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, April 15^TH, 2004 6 - 8 p.m.

Po’Jazz, the one-of-a-kind jazz and poetry series, is honored to feature acclaimed author Esmeralda Santiago and award-winning poet and writer Robin Metz in its third Thursday evening of the month slot on April 18^th 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.

“The Medicine Woman of Jazz,” host and poet Golda Solomon also welcomes innovative cellist Karen Patterson, writer Francine Lassandro, poets Sandra Del Valle and Christine Lewis, and the Ila Cantor Quartet (guitar, piano, bass, and drums) with special guest Lucas Cantor on guitar. The 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.”

Esmeralda Santiago is the author of two memoirs (a third is due out in August), a novel, América's Dream, and is co-editor of two anthologies. Upon publication of her first book, the memoir When I was Puerto Rican, Ms. Santiago was hailed as “a welcome new voice, full of passion and authority,” by the Washington Post Book World. Her second memoir, Almost a Woman, was adapted into a film for ExxonMobil Masterpiece Theatre. Robin Metz has won awards for both his poetry and his fiction. He currently teaches at Knox College in Illinois, and directs its creative writing program. His volume of poetry, Unbidden Angel, was awarded the Rainer Maria Rilke International Poetry Prize. Of that collection, DePauw University Professor Barbara Bean says, “These are such poems of the body, so musical, so tactile, they beg to be read aloud and felt on the tongue.”

Gladys Serrano of Mutable Music says, “Po’Jazz at Cornelia Street is one big friendly party of good words, good sounds, and good food.” Po’Jazz 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. 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, May 20th, from 6 until 8.

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

About the Artists

Ila Cantor’s 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. Currently at the New School jazz program, 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.

Lucas Cantor, guitar, has studied with guitar greats Jon Scofield, Jon Abercrombie, Doug Munro, and Randy Johnston. His performance credentials include appearances at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Cathedral of St. John the Divine, Studio 54, Joe’s Pub, and many of Westchester's hottest Jazz clubs. He will graduate from SUNY Purchase this May with a degree in Jazz Performance.

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, and says 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.

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.

Francine Lassandro, writer and poet, has had a fascination for language and how it works for as long as she can remember. As a student of voice and drama, she enjoyed testing the power of the written word through inflection, intonation, and resonance in her performances and recitals. Her passion for language led her to a career in higher education, and she is currently an Adjunct Lecturer at Manhattan College, where she teaches English and College Writing. She has both performed in and directed community theatre productions, completed a collection of short stories, Riding the Wings of an Angel, and is working on a novel, The Lemon Tree. In a more scholarly pursuit, she is researching the life of Giuseppe di Lampedusa and his work, Il Gattopardo, (The Leopard) as compared to Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With The Wind.

Christine Lewis, poet, is a Jill of many genres. Dancer, performer, and poet, she brings her unique Trinidadian voice to poetry that moves with island flavor and rhythms.

Robin Metz, poet, is a graduate of Princeton University and the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He currently teaches at Knox College, where he is Philip Sidney Post Professor of English and Director of The Program in Creative Writing, which has won three national collegiate championships and a national Pacemaker Award for its literary magazine, Catch. Metz’s volume of poems, Unbidden Angel, was awarded the Rainer Maria Rilke International Poetry Prize. It was also selected as one of 25 recommended books by the White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Health. Individual poems were selected as texts for original jazz compositions by Mitar Covic, Lloyd King, and Darin Wilson; for the piano suite “Grasping for Silence” by ASCAP award winner Bruce Polay; and for various multi-media installations, musical performances, and stage performances. His fiction, poetry, and non-fiction have appeared in The Paris Review, International Poetry Review, Epoch, Visions International, and numerous other periodicals. Among his many writing awards are fellowships from the Illinois Arts Council; two NEA/PEN Syndicated Fiction Prizes; the Marshall Frankel American Fiction Prize; the Mississippi Valley International Poetry Prize; finalist designation for the Atlanta Review’s International Poetry Prize, and two Roll of honor citations in The Best American Short Stories.

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 improvisation 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.”

Esmeralda Santiago is the author of a novel, America's Dream, and two memoirs, When I Was Puerto Rican and Almost a Woman, which was the basis for an ExxonMobil Masterpiece Theatre presentation that premiered on PBS in September 2002. With Joie Davidow, Ms. Santiago is coeditor of the anthologies, Las Christmas: Favorite Latino Authors Share Their Holiday Memories and Las Mamis: Favorite Latino Authors Remember their Mothers. Her third memoir will be published by Perseus Books in August 2004. Her essays and opinion pieces have appeared in national newspapers including The New York Times and The Boston Globe, and in mass market magazines like House & Garden, Metropolitan Home, and Good Housekeeping. Born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Ms. Santiago came to the United States at the age of 13 and attended New York City’s Performing Arts High School, majoring in drama and dance. After eight years of part-time study at community colleges, she transferred to Harvard University with a full scholarship, where she studied film production and graduated magna cum laude. Shortly after graduation, she and her husband, Frank Cantor, founded CANTOMEDIA, a film and media production company, which has won numerous awards for excellence in documentary filmmaking. Her writing career evolved from her work as a producer/writer of documentary and educational films. In addition to her literary endeavors, Ms. Santiago is an active volunteer and spokesperson for various organizations, and she founded a shelter for battered women and their children.

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.