This post continues
the theme of pleasure in the unexpected, in this case with music and poetry, though no
animals.
The best events, in my memory, are the small and unexpected
gems: “Once on This Island” and “Driving Miss Daisy” in their debuts in the
tiny, rickety, up-a-steep-and-winding staircase of the first Playwrights Horizons
space; “A Chorus Line” at the Public Theater before the buzz and Broadway; Susannah
McCorkle at the Spencertown Academy, with Mabel Mercer in the audience!; and,
on October 5th of this year, “Jazz
& Poetry/Poetry & Jazz” at the Sandisfield Arts Center, a converted
church and synagogue in a little town in western Massachusetts.
Thanks to a small number of passionate and highly capable
local arts lovers and citizens, the Arts Center has been
evolving for over a decade, and it’s really arrived as an amazingly first-class
venue for music and theater. I hadn’t been since the recent improvements – a
bright, welcoming vestibule when you enter, then in the upstairs
sanctuary/theater space, new, handsome and comfortable chairs replacing hard
pews, and a new floor shining. The place looks like a million dollars, and even
includes a handicap lift, but I’m told they did these recent renovations for $86,000, thanks to a few grants and many generous donations. Quite a feat for a
town of some 900 year-round residents (up to 2500 with second-home owners. )
So the surroundings raised my expectations a little -- I’m a
poet myself, and a jazz fan, but I never expect much out of “Jazz and Poetry”
type events, fearing someone snapping their fingers while reading Ferlinghetti,
backed by a saxophonist wandering off into an unintelligible solo. But the
lighting was just right, warm and glowing, and on the stage were simply a piano, a bass, and a drum set, plus the two readers, a woman and a man, seated, looking intelligent and prepared, books in their laps.
Skimming the program raised my expectations even more – some
of my favorite jazz tunes mixed in with some of my favorite poems, and others I
didn’t know but that had promising titles or authors (the song “Je Ne T’Aime
Pas” by Kurt Weill; poems “Some Days the Sea” by Richard Blanco (the young poet
from Obama’s second inauguration) and “The Wind One Brilliant Day” by Antonio
Machado), the poems spanning centuries and cultures (Rumi, Neruda, Kabir,
Hafiz, along with our own Roethke, Collins, Bishop). Clearly an interesting,
knowledgeable, eclectic mind was at work here.
From the first notes, the program didn’t disappoint. The
piano was perfectly in tune and rich beyond its baby grand size; the bass and
drums came through perfectly, whether as part of the trio or in solos. The
acoustics were so good that all the sung and spoken words were crisp and the
music enveloping without being harsh – a full dynamic range from soft parts
soft but clearly audible to rousing climaxes that didn’t tax the eardrums. The
musicians, The Sir William Trio consisting of William Stillinger, bass, James
Argiro, piano, Gregory Caputo, drums, along with vocalist Stacey Grimaldi, were
first-rate, more than living up to their impressive bios. Ben Luxon and Anni
Crofut, the intelligent-looking readers, indeed were intelligent in their
reading, doing justice to a wide and not undemanding range of poems, subjects,
and styles, projecting them in the best tradition of the spoken word without
being theatrical or, even worse, sing-song poet-y. (Yes, Ben Luxon is that Benjamin Luxon, the internationally known singer, now a
Sandisfield resident.)
So thanks to them, and also to the organizers, Alice Boyd,
Director of the Arts Center, and Sandy and Flora Parisky, the Program
Coordinators, who first heard the program in Connecticut and brought it here –
people who believe that small and first-class can go together, that a little
town can do big things, that art matters.
And especially thanks to William Stillinger, who I later
found out was the interesting, knowledgeable, and eclectic mind that put the
program together. A lovely range, a musical intelligence in the harmony and
flow and counterpoint of the arrangement.
For people who were there and want to revisit the evening’s
pleasures, here are links to some of the poems that are available on the web:
I Go
Back to the House for a Book, Billy Collins
Some
Days the Sea, Richard Blanco
The Wind One
Brilliant Day, Antonio Machado
Hatred,
Gwendolyn Bennett (listed as Brooks in the program, but a web search indicates
Bennett is a different person)
One
Art, Elizabeth Bishop (one of the best villanelles ever)
The Perfect
Life, John Koethe
If
You Forget Me, Pablo Neruda (in my web search I actually found a YouTube
video of the poem read by Madonna, which may be wonderful, but I’m just linking
to the PoemHunter print version)
The
Holy Longing, Goethe
In a
Dark Time, Theodore Roethke
I Know
a Man, Robert Creeley
(Credits to the Poetry Foundation, PoemHunter, PoetSeers, Floating
Wolf Quarterly, and other websites for making these poems accessible on the web,
I trust with proper respect for copyright.)
Maybe the best way I can sum up my appreciation is to say --
I’ve been a Geraldine Dodge poet off and on since 1986, attending many
Geraldine Dodge Festivals, and I could easily imagine this program under the
big tent, with an audience of over a thousand, on the opening or closing night
of Dodge. But it was even more fun to find it under the roof of our own Arts
Center, in the company of neighbors!
