The Poets Are Gathering

Benjamin Boone

Label: Origin Records
Released: 2020
Duration: 01:11:58
Views: 1,718

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).

Personnel

Benjamin Boone

saxophone

Kenny Werner

piano

Corcoran Holt

bass

Ari Hoenig

drums

Ben Monder

guitar

Hashem Assadullahi

saxophone

John Bishop

drums

Peter Brendler

bass

David Aus

piano

Patrick Olvera

bass

Ray Moore

drums

Craig VonBerg

piano

Nathan Guzman

drums

Richard Juarez

percussion

Donald Brown

piano

Alberto Diaz Castillo

piano

Stefan Poetzsch

violin

Album Description

“The Poets Are Gathering” is the third in a series of acclaimed recordings from saxophonist/composer Benjamin Boone that integrate the music and 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 Tyehimba 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.