My first collection of poetry is being published by the Sheep Meadow Press! Publication party is on Jan 19th at the Sixth Street Shul – with Frank London, Greg Wall, Eyal Maoz and Uri Sharlin.

The book is already available for order via Sheep Meadow, pre-order on Amazon, and I have copies on me, which I’ll bring to Zorn’s Nittel Benefit gig this Saturday night (I’m sitting in with the Ayn Sof Arkestra). And obviously to the publication party on Jan 19th!

All the info about the book, including blurbs and an intro are here!

Time for another Jazz Talmud gig! I will be performing with a terrific crew of musicians – Frank London (trumpet), Greg Wall (sax), and Alon Nechushtan (keys) at the Sixth Street Synagogue on Dec 8th, at 8.30pm.

Hope to see you there! Here’s the low-down about the Jazz Talmud music-poetry project.

The idea is to bring together a hip group of writers-thinkers to not only look at the ‘canon’ of Jewish poetry, but also dig into various promising forms and molds and tropes around Judaism – the noise of the beit midrash, talmudic loophole, radical mis-interpration, dissociation with tradition as tradition – and to write, using these – and many other – forms. I’d like to look at the rhetoric of Talmudic arguments as transposed into works of Louis Zukofsky & Edmond Jabes, but also things like Shiviti/iconology in the context of modernist tradition of graphic poetry. Most importantly, I’d like to brainstorm with all of you about new directions Jewish poetry could go, to hear you read and react to each other.

There will be 7 sessions from Oct 31st through Dec 12th all on Mondays 7.30-9pm at 190 Amsterdam Avenue (b/n 68 and 69th). Although there will be continuity to the series as a whole, each session will be its own deal, i.e. if you can totally join at any point in the game.

There will be arts programming on some of the Mondays afterwards, at 9.15pm. On Monday 31st, great saxophonist Greg Wall is coming to play his superb brew of jazz-klez, and on Nov 14th poet Jerome Rothenberg will read and speak.

The class and gigs are free. More info: http://www.mechonhadar.org/90at190.

Among my newly minted resolutions is getting back into posting on the blog – drafts of poems in progress?

Here’s a Rosh piece I’m working on -

Cause for Celebration

“what does it mean to celebrate

Rosh Hashana if you don’t believe

the world was created on this day

any more than yesterday or tomorrow?”

I ask myself, mouth full

of honey, thankful for our exilic

solar calendar spinning

the first of Tishrei

so that it falls

         out on a different day every year

 

good wishes to all!!

As some of you know, this going to be the last one for a while…

Wed, Jan 12th 7.30PM at the Cell Theater

Jazz Talmud Quartet ft. Jake Marmer (voice), Greg Wall (sax), Rob Henke (trumpet), and Uri Sharlin (keys).

Jazz Talmud is a poetry and music project where poems mimic Talmudic rhetoric, style and turns of phrase, as they reflect on the contemporary Jewish experience, jazz, dreams, loneliness and more, while musicians, acting as Talmud’s interpreters Rashi and Tosefot spontaneously riff on the spoken material and each other’s reaction to it.

Some video samples are here: http://jakemarmer.wordpress.com/jazz-talmud-premiere/

As seen in New York Times.

Cover: suggested donation of $20 (reg) or $10 (student/senior) or pay-what-you-wish.

Doors open 7.30pm, show starts promptly at 8pm

Tonight, I will be doing a jazz poetry set with superb drummer Haim Peskoff at Yeshivat Hadar on the Upper West Side – starting 9PM sharp. Info: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=176430559052572.

On Saturday night Dec 25th, I’ll will be performing with Ayn Sof Arkestra at the Tzadik Label festival hosted by the Sixth Street Synagogue! More details re the festival to come but the fest will be ground-breaking – intense line-up of some of Tzadik’s most illustrious representatives.

If you happen to be going to Limmud UK, I’ll be there and will read on Mon Dec 27th 3.30pm. Doing a few other sessions there as well.

Lastly, pls mark your calendars for Wed Jan 12th – I will be playing some of the Jazz Talmud material with Frank London and Greg Wall at the Cell Theater.

These might be the last few gigs for a while!

• Jazz Golem
• Mishnah of Visions/Mishnah of Aesthetics
• God
• Laws of Dream-Cooking/The Bath-House of Dreams
• Dreamemory
• Mishnah of Loneliness/Mishnah of Silence
• Tohu

On Sep 27th @ the Cell Theater: Frank London, Greg Wall and myself will perform my Jazz Talmud poems, imitating talmudic modes dialogue, argument, orality. Frank and Greg – two horn players – will be acting as Rashi and Tosefot, two commentators fighting and harmonizing over the text.

And then! Ayn Sof Arkestra, 15-piece klezmer band will play a set.

Should be totally wild. More info is here.