an isolated phrase appears, then the next descends, and then another, each open space miming the way breath appears in human speech, as an aid to understanding and an absolute electric charge." — Kevin Killian, San Francisco
Craig Taborn began working professionally in the 1990s in a variety of musical contexts, ranging from more straight-ahead jazz to more outside music, with young jazz musicians, seasoned veterans, and even techno artists. Before he graduated from the University of Michigan, he had already performed on three recordings as a member of the James Carter Quartet. In 1995, DIW released Taborn's first date as a leader, The Craig Taborn Trio. He then moved to N.Y.C., and by the close of the '90s, he performed on two more Carter releases; Roscoe Mitchell's 1999 ECM release, Nine To Get Ready; Detroiter Carl Craig's techno-jazz project, Innerzone Orchestra; and Hugh Ragin's Afternoon in Harlem. His second album, Light Made Lighter, was a piano trio date for Thirsty Ear in 2001. He has collaborated and recorded with the likes of Gerald Cleaver, William Parker, Dave Douglas, Bill Laswell, and Dave Holland, among many others. His first album of solo piano, Avenging Angel, was released in 2011 by ECM.
— "Chants [on ECM] is the extraordinary new record by Craig Taborn, a pianist of cryptic insights and galactic interests...a product of alert indeterminacy, it lands on a recognizable style the way a dragonfly alights on a reed. You might hear the shadow influence of second-wave Detroit techno...likewise flickers of Duke Ellington and Herbie Nichols. Mr. Taborn, 43, has worked far more extensively in other people’s bands than with his own. But the album, recorded a couple of months after his trio’s Village Vanguard debut last year, confirms his standing as an inspired bandleader-composer, one of the smartest and slipperiest in his peer group." — Nate Chinen, The New York Times
