Po'Jazz
...at the Center

JANET AALFS is a writer, martial artist, teacher, performer, and community activist. Her poetry, fiction, and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including Sojourner, Onion River Review, Sinister Wisdom, and Women in the Martial Arts. She won first place in Peregrine's 15th anniversary poetry contest, and her poem, "We Share the Moon," was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 1996. Her poetry collections include Of Angels and Survivors, Full Open, and Reach. She helped to found and continues to be active in both writing and martial arts organizations including the Valley Lesbian Writers Group, Orogeny Press, the National Women's Martial Arts Federation, and Valley Women's Martial Arts, a non-profit school of which she is Head Instructor and Director.

TOM AALFS, violinist, composer and arranger, is a featured soloist on Etta Jones' and Houston Person's two recent CDs and has performed at many New York City venues including the Blue Note, Sweet Basil, Birdland, and the Museum of Modern Art. He has been with Po' Jazz at the Center since the series' inception, and is its Music Director. His latest CD, Group 15, all Thelonius Monk compositions, was recorded with Jay Leonhart on bass and Peter Bernstein on guitar.

TERESA AGULLES is a freshman at Hastings High School who began writing poetry five years ago, at the age of 10. She also enjoys swimming, tennis, running, writing, photography, and listening to favorite metal bands Linkin Park and Blink 182. Teresa plans to attend college in Hawaii or London, and major in poetry and marine biology. She wishes that one day she is named U.S. Poet Laureate.

AMNAH POPPY BASHIER will be 11 years old on June 16th. She's had a great interest in poetry for most of those years, and spends most of her time entertaining herself with the guitar. She is in her third year in the P.S. 11 Voices of Victory Chorus, which competes in festivals each year. Amnah enjoys learning many different things in school and plans to go to the best junior high school, high school, and college possible.

GHAI'L RHODES BENJAMIN is a poet, actress, singer and storyteller who currently performs her one-woman show, "Spiritual Eclipse," in the New York tri-state area, Detroit, and Chicago. She was a winner in the 1998 Famous Poets Society international competition, and a recipient of the Outstanding Young Woman of America Award in 1997 for her writing of plays for children and conducting of theatre and poetry workshops. She has performed in numerous nightclubs, theatres, schools, churches, and homeless shelters, and her homegrown lyrics are infused with survival, dignity, and humor.

DAVID BRAHAM see Latin Jazz Alliance (below)

BELDEN BULLOCK is an accomplished acoustic/electric bassist. After graduating from Boston's Berklee College of Music, he spent several years there as an ensemble professor, and played and recorded with many of the top acts in the Boston area. Now living in New Jersey, Mr. Bullock is a fixture at most of the top jazz clubs in the New York tri-state area, and has played with such jazz greats as Ahmad Jamal, Andrew Hill, James Spaulding, George Adams, Roy Haynes, Lionel Hampton, Gloria Lynn, and Ted Curson. He is currently a regular with artists such as Evidence, The Ralph Peterson Fo'tet, The Oliver Lake Quintet, and Abdullah Ibrahim, among others.

ILA CANTOR is a junior at Somers High School. She has been playing guitar for four years, and currently has a regular Saturday night gig at the Flying Pig Farm Market Café at the Mt. Kisco train station. Ila enjoys fine arts and plans to attend music school after she graduates.

DAVID CIOFALO, trumpet and french horn, is a member of the SSHS Jazz Band in Rockville Centre, NY. Now 14, David has been playing trumpet for four years and has studied privately with Carl DeCicco and Joseph Conerty. He made his debut in 1999 at a jazz concert of select music students (including his twin brother Nick on sax) featuring the NYC Rainbow Room of Jazz trio. David, his sister, and two brothers are growing up in a musical family -- dad Joe played guitar in rock bands for many years, and mom Linda is the acclaimed jazz vocalist. David is honored to be asked to perform at Po'Jazz.

LINDA CIOFALO is a versatile vocalist, songwriter, and producer. She works steadily as a bandleader, jazz vocalist, and has performed at the Blue Note, Cleopatra's Needle, Iridium jazzz club, colleges, music festivals, and elsewhere. She has shared the stage with legendary guitarist Les Paul and jazz singer Mark Murphy. Her self-produced CD, Take the High Road, has received worldwide airplay and critical acclaim.

STEPHEN D. COLEMAN has been an active theatre artist and writer for twenty years. He studied writing, voice, and performance at New York University and the New School for Social Research, and was a member of the 13th Street Repertory Company, where he both appeared in and managed stage productions. His articles on the theatre have appeared in The New York Amsterdam News and Black Masks, and he received the "Writer of the Year" award from Limelight Magazine while acting as its New York correspondent. Stephen has taught creative writing and developed art and culture programs for Grosvenor Neighborhood House's Teen Arts program, and he has taught playwriting and acting to adults and children at various cultural and educational organizations. He is author and performer of three culturally-oriented one-act plays, Sound Bites, Afrophobia: Journey Into Fear, and Shaft's Illegitimate Half Brother. His one-act comedy, Life with Emilio, is slated for production by the Company of Impossible Dreams.

SARAH CORTEZ has been a high school teacher, a tax accountant, an employee benefits consultant, and a police officer. Throughout her various careers, a love of writing has been a constant, and several of her short stories were published in literary journals and anthologies. In 1992, Sarah found her focus changing from fiction to poetry, and in 1999 she won the PEN Texas Literary Award for Poetry. She was named semi-finalist for the Louisiana Literature Prize for Poetry in 2000, and Visiting Scholar in the University of Houston's Center for Mexican-American Studies for an unprecedented two consecutive years. Her first book of poetry, How to Undress a Cop, was published in 2000. Kirkus Reviews writes of it, "Her sassy debut of mostly first-person poems comes to us from the unique perspective of a female police officer: drawing deeply on her experiences as a deputy constable in Houston's Harris County, as well as her Mexican-American roots, Cortez writes convincingly on the charged topics of lust, fear, and home."

ANTHONY COSTANTINI, a returning poet to Po'Jazz, is 9 years old and attends Hillside Elementary School. His poem, "Bluebird," can be heard on the CD, Po'Jazz: Takin' It To The Hollow. Anthony is a Junior Audubon member who enjoys studying plants, birds and animal life. He is a creative Lego enthusiast and also enjoys playing with his friends.

SANDRA DEL VALLE began writing poetry a year ago, after practicing law for fourteen years. She spent ten years as a civil rights attorney for the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund in New York City, and continues to assist the organization on a part-time basis. She was raised in East New York, Brooklyn, and then Queens, one of five children born to parents who moved from Puerto Rico to El Barrio in the 1950s. Sandra says that she only found the courage to write creatively after completing a book on language rights in the U.S., due to be published this fall.

MARK DEUTSCH is a classically trained bassist with extensive experience in orchestral ensembles, sitar performance, jazz groups, and global folk traditions. As a studio musician, he has recorder in a wide variety of musical situations, playing both electric and acoustic bass, sitar, guitar, and Bazantar. As a bandleader, he has led his own jazz quintet, blues band, and acoustic folk-rock group. He has also been a successful sideman, and his experimentation as a solo artist has given him the freedom to expand the boundaries of musical possibilities. In 1993, Mark began work on the first prototype of the Bazantar, a five-string acoustic bass fitted with an additional twenty-nine sympathetic strings and four drone strings, for which he was awarded a U.S. Patent in 1999. The instrument possesses a melodic range of over five octaves and a sympathetic range of four octaves.

R. ERICA DOYLE is a writer and teacher of Trinidadian descent who was born in Brooklyn, New York. She holds a Masters of Fine Arts in poetry from the New School for Social Research, and has worked as a journalist and a domestic violence activist. She is a recipient of artistic grants and awards from humanities councils, arts commissions, and private foundations, most recently, the Hurston/Wright Foundation. Her work appears in various publications, including Best American Poetry 2001, Bum Rush The Page: A Def Poetry Jam Anthology, Role Call: An Anthology of Social and Political Black Literature and Art, Callaloo, Ploughshares, and, most recently, Gumbo: Fiction by Black Writers edited by Marita Golden and E. Lynn Harris. She is a fellow of Cave Canem: A Retreat and Workshop for African-American Poets and she currently teaches Spanish and English Language Arts at Middle School 143 in the Bronx, and an adult fiction workshop at the 14th Street Y in Manhattan.

JOE EXLEY, tubist, has been recorded on television news themes, albums of rock and jazz, and has performed with many orchestras and bands in just about every type of music imaginable. Some of his credits include performing with William Russo and the Chicago Jazz Ensemble, the Chicago Jazz Orchestra and the Illinois Philharmonic Orchestra. He has been an Artist-in-Residence at the Bravo! Colorado Vail Valley Music Festival and the Birch Creek Performance Center. Joe is Music Director for brooklyn poetry project.

JOHN HART, guitarist, has distinguished himself both as a recording artist and bandleader and as a sideman whose credits span the spectrum of the many genres of jazz, from mainstream to free improvisation; blues to funk. Known for his longtime tenure with Hammond B3 organ master Jack McDuff, John has also worked with cutting edge and rising young stars such as Brian Blade, Larry Goldings, Chris Potter and Javon Jackson. He is a composer of merit, with 5 CDs as a leader, he has appeared on more than 50 CDs as a sideman, and has performed at many of the major international jazz festivals and clubs. John has also appeared on a number of television sound tracks, including HBO's Sex and the City, and in the late 80s, was a member of the house band at Harlem's famous Apollo Theater. His recently formed trio has just released a new CD, Scenes from a Song.

VIJAY IYER is a self-taught jazz pianist and composer. He has released three critically acclaimed compact discs, Memorophilia, Architextures, and Panoptic Modes, each named on "best of" lists in its year of release. Mr. Iyer has traveled worldwide as a leader and a sideman, and has collaborated extensively with world-renowned saxophonist and composer Steve Coleman. He has also joined forces with many cutting-edge artists and is currently a member of avant-garde pioneer Roscoe Mitchell's nine-piece Note Factory. In a recent feature on Mr. Iyer, Village Voice critic Gary Giddins wrote, "he has aligned himself with the percussive school of jazz piano - Ellington, Hines, Monk, Powell, Taylor, Nichols, Weston, Tyner, and the rest - and you can hear the influences at work, but he doesn't sound like any of them… His sound is his own, and you would recognize it in a blindfold test."

RON JACKSON, guitarist, composer, arranger and winner of the first annual 1996 Heritage Guitars International Jazz Guitar Competition, has established himself on the international scene. He has two CDs under his own name: A Guitar Thing and Thinking of You as well as the recently released CD Concrete Jungle, co-led with bassist Nicki Parrott. He is a faculty member at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center and WBGO Jazz for Teens program. He has appeared at the New Orleans Heritage and Jazz Festival and performs regularly in New York City. Rufus Reid calls him "a swinging and witty guitarist."

TONY JEFFERSON, drummer, is a native of New York. He attended the Berklee College of Music on scholarship in 1984. In 1992 he placed third in the Thelonious Monk International Drum Competition. Tony has performed and recorded with many jazz artists, including Kenny Drew Jr., Lonnie Smith, Lou Donaldson, Frank Wess, Eddie Harris, Don Friedman, Cyrus Chestnut, Mark Whitfield, Jerry Bergonzi, Joey Calderazzo, Jack Wilkins, and Freddie Cole. He has appeared at many jazz festivals around the world and is an active player on the New York jazz scene. He has been a guest clinician in high school and college workshops and has taught Masters classes nationally and abroad.

INGRID JENSEN, trumpet and flugelhorn, was selected by Down Beat as one of the "25 most important improvising musicians of the future" and rated in the top three in a number of their critics polls for "talent deserving wider recognition." Raised in Nanaimo, Canada, she received a number of scholarships and awards to attend the Berklee College of Music in Boston. Since graduating, her performances as a leader and as a featured soloist have taken her around the world. Her three CDs for the ENJA label won her numerous nominations from the Canadian Juno Awards, with a win for her first of the three, Vernal Fields. She has played with Steve Wilson, Jeff "Tain" Watts, Dr. Lonnie Smith, Marc Copland, Bob Berg, Gary Thomas, and many more outstanding musicians. Locally, she has performed with the Maria Schneider Orchestra, the Mingus Big Band, and most recently with her own group at the Wall to Wall Miles celebration. Ingrid is currently on the faculty of the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore, and she has spent time in Austria as Professor of Jazz Trumpet at the Bruckner Conservatory of Music.

JACQUI JOHNSON is a multi-disciplined writer working in the areas of poetry, books for children, non-fiction and fiction. She is the author of Stokely Carmichael: The Story of Black Power, for children, and a contributor to Bum Rush the Page, Role Call, UpSouth: African American Migrations 1743 to the Present, and Streetlights: Illuminating Tales of the Urban Black Experience. Her poetry book A Gathering of Mother Tongues was winner of the 1997 White Pine Press Poetry Prize, and she was the 1987 winner of the Mid-Atlantic Writers Association Creative Writing Award in Poetry. Ms. Johnson has been a resident Poetry Fellow at the MacDowell Colony for the Arts and the Blue Mountain Center, and was the 1989 Gregory Millard Fellow for the New York Foundation of the Arts. She has read at numerous venues, including Pratt Institute, Poetry Society of America, NuYorican Poets Café, and the Knitting Factory. Founder of the “Power of the Word” reading series at Manhattanville College, and former Executive Director of New Renaissance Writers Guild, Ms. Johnson currently teaches poetry at Frederick Douglas Creative Arts Center in New York City.

JAMES LANDRUM, saxophone, is a freshman at Sleepy Hollow High School. He began by studying flute with Charlie Lagond, and added saxophone to his reed repertoire two years ago. He has appeared on stage in Amahl and the Night Visitors, The Music Man, Damn Yankees, and most recently, as Freddy in the high school production of My Fair Lady. James plays in the Sleepy Hollow High School Jazz Band, and together with some friends, recently formed the Westchester Youth Jazz Ensemble.

KINNY LANDRUM is a composer, arranger, studio musician and musical director. Much of his current work is for film, TV and commercials, including the TV series Twin Peaks and Saturday Night Live, the film Wild At Heart, and the award-winning PBS special, Alamance. He has worked with any number of performers, including Carly Simon, Robert Palmer, Herbie Mann, Neil Sedaka, and Natalie Cole, and has played in the pit for Broadway shows such as Metro. Kinny has also been a member of the Irish trad/rock band, Kips Bay, and his jazz-flavored tune "Clear Blue Sky" was recently recorded by Celtic uilleann piper Jerry O'Sullivan.

THE LATIN JAZZ ALLIANCE consists of five of New York's outstanding jazz and Latin music artists. The group performs a repertoire of Latin jazz reminiscent of Tito Puente, Mongo Santamaria and Cal Tjader.

Pianist Dave Braham has a history of performing with many of the greats in jazz and Latin music. During the 1980s he traveled extensively with the Houston Person-Etta Jones group. He has also peformed and/or recorded with singers such as Irene Reid, Ernestine Anderson, Arthur Prysock, Mark Murphy and Della Griffen. His experience also includes gigs and recordings with Lou Donaldson, Al Grey, David "Fathead" Newman, Nicky Marrero, Johnny Lytle, Ray Vega and others.

The other members of the quintet also have impressive credentials. Bassist Victor Venegas has performed with Cal Tjader, Willie Bobo, Mongo Santamaria, Machito, Jovenes del Barrio, Eddie Palmieri and Charlie Palmieri. He continues to perform regularly with Dave Amram and Candido. Al Acosta, sax and flute, has performed with Xavier Cugat, Charlie Palmieri, Tito Puente, Frank Foster and Ray Santos. Al has also contributed original compositions to the quintet's book. Conguero Willie Everich, in addition to Latin jazz experience with artists like Ray Vega, Orquesta Flamboyan and La Banda Chez, has been very active in the NY folkloric percussion scene playing with the groups of Eugenio "Totico" Arango. Raul Paonessa, who plays drums and timbales, has performed with Mongo Santamaria and Hilton Ruiz.

TAMARA MAGNITSKY is a product of a multigenerational expression of female poets. She has experienced poetry as a sustaining influence throughout her life. She is currently publishing her first book of poetry, called Celestial Thunder. She was first place winner at the Yonkers Public Library Poetry Slam in the fall of 2000 and has been a guest speaker and poet on numerous radio programs in Westchester County. Tamara is also a Data Analyst at the New York Blood Center, a Certified Intuitive Counselor and portrait artist.

LENARD D. MOORE, founder and executive director of the Carolina African American Writers' Collective, is the author of Desert Storm: A Brief History (1993); Forever Home (1992); and The Open Eye (1985). His poems, essays, and book reviews have appeared in more than 350 publications in more than a dozen countries. He is the recipient of The Alumni Achievement Award (Shaw University, 2000); The Tar Heel of the Week Award (1998); Margaret Walker Creative Writing Award (1997); The Indies Arts Award (1996); and The Haiku Museum of Tokyo Award (1994 and 1983); among several other awards. He has taught at Enloe High School; NC A&T State University; and NC State University. Currently, he teaches English and humanities at Shaw University. He also is Writer-in-Residence for the United Arts Council of Raleigh and Wake County. In addition, he is the Executive Chairman of the North Carolina Haiku Society.

YAMINI NAYAR is a visual and performance artist who is currently an artist-in-residence at the Kindredom think tank in Times Square, New York City. She has performed her poetry in venues such as Nuyorican Poet Café, New York Society of Ethical Culture, and with her multimedia performance group, Kalikut Root, at the Wordstock Festival in Prospect Park, Brooklyn. Yamini was one of the writers and performers of the musical "Women with Voices Ringing", and she wrote "I Be These Roots" for Kelli Hand. A recording of her "Children of the Drum" has been released in England and France. She was art director and executive producer of the Sprite "Voices" television campaign of 2001, and was co-art director of One World magazine. Yamini works as a mentor to teenagers through the organization Youth Speaks.

J. D. PARRAN is a saxophonist, clarinetist, and flutist, whose signature instruments are the rarely heard alto clarinet and the nearly extinct bass saxophone. After appearing on forty-five recordings that outline his deep roots in a wide spectrum of music, Mr. Parran has recently released his first CD as a leader, JD Parran & Spirit Stage, featuring the poetry of Shirley LeFlore. He was a member of New Winds with Robert Dick and Ned Rothenberg for fifteen years, and he has performed with the Vision Orchestra led by Bill Dixon and Alan Silva. Recently he has performed at the Library of Congress with Anthony Braxton, at the London Jazz Festival with Roy Nathanson and Elvis Costello, at the Salzburg Festival, and at the New York City Ballet. Mr. Parran teaches at City University of New York and at The Harlem School of the Arts, where he has served as Music Department Chair and Director of Jazz and African-American Music Studies.

NICKI PARROTT, bassist, came to New York from Australia in 1994 to study with acclaimed bassist, Rufus Reid. She has performed at major festivals, including the Mary Lou Williams Jazz Festival. Downbeat said of her in a review of her Bern, Switzerland festival appearance: "Nicki Parrott's lead on 'A Man I Love' …transformed a conservative audience into an enthusiastic mob demanding double encores." She has appeared in the pit of Broadway shows such as You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, Jekyll and Hyde, and The Lion King. Nicki co-leads with guitarist Ron Jackson on the recently released CD, Concrete Jungle.

POPPY made her first public poetry appearance as a teenager, at the Castillo Theater in Manhattan, and hit the cafe/open mike scene several years later. She earned her stripes at the renowned Nuyorican Poet's Cafe's poetry slams, and was a member of the undefeated 1995 New York Slam Team at Ann Arbor, Michigan's national poetry competition. Poppy earned her M.A. from City College's graduate creative writing program, and published her first book of poetry, Pissin' Blue, in 1997. Her second collection, Creepin' Through da Hinge, was published late last year. She performs frequently throughout the tri-state area, and has worked with the Poetry Outreach Center.

GOLDA SOLOMON, Po'Jazz project director, is a professor of communications, poet, performer and producer. She is both a docent to jazz venues through her business JazzJaunts and a supporter to women musicians. Along with Barbara Sfraga and Gha’il Rhodes Benjamin, Solomon is co-founder of ICAAN (Interactive Communication and Arts Network). Po’Jazz combines her two passions, poetry and jazz, and she selects musicians with an ear to the poetry they will be improvising behind. Her chapbook, Flatbush Cowgirl, was published in 2000, and she has just produced a companion CD of her poems, First Set.

Po'Jazz Fall 2002

Po'Jazz Spring 2002

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