Serial Underground Presents Re: Person We Knew, a Bill Evans tribute...

Serial Underground Presents Re: Person We Knew, a Bill Evans tribute Wednesday, September 15, 2010 6:00 at Cornelia Street Café, 29 Cornelia Street, NYC.

Person We Knew, a Bill Evans tribute with
Bill Zavatsky, writer
Laurie Verchomin, writer
Jed Distler, piano
Arnold Barkus, director

Wednesday, September 15, 2010 6:00 PM (doors open at 5:45).

Serial Underground’s 2010/11 season opener commemorates the thirtieth anniversary of Bill Evans’ passing with two writers closely associated with the late, legendary pianist/composer, director Arnold Barkus, and CCi artistic director Jed Distler, who worked with Evans in 1980. Bill Zavatsky offers poems and stories about his friendship with Evans in the 1970s. Laurie Verchomin reads from her upcoming memoir The Big Love/Life and Death with Bill Evans, with Jed Distler at the piano, directed by Arnold Barkus.

Bill Zavatsky grew up in Connecticut but has lived in New York City since 1965. He has taught every population group but the unborn and the dead in many schools, but for the last two decades plus he has worked in the high school at the Trinity School in Manhattan. He has published two books of poetry, Theories of Rain and Other Poems and Where X Marks the Spot. He has also translated, from the French, two volumes of poetry, Earthlight: Poems by André Breton (with Zack Rogow, which won the PEN/Book of the Month Translation Prize, and (with Ron Padgett) The Poems of A. O. Barnabooth by Valery Larbaud.

Since childhood he has been a musician (accordion and piano), and wrote the “Elegy” for Bill Evans that appear on You Must Believe in Spring, the first recording to be issued after Evans’ death. Since then he has written poems as liner notes for twelve CDs by pianist Marc Copland. most recently for his solo album Alone. He is at work on a memoir about Bill Evans.

Laurie Verchomin, born in Edmonton, Alberta on April 5, 1957, lived on the Canadian prairie throughout her childhood and youth. She attended Grant MacEwan Community College as a student of modern dance. There she received her first exposure to jazz. In April of 1979, she was waitressing at the Mayflower Restaurant in Edmonton in support of the Railtown Jazz Society’s sponsorship of a Bill Evans concert.

One thing led to another and soon she was in New York. She spent the next year and a half as Evans’ muse during the most creative period of his career, and kept journals during that time. Her book The Big Love/Life and Death with Bill Evans is lovingly drawn from these journals and the memory of her first love. The ultimate coming of age memoir The Big Love chronicles her journey into the underworld of the New York jazz scene and her awakening into love, sex, drugs, jazz, spiritual enlightenment and death.

Jed Distler is a composer, pianist, broadcaster, writer, and presenter. He has premiered numerous works written and/or dedicated to him by Virko Baley, Alvin Curran, Andrew Thomas, Frederic Rzewski, Lois V Vierk, Virgil Thomson, David Maslanka, David Del Tredici, and numerous others. As the "inventive artistic director" (Allan Kozinn, New York Times) of ComposersCollaborative, Inc., Jed has created and programmed such innovative festivals as Solo Flights, Non Sequitur, and, most recently, the new music variety show Serial Underground every at New York's landmark Cornelia Street Café.

He's received grants from ASCAP. Meet the Composer, American Composers Forum, and a coveted McDowell Colony residency. Jed taught for many years at Sarah Lawrence College, and has participated in guest composer/teacher residencies across the United States. His own work can be found on the Bridge, Point, Decca, Nonesuch, ASV, Mode, Naxos and CRI labels.

His latest CD, Meditate with the Masters, is scheduled for a January 2011 release on Musical Concepts. Jed also will be guest hosting Hammered!, an all-keyboard show for Q2/New York Public Radio. In 1980 he was asked by Bill Evans to help edit and transcribe his piano solos for publication, and later provided transcriptions and arrangements for Jean-Yves Thibaudet’s Decca release, Conversations with Bill Evans.

Filmmaker and theater director Arnold Barkus has directed two feature films and numerous theater pieces. His feature, funded by Canal Plus, Tempête Dans Un Verre d¹Eau, was theatrically released in France, and in festivals worldwide. The DeMarco Foundation opened the door for his first theater work, for which, he directed an original piece at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

In New York, Arnold has directed two Theater Ten Thousand productions: The Gnädiges Fräulein by Tennessee Williams at the Ohio Theater, and Honey and Boyd at Present Company Theatorium. Since 2001 Arnold has been a key player on the CCi production team, directing the Non Sequitur Festival and The Gold Standard, a piano theater piece by Jed Distler and Ed Schmidt.

Lighting designer David Lovett trained at the Chelsea School of Art and Design, in London. After working in a number of British repertory theatres and on the European touring scene Lovett worked for the Almeida theatre in London and was a visiting lecturer at the Central School of Speech and Drama. His work includes pieces for: Extemporary Dance, Scottish Opera, Attic Theatre, Garsington Opera, Newcastle Playhouse, Northern Symphonia and Electro-Acoustic Music Association of Great Britain (EMAS) and The Matix Ensemble.

Lovett worked on realizing John Cage's installation piece Essay in the Espai Poblenou, Barcelona and a tour of Cage's Europeras 3 & 4. For the Aldeburgh Festival he lit the world premiere of John Tavener's Mary of Egypt. Lovett was also responsible for re-lighting Robert Wilson's Hamletmachine on the European tour. Other credits include collaborations with Ute Lemper, Steve Montague, Julia Bardsley & Andrew Poppy.

Serial Underground, is a new music variety show, curated and hosted by CCi Artistic Director Jed Distler. Composers, writers, visual artists and performers mix and match together and with the audience as they showcase new projects in an intimate, informal setting, fueled by superb food and drink. Starting November 7th 2010, Serial Underground moves to a new day and time, every first Sunday of the month at 6:00 PM at the Cornelia Street Café.

The Cornelia Street Café opened its doors in 1977, and has garnered landmark status for its gourmet cuisine. Founding owner Robin Hirsch, a successful author and actor, has nurtured the café’s artistic reputation over the years, providing a forum for the finest in established and emerging spoken word artists, actors, poets, writers, classical and jazz musicians, composers, songwriters, and even Nobel laureates scientists.