City Alive with Dreams

This past weekend, I attended my first poetry slam at the Green Mill. I’d only been there in the past for music, basically for only the amazing Alan Gersik and his Swing Time Band, and I tried the Paper Machete, a live literary variety show. (Not really my cup of tea sadly. I much prefer the Write Club).

The show was okay. I’ll admit that poetry slam is not really my cup of tea. I walked in during the open mike, which was unfortunate. However, there was a young girl, a 17 year old, who is on the National Slam team who did a bone chilling piece about the “Mother of Columbine.” She got into the mind of a young woman who killed 2 classmates at her school in the 1970s. It was brilliant.

The reason I came to the Poetry Slam was because a friend of mine Carron Little was the showcase act for the evening. She was debuting several songs sung by a choir as part of her series “City Alive with Dreams.” The songs were based on poems from interviews she has conducted on a weekly basis for at least a year. She interviewed people about their dreams at night. I myself was interviewed last summer.  These interviews turned poems have become incredible paintings and sculptures. And now they are magnificent songs. I am really excited about this work since I love when artists work in diverse mediums. Earlier this year I talked about seeing Art Spiegelman’s Wordless event where he combined wordless novels and a seven piece jazz band. I really like artists combining their visual work with music/audio.

I was really pleased with the four songs debuted by the choir For City Alive with Dreams. There were about eight or nine people in the choir so you got wonderful diverse voices that harmonized, chanted, countered one another. My favorite song was “What would Cher do?” which largely became this beautiful blend of orgasmic sounds.

This was the beginning of City Alive with Dreams. On June 4th at noon, there will be a concert at the Cultural Center in the Claudia Cassidy Theater, when Carron Little is a resident artist. You should go.

Additionally, there will be public performances  in August, which I’m also really looking forward to!

Also, Carron Little curates Out of Site, a series of performance art pieces on 5-7 Fridays later in the summer. This will be the fourth year. More details on that when I get them. It’s really the bees knees.

That’s all for now!