Announcing the Release of David Amram Poetry JAM, a Historic CD Anthology Featuring Music by David Amram
Label: Calque Cinema Records and Publishing
Producer: Casey Cyr
Artists: David Amram, Casey Cyr, Steve Dalachinsky, Albert Kausch, Richard L. Martin, Lee Ranaldo, Ron Whitehead
MYSTIC, CONNECTICUT (Feb 20, 2012) - Calque Cinema Records is ecstatic to announce the release of David Amram Poetry JAM – a historic 39-track CD Anthology featuring original musical compositions by world-renowned multi-instrumentalist, composer and conductor David Amram, described as “the Renaissance man of American music” by The Boston Globe.
David Amram jams with contemporary poets from New York to Kentucky as he has done since 1957 when he performed with Jack Kerouac in New York City’s first-ever jazz & poetry readings.
In David Amram Poetry JAM, David accompanies readings of original poetry by (in alpha order) Casey Cyr, (Calque Cinema founder), award-winning poets Steve Dalachinsky and Albert Kausch, Richard L. Martin (Hozomeen Press founder), Lee Ranaldo (Sonic Youth guitarist and multi-media artist) and Ron Whitehead (Published in Heaven International Independent Journal for the Arts, the Literary Renaissance, and White Fields Press founder), who have collaborated together live on stage, in the studio, and who share titles published by the Kerouac-inspired boutique imprint Hozomeen Press.
In the studio, as each poet read, David listened intently, composing on the spot. David Amram crafts spontaneous compositions that harmonize with the poem, as he draws from an arsenal of instruments from the four corners of the globe – Shanai, Doumbek, Lakota Courting Flute, Congas & Cascara, Moroccan Clay Drum, Tambourine, Ocarina, Irish Double D Whistle, Piano and French Horn. Instruments are only tools for his creations. It is his ability to transmute language into sound and vibration that convey his alchemical genius. Through a lifelong love affair with music, literature, language, and life itself, David Amram is a true master. An aspect of his diverse mastery is forever captured in these joyful and poignant collaborations. The CD is now available at www.calquecinema.com.
David Amram: Pioneer of Spoken Word and Music
David Amram is a pioneer of the genre of spoken word and music. From 1957-1958, Jack Kerouac and David Amram with Philip Lamantia and Howard Hart held a series of New York City’s first-ever official public jazz and poetry readings at the Brata Art Gallery, the Circle in the Square Theater, and Brooklyn College. Those historic readings are described in David’s books “Vibrations,” “Offbeat: Collaborating With Kerouac” and “Upbeat: Nine Lives of a Musical Cat” published by Paradigm Publishers.
David Amram has been collaborating with acclaimed writers around the world for more than 40 years since those landmark readings with Jack Kerouac.
David Amram’s Biography
David Amram has composed more than 100 orchestral and chamber music works, written many scores for Broadway theater and film, including classic scores for films Splendor in The Grass and The Manchurian Candidate; two operas, including the ground-breaking Holocaust opera The Final Ingredient; and the score for the landmark 1959 documentary Pull My Daisy, narrated by novelist Jack Kerouac. He is also the author of three books, Vibrations, an autobiography, Offbeat: Collaborating With Kerouac, a memoir, and Upbeat: Nine Lives of a Musical Cat published in the fall of 2007 by Paradigm Publishers.
A pioneer player of jazz French horn, he is also a virtuoso on piano, numerous flutes and whistles, percussion, and dozens of folkloric instruments from 25 countries, as well as an inventive, funny improvisational lyricist. He has collaborated with Leonard Bernstein, who chose him as The New York Philharmonic’s first composer-in-residence in 1966, Langston Hughes, Dizzy Gillespie, Dustin Hoffman, Willie Nelson, Thelonious Monk, Odetta, Elia Kazan, Arthur Miller, Charles Mingus, Lionel Hampton, E. G. Marshall, Johnny Depp and Tito Puente. One of Amram’s most recent works Giants of the Night is a flute concerto dedicated to the memory Charlie Parker, Jack Kerouac and Dizzy Gillespie, three American artists Amram knew and worked with. It was commissioned and premiered by Sir James Galway. His two most recent orchestral works are Symphonic Variations on a Song by Woody Guthrie, commissioned by the Guthrie Foundation, premiered Sept. 29 2007, and Three Songs: A Concerto for Piano and Orchestra premiered in January of 2009. He was the Democratic National Convention’s composer-in-residence in August of 2008 in Denver.
Today, as he has for over fifty years, Amram continues to compose music while traveling the world as a conductor, soloist, band leader, visiting scholar, and narrator in five languages.
“David Amram is one of the most versatile and skilled musicians America has ever produced ...” – Washington Post
“Amram was multicultural before multiculturalism existed.” – New York Times
“Amram may be able to play more types of music than any other man. He is a relentless pied-piper of pan cultural persuasiveness, leading listeners into a global circle that brings all peoples together.” – Milwaukee Journal
David Amram Poetry JAM: The Poets
Casey Cyr is a writer, musician, visual artist, producer of David Amram Poetry JAM, and founder of Calque Cinema Records and Publishing – a company born out of a love for unusual musical and literary collaborations. Her lyrical poetry & haunting melodies from her CD Phantom Moon reflect the unconscious realm of magic. Music: Summer of Love (Mystic Discs), Hello Butterfly, Shiva with David Amram, (Calque Cinema), Hozomeen Press titles: Metta Morpheus, 50 drawings 50 poems, View From The Launch Pad, prose, poetry, drawings and photography; Screenplay: Memory Bank. Casey has contributed to journals and anthologies including: Reflections upon the 50th Anniversary of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road (Published in Heaven books/Editors Ron Whitehead and Robert M. Zoschke), Post Magazine, Mason’s Stoup, Corn Fed, Root of Twinkle, Ground Zero. Casey co-founded the New York Underground Music & Poetry festival which took place at 16 clubs over 3 days in November of 2000, and continues to initiate community and diversity in the arts. “Casey Cyr is a visionary poet and singer songwriter in the beat tradition. Beat as in beatific.” –Mike McHugh
Steve Dalachinsky was born in 1946, Brooklyn, NY. His work has appeared in journals and anthologies: Big Bridge, Milk, Unlikely Stories, Xpressed, Ratapallax, Evergreen Review, Long Shot, Alpha Beat Soup, Xtant, Blue Beat Jacket, N.Y. Arts Magazine, 88 and Lost and Found Times, Beat Indeed, The Haiku Moment, Up is Up But So is Down: NYU Downtown Literary Anthology, the Unbearables anthologies: Help Yourself, The Worse Book I Ever Read, the Big Book of Sex (as co-editor), the esteemed Outlaw Bible of American Poetry. His CD, Incomplete Direction (Knitting Factory), in collaboration with musicians William Parker, Matthew Shipp, Daniel Carter, Sabir Mateen, Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth), Vernon Reid (Living Colour) has garnered much praise. Chapbooks: Musicology (Editions Pioche, Paris), Trial and Error in Paris (Loudmouth Collective), Lautreamont’s Laments (Furniture Press), In Glorious Black and White (Ugly Duckling Presse), St. Lucie (King of Mice Press), Dream Book (Avantcular Press), Christ Amongst the Fishes (collages, Oilcan Press), Insomnia Poems (Propaganda Press), Invasion of the Animal People (Propaganda Press). Books: A Superintendent’s Eyes (Hozomeen Press), PEN Oakland National Book Award winning book The Final Nite, Reaching into the Unknown (with Jacques Bisceglia, RogueArt). Latest CD: Phenomena of Interference with Matthew Shipp (Hopscotch Records). He has read throughout the US, Japan and Europe.
As a scientist and a poet, Albert Kausch’s unique perspective derives from a deep appreciation of the web and ecology of life in all it’s forms and expressions. While his writing only rarely relies directly on his science the influence is unmistakable. He has published three books, The Continuum, A Thousand Luna Moths, and The Autarkic, as well as numerous poems, prose stories, articles and essays with Hozomeen Press and other publications. He has recently completed a novel called In the Bee Loud Glade. Dr. Kausch is a geneticist who teaches at the University of Rhode Island and is the author of more than thirty scientific publications and an inventor on more than twenty patents. He lives in Stonington, CT.
Richard L. Martin is founder of Hozomeen Press, Cosmodemonic Telegraph and the Telegraph Recording Company, collectively releasing some 300 titles of poetry, prose, graphics and music over the last 20 years. Serves as President of New London Music Festival which produces concerts including I AM Fest, Traditions, and the Rock Fix in southern New England. Managing Director of Hygienic Art overseeing booking, production and promotion for the organization. Martin is in the indie rock outfit Low Beam which released ‘Charge of the Light Brigade’ in early 2011. Martin is also a visual artist whose work pursues a personal mythology through the medium of digital montage. Martin and his wife Daphne own The Telegraph, a classic vinyl record shop in New London, Connecticut.
Lee Ranaldo is a member of Sonic Youth, now in 30th year; visual artist, writer, producer. Recent live performances with partner Leah Singer, sight unseen, have been large scale, multi projection quadraphonic sound+light events, w Lee performing suspended guitar phenomena. A solo record of songs was completed this summer and slated for release early in 2012. Lee’s drawings, prints and videos have been on view this year in gallery and museum shows in places such as Bratislava Slovakia, Auckland New Zealand, Salt Lake City Utah and in Brooklyn and Manhattan, NYC. Most recent book: Against Refusing, (Waterrow Press 2010).
Ron Whitehead, author of 21 books and 31 CDs has been hailed by many as the poet of his generation “I have long admired Ron Whitehead. He is crazy as nine loons, and his poetry is a dazzling mix of folk wisdom and pure mathematics” –Hunter S. Thompson. He has work on dvds, films, and in thousands of publications of every creative medium round the world. He has received numerous writing awards, has been nominated for the Pulitzer and the Nobel in Literature. Ron has edited and published over 3,000 titles, produced over 3,000 arts events including 24, 48, 72, & 90 hour non-stop music and poetry arts Insomniacathons from New Orleans to New York City to The Netherlands and beyond. He has presented over 6,000 performances of his own poetry and prose accompanied by some of the greatest musicians and bands on the planet. While traveling the world he hombases in Kentucky.
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