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, March 17th, 2005 6 - 8 p.m.

Po’Jazz, the one-of-a-kind jazz and poetry series at The Cornelia Street Café, celebrates American music on March 17th with acclaimed pianist Robert DeGaetano. This very special performance will take place Downstairs at the Café in the series’ third Thursday evening of the month slot beginning at 6 pm. 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.

Poet and host Golda Solomon, “The Medicine Woman of Jazz,” will be joined by poets Ellen Goldsmith, Angelo Verga and Sandy DelValle and writer Francine Lassandro. The Po’Jazz House Quartet officially becomes a Quintet this month with the addition of Jonathan Rossman’s alto sax to the lineup of Eliot Cardinaux on piano, Adam Chilenski on bass, Bram Kincheloe on drums, and Daniel Levine on trumpet.

Native New Yorker Robert DeGaetano is a brilliant pianist and a composer of striking originality and communicative intensity. A review in The Westsider calls him “a true virtuoso, bravely attempting musical feats many other pianists…can't quite achieve. He's exciting and interesting...and his range of dynamics…can hit the solar plexus.” The Atlanta Constitution says “DeGaetano has the fire of youth.” Mr. DeGaetano will be taking advantage of the informal and congenial Po’Jazz setting to perform his Piano Voyage Age of Aquarius and some new transcriptions of American and Italian pop tunes, as well as some Gershwin and Gottschalk and a short jazz etude by Dick Hyman dedicated to Art Tatum.

Golda Solomon’s unique brand of jazz-flavored 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). Last year, Golda was featured at the 92nd Street Y’s Makor Marathon and Mamapalooza at the Bowery Poetry Club, she headlined a pair of performances in Denver, Colorado, and she was a finalist in the Jazz Poetry Slam at Nuyorican Café hosted by WBGO’s Gary Walker.

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 2.5 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, April 21st, from 6 until 8.

About the Artists
( e-mail info@icaan.biz for photos)

Eliot Cardinaux, piano, is a 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.

Robert DeGaetano, pianist and composer, is a graduate of The Juilliard School, where he studied with Adele Marcus and Rosina Lhevinne. He was the first musician ever to be awarded a Rotary International Scholarship, enabling him to live in Paris and continue his studies with Alexis Weissenberg. Upon the recommendation of world-renown musicians David Oistrakh and Sviatoslav Richter, Mr. DeGaetano embarked on an active concert career under the auspices of the legendary Sol Hurok. He made his New York recital debut at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts’ Alice Tully Hall and his orchestra debut with the San Antonio Symphony. Since then, his touring schedule has taken him to all fifty states as well as the major music capitals of Europe. He has been a frequent guest soloist with orchestras across the United States, including those of Dallas, Denver, Indianapolis, New Orleans, Pittsburgh, San Antonio, San Diego and the Boston Pops. In 1986, Mr. DeGaetano emerged as a composer and performed the New York City and domestic and international tour premieres of his own first Piano Sonata. As a result of the overwhelming critical praise for this work, he was commissioned by Michigan's Jackson Symphony Orchestra to compose his first Piano Concerto, which he premiered in March of 1998 to equally enthusiastic response. The Challenger, Mr. DeGaetano's suite for solo piano written in tribute to the seven astronauts killed in the 1986 space shuttle tragedy, was commissioned by Miss Alice Tully. The world premiere occurred in the presence of the astronauts’ families in November, 1987 at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, with the composer at the piano. Robert DeGaetano is currently represented on CD by six acclaimed albums - devoted to the music of Chopin, DeGaetano, Gottschalk, Liszt, and Rachmaninov - all on the Crystonyx label. For more information, visit www.degaetano.com.

Sandy DelValle, poet, began writing poetry 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., published in 2003.

Ellen Goldsmith is a poet and teacher whose present work is exploring issues and change and continuity.  Her poetry has appeared in a number of magazines and journals, and her collection, No Pine Tree in This Forest Is Perfect, won The Hudson Valley Writers’ Center 1997 chapbook competition.  She has won a number of Creative Incentive Awards from The City University of New York. A Professor in the English Department at NYC College of Technology, Ellen Goldsmith established the Center for Intergenerational Reading to address equity issues in relation to the literacy development of young children and their families.  She has won awards from the New York Metropolitan Association of Developmental Educators and from the National Association for Developmental Education for her family literacy work.

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. One year later, he left to attend the Manhattan School of Music, where he is currently studying with Justin Dicioccio.

Francine Lassandro, Adjunct Lecturer, writer, and poet, returns to Po’Jazz for her second performance in the Writer’s Room at The Cornelia Street Café. She brings to the series her keen observations of the world around her with her penchant for description. As a storyteller, through her artful choice of words and dramatic delivery, she allows the audience to embrace her world and to identify with the emotions that she feels which helps us to clarify and better understand our very own lives, giving richer and deeper meaning to why we are here. 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 comparing his work, Il Gattopardo (The Leopard) to Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With The Wind.

Daniel Levine, trumpet, grew up in New York City in a family of musicians. He started playing trumpet at age 11, and became interested in jazz 2 years later when he first heard Miles Davis and John Coltrane. After three years of high school, he dropped out to have more time to practice, play and enjoy the wealth of music in New York City, and began meeting the various musicians he would come to play with at Po’Jazz and elsewhere. He moved to Boston to study at the New England Conservatory for a year, then returned to New York, where he is currently attending the Manhattan School of Music and having a great time playing and digging music.

Jonathan Rossman, alto sax, moved to New York in 2000 to pursue his studies in music at New York University, where he studied with two legendary teachers- Ralph Lalama and George Garzone. He quickly became immersed in the New York city jazz scene, playing gigs at such places as Birdland, Bluenote, Cornelia Street Café, and the Knitting Factory. As an integral part of the young jazz community, he was responsible for the creation of the jazz scene at Totem Jazz Club in the East Village. Jonathan has received awards from the National Foundation for the Arts, the John Coltrane Foundation, and the Eubie Blake foundation. In 2003 he attended a residency at the Banff Jazz Workshop where he performed with such jazz greats as Dave Douglas, Mark Turner and John Abercrombie. He has performed extensively across the United States, in Canada, and in Europe.

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. She and poet Monique Avakian are currently conducting “From Page to Performance” workshops for emerging poets and “ready to come out of the closet” writers. 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.

Angelo Verga’s poems have appeared in scores of journals, including The Village Voice, Graffiti Rag, Rattle, Hanging Loose, The Massachusetts Review, Pearl, The New Orleans Poetry Forum, Mudfish, and Paterson Literary Review, as well as in Birthday Poems, an anthology of 20th century American verse. He has 2 collections of poems: Across The Street From Lincoln Hospital and The Six O'clock News, for which he won the Quentin R. Howard Poetry Prize. He is also the recipient of a Bronx Council on the Arts BRIO award and the 1999 Graffiti Rag Prize. Verga has read at St. Mark’s Church, The Knitting Factory, Grolier Poetry Book Shop, and on radio and cable TV. He is a founding member of Against the Tide: Poets for Peace, is on the executive board of The NYC Poetry Calendar, and curates poetry & performance at The Cornelia Street Café.