Yusef Komunyakaa with Hafez Modirzadeh: October 18, 2013

The Poetry Center, in collaboration with The Green Arcade and with gratitude to our hosts, McRoskey Mattress Co., presents Yusef Komunyakaa reading his poetry, with composer, musician and teacher Hafez Modirzadeh on saxophone, improvising around the Charlie Parker songbook. Komunyakaa, on a brief visit from New York City, reads poems included in his then-just released book, Testimony: A Tribute to Charlie Parker (Wesleyan University Press, 2013); various of his "jazz poems" having been incorporated into the libretto for an Australian Broadcasting Corporation-sponsored work, with music by composer Sandy Evans, included on a CD with the book, and drawing from the breadth of his poems as included in Pleasure Dome: New Collected Poems (Wesleyan, 2001).

The debut improvised duo performance takes place on a stormy night at McRoskey Mattress Co., on Market Street in San Francisco. Steve Dickison introduces the players, following Patrick Marks, of The Green Arcade, welcoming the audience. Komunyakaa lets the pieces speak for themselves, but dedicates the night's reading to the memory of long-time colleague, composer and saxophonist John Tchicai (who had died one year earlier, October 8, 2012, in France).

Note: an unfortunate brief audio drop-out occurs near the start of Modirzadeh's opening improvisation. The quality of this digital video from Fall 2013 is compromised due to the loss of master-files from failure of a 'failsafe' set of mirrored hard-drives; fortunately, a compressed video file could be retrieved from DVD backup.