Fans of Thursday Night Jazz rejoice: legendary Pittsburgh drummer Roger Humphries and RH Factor return to City of Asylum to join in the 20 year anniversary of Jazz Poetry. Our Tuesday night poets feature City of Asylum writer-in-residence and prolific Ukrainian writer Volodymyr Rafeyenko in his Jazz Poetry debut, winner of the University of Pittsburgh Press’s Donald Hall Prize for Poetry Sahar Muradi, sharing work from her recently published collection Octobers, recipient of The Judith A. Markowitz Award for Emerging Writers Xan Forest Phillips, and Mónica de la Torre, Mexican poet and winner of the 2022 Foundation for Contemporary Arts C.D. Wright Award for Poetry.

Each Jazz Poetry program begins with a 40-minute performance by the band, followed by 30 minutes of collaborative performance with the featured poets. In these collaborations, poets share their work while the musicians interpret and accompany their poetry with jazz, adding a unique, improvisational dimension to each performance.

Featured Musicians:

• Roger Humphries: drums
• Yoko Suzuki: saxophone
• Lou Stellute: saxophone
• Dwayne Dolphin: bass
• Max Leake: piano