Poetry & Song Close Month of Jazz at TORCH

Seniz Yargici Lennes opened the last Sunday in the Month of Jazz at TORCH

The Jazz Residency of Sean Roderick came to a close Sunday night at TORCH with two very talented ladies performing a perfect note for a cold, rainy Minneapolis evening. There was a set of mid-Twentieth Century Jazz vocalizations by Seniz Yargici Lennes and a set of poetry with jazz by Leslie Sedivy, poetess extraordinaire at Le Cirque Rouge Cabaret and Burlesque Show as Lulu Blue. There was no lack of comfort and no want of a beautiful diversion.

Seniz made her vocal debut to a full house performing her “Jazz Singer Lady.” Seniz is a seasoned performer here in Minneapolis, mostly as an actress and comedienne specializing in improvisation.

She serenaded us with the likes of Gershwin’s Someone to Watch Over Me, and old favorites like How High the Moon and Cry Me A River. Dotted through the set were some improvised songs that called to the audience for words and inspiration. That treated us to a song about a minivan and how boring it was to drive. Nicely done, Sinez! Nicely done.

You remember the beat poets, right? Jack Kerouac, maybe a muted coronet or a brushed snare drum? My first introduction to the beatnik was Maynard G. Crebs. Remember him from The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis … no? Bob Denver pre-Gilligan? How about a more contemporary example; an only slightly popular Mike Myers movie, So I Married an Axe Murderer … no? Steve Bushemi in Hudsucker Proxy? Never mind.

In those cases the poet was more of a cartoon and the poetry so damn-the-electric-fence over the top you couldn’t imagine how to cut through all the pretensions let alone see the form ever be taken seriously.

However, Ms. Sedivy and Mr. Roderick completely ripped it up! They so expertly wove a fabric of jazz and verse together that one could only park a collective jaw on the floor and listen with a smile on your face.

Sedivy’s verse was poignant, witty, clever … sans cliché and delivered with a meter that perfectly embraced Roderick’s unassuming accompaniment. It was warm and personal, engaging and truthful. You’ve got to see Leslie perform her poetry at your earliest convenience. Until then, make sure you listen to her offerings at Sound Cloud and keep chanting, "gotta see her live, gotta see her live."

As far as I’m concerned, she’s single-handedly keeping the English language alive.

Leslie Sedivy takes a bow at the end her set at TORCH.

My hat's off to Sean Roderick. He put together a full month of excellent music and entertainment at TORCH in his curatory debut. Brava! We'll be back.

Davu Seru — Just That Moment

Davu Seru, Nelson Devereaux & Devon Gray

I've been working on this quite a while now and I'm still not sure if I've got it right: "improvisation being the sincerest form of expression." Hmm ... got a nice beat, easy to dance to. I really don't know squat about jazz. Oh, sure, I've gotten the cursory introduction to Miles, Monk, even Klemmer, Walcott, Corea and Jarrett; but never live improvised jazz. Jazz improvisation has always been a reservation for me, an enigma that was far more than I wanted to think about.

Back when I'd geek out about the Guthrie and doing theatuhhh, I once read an interesting observation from Garland Wright which might be appropriate. Essentially, Garland was pointing out that going to the theater was a conscious decision made by audience and actors to engage in the event. An event that is precious and will never happen again. He meant that the people, once in that place, for that happening, in that moment can never be truly replicated. This is what made a night with Davu Seru, Nelson Devereaux, and Devon Gray an exception.

Davu Seru

Nelson Devereaux

Devon Gray

I confronted the band after their set and asked, "is that repeatable?" in my most admittedly novice manner. All three welcomed my question and were very accommodating; appreciative that I asked and willing to assure me that at least the form was repeatable. All three instructed me they had just gotten together for the evening ... they knew each other. I'm not even sure they had actually played together before. It didn't matter. I was there at that moment.

Piano + Poetry + A Sultry Night at TORCH = Lulu Blue

Lulu Blue — the Burlesque Poet of Minnesota

Allow me to introduce Leslie Sedivy better known as Lulu Blue; the Burlesque Poet of Minnesota.* She's a blithe spirit with a sharp clip and a confidence that belies all other English Majors I've ever met. But, can I say something? She's giving life back to a deeply rooted aural tradition that is decidedly lacking in mainstream entertainment. She's doesn't tell stories but paints them with her voice, with great insights into the phrasing and texture which is our spoken word. Lulu Blue at Sound Cloud.

She received her BA in English from the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities and specializes in incorporating her passion for Marxist and Feminist theory into her work.

Since 2010, she has performed as the poet laureate of the Le Cirque Rouge Cabaret and Burlesque Show, directed by Amy Buchanan, where she recites her verse accompanied by the Le Cirque Rouge House Band, an accomplished jazz quartet. Leslie heads the experimental jazz duo "Stanzic," in which she collaborates with the very talented pianist and TORCH Jazz Curator, Sean Roderick.

Joining Lulu Blue will be Seniz Yargici Lennes who will be performing her "Jazz Singer Lady" accompanied by Mr. Roderick on the piano. Seniz is a well known Twin Cities actor/improvisor, arts and family educator and international songstress. Partial to themes of jazzy love and loss, she has graced the prestigious stages of local venues such as Vegas Lounge, the Uptown VFW, Nye's Polonaise, and her car. She will be performing styles of the 30's through the 50's and oh yeah ... the TORCH series will be her professional singing debut.

Tickets for this event are available at Event Brite: Ladies Night with Seniz Yargici Lennes and Leslie Sedivy

* There might be an oxymoron of some kind there … being the "Burlesque Poet of Minnesota." Burlesque suggests a certain lack of attire which is something you can't afford a lack of in Minnesota. Food for thought.

Alan Tilson One-Man King Lear: Poor Lear

I’ve known Alan for a long time. Albeit, our paths don’t cross much since his is through Kansas City and mine through Minneapolis. None-the-less, we spent a summer together doing Merry Wives of Windsor for the Minnesota Shakespeare Company back in the early nineties.

Recently I sat down with my friend over some coffee and we chatted about his exploits and in particular, Poor Lear. Now, I’ve got some intimate familiarity with Shakespeare’s classic tragedy, King Lear and wanted to know how the “Poor” version came about.

Alan had been working in the Kansas City theater scene for quite some time coming to the realization it was not offering him enough opportunity to perform Shakespeare; unless of course he could get cast at Heart of America Shakespeare Festival. For the most part, Kansas City theater only has the one place producing Shakespeare … thee place to produce Shakespeare. Other theaters don’t even allow Shakespeare monologs for audition pieces!

Armed with 50 monologues from Shakespeare’s text, Alan had no place to showcase his arsenal. He started performing what he coined as “Shitty Shakespeare” which took the form of Shakespeare roulette. The first line of each monolog was written on a piece of paper and the audience would draw them from a hat. Randomly, he’d perform the result. As amazing as that was, after the first four or five passages, the audience was over it and ready to move on.

“I needed a story for the audience to engage and stay engaged,” mused Alan. “I had always been disturbed by the recurring theme of misogyny in Lear and that anxiety just gnawed at me begging to be explored. So, I started memorizing King Lear.”

Alan found himself rehearsing Lear by the river front, a quiet, less traveled sanctuary, as he went about learning the story. He struggled to find a context in which to give Shakespeare’s tragedy and admits he hadn’t noticed the homeless whose retreat he found himself invading … “then it struck me like the hot kiss at the end of a wet fist. The Homeless! There’s my context!”

“My goal has always been to strip the pretensions from Shakespeare and make something the audience can relate to. I worked with a director through nine drafts of the text whittling the story and its language down to the bare essentials,” Alan continued.

“I had heard that Alan Cumming was re-staging his one man adaptation of MacBeth. I hightailed it to New York and caught a performance. That answered a lot of questions on the how’s and why’s for Poor Lear.”

Poor Lear is a one-man re-imagining of Shakespeare’s King Lear from a military veteran with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. A prop filled grocery cart holds all the surprises that lead to his homelessness. Producer/actor Alan Tilson, in association with Escape2Create, will present four performances of Poor Lear in the TORCH Courtyard June 5 - 8.

Poor Lear was originally produced in partnership with the Metropolitan Ensemble Theatre as a benefit for the Homeless Services Coalition of Greater Kansas City in association with Kansas City Episcopal Community Services. Tilson and Poor Lear were selected from national application for an Artist-In-Residency with Escape2Create in Seaside, Florida for the month of February, 2014. Internationally acclaimed E2C’s month long residencies have advanced the role of the artist and the experience of art as a valued component of community life for 21 years.

Tilson is a member of the Acting Core Ensemble with Metropolitan Ensemble Theatre, in Kansas City, MO. He has acted in 18 MET productions including Main Stage, the Library Script-In-Hand series, and has toured with MET’s The Hindu & the Cowboy for seven years.

He has performed in the Kansas City area with the Missouri/Kansas City Repertory Theater, Heart of America Shakespeare Festival, Theatre for Young America, in Titus Andronicus, The Accidental Waiter & Accidental Holiday at the Living Room Theater, The Country of the Blind Coterie Theater tour of Kansas, and in the title role of Moliere’s The Miser at Union Station City Stage.

Tilson has worked regionally with the Oregon and Colorado Shakespeare Festivals, four years with the Minnesota Shakespeare Company in Minneapolis, and with the Black Hills Playhouse in Custer, SD.

By the way … did I mention he is also a retired Episcopal priest!?! Just thought I’d let you know.

For more information look to TORCH dot website or TORCH dot facebook

Neil Davis with Sean Roderick and Friends of Noam Chomsky

Neil Davis performed a set with Sean Roderick on keys and Friends of Noam Chomsky's rhythm section. Oh man! Now, Neil lives in Milwaukee which in these parts officially makes him a "Sconi" and sometimes that's hard to chew on when you're an uppity Nordsky.

Well, there was no uppity and no sconanegans when Neil took the stage at TORCH Sunday night. Neil unleashed his brand of Hard Bop on an enthusiastic crowd that was most appreciative crawling out of their otherwise still Minnesotan box.

Neil Davis with longtime friend and former classmate Sean Roderick

Longtime friend and former classmate Sean Roderick introduced Neil saying, "He's the first musician of this caliber he ever played with and very few, if any, have surpassed."

Mr Davis announced about halfway through his set that his wife didn't come with him. "I don't remember why, exactly. Oh yeah! There was no hotel room. I can see her point though, I wouldn't want to go to one of her Marketing Conferences and stay at a friend's house." He did let on that he had a nice drive across Wisconsin which netted him a 1952 Gibson ES 125 which he debuted for those in attendance.

Neil is the Jazz Guitar teacher with Milwaukee Youth Symphony Orchestra's jazz studies program. The largest program of its kind. He also co-founded West End Conservatory, a new music school in Milwaukee.

Neil with Andrew Foreman (bass) and Zach Schmidt (drums) Friends of Noam Chomsky

For more insight into Neil Davis and his brand of Hard Bop, check out this excellent article written by Milwaukee Jazz Music Examiner author A. Scott Ferguson: Preview of the Neil Davis Quintet Saturday night at the Jazz Estate

Noam Chomsky ... Your Friends were at TORCH!

Friends of Noam Chomsky

Friends of Noam Chomsky opened a night of jazz at TORCH last Sunday that the "father of modern linguistics" would be proud of. Noam would most certainly crack that octogenarian smile and tap a toe or two. Now I don't know that much about Mr. Chomsky or jazz for that matter but, what I saw and heard was four great musicians in a tiny venue play their souls out. It was great.

Andrew Foreman

FoNC is bassist Andrew Foreman's project. Andrew is a freelance bassist living in Minneapolis. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Music and Hispanic Literature from Macalester College in Saint Paul, and his studies include attending the Leroy Vinnegar Jazz Institute in Portland, OR as well as the L'aula Institute for Modern Music in Barcelona, Spain.

Jake Baldwin (trumpet)

Foreman performs nightly in Jazz/Soul/Rock/Latin/Roots settings and curates a monthly event at the Aster Cafe called "Off the Cuff: A Series of Improvised Collaboration. "Friends of Noam Chomsky" is an ensemble led by Foreman, featuring Thomas Nordlund (guitar), Jake Baldwin (trumpet), and Zach Schmidt (drums).

Tom Nordlund (guitar) aka Guitarist for Carlo Gesualdo Zach Schmidt (drums)

This group seeks to explore intersections of jazz tradition, art rock, and free improvisation, experimenting with originals and covers from indie rock/alternative pop lineages such as the Pixies, Feist, Deathcab for Cutie, and more.

Keep up with what's happening at TORCH ... here ya go!

There's A Hutch @ TORCH

Jennifer Chilstrom is excited to announce there will be Yoga at TORCH this summer. Theresa Hutch is a Yoga instructor and artist who will be conducting Yoga classes on Friday’s and Saturdays through the summer.

A long time art teacher in the Minneapolis public schools, Theresa embarked on a personal project to produce a painting every week for one year. “How many weeks is that? Ah! Fifty-two!” Almost 156 weeks later, Theresa continues to paint every week and uses her paintings to create cards for a weekly yoga-inspiration. She is grateful for the spiritual contribution and insights Reverend Jaganath Carrera adds to the text on every Yoga Sutra Card.

For every class that she teaches, she brings a copy of the week's card for her students to take with them. Theresa gives the cards as gifts, but they also serve to remind her students of their yoga practice while they are out in the world!

Theresa began her yoga practice as a college student in 1998, she had no idea how significant yoga would become in her life. With a B.A. in Design Communications and an art teaching certificate Theresa taught high school art for ten years. Through this experience, she learned the importance of meeting the needs of all students who walked into her classroom. In 2010, she enrolled in the 230 hour R.Y.T. study program at The Yoga Center of Minneapolis.

Upon completion, she began experiencing yoga in a completely new way, as a teacher. Theresa continues her studies through extensive reading, workshops, and her personal art practice.

• Classes starting May 2
• Fridays - Slow Flow Vinyasa 12:00 - 1:00pm
• Saturdays - All Levels Vinyasa 10:00 - 11:00am *
• * After Saturday classes you receive a 10% discount off your lunch at Namaste Cafe, two doors up from TORCH

$12/class drop-in or Purchase $60/six class pass

For more information about Theresa, her art and yoga go to THERESA HUTCH dot com.

Yes, Gesualdo Rocked Out Like That.

Carlo Gesualdo Group: Scott Fultz (sax), Andrew Bergmann (bass), Adam Patterson (drums), Sean Roderick (keys), Tom Nordlund (guitar).

Sean Roderick kicked off a great introduction to A Month of Sundays Jazz at TORCH last night performing with Carlo Gesualdo Group. A small audience was treated to an exceptional jazz exploration of the 16th century madrigal compositions of the infamous Italian Prince, Carlo Gesualdo; a late renaissance recluse known for his extreme emotional themes and wildly vocal musical forms.

Bassist and leader Andrew Bergmann engaged the audience about half way through the first set informing us they’ve taken Gesualdo’s vocal arrangements and rewritten them for modern instruments.

Tom Nordlund

Famous for murdering his wife and her lover, Carlo, in a self-imposed seclusion at his castle, composed choral pieces influenced by many of his contemporaries although much more experimental in tonal range. “Most of his music was only performed for his own fancy,” Bergmann instructed us, “parlor performances with hired musicians who he composed for.”

Gesualdo’s music is among the most experimental and expressive of the Renaissance, and without question is the most wildly chromatic. Progressions such as those written by Gesualdo did not appear again in music until the 19th century, and then in a context of tonality.

Carlo Gesualdo Group at TORCH

The Carlo Gesualdo Group gave modern life to these compositions which delighted the audience and sparked much approval from those who attended. When asked if Gesualdo rocked out like that? the consensus of the band was, “yeah … probably.”

TORCH dot website

TORCH — Why a Blog?

Late last summer an acquaintance took over the first floor of an old Victorian house at 2520 Hennepin Avenue S, just north of Uptown. Now, I've had some familiarity with this house ... not of the previous inhabitants but its landmark like countenance.

When I first moved to Minneapolis I lived at 25th and Emerson, about 2 blocks from this house and passed by regularly on my way to either work or merriment. At the time, its iron gate protected a space filled with lawn ornamentation. I supposed it was for sale and could be purchased. By appointment, I imagined I could procure a statue of St. Phocas for the garden with a matching birdbath and elephant topiary; expensive high-quality pieces. To my poverty and the fact that my apartment didn't come with a garden, entertaining any such enhancement to the verge of my rented living quarters would have to be left to my imagination. The place was quite possibly something entirely different ... imagination can be a vivid palette.

Thirty years later there's a different life there. I had never noticed before but there's a piece of stained glass in the door. A stained glass of a torch. Might be a piece of Art Nouveau from the late 20th century ... original? I don't know. Remarkably, though, it's a torch. I find that somehow winsome and curious ... a wee bit of serendipity wouldn't you say? The beacon, the light and all that.

My friend MacBeck calls up one day and wants to work on a readers performance of Murder in the Cathedral ... that pithy little ditty by T. S. Eliot. He has this friend who's got this place that would be perfect for an intimate reading, it'll be great! So a couple months later I'm hanging out with a group of cronies from my Shakespeare Company days and we're performing a reading of T. S. Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral at TORCH. Yeah, that house on Hennepin with the stained glass torch on the door!

You really have to meet Jennifer Chilstrom (fodder for another blog post) the proprietress of TORCH. It's her brainchild. Over the course of preparing for Murder in the Cathedral, I took occasion to ask what might be her hopes for such a space. It's important to know that Jen is an artist; of many colors and expressions. She has worked with people throughout her professional life to support art in their lives bringing artists and consumers closer in thought and community. Some might say she's something of a "Social Artist" so, the concept of TORCH is really quite simple ... use this intimate space to bring people and art closer together.

I was quite taken with the idea. I have always been an ardent advocate of the arts but more of a silent partner than an activist. That's unfortunate, really, since I've watched arts opportunities be methodically expunged from many of our educational systems. I am from a rich culture of art in education from elementary all the way through college and plenty outside of class. I grew up creating, performing, attending, observing and sharing expressions of all kinds ... opportunities bowed the trees like too many apples. I'm quite grateful for that fortune as I look back on it all.

So ... why a blog?

Because it's an opportunity. An opportunity that needs a voice. An opportunity that needs support. An opportunity that needs me to get off my passive soapbox and give back to the community that has made my life so rich.

I approached Jen with the idea of covering the activities, people and artists at TORCH giving the interwebs something else to mull over. Maybe they'll find a connection or even take up TORCH on all the opportunities it may have to offer. I know that it has put me in touch with some dear old friends and introduced me to some brave new friends; new artists with special voices. Voices for their time that need opportunities as plentiful as my time. So ... I give you TORCH; a blog about a performing arts space on Hennepin Avenue.

You may be interested in checking out TORCH dot website or strolling pass some time.