LATE-BREAKING UPDATE | May 16, 2012

Mississippi’s Kristen Dupard Wins 2012 Poetry Out Loud: National Recitation Contest

National Endowment for the Arts

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Excerpted from “Poetry Out Loud gets high schoolers excited about verse,” by Alison Lobron

Go to the copyrighted original at Boston Globe Magazine, Sunday, May 13, 2012

David S Marshall

Stephanie Igharosa: Massachusetts 2012 finalist for Poetry Out Loud, a National Poetry Recitation Competition

FRAGMENT

… In the final round, all six students deliver strong performances, but one in particular has an added oomph: Stephanie Igharosa, of Randolph High School, recites Al Young’s “The Blues Don’t Change,” and as she finishes, she sweeps one arm downward in a gesture of triumph. “Thank you!” she cries into the microphone, as if she knows she’s nailed it.

And she has. Stephanie, a cross-country runner, Model UN enthusiast, and native of Nigeria, is the new Massachusetts Poetry Out Loud champion. As a freshman, she is also a first-time participant in the contest. Like her fellow Randolph resident Wilmene Hercule in 2009, or Michaela Murray last year, she faces none of the pressure of a repeat performance. As the 14-year-old stands onstage, with a crown of leaves on her head, she smiles and blinks back tears.

… In Washington, Stephanie will recite the same three poems that she did in the state finals: “Richard Cory,” by Edwin Arlington Robinson, “The Man With the Hoe,” by Edwin Markham, and “The Blues Don’t Change,” by Al Young. Her favorite is the Markham poem. “It was the one I really had to try to understand,” she says. “It was the most challenging to memorize.”

“I love challenges,” she adds.

© 2012 Boston Globe and Alison Lobron

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Related posts

Ashly Brun performs Al Young’s “The Blues Don’t Change” at the Massachusetts Poetry Out Loud state finals (March 28, 2012)

Sophomore (Lily Hargis at Richmond, VA’s Maggie L. Walker Governor’s School for Government and International Studies) wins Poetry Out Loud contest (February 20, 2012)

Saul Williams reads Al Young’s “The Blues Don’t Change” at PoemsEveryDay (February 24, 2010)

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© Prentiss Taylor

Prentiss Taylor’s 1935 photo of Zora Neale Hurston performing the crow dance. | Courtesy of Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library

• View Susan Sontag, Marcel Proust, Ernest Hemingway and the rest of Emily Temple’s silly photo finds — 15 in all — at Flavorwire’s winsome Books section

Other Emily Temple posts at Flavorwire

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“Jon Faddis is a complete and consummate musician – conductor, composer, and educator. Marked by both intense integrity and humor, Faddis earned accolades from his close friend and mentor John Birks “Dizzy” Gillespie, who declared of Faddis, “He’s the best ever, including me!” As a trumpeter, Faddis possesses a virtually unparalleled range and full command of his instrument, making the practically impossible seem effortless.”
– Ed Keane

JON FADDIS

The Majesty of the Trumpet
Stanford Jazz Orchestra
Director: Fredrick Berry

Dinkelspiel Auditorium

Wednesday, May 16 at 8pm

Co-sponsored by the Stanford University Department of Music and ASSU

TICKETS | General $10 | Seniors $9 | Students $5 | Stanford Students with SUID free

STANFORD TICKET OFFICE: tickets.stanford.edu

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Jon Faddis Interview (Jazz Ascona 2011)

Born in Oakland, CA, on July 24, 1953, Jon Faddis began playing trumpet at age eight, inspired by an appearance of Louis Armstrong on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” Three years later, his trumpet teacher Bill Catalano, an alumnus of the Stan Kenton band, turned the jazz- struck youngster on to Dizzy Gillespie. By his mid-teens, Jon had not only met Dizzy, he’d even sat in with his hero’s combo at the famed Jazz Workshop in San Francisco.

Upon graduating high school in 1971, Jon joined Lionel Hampton’s band as a featured soloist and moved to New York. That same year, responding to an invitation from Mel Lewis to drop by the Village Vanguard whenever he got to New York, Jon sat in with the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Big Band on one of their regular Monday night sessions. That sit-in turned into four years of Monday nights playing with the band, as well as a tour of the Soviet Union with the highly acclaimed unit. Jon also toured with Charles Mingus and recorded on the Pablo label with Dizzy and Oscar Peterson.

Other highlights included filling in (at age of 18) for an ailing Roy Eldridge in an all-star concert led by Charles Mingus at New York’s Philharmonic Hall; a Carnegie Hall gig with Sarah Vaughan; two years in attendance at the Dick Gibson~s Annual Colorado Jazz Party where he was featured in a historic duet with Eubie Blake; performances with Gil Evans’ and Count Basie’s big bands; appearances at Radio City Music Hall and festivals here and abroad; and sitting in with Dizzy whenever possible.

In light of these accomplishments — his recognition in the jazz polls, myriad accolades from the critical press, burgeoning numbers of international fans, heady praise from the likes of Diz, Mingus and Mel Lewis, and the pressure of public life — is it any wonder that a (then) 20-year old Jon Faddis opted for the sequestered life of the studio musician?

However, those studio years ultimately proved significant in his artistic development. Exposure to a diverse spectrum of music helped shape him into the broad-based interpreter and (creator in) African-American idioms that he is today. Jon’s distinctive trumpet voice would be heard on albums by performers as disparate as Duke Ellington, the Rolling Stones, Frank Sinatra, Kool and the Gang, Luther Vandross, Quincy Jones, Billy Joel and Stanley Clarke, to name a few. His horn was heard on the theme of “The Cosby Show,” on the soundtrack of Clint Eastwood’s films “The Gauntlet” and “Bird,” and on many commercials. Jon Faddis had become one of the most in-demand session musicians in New York.

– Jazz Studies, University of Pittsburgh

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Download audio MP3

Joseph Robinson

Al Young’s monthly poem at KQED’s ‘The California Report’

ADVISORY | The texts of poems posted at KQED’s link may not always reflect purposeful line breaks

A MAY TO WARM THE BORDERLANDS

When May warms up our borderlands, Oregon oozes
Shakespeare. Arizona, México, Nevada — they smile,
re-chill, then heat back up all funny. The miles you jog
in El Cajón won’t feel the same in Truckee, El Centro,
Nevada City, Douglas City, Culver City, Lodi, or Taft.

High on May, California travelers, all stone, petrified,
just come down from races up hills and races up
mountains — 880, 680, 580, 280, 101, I-5, all One –
dig into California’s DNA and clink! Hey! May!
Broken out in code and sequences, present-day May

speaks up, shouts out, says: “Look deep, reach far
into my vacillating light. Feel my Gold Rush heat
and whorl. Forget about a merry month, sipped wine.
May knows far more than one hot mind can store.
Consider May in brisk Bodega Bay, or borderline L.A.”

– Al Young

©2012

• Where to find ‘The California Report’

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” … The moon, the whole moon, and nothing but the moon.”
– Al Young
from 22 Moon Poems | Heaven: Collected Poems 1956-1990

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Full moon poems

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