Chicago Jazz Festival

08/31/2011

The 33rd annual Chicago jazz festival starts on Thursday through Sunday and for the first time ever, they are including poetry slam in the fest. This is the first time that poetry and jazz have infused themselves at the festival and here to give us a preview of what to expect is writer, poet Maurice Meaway and Saxophonist Ernest Dawkins.

More about Ernest and New Horizons:

A flagship band of Chicago's Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians for more than 30 years, the New Horizons Ensemble may be as well-rounded a group as the city has produced in that time. It's both a great "outside" band in pushing the limits of "freebop," and a great "inside" band in offering compelling tunes and tight arrangements. The soloing by altoist Ernest Dawkins and company is always soulfully charged. And if that weren't enough, New Horizons has been an ideal vehicle for Dawkins' thematic works, the latest of which, The Prairie Prophet, pays tribute to AACM eminence Fred Anderson, who died last year.

More about Maurice: If Maurice Meaway hadn't decided to become a Writer, he would've been a detective (inspired by the Sherlock Holmes series while young). Representing Minneapolis Minnesota, he is a current student of Columbia College Chicago seeking a degree in Fiction Writing. He is also a Poet who's performed alongside acts such as Ill-Literacy, Aja Monet, Saul Williams and Kevin Coval, as well as holding publications ranging from articles written for Chi-Tea Magazine and reviews for AllHipHop.com. He has been slamming since he was 16. He's now 22 years old.

With a narrative that blends Jazz and Hip Hop into his body of work both Fiction and Poetry Maurice illustrates moments of influence stemming from his life, while constructing thought provoking instances tuned to take the reader on a journey. En route to working on an epic novel, collection of short stories as well as a chapbook while performing poetry alongside the Young Chicago Authors, he continues to write with the motif of a Space Cowboy or even a Gangster of Love.

He's a Fiction Writer and Poet associated with the Young Chicago Authors group called The Board (which is facilitated by Def Poet Shannon Matesky). The piece he's performing at the fest is a poem titled "Internal Reflections" - which is derived from the Hip Hop collective of Talib Kweli and DJ Hi-Tek's group name: Reflection Eternal, as well as relating back to the Japanese Hip Hop/Jazz producer Nujabes, who has a song with the same name.

Link to Chicago Jazz Festival (Poet lineup) - http://jazzinchicago.org/jazzfest/2011/08/05/1052/ General website: http://jazzinchicago.org/jazzfest/