Contact: Golda Solomon, 877-529-9528, or gs@goldajazz.com

Cornelia Street Café: corneliastreetcafe@earthlink.net

For immediate release

Po’Jazz at The Cornelia Street Cafe

Poetry in Partnership with Jazz

Thursday, October 21^st, 2004 6 - 8 p.m.

Po’Jazz, the one-of-a-kind jazz and poetry series, is in its third Thursday evening of the month slot on October 21st Downstairs at The Cornelia Street Café. The downstairs room opens at 5:30 for early dining and imbibing (serving the same fine food as upstairs). Admission is $15 ($13 students/seniors), which includes one drink.

Host Golda Solomon, “The Medicine Woman of Jazz,” welcomes saxophonist/flutist Carol Sudhalter and poet Veronica Golos to the program. The evening will also feature poet Alana Free and three members of Ms. Golos’ writing workshop, Kim Irwin, Ritu Kalra, and Lisa Ramirez, as well as the Po’Jazz Quartet, consisting of Eliot Cardinaux on piano, Adam Chilenski on bass, Bram Kincheloe on drums, and Daniel Levine on trumpet.

The multitalented Carol Sudhalter (flute, baritone sax, and tenor sax) is founder of the Astoria Big Band. In addition to regularly playing in the New York area, she has performed at festivals across the U.S. and Europe, and frequently tours Italy and Switzerland. In a review of this year’s Mary Lou Williams Women in Jazz Festival at the Kennedy Center, Peter Westbrook called her Astoria Jazz Band “a breath of fresh air.” Time Out Magazine recently said that Carol’s “warm, gutsy sound will put you in mind of Hawk and Bean.”

Veronica Golos is curator of WhYWords, a new poetry/performance series at the 92nd Street Y/Makor Café, and author of A Bell Buried Deep, co-winner of the 16th Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize and 2004 Pushcart Prize nominee. In the words of performance poet Patricia Smith, “(Golos’) body of work shines with quiet brilliance.”

Golda Solomon’s unique brand of jazz-flavored poetry was recently featured at a pair of performances in Denver, Colorado, at the 92nd Street Y’s Makor Marathon, and at Mamapalooza 2004 at the Bowery Poetry Club. Her poetry has been described as having “a rhythm and spontaneity that goes right to the heart… (She) has found her perfect accompaniment in jazz” (Madeline Peters, President and founder of Poet’s Corner).

Po’Jazz is increasingly becoming “the place to be” every third Thursday. Gladys Serrano of Mutable Music says, “Po’Jazz at Cornelia Street is one big friendly party of good words, good sounds, and good food.” Performances are currently being recorded live for a new CD (expected release summer 2005).

This performance is part of a third Thursday of the month poetry and jazz series at The Cornelia Street Café programmed by ICAAN co-founder Golda Solomon in association with JazzJaunts (www.jazzjaunts.com). Dedicated to the belief that the arts are vital for tapping into processes needed for individual healing and community building, ICAAN (Interactive Communication and Arts Network) provides on-site arts programming to workplaces, schools and other organizations. For more information about ICAAN, call 877-529-9528 or visit www.icaan.biz.

The Café is located at 29 Cornelia Street, Greenwich Village, NYC. Po’Jazz events take place in the café’s downstairs performance space. By subway, take the A, C, E, F or V train to West 4th Street, or the 1 or 9 train to Christopher Street - Sheridan Square (walk 2-1/2 blocks east on West 4th and make a right onto Cornelia Street.) By car, take 7th Avenue south to Bleecker; left on Bleecker; left onto Cornelia. For more information, visit www.corneliastreetcafe.com, or call 212-989-9319.

The Cornelia Street Café poetry series is curated by Angelo Verga. The next event in this series will be held on Thursday, November 18th, from 6 until 8.

Artist bios follow; e-mail info@icaan.biz for photos.

About the Artists

Eliot Cardinaux, piano, is currently a first year jazz piano student at the Manhattan School of Music. He was born in Dayton, Ohio in 1984 and moved to New York in the fall of 2003. He began playing jazz piano at the age of 15.

Adam Chilenski, bass, is excited to be living in NYC. Having recently moved here from Portland, Maine he already considers it his home. Adam has been making a living as a musician since high school, and says he has no plans to do anything else.

Alana Free, poet, is a published writer and editor of The Mom Egg. Her monologues have been performed at the Bowery Poetry Club and The Cutting Room. Alana met Golda while performing at Mamapalooza, an annual festival that celebrates mother-artists. She spent her formative years in Atlantic Canada, and after University lived and studied in Israel. While residing the last decade in Manhattan, she fulfilled the dream of completing a Masters degree in Jewish Studies while raising her son.

Vernoica Golos, poet, is the author of A Bell Buried Deep, co-winner of the 16th Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize, (Story Line Press), and nominated for a 2004 Pushcart Prize by Edward Hirsch. She was a 2003 recipient of a three-month residency at the Wurlitzer Foundation, in Taos, New Mexico. From 1999-2003, Ms. Golos was the Artistic Director for Literary Programs at the Sol Goldman 14th St Y in New York City where she curated the award-winning series, WhYwomen/WhYwords. The series has moved to Makor. Presently, Ms. Golos teaches poetry and multi-genre writing for Poets & Writers, Poets House and Makor (92nd St Y) and the Nassau County Museum of the Holocaust. Golos is on the Faculty of Makor's Artist's Network, where she will be teaching a workshop “Myth, Midrash and the Mask” with poet Alicia Ostriker in November. She is a poetry editor for The Other Half: A Magazine for Emerging Artists of Color and is part of the trio, 3poets4peace, which performs and donates all proceeds to peace organizations. She has been nominated for membership in PEN.

Kim Irwin, poet, is a visual and performance artist who writes poetry. Her WE ARE SECRETARIES project recruited over 100 working women to type their autobiographies at public performances in six U.S. cities. Described as “a pro-woman pep rally,” the WANTED: X-Cheerleaders project, with choreographer Jody Oberfelder and a squad ages 25 to 56, has performed cheers about women’s issues from NYC to Chicago to Atlanta and got 2,000 working women to their feet cheering for equal pay. Kim has performed at Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors and at the New Museum. She is currently working on a manuscript of poems about the inhumanity of white privilege and what this monstrous lie looks like, sounds like, and feels like.

Ritu Kalra, poet, is a recovering bond trader and investment banker who is taking refuge as a graduate student in journalism at NYU. Her work focuses on the nature of global economics, and the connections between economy and ecology, metaphor and metamorphosis. She is fascinated by many things, including the physics of space and time, infinite sets of numbers, and consciousness. She has written for Newsday and Reuters, and is currently at Forbes magazine. Ritu enjoys flossing, and has missed many a train because of it.

Bram Kincheloe, drums, has been playing music all of his life, starting drum lessons at the age of five and taking piano lessons from his mother. He has toured Japan twice with the Monterey Jazz Festival High School All Star Band, and visited Amsterdam twice to study at the Conservatory Von Amsterdam. Bram moved to New York at the age of 16 to study at the LaGuardia High School of Performing Arts, and, after one year, left to attend the Manhattan School of Music, where he is currently studying with Justin Dicioccio.

Lisa Ramirez, poet, is an award winning actor, director, and playwright. She is a founding member of the Actors Theatre of San Francisco, and former literary director for ¡Brava! For Women In The Arts. She is a member of Veronica Golos’ Writing to the Bone Workshop. Lisa most recently joined forces with Coleman Domingo to form Fresh Food Theater Co. which will be dedicated to new work. Exit Cuckoo is her first play.

Golda Solomon, “the medicine woman of jazz,” is a professor of communications, speech, and theater arts; a poet, performer, producer, and docent; a supporter of women musicians as well as young musicians, poets, and performers. She was project director of Po’Jazz at The Hudson Valley Writers’ Center for four years, and co-founded the brooklyn poetry choir. Golda has pioneered several unique businesses including JazzJaunts, a personalized jazz service, and, with Barbara Sfraga, ICAAN (Interactive Communication and Arts Network), which provides innovative, on-site, organization-specific arts programming to workplaces, schools, and other organizations. Golda has a collection of poetry, Flatbush Cowgirl, published in 1999, for which she co-produced a companion CD, First Set. She also co-produced the CD Po’Jazz: Takin’ It To The Hollow, which includes over 20 poets and musicians. In 2002, Golda's poetry won first prize at the Writer's Workshop in Asheville, North Carolina. Her book and CDs are available on www.amazon.com and www.jazzjaunts.com.

Carol Sudhalter, flute, baritone sax and tenor sax, moved to New York from Boston in 1978 to join the first all-female Latin band, Latin Fever, which played the 1978 Salsa Festival at Madison Square Garden alongside Tito Puente. She was the first graduate of Smith College to become a jazz musician. In 1986 she founded the Astoria Big Band, in which she plays baritone sax. Since 1992, Carol has played Sunday Brunch at the Cajun Restaurant, first under the leadership of Jimmy “The Face” Butts; then on his passing, under Butts’ partner Al “Doc” Pittman. On Doc’s passing in January 2003, Carol stepped into the role of leader, and continues as such. She has performed in New York at Trumpet’s, Pumpkins, Birdland, Danny’s Skylite Room, Iridium, Flushing Town Hall, JVC Jazz Festival, and more. She regularly tours Italy and Switzerland and has played numerous jazz festivals in the U.S. and Europe. As music producer, she pioneered several jazz series in her home borough of Queens, including the Athens Square Park Jazz Mondays series (1998-2001), and the Astoria/LIC Waterfront Jazz Festival. She has spent 30 years teaching private flute, saxophone and piano lessons, including six years in the New York Pops “Salute to Music” program. Ms. Sudhalter can be heard with her quartet, sextet and the Astoria Jazz Band on several Carolina Records releases, including the band’s most recent CD, Last Train to Astoria. www.sudhalter.com