Friday, August 15, 2003  
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Healthy competition
Team Poetry Slam, The 19th annual Battle of the Blues, and more music

Team Poetry Slam

Marc Smith started poetry slams in Chicago in 1984 with three things in mind: 1) everyone has a poetic voice; 2) there need to be places for that voice to be heard; and 3) the best judges of that poetry are the people hearing it. So explained Michael Brown, host of the Team Poetry Slam at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education last Saturday night. Sixteen poets from four teams — representing the Cantab Lounge, the Lizard Lounge, Bridgewater, and Ryles — competed in preparation for the National Poetry Slam in Chicago August 6 through 9.

The CCAE was packed: people sat in the aisles, stood in the back, and poured out the door into the hall, as Jeff Robinson, who runs the Lizard Lounge slam, explained the rules. Each poet has three minutes to recite plus a 10-second grace period, after which points are deducted. Five judges chosen at random from the audience rate the performance and the quality of the poetry on scale from zero to 10. The highest and lowest scores for each performer are dropped, the rest are added up, and the team with the highest cumulative score wins.

But to say these poets recited poetry would be like saying Ted Williams swung at baseballs. They barreled through original poems in a heady blend of small tales and big opinions, of spoken song and verbal dance, of the personal and political, all rhythm, all passion. "Am I gonna die today?" went the refrain of Lizard Lounge member Omekongo Dbinga’s poem. "With so many pedophile priests I have to wonder if my sons and daughters stay tight today." Skiam McGuire, from the Ryles-based all-woman Amazon team, told a modern-day fairy tale of a princess charming that had an R-rated Dr. Seuss feel to it, with lines like "I discovered the water of life between her thighs. My hair got short and I started wearing ties." A hipster type with a sullen glance who goes by the name of J*Me (pronounced Jamie) got the highest individual score for his fast-talking, hard-feeling ode to Janis Joplin. Some poets spat, and many shook, but they didn’t stumble over words — tongues were decidedly, and remarkably, untangled.

The Cantab Lounge took the night, edging the Lizard Lounge by two-tenths of a point, and the Amazon team by half a point, with the youthful Bridgewater team making a respectable showing. The Big East Regional Slam, with six teams, is the final area competition before the Chicago slam. It’ll take place this Wednesday, July 30, at 8 p.m. at the Cantab Lounge, 738 Massachusetts Avenue in Central Square; call (617) 354-2685. For more information on slams in North America, visit www.poetryslam.com. For New England updates, visit www.slamnews.com.

BY NINA MACLAUGHLIN

The 19th annual Battle of the Blues

The six-piece Matthew Stubbs Band won the 19th annual Boston Blues Challenge, which was sponsored by the Boston Blues Society and Harpers Ferry, at Harpers a week ago Thursday. Fronted by the leader’s guitar and flamboyant blues shouter Kit Holliday, the band earned $1000 and the opportunity to compete in the Blues Foundation’s International Blues event in Memphis in 2004.

Also competing Thursday night: subway busker Lloyd Thayer, who accompanied himself with steel-body and wood dobros; the South Shore–based Steve DiCecco Band, who were fronted by the leader’s chromatic harmonic playing; Jose Ramos & the No Way Jose Band, the long-time Monday-night band at Wally’s Café in the South End; and the Connecticut-based Ryan Hartt and the Blue Hearts, a five-piece band featuring upright bass and the leader’s harmonica and playing a mix of Chicago and Texas-style swing and jump blues. The finalists were drawn from a field of 16 bands who’d competed at Harpers over the July 4 weekend. The judges for the final were former club owner Ed Burke, writer Frank-John Hadley, world-renowned harmonica ace Jerry Portnoy, Tone-Cool label honcho Richard "Rosy" Rosenblatt, and Phoenix associate Arts editor Jon Garelick. For more information about the event, go to www.bostonblues.com.

Also Thursday, Harpers owner Charlie Able announced that the club will resume its open-mike blues jams, which were hugely popular Wednesday-night events in the late ’80s and early ’90s. The new series, dubbed "Blue Mondays," will take place on Monday nights beginning September 8 and will again be hosted by long-time Boston blues fixture Rick Russell. The first incarnation of the blues jams became a citywide phenomenon, Able said, and the market grew saturated — after several years, the audience and the pool of available players were spread too thin for the series to continue. But at their peak, they drew between 250 and 300 people to Harpers every Wednesday night. Able hopes the series will find that kind of audience again.

Equinox Festival Fall 2003

The Equinox Music Festival has announced its fall schedule, which includes performances by Pharoah Sanders and Cecil Taylor. Another highlight is the appearance of Anthony Brown’s Asian American Orchestra with special guest Steve Lacy playing Brown’s arrangements of pieces by Thelonious Monk. Here’s the line-up:

September 14: Lisa Yves and the Young Beboppers at the Children’s Museum of Boston, 300 Congress Street, at 1 p.m.

September 17: bassist Art Davis and saxophonist Odean Pope in duet, plus the ensemble Tatu with Leonard Brown, Bill Lowe, and Syd Smart, at Berklee Performance Center, 136 Massachusetts Avenue in Boston, at 8 p.m.

September 18: the Equinox All Stars, with Keith Copeland, Herb Pomeroy, Al Vega, Leon Merian, Ron Mahdi, and Andy McGee, at the Sorenson Center for the Arts, Babson College, Park Manor South, Babson Park, off Forest Street in Wellesley, at 8 p.m.

September 19: the Matthias Lupri Group at the Sorenson Center for the Arts, Babson College, at 8 p.m.

September 20 and 21: the 26th annual John Coltrane Memorial Concert, with special guest Pharoah Sanders and artist-in-residence Keith Copeland. The concerts take place at, respectively, Northeastern University’s Blackman Auditorium, 180 Huntington Avenue, at 8 p.m., and Mechanics Hall, 321 Main Street in Worcester, at 7:30 p.m.

September 24: Cecil Taylor and the Sound Vision Orchestra at the Somerville Theatre, 55 Davis Square, at 8 p.m.

September 25: Omar Sosa Octet at the Somerville Theatre at 8 p.m.

September 26: Anthony Brown’s Asian American Orchestra with special guest Steve Lacy, at Berklee Performance Center at 8 p.m.

September 27: Manny Oquendo y Libre at a venue to be announced.

September 28: Taylor Ho Bynum’s SpiderMonkey Strings, Charlie Kohlhase’s CK5, Hiromi, and Ron Reid’s SunSteel, and more artists to be announced, in a free concert at Boston City Hall Plaza from noon to 6.

The Equinox Festival grew out of the John Coltrane Memorial Concert three years ago and now includes events year-round. For tickets and information, call (617) 308-7332, or visit www.jcmcsite.com.

World Music/CrashArts Fall 2003

And here’s the fall season for World Music & CrashArts:

September 12: Youssou N’Dour at Sanders Theatre, 45 Quincy Street in Harvard Square, at 8 p.m.

September 28: Ravi Shankar and Anoushka Shankar at Symphony Hall, 301 Massachusetts Avenue in Boston, at 7:30 p.m.

October 2-4: Noche Flamenca at the Majestic Theatre, 219 Tremont Street in the Theater District, Thursday at 7:30 p.m. and Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m.

October 3: Capercaillie at the Somerville Theatre, 55 Davis Square, at 8 p.m.

October 17: Leahy at Berklee Performance Center, 136 Massachusetts Avenue in Boston, at 8 p.m.

October 17-19: Rennie Harris in Facing Mekka at the Majestic Theatre, Friday at 7 p.m., Saturday at 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2 p.m.

October 26: Doudou N’Diaye Rose and His Drummers of West Africa at Berklee Performance Center at 7 p.m.

November 2: Sol y Canto at the Somerville Theatre at 11 a.m. and 3 p.m.

November 8: Théâtre de l’Oeil in The Star Keeper at the Somerville Theatre at 11 a.m. and 3 p.m.

November 8: Shaolin Warriors at the Orpheum Theatre, 1 Hamilton Place, at 8 p.m.

November 9: Enrique Morente at Sanders Theatre at 7:30 p.m.

November 14: Fula Flute Ensemble at the Somerville Theatre at 8 p.m.

November 15: Wayfaring Strangers at the Somerville Theatre at 8 p.m.

November 22: Cesaria Évora at the Orpheum Theatre at 8 p.m.

November 22: Wadaiko Yamato at Berklee Performance Center at 8 p.m.

November 23: Dan Zanes + Friends at the Somerville Theatre at 11 a.m. and 3 p.m.

December 2: Blind Boys of Alabama in The Blind Boys Family Christmas at Berklee Performance Center at 7:30 p.m.

Tickets are on sale now; call (617) 876-4275 or visit www.WorldMusic.org.

Edmiston lands

The news is good for fans of director Scott Edmiston, whose Nora Theatre Company productions of Molly Sweeney and Betrayal have both won Elliot Norton Awards. When not winning kudos for his freelance directing, Edmiston was, until his dual position was recently eliminated, resident dramaturg for the Huntington Theatre Company and an assistant professor at Boston University, where he headed the MFA directing program. Now he’s been appointed director of Brandeis University’s newly inaugurated Office of the Arts. He starts work August 11.

Edmiston’s duties, in the new job, will include "strengthening Brandeis’s arts profile both on campus and in the Greater Boston community; facilitating the staging of arts events in the departments of Fine Arts, Music, Theater Arts, the Creative Writing Program, Film Studies, and the Rose Art Museum, with the aim of building and attracting new audiences; and creating opportunities to expand arts activities such as faculty, student, and guest-artist exhibits, performances, lectures, recitals, poetry readings, workshops, and seminars." Sounds like a tall order for Edmiston, who also serves as board president of StageSource, the Alliance of Boston Theatre Artists and Producers. And he plans to continue to direct professionally in the Boston area. His most recent productions include a BU staging of Noël Coward’s Hay Fever with guest artists Paula Plum and Richard Snee and this summer’s stellar Gloucester Stage Company revival of Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris. Edmiston, too, is alive and well — and working in Waltham.

Súgán 2003-2004

Súgán Theatre Company has all its ducks lined up for next year. And though the troupe, now in its 12th season at the Boston Center for the Arts, is dedicated to contemporary Irish and Celtic culture, this one’s a partly Irish-American season. As was previously announced, Súgán will team with SpeakEasy Stage Company to present the New England premiere of A Man of No Importance October 3 through November 9. Based on a 1994 film written by Barry Devlin and set in 1960s Dublin, this musical by the Tony-winning, all-American Ragtime team of composer Stephen Flaherty, lyricist Lynn Ahrens, and librettist Terrence McNally won the 2002-03 Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Off Broadway Musical when it was staged at Lincoln Center. SpeakEasy artistic director Paul Diagneault, a 2003 Elliot Norton Award winner, will stage the Boston production of the show, which is about a middle-aged Dublin bus driver (Albert Finney in the film), an amateur thespian and dévoté of Oscar Wilde whose determination to stage Salome at his church gets him in hot water with the clergy. In the process of fighting for Wilde, he comes to grips with his own sexuality.

A Man of No Importance will be followed January 30 through February 28 by the eagerly awaited unveiling of the third leg of Irish-born, Boston University–trained playwright Ronan Noone’s Baile trilogy, The Gigolo Confessions of Baile Bréag. Coming in the wake of Noone’s award-winning The Lepers of Baile Baste and The Blowin of Baile Gall, Baile Bréag (the name means "Town of Lies") divides its attention between a successful gigolo business in a small Irish town and a woman who’s dealing with her father’s descent into madness. Artistic director Carmel O’Reilly is at the helm of both Noone’s play and the company’s 100-percent-Irish season closer, Belfast playwright Owen McCafferty’s Mojo Mickybo, which is described as "an exhilarating and fast-paced tale of two young boys who, after a chance meeting in a park, form a unique friendship based on their obsession with Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" (well, so much for 100 percent Irish). The work, which is set in 1970s Belfast and the present, was named Best Play at both the Edinburgh and the Dublin fringe festivals and won a Granada TV Best Play Award. It goes up April 2 through 24. For subscription and ticket information, call (617) 497-5134 or visit www.sugan.org.

 


Issue Date: July 25 - August 1, 2003
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