The great poet Yusef Komunyakaa was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards this last September and I was fortunate to have been commissioned to compose and perform a brief piece of music for the event. Celebrating “90 Years of truth telling through literature,” you can watch our performance in the first five minutes of the ceremony:
I had initially favored a compositional approach featuring multiple samples and overlapping musical motives influenced by Meshell Ndegeocello’s incredible recent No More Water project. But after having chosen to set “The Candlelight Lounge”–a poem referring to the author’s love for the now-defunct Trenton, NJ jazz club–a more straight-ahead and explicitly blues-oriented approach made sense.
Dr. Dave Thomas and I got together to plot out a few shifting vamps that would set the stage for the wonderful actor/vocalist Tony Sias to interpret the text. Bill Ransom joined on trap kit to animate the organ trio and it was a go.
Sometimes lovingly referred to as the “Black Pulitzers,” The Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards and its related constellation of people and activities are a gift. I’m pleased with how this piece/performance came out and am still so honored to have been invited to contribute.
AJ Kluth 