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

Pavone has spent the past four decades defining the cutting edge of jazz, both as a sideman to legendary innovators and the leader of groups featuring some of today’s most respected young improvisers. As busy as ever at nearly 70 years old, he released two notable records in 2008: Trio Arc, featuring Paul Bley and Matt Wilson, and Ancestors, featuring his Double Tenor Quintet with Malaby and Jimmy Greene. So far this year he's also performed with groups such as the Connecticut Improvising Composers Project and his intergenerational trio with Sorey and saxophonist Pete Robbins, which will perform at The Stone on August 21st. He was also awarded a 2009 New Jazz Works Grant from Chamber Music America.
Learn more at www.mariopavone.com
 Cover $10

What happens when a wandering Jew stops wandering? At the end of his acclaimed memoir,LAST DANCE AT THE HOTEL KEMPINSKI, Robin Hirsch had found a measure of peace, had even, for want of a better word, settled down. He had married, produced two children, and however tentatively, begun to explore the notion of home.

But the notion of home, for a Wandering Jew, is a complex one. For Robin, it includes most tenderly, the Cornelia Street Café in Greenwich Village, which he opened in 1977 together with two other artists, an Irish-American actor and an Argentinean-Italian-Canadian painter and sculptor. Over the last thirty-two years it has been a home not just for three starving artists, as they then appeared to themselves to be, but for a whole host of performers, from Suzanne Vega and The Songwriters Exchange to Eve Ensler and the Vagina Monologues, from Nobel Laureate Roald Hoffmann to Poet Laureate Billy Collins, from Senator Eugene McCarthy reading his poetry to neurologist Oliver Sacks reading his prose, from members of Monty Python to members of the Royal Shakespeare Company, from comedians to cellists, from stiltwalkers to ventriloquists. And for all kinds of civilians and celebrities.

Amid the turmoil of this passing throng, however, the sheer act of standing still after half a lifetime of wandering allows our hero, an exile from his native country, in which his parents were themselves exiles, to sift the nuances of arrivals and departures, of family and community, of longing and fulfillment, of exile and homecoming. And all this in a city where to stand still at all is at once an achievement and an act of betrayal.

In 1987, on its 10th anniversary, New York's Mayor Koch proclaimed the Cornelia Street Café "a culinary as well as a cultural landmark."

In THE WHOLE WORLD PASSES THROUGH, Robin Hirsch picks up the personal history begun in Last Dance and finds in the midst of a myriad of other people's stories the continuation of his own.
 Cover $10   www.speakeasystories.com

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

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

Most of the songs that the ensemble performs are Martin's original compositions, which are a gumbo of heart-warming melodies and adventurous grooves! The remaining are an anthology of songs written by my friends and classics from the ''Standard American Songbook.'' The repertoire is based on songs that I find gorgeous and that move me. I love melodies that make a statement and can transport us to heaven (or hell if we so desire).

As far as what to expect from a performance by the Martin Urbach Group, the audience will experience a set of music filled with songs that make us smile, reflect, dance and rejoice. Above all, the audience will see and hear a group of friends doing what they love to do most.

- "Terrific listening experience" All About Jazz

- "From quietly poetic to jagged and explosive, the music reflects an interesting mix of sounds and ideas". Jazz Improv NY

- "Good, straight-forward Jazz, well played and full of ideas and great melodies, something every Jazz lover should enjoy". Jazzis.com

cover $10 includes a CD   www.martinurbach.com

Elam Blackman is a gifted singer-songwriter firmly planted in the folk tradition, whose songs delight and touch the listener. Sometimes whimsical, sometimes melancholy, often longing, he invites his listeners to journey with him. His easy going manner and warm stage presence draw people in and establishes an easy rapport with his audience.
 Cover $10   www.heathermasse.com ,  www.elamblackman.com

I found out more later. She had come down to New York from rural Maine and had a band called ONCE BLUE with singer guitarist Jesse Harris. Their album on EMI still sounds playful and timeless, as if Blossom Dearie had recorded with Steely Dan. But the confines of a band, even a casual one, was out of character for Rebecca, just as it would be out of character for Georgia O'Keefe, Amelia Earheart or Joni Mitchell. She moved out of the band the way you'd move out of an apartment that was too small or too noisy and moved into a new space."

 Cover $10   www.rebeccamartin.com

Jay Clayton is an internationally acclaimed vocalist, composer, and educator, whose work boldly spans the terrain between jazz and new music. Clayton's pioneering vocal explorations placed her at the forefront of the free jazz movement and loft scene in the 1970s, where she counted among the first singers to incorporate poetry and electronics into her improvisations. She formed a long-term association with renowned minimalist composer Steve Reich. Clayton's versatility would also lead her to make some of the first recordings of composer John Cage's vocal music. With more than 40 recordings to her credit, Clayton has appeared alongside such formidable artists as Muhal Richard Abrams, Julian Priester, George Cables, Lee Konitz, Gary Bartz, and Kirk Nurock, as well as fellow vocalists Jeanne Lee, Norma Winstone, Urszula Dudziak, and Bobby McFerrin. Her many accomplishments include grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Meet the Composer, CAPS and Chamber Music America (2004). Her book, Sing Your Story: A Practical Guide for Learning and Teaching the Art of Jazz Singing, was published by Advance Music in 2001. Jack Wilkins is considered "A superior, slightly underrated improviser" (Scott Yanow - All Music Guide) who has recorded with Jack DeJohnette, Eddie Gomez, Phil Woods, Harvie Swartz and the Brecker Brothers. This concert will celebrate over 20 years of collaboration between Clayton and Wilkins, being one of the first ensembles Clayton assembled in New York City. The repertoire for the evening will include standards, originals and some poetry "along the way."

  www.sheilajordanjazz.com ,  www.jayclayton.com

An evening of strong laughs, some fresh perceptions, and a lot of news about as hard as you can stand it.

Mark Crispin Miller is a media critic and pro-democratic activist, renowned throughout the nation and the world (against all odds). His books include Boxed In: The Culture of TV, The Bush Dyslexicon, Cruel and Unusual: Bush/Cheney's New World Order and Fooled Again: The Real Case for Electoral Reform. He wrote and performed A Patriot Act at the New York Theater Workshop in the summer of 2004, and since then has appeared on that stage and others, doing stand-up that, he hopes, may help to bring democracy to the United States. He lives in Manhattan, where he works as a professor of media studies at New York University.
 Cover $10