Poetry and Music: Steve Dalachinsky, Clark Coolidge and Michael Bisio, Henry Grimes and Nathaniel Mackey

Floor Five, Neil Bluhm Family Galleries

The performance program for Open Plan: Cecil Taylor continues as giants of the free jazz and poetry worlds come together in duo and solo sets to pay tribute to Taylor in this afternoon event.

About the program
A New York poet and avant-garde jazz devotee, Steve Dalachinsky performs and records regularly with free jazz musicians. His book, The Mantis (Iniquity Press, 2011), was written while the author listened to Taylor perform in New York venues from 1966 to 2009. 

Clark Coolidge is an experimental poet associated with the Language movement and a jazz drummer whose poem, "Comes Through in the Call Hold (Improvisations on Cecil Taylor)"(1989), was first published as an excerpt in the Village Voice. He will be accompanied by Michael Bisio, an acclaimed bassist and composer praised for the physicality of his playing.

The third set will feature Nathaniel Mackey, a lauded writer and winner of Yale University’s Bollingen Prize for American Poetry (2015). He has published interviews with Taylor in Hambone, which he edits, and has written on Taylor and "new thing" jazz in his experimental text Splay Anthem (2006), which won the National Book Award for Poetry. He will be joined by virtuoso double-bassist Henry Grimes.

Free with Museum admission. Seating is available on a first-come, first-served basis. A limited number of guaranteed seats are available for advance purchase; tickets include admission to the galleries.