.B. Spellman Poetry Reading: Between the Night and Its Music

The New Mexico Jazz Festival is proud to partner once again with Collected Works Bookstore and Coffeeshop in Santa Fe — to present a reading by the amazing A.B. Spellman who, at age 90, has just released a new book of poetry called Between the Night and Its Music/New and Selected Poems on Wesleyan University Press. A.B. who is known to festival-goers as the retired NEA Deputy Chairman and architect of the NEA Jazz Masters Program (and NEA Jazz Master, himself) who has conducted the fascinating Meet the NEA Jazz Master conversations every year since the festival’s founding in 2006. This year we will focus on A.B.’s own artistic work as both a writer and performer. We will present this reading at Collected Works on Saturday and on Sunday the 21st at 7:30pm at the Lensic we will present the Grammy Award winning collaborative piece called Passion for Bach & Coltrane featuring A.B. as poet and orator along with the Imani Winds Quintet; the Harlem Quartet; and jazz trio comprising Alex Brown, Edward Perez & Neal Smith. A. B. Spellman is an acclaimed American poet, music critic, and arts administrator. He is widely recognized as a leading figure in the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s, a cultural and literary movement that emphasized Black identity, pride, and artistic expression. Between the Night and Its Music brings together A. B. Spellman's early work with a collection of powerful new poems. Spellman's literary career took flight in 1965 with his debut poetry collection, The Beautiful Days, which introduced his distinctive voice blending elements of jazz, blues, and African oral traditions. In 1966, Four Lives in the Bebop Business established Spellman as a respected music critic and scholar. It was a groundbreaking work that chronicled the lives and struggles of four influential jazz musicians. Spellman held senior positions at the National Endowment for the Arts for thirty years with lasting impact on arts funding for inner cities and rural and tribal communities. In addition to poems from The Beautiful Days (1965) and Things I Must Have Known (2008), this book contains a trove of new and uncollected poems, confirming Spellman's continued centrality to contemporary American literature. This is an essential volume for readers already familiar with Spellman, and an excellent introduction for new readers. Lauri Scheyer's introduction situates Spellman's work within jazz writing, Black Arts, and American poetry broadly. FREE.

Books will be available to purchase at both the reading and the Passion for Bach & Coltrane concert at the Lensic the following evening
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