National Poetry Month on Echoes

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April is National Poetry Month

Though Echoes is primarily an instrumental music program, the human voice occasionally makes an appearance. Sometimes, it even takes the form of poetry. Over the years we've chronicled a few intersections between music and verse, from ancient odes to modern text. To commemorate National Poetry Month, we'll listen to a few here.

~Kimberly Haas

CURIUM:
e.e. cummings Fried in a Hard Drive
(2007)
e. e. cummings

e. e. cummings

E.E. Cummings

=listen=

E.E. Cummings was a poet in word and form, sculpting his verse in graphic designs and synthesist Evan Sorenstein has plugged into this. Under his recording guise as Curium he's made a beguiling recording, setting charming readings of Cummings poetry, read by a 3-year-old girl, an 80-something grandmother and everyone in between. Processed, stretched and distorted, he's set their words in a subtle ambient soundscape on the album Nowever. Curium talks about a poetry and music disc that transcends the form.

Loreena McKennitt is a Canadian singer who has adopted the Celtic harp as her main instrument and Ireland as her spiritual home. In 1992, Loreena McKennitt talked with us about music she made in a church belfry for his first U.S. album, The Visit. The singer adapted lyrics from Shakespeare and Tennyson, drew on myths of Ireland and Japan, and merged Eastern tonalities with Celtic melodies.

Loreena McKennitt: Celtic Soul from Canada
(1992)

Loreena McKennitt

Philip Glass	PHILIP GLASS AND ALLEN GINSBERG: Hydrogen Jukebox (1990) In 1990, world-renowned composer Philip Glass created a performance cantata with Allen Ginsberg's poetic exploration of America's changing values. We recorded the performance and talked with Glass and Ginsberg at the world premiere at the American Music Theatre Festival in Philadelphia, followed by runs at the Spoleto Festivals in South Carolina and Italy. =listen=	Allen Ginsberg

Axiom of Choice is a Los Angeles based Persian fusion group that merges sounds of the Middle East with atmospheres of the west. Their CD Unfolding is an ecstatic take on the poetry of Omar Khayyam, sung in Farsi by Axiom singer Mamak Khadem. She's surrounded by the strings of Loga Ramin Torkian who plays quarter tone guitar and saz and Martin Tillman's transformative electric cello. Armenian duduk and Middle eastern percussion add to a deeply sensual and spiritual passage. Mamak and Loga talk about the spirit of Omar Khayam and the spirit of Unfolding.

AXIOM OF CHOICE:
Persian Poetics
(2002)

Axiom of Choice

=listen=

Jonathan Elias

JONATHAN ELIAS:
The Prayer Cycle
(1999)
We talk to Jonathan Elias, composer of "The Prayer Cycle." Elias reveals the motivation behind his world music lament which features Ofra Haza, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Alanis Morissette.

=listen=

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