March 5 at All Souls at Sundown:

Ben Wolfe, bass/composer

Ben Wolfe grew up in Portland, Oregon, where he backed Woody Shaw and other national acts. At age 23, he moved to New York, and in 1988 began a five-year engagement with Harry Connick, Jr. and his Orchestra. He later became a member of the Wynton Marsalis Septet, the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, and Diana Krall’s touring band. He currently performs with his own ensemble and is on the faculty of the Juilliard Institute for Jazz Studies. Ben has created four CDs leading his own group; the last, My Kinda Beautiful, features writing for a large ensemble including strings.

"He swings, he scores: it is always intriguing to note the point in an artist’s career when his personal vision takes flight, moving him from the realm of sideman to bandleader, pointing toward future roads to be traveled."

— Billboard Magazine

The Poetry of Joy Harjo

Winner of the National Book Award and author of six volumes of poetry, Joy Harjo is recognized as one of our foremost poets. She belongs to the Muskogee Nation, teaches at UCLA, and travels widely playing saxophone with her band Poetic Justice. “If Whitman were a Muskogee jazzman, he would have written this…a stunning, mature, wholehearted, musical series of poems…brilliant, unforgettable.” (Booklist)