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Published on 5/8/08
Video
The notion of combining poetry and jazz calls to mind the decades-old image of a beret-bedecked, goateed beatnik reciting verse over smoky bop figures. That model may have worked for Jack Kerouac and Kenneth Rexroth, but it clearly wasn’t what Sam Sadigursky, a Los Angeles–born Brooklynite saxophonist-composer, had in mind when he conceived The Words Project, a new cycle of ten songs based on contemporary poetry.
Instead, Sadigursky took his lead from a handful of notable jazz artists—foremost among them Steve Lacy, Fred Hersch and Frank Carlberg—who fused poetry and music in a manner akin to that employed by classical-song composers for centuries. Rather than imagining music as a backdrop for the verses he selected, Sadigursky sought to fashion settings and performances that would reflect the shape and spirit conjured in the poets’ words.
The quiet mystery of Czeslaw Milosz’s “After Paradise” is echoed in vocalist Heather Masse’s deep timbre, poured out slowly over an angular piano melody embellished with purring accordion, rolling cymbals and breathy flute. Sadigursky evokes the snowy quiet of Paul Auster’s “Still Life” with fluttering soprano sax and Becca Stevens’s light, clean voice. Monika Heidemann sings Marina Tsvetaeva’s “I’m Glad Your Sickness” with a compelling tone of ambiguity, and recites Sylvia Plath’s “You’re” without posturing. Noam Weinstein’s downbeat delivery of Maxine Kumin’s “After Love” ends the disc on a touchingly intimate note.
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