“Philadelphia and shades of Sun Ra are, ’in the house’ when Sabir Mateen plays…”Golda Solomon, Host Po’Jazz

“Mateen has always been a free jazzman in heart and soul enjoying the rhythms, enjoying the freedom, enjoying the expressiveness, enjoying the interplay, and going at it to the full”-Free Jazz Blog
 Cover $15 (includes one house drink)   www.wbai.org

"With James Westfall's vibes in the forefront, the group has a fresh sound, and bassist Dan Loomis and drummer Jared Schonig flow like the tides. Wee's sound is not wee, it's huge."
- SF Chronicle
"Bring a teen."
- Metaljazz.com
 Cover $10   www.theweetrio.com

Arrive before 6 pm to sign up.

Feature: Dominique Lowell

Straight out of Detroit comes Dominique Lowell, one of the most powerful spoken word voices ever, who has been called alternately "The Charlie Parker" and "The Janice Joplin" of the spoken word scene. She tore up the stages up and down the west coast in the 90s before returning to her native Motor City. She is on the east coast for the first time in 10 years.
 Cover $7 (includes one house drink)

The Sage features new compositions by Jason Rigby and showcases his creative prowess on tenor and soprano saxophones and his considerable talent as a composer. A compelling freestyle soloist, Rigby has formed his latest ensemble to explore group improvisation with the twists and turns of a 2-horn front line. Alongside Rigby stands trumpeter Russ Johnson, a lyrical and energetic soloist who has been part of the backbone of NY’s downtown scene for over a decade. Mike Holober, an organic improviser and heavy composer in his own right, plays Rhodes. On bass is the mighty jazz veteran Cameron Brown, who has performed with the likes of Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry, and Joe Lovano, to name a few. Completing the ensemble is the prodigious and eternally creative drummer Gerald Cleaver.

The Sage, Rigby’s second Fresh Sound Records release, follows the critically acclaimed success Translucent Space, which was named one of the 2006 Top Jazz & Improv Records Of The Year by The Wire (UK). Jim Macnie of NYC’s The Village Voice says:

“The young saxophonist’s Translucent Space gave jitters a good name. The antsy music had enough grace to assuage its attack. That’s a best of both worlds deal. This quintet outing will show us the kind of ideas he can string together on the stand.�

Rigby has performed with the Village Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, David Binney, Darcy James’ Argue’s Secret Society, Donny McCaslin, Aretha Franklin, Tony Malaby, David Liebman, Alan Ferber’s Nonet, John Riley, Kris Davis, Eivind Opsvik ‘s Overseas and is a regular sideman with Cameron Brown’s ‘Don Cherry’ Quartet, the experimental-garage-jazz trio Heernt, Rich Johnson’s We Can Build You, the Westchester Jazz Orchestra and numerous others.
 Cover $10   www.jasonrigby.net

STREAMING LINK: jasonrigby.net/SoundFiles/TurquoiseTurkishMP3.mp3

Pete Robbins is a recipient of Chamber Music America's "New Works" and "Encore" grants, and performs regularly in the U.S. and Europe. He is celebrating the release of his third studio album as a leader, "Do The Hate Laugh Shimmy" (Fresh Sound New Talent), which is available at “[Robbins leads an] ambitious ensemble that combines spacious avant-gardism with the melodic punch of rock....[he has] a cool tone and a thoughtfully off-kilter sensibility.”
NATE CHINEN, The New York Times

" . . . as a horn player Robbins has liquid timbre that can remind just how pretty modern jazz can be."
JIM MACNIE - The Village Voice

Pete Robbins on the title Do The Hate Laugh Shimmy: “I'm not totally clear on how he (e.e. cummings) meant it, but to me ‘doing the hate laugh shimmy’ is a way to think about life in general: twisting and shimmying between hatefulness/negativity/ bad vibes and laughter/love/positivity/acceptance.”

Listening to Do The Hate Laugh Shimmy transports you into the distinct musical universe of alto saxophonist/composer Pete Robbins. It is filled with soaring sonic sculptures; ten singular Robbins compositions (that seem to delight his band judging from the zeal and ownership with which they interpret his tunes), peppered with his sprightly and beautifully-toned flights of improvisation on alto sax. With Do The Hate Laugh Shimmy (Robbins’ 3rd release as a leader) this grant winning (Chamber Music America’s prestigious “New Works: Creation and Presentation” grant), and critically applauded artist, offers a new chapter to the jazz cannon that reminds us of the vibrancy, originality and prolificacy that is so common in jazz today, particularly in his adopted home of Brooklyn. However, there is nothing common about this brilliant offering from Robbins. Do The Hate Laugh Shimmy, which borrows its title from a poem by e.e. cummings, is a highly unique vision/musical statement that has come together with superlative contributions from some of Robbins’ frequent collaborators and friends: Sam Sadigursky (tenor saxophone), Jesse Neuman (trumpet, pedals), Craig Taborn (Fender Rhodes, Nord Electro), Eliot Cardinaux (Fender Rhodes, Nord Electro, loops), Ben Monder, Ryan Blotnick (guitars), Mike Gamble (guitar, pedals, loops), Thomas Morgan (bass), Dan Weiss, Tyshawn Sorey (drums).
 Cover $10   www.peterobbins.com ,  www.myspace.com/peterobbins

A new twist on the ancient tradition of oral history.

SpeakEasy is people telling stories-- true stories. Period. No scripts. No crib notes. No rehearsals. SpeakEasy has a dynamic and constantly changing cast of storytellers that include such greats as Mike Daisey, Jonathan Ames, and Reno, along with homemakers, lawyers, dog walkers, street magicians and writers

You never know what you'll hear. So join us for what could be a life changing experience!

 Cover $10   www.speakeasystories.com

Jane Ormerod was born on the south coast of England and now lives in New York City. Her poetry appears in publications such as 21 Stars Review, Arsenic Lobster, Erato Postmodern Poetry, Failbetter, Night Train, Whatever Literary Journal and the spoken word CD Nashville Invades Manhattan. Thrush, a half-hour prose poem, was performed at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London and, more recently, at venues in New York and New Jersey. A regular and acclaimed performer of her work throughout the United States, Jane has also read in Canada, Germany, Britain, The Netherlands, and on radio and cable television. She is host and curator of the occasional reading series Emotional Rescue at The Cornelia Street Cafe.

Jane is a founding editor at Uphook Press, a new poetry publisher dedicated to bridging the gap between �performance� poetry and the printed word.
 Cover $7 (includes one house drink)

"Cover Girl" rejects the polars of the Islamic veil as liberation/oppression and looks at it from the inside, where she used it as a childhood home. This piece examines the social act of veiling in both Iran and America, through such practices as racism, sexual segregation and patriotism.

"Are You My Father?" is a search for father within the Iranian cultural institution of temporary marriage, which can last anywhere between 90 minutes to 90 years, many times just long enough to engage in a sexual act. The piece looks at gender encounters and relations in temporary marriage from multiple female viewpoints, including wives, prostitutes, daughters and women looking for sexual freedom to show the different outcomes that result from legitimizing non-committed sex under Islamic law.

Lawrence Joseph's most recent books of poems are Into It and Codes, Precepts, Biases, and Taboos: Poems 1973-1993, both published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Norman Finkelstein is a poet and literary critic. His books of poetry include Restless Messengers (Georgia, 1992), the three-volume serial poem Track: Track, Columns, and Powers (Spuyten Duyvil 1999, 2002, 2005), and Passing Over, a volume of poems containing work from the late 1980s through the mid 1990s (Marsh Hawk, 2007). He has written extensively about modern and postmodern poetry, and about Jewish American literature. His books of criticism are The Utopian Moment in Contemporary American Literature (Bucknell, 1988, 1993), The Ritual of New Creation: Jewish Tradition and Contemporary Literature (SUNY, 1992), Not One of Them In Place: Modern Poetry and Jewish American Identity (SUNY, 2002) and Lyrical Interference: Essays on Poetics (Spuyten Duyvil, 2004). His latest critical project is a book called On Mt. Vision: Forms of the Sacred in Contemporary American Poetry. Recent poems, essays and reviews have appeared in American Letters & Commentary, Cincinnati Review, Contemporary Literature, American Literary History, Twentieth Century Literature and on the website of the Cultural Society.

Finkelstein was born in New York City in 1954. He received his B.A. from Binghamton University and his Ph.D. from Emory University. He is a Professor of English at Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio, where he has taught since 1980.
 Cover $7 (includes one house drink)