Benjamin Boone: Caught in the Rhythm Trailer (Origin Records 82879)
BENJAMIN BOONE
Online Video
Jazz music community with review and forums
Liner Notes (by Gene Seymour): It is difficult / to get the news from poems / yet men die miserably / for lack / of what is found there. ~ William Carlos William
By now, this fragment from one of Doctor Williams’s pastorals has become as well-known and widely circulated as “The Red Wheelbarrow.” Poets have always been the star reporters of inner space and, as with the best reporters, they tell us things we didn’t know before; or, closer to the point, things we at best vaguely suspected were there, but couldn’t pin down without a poet’s unholy combination of audacity and precision. There remain important things in our lives that stay “news” longer than whatever cable television, newsprint, or digital feeds tell us and poets can’t help but dig deeper for the truths beyond the reach of mere fact, especially the bastardized “facts” of what we’ve come to know as “fake news,” which has given human imagination a bum rap insofar as its usefulness for understanding the who, what, when, where, and how of our souls’ disparate passages. The poet is here to deliver news-that-stays-news and, if she knows what she’s doing, clears a path to that Truth-and-Beauty signpost John Keats identified centuries ago.
Think of Caught in the Rhythm, then, as an aural front page of dispatches, reveries, declamations, and narratives from past and present that tell you things you may have neglected, forgotten, or not known at all. As he has on three previous albums, Benjamin Boone has merged contemporary poets and their work with the roll, tempo, and spur-of-the-moment invention of jazz music, providing a framework for the spoken word that helps restore poetry’s quasi-musical primacy. As with 2020’s The Poets Are Gathering, Boone, once again the ringleader as arranger, composer, and saxophonist, sets off an exploding kaleidoscope of diverse voices, by turns raw, romantic, funny, elegiac, and emotionally accessible to listeners trying to sort their way through the swamp of the present day.
And, as before, Boone’s alto and soprano saxophones are both listening to and talking with the poetry itself, maintaining a solicitous negotiation with words, images and, most of all, the beat that propels each line. The glittering array of musicians who’ve come along with him on this ride are likewise conversant with each poem’s imperative. As before, the results are enrapturing, at times, breathtaking.
Tunes in this Trailer (There are 7 additional tracks on the album):
Mississippi 1955 Confessional – T.R. Hummer
T.R. Hummer, narration
Benjamin Boone, alto saxophone
Hashem Assadullahi, soprano saxophone
Ben Monder, guitar
Eyal Maoz, guitar
Peter Brendler, bass
John Bishop, drums
Hoodwitches [Redux] – Faylita Hicks
(unmixed outtake)
Faylita Hicks, narration
Benjamin Boone, soprano saxophone
Kevin Person, Jr., keyboard
Philip Sarkisian, bass
McKenna Reeve, drums
Caught In The Rhythm – Patrick Sylvain
Patrick Sylvain, narration
Ambrose Akinmusire, trumpet
Benjamin Boone, alto saxophone
Corcoran Holt, bass
Ari Hoenig, drums
Rodrigo Dalla, percussion
The Case Against Poetry – Edward Hirsch
Edward Hirsch, narrator
Benjamin Boone, alto saxophone
Kenny Werner, piano
Corcoran Holt, bass
Ari Hoenig, drums
Mercy – Tyehimba Jess
Tyehimba Jess, narrator
Benjamin Boone, alto saxophone
Stefan Poetzsch, violin
Kenny Werner, piano
Corcoran Holt, bass
Ari Hoenig, drums
Olivia Suggests All the Women in Class Imagine Male Sexuality – Kimiko Hahn
Kimiko Hahn, narration
Benjamin Boone, alto saxophone
Hashem Assadullahi, alto saxophone
Ben Monder, guitar
Eyal Maoz, guitar
Peter Brendler, bass
John Bishop, drums