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, February 19^TH, 2004 6 - 8 p.m.

The one-of-a-kind jazz and poetry series Po’Jazz will be downstairs at The Cornelia Street Café in its third Thursday evening of the month slot on February 19^th at 6 pm (doors open at 5:30.) Admission is $15 ($13 students/seniors), which includes one drink.

Poets R. Erica Doyle, Amy Montegut, and Sandra Del Valle will join “The Medicine Woman of Jazz,” host Golda Solomon. Their poetry will blend with the music of acclaimed jazz & blues cellist Karen Patterson and drummer Tony Jefferson. The Ila Cantor Quartet (drums, bass, piano and guitar), led by guitarist Ila Cantor and featuring students enrolled in some of the best jazz studies programs in the New York metropolitan area, will get the evening started at 5:45 and then return later to jam with Patterson & Jefferson. Artist bios follow; e-mail info@icaan.biz for photos.

Gladys Serrano of Mutable Music says, “Po’Jazz at Cornelia Street is one big friendly party of good words, good sounds, and good food.”

This performance is part of a third Thursday of the month poetry and jazz series at The Cornelia Street Café programmed and hosted by ICAAN co-founder Golda Solomon in association with JazzJaunts. 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 4^th Street, or the 1 or 9 train to Christopher Street - Sheridan Square (walk 2^1/2 blocks east on West 4^th and make a right onto Cornelia Street.) By car, take 7^th 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, March 18th, from 6 until 8.

About the Artists

Ila Cantor, guitar, has been featured as an emerging artist and a frequent guest of Po'Jazz, but this performance marks her debut as a leader. Her unique and versatile guitar playing has led to gigs in New York, New Jersey, Boston and Barcelona, at jazz clubs, restaurants, and private parties, playing with jazz duo, trio, and larger combos, as well as playing solo jazz guitar and other styles of music such as Spanish boleros, classical, and rock. She debuted at the Iridium with Les Paul in July of 2002. Ila has trained in classical and jazz with Bob Hansmann for over four years. She has studied under several masters, at Berklee School of Music, New School University, and privately; with Rory Stewart, John Scofield, John Abercrombie, Melvin Sparks and Kurt Rosenwinkle, among others. Currently at the New School jazz program, Ila resides in Brooklyn as a guitar student, teacher, and player.

Eliot Cardinaux, piano (Ila Cantor Quartet), 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 (Ila Cantor Quartet), is excited to be living in New York City. 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. He has no plans to do anything else.

Sandra Del Valle, poet, began writing poetry almost three years ago, after practicing law for fourteen years. She spent ten years as a civil rights attorney for the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund in New York City, and currently teaches at the CUNY Law School. She was raised in East New York, Brooklyn, and then Queens, one of five children born to parents who moved from Puerto Rico to EL Barrio in the 1950s. Sandra says that she only found the courage to write creatively after completing a book on language rights in the U.S., due to be published this spring.

R. Erica Doyle, poet, was born in Brooklyn after the riots of ’68. Her work has appeared in Best American Poetry, Best Black Women’s Erotica, Gumbo: Fiction by Black Writers, Role Call, Callaloo, Ploughshares, the St Mark Poetry Project’s Poets and Poems, Ms. Magazine, and Black Issues Book Review. She has received grants and awards from the Hurston/Wright Foundation and the Astraea Lesbian Writers Fund, and she is a fellow of Cave Canem: A Workshop and Retreat for Black Writers.

Tony Jefferson, drums, is a New York native. He attended the Berklee College of Music on scholarship in 1984, and in 1992 he placed third in the Thelonious Monk International Drum Competition. Tony has performed and recorded with many jazz artists including Kenny Drew Jr., Lonnie Smith, Lou Donaldson, Frank Wess, Eddie Harris, Don Friedman, Cyrus Chestnut, Mark Whitfield, Jerry Bergonzi, Joey Calderazzo, Jack Wilkins, Freddie Cole and others. Tony has appeared at many jazz festivals around the world and is an active player on the New York jazz scene. He has been a guest clinician in high school and college workshops and has taught Masters classes nationally and abroad.

Bram Kincheloe, drums (Ila Cantor Quartet), 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. Bram says, “I've met many amazing people through music and Ila is no exception. I am extremely grateful to play with these three friends of mine in this situation, as in any situation.”

Amy Montegut, poet, is a graduate student at Teachers College studying Anthropology. She is returning to writing (at the Frederic Douglas Creative Arts Center) after an extended hiatus from the discipline.

Karen Patterson, cellist, has performed and taught cello for over ten years. Her experience is as varied and unique as the repertoire she performs (jazz, spirituals, classical and contemporary works) and the audiences she reaches (from throughout the United States, South America and Europe). She began her cello studies in an experimental school at the age of eight. In both college and graduate school she combined the study of performance with traditional education. Karen has played in the master classes of Mistislav Rostropovich and Janos Starker and studied jazz improvization with Keter Betts, bassist for Ella Fitzgerald. “When I play the cello,” Karen says, “I know that I am a vessel for something bigger than myself.”

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. Her book and CDs are available on www.mouthwideshut.com.  In 2002, Golda's poetry won first prize at the Writer's Workshop in Asheville, North Carolina. Madeline Peters, President and founder of Poet’s Corner, says of Golda “Her poetry has a rhythm and spontaneity that goes right to the heart. Golda Solomon has found her perfect accompaniment in jazz.”