The group SACO & As It Is is a unique ensemble with vocal/mbira/piano, percussion, spoken word, and a choir. However, because the choir members do not all having musical backgrounds, they boldly bring challenging improvisational approaches to the music. Their free and easy performing style is gradually drawing attention from the musical community.

Master trumpeter , Ahmed Abdullah, recounts his 2 decades of touring with the great jazz musician Sun Ra in his new memoir, A Strange Celestial Road: My Time in the Sun Ra Arkestra.  

For this zoom event, Abby and Lee will share the first episode of a proposed internet series, Legacies, which focuses on the musician/composer Thomas Chapin who passed away at the age of 40 in 1998 and the efforts of his widow, Terri Castillo Chapin, to preserve, protect and secure his archival legacy at Duke University’s Library of Special Collections for future generations to discover him. During the course of making this film, Terri, herself, passed away. This episode is dedicated to them both.

Glenis Redmond will read from her latest book, Praise Songs for Dave the Potter, Art by Jonathan Green, and Poetry by Glenis Redmond (University of Georgia Press). She is the First Poet Laureate of Greenville, South Carolina. She is a Kennedy Center Teaching Artist, and a Cave Canem alumni.

Kim Coleman Foote will be reading from her debut novel, Coleman Hill, which is the exhilarating story of two American families whose fates become intertwined in the wake of the Great Migration. Braiding fact and fiction, it is a remarkable, character-rich tour de force exploring the ties that bind three generations.

Ras Moshe Burnett is a Brooklyn born saxophonist/composer/educator, hailing from a musical family. He began performing with his own ensembles in 1987. Patricia Spears Jones is the NY State Poet, and is the recipient of the Jackson Poetry Prize, She will be reading from her latest collection, The Beloved Community,

This is going to be great! We will hear from our own Board member, Jacqueline Johnson, as well as fellow contributors to From The Belly: Poets Respond to Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons,, Kaaren Aleiner, Nancy White. It’s guaranteed to be fun!

We are thrilled to present the Makanda Project, a 13-piece ensemble that has become an important part of the Boston jazz scene. Join us!

Join One Breath Rising for an early celebration of Craig Harris’ 70th birthday with original works performed by his trio. Craig Harris is a trombonist, prolific composer, sonic shaman, and one of creative music’s most progressive thought-leaders. From touring with Sun Ra to co-composing the film score for Judas and the Black Messiah, Craig uses his musical voice to comment on social injustice and humanity.

Tony Medina is a multi-genre author/editor of 24 award-winning books for adults and young people, the most recent of which are Che Che Colé (fiction); Death, With Occasional Smiling (poetry); Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Boy (children’s); I Am Alfonso Jones (graphic novel); Resisting Arrest: Poems to Stretch the Sky (anthology).

Jay Rodriguez is a Grammy Nominated Saxophonist, Flautist, Clarinetist, Film Composer, Producer and Arranger. Jay Rodriguez is a visionary artist. His voice on all his instruments is one that has led him to be in demand as a leader and sideman with wildly diverse musicians.

Susana H. Case, Ph. D., is the author of eight books of poetry. The Damage Done, from Broadstone Books (2022) is her newest and won a Pinnacle Award for Best Poetry Book. Dead Shark on the N Train, from Broadstone Books (2020), also won a Pinnacle Book Award for Best Poetry Book, as well as a NYC Big Book Awards Distinguished Favorite, and was a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Award.

Glenis Redmond is the First Poet Laureate of Greenville, South Carolina. She is a Kennedy Center Teaching Artist, and a Cave Canem alumni. She has authored six books of poetry, for which she has won many awards.

Jai Chakrabarti is the author of the novel A Play for the End of the World (Knopf), which won the National Jewish Book Award for debut fiction, was the Association of Jewish Libraries Honor Book, was short-listed for the Tagore Prize, and was long-listed for the PEN/Faulkner Award. He is also the author of the story collection A Small Sacrifice for an Enormous Happiness( Knopf, Feb 2023).

Myronn Hardy is the author of five books of poems, most recently, Radioactive Starlings. Join us on Zoom! See you there!

Join us on Sunday, November 13, 2022 at 4:40 pm on Zoom to celebrate the arrival of At the Crossroads – the One Breath Rising Anthology of Poetry and Prose. Click here to register.

Come celebrate the Brooklyn debut of the extraordinary Makanda Project, a 13-piece ensemble that has become an important part of the Boston jazz scene. Led by pianist, bandleader and arranger, John Kordalewski, the Makanda Project explores and celebrates the richness of the unrecorded music of multi-instrumentalist, composer and educator Dr. Makanda Ken McIntyre.