Benjamin Boone releases a new jazz + poetry collab, gets inducted into Valley Music Hall of Fame.
Plus, a release for the long-awaited EP from Crewmatic.
The fact that Benjamin Boone released a new album the week before he officially becomes a Valley Music Hall of Famer is nice coincidence, in a two-birds, one-stone kind of way.
It offers the chance to talk about the album (Boone’s fourth in a series of collaborations with contemporary poets) and remind readers of the Hall of Fame’s upcoming induction ceremony, which happens Wednesday night at Roger Rocka’s Dinner Theater.
Let’s take the ceremony first: Tickets for the dinner and show are $85 and should be purchased in advance (check with the Roger Rocka’s box office).
It’s a semi-formal event, so dress up if you go.
Organizers promise live music inspired by the inductees, some of whom will be performing. So, one could assume Boone will play some point.
As reminder, the list of inductees for 2023 includes Boone; mandolin legend Kenny Hall; the Native American rock band Redbone; Flamenco guitar master Juan Serrano, and singer/recording artist Ann Thaxter.
Boone has a long resume of accomplishments that qualify him for induction into the Hall of Fame, including having one of his orchestral works premier at Walt Disney Hall in Los Angeles. Mostly, he is well known in jazz circles (like, with a loooong list of awards and such) as a player, educator and composer with a penchant for exploration.
See: Trips to Ireland, Ghana, and the Republic of Moldova as a Fulbright Scholar. And also his most recent collaborations, which have been documented in a series of recordings on the jazz and classical music label Origin.
The latest, “Caught in the Rhythm,” was released on Friday and has Boone paired up with six contemporary poets on 13 tracks that were recorded over three sessions beginning in 2019.
The poets (Kimiko Hahn, Faylita Hicks, Edward Hirsch, T. R. Hummer, Tyehimba Jess and Patrick Sylvain) are joined by more than a dozen musicians in capturing Boone’s jazz-poetry concept, which is centered on finding the musicality naturally locked within the spoken word.
As Boone has said: “When I hear people speak, I hear it as music.”
Hicks, a queer Afro-Latinx writer, spoken word artist, and cultural strategist, gets the most attention on the album, with four tracks, including “Hoodwitches” (playing off the title of their debut book) and “ASMR Sleepcast: The Night After Being Released from the Rural County Jail.”
Upcoming: Crewmatic Ep release at Strummer’s
Crewmatic made its official debut in concert more than a year ago, teasing an EP worth of jazzy hip-hop soul tunes.
Then, the band sort of disappeared back into the work.
On Thursday, that five-song self-titled EP will finally be released into the world and the band will celebrate with a performance at Strummer’s.
The show happens at 8 p.m. with a $10 ticket and a killer lineup that includes funk-punk killers MKC and rapper Otis Reed, doing a live-band set.
Crewmatic was originally conceived as a partnership between Cloudship drummer/singer and all-over the-place musician Brandon Freeman and emcee/rapper Catch Benevedo, but quickly turned into a large-scale collaboration. The band operates as a nine-piece (at least in press photos and the like) but can fluctuate up to a dozen players depending on who’s available.
That’s it for this week. Remember you can now hear me on the Homegrown Show Sundays at 8 p.m. on New Rock 104.1 FM. Tonight’s show has an interview with the rock band Blackwater Baptized. If you have anything you think I need to be looking at or listening to, feel free to let me know: jtehee@gmail.com