Nicole Peyrafitte

Pierre Joris has moved between the US, Great Britain, North Africa, France & Luxembourg for close to half a century. He has published over 40 books of poetry, essays and translations, most recently Canto Diurno #4: The Tang Extending from the Blade, an Ahadada ebook. 2010. In 2007 & 2008 he published Aljibar and Aljibar II (poems, a bilingual edition with French translation by Eric Sarner, Editions PHI, Luxembourg). Justifying the Margins: Essays 1990-2006 came out in 2009 from SALT in the UK. His 2007 publications are the CD Routes, not Roots (with Munir Beken, oud; Mike Bisio, bass; Ben Chadabe, percussion; & Mitch Elrod, guitar) issued by Ta’wil Productions and Meditations on the Stations of Mansour Al-Hallaj 1-21. Translations include Paul Celan: Selections and 4x1: Work by Tristan Tzara, Rainer Maria Rilke, Jean-Pierre Duprey & Habib Tengour translated by Pierre Joris. With Jerome Rothenberg he edited Poems for the Millennium, vol. 1 & 2: The University of California Book of Modern & Postmodern Poetry. He has published 3 further volumes of Paul Celan translations: Breathturn, Threadsuns and Lightduress (which received the 2005 PEN Poetry Translation Award) and a range of translationsinto French, including books by Jack Kerouac. Julian Beck, Allen Ginsberg & Sam Shepard. Working with Nicole Peyrafitte has allowed Joris to create a range of collaborative performances such as dePLACEments, Manifesto&a, Sumericabachbones, and many others.
David Gitin wrote: Pierre Joris' CD, ROUTES, NOT ROOTS, is a celebration of mind, wonderful naming, and spinning between those points, weaving space(s) in exquisite motion, his own fine ear accompanied sensitively by oud and percussion (as well as guitar and voice). I'm only pointing to it; the pleasures of his unique poetry await. Highly recommended CD.
Jerome Rothenberg on Pierre Joris: Joris is a genuine Luxembourgian Yankee, who has invaded the American language, not to plunder but to enrich us with his presence. The scope of the work is large, the thrust is synthesizing, the idiom particular and rich. A renard-coyote, his accomplishment is there for all of us to see and hear
www.pierrejoris.com

Nicole Peyrafitte is a Pyrenean-born performance artist who sings, paints, films, writes, and cooks. Her eclectic heritage allows her to perform songs that range from French cabaret to jazz standards and contemporary poetry. Her voice is frequently heard integrated into multimedia stagings based on her visuals and writings. These performances usually also involve the onstage preparation and cooking of a dish that she shares with her audience. Peyrafitte’s work highlights her exploits in creating an imaginative identity between two continents & four languages. Her more recent performances are: The Bi-Continental Chowder/La Garbure Transcontinentale (Multimedia performance & CD), Whisk! Don’t Churn (with Michael Bisio, live performances & CD), Augustus Saint Gaudens’ return to the Fatherland (Multimedia performance, article, and documentary in development), Sax, Soup, Poetry & Voice (Performance & DVD with Pierre Joris & Joe Giardullo). Her visual work is currently on display at the “D’Artagnan Anniversary Art Show” at the Trump Tower World Bar & “Waltzing in Quicksand: Poets in Collage” at Gathering Tribes Gallery.
"Nicole Peyrafitte is a brilliant and most original performer. Her vocalizations, her song, her gestures are provocative: both stunningly beautiful and powerfully unnerving at times. She is the chthonic goddess come to tempt you, scare you, transform you. She is in the poetic lineage of Greek tragedy, Café Voltaire antics, of dada and surrealist play but with a post-modern, hip sensibility. I am transfixed when she's on stage." Anne Waldman Poet/Performer.
For more info and video: www.nicolepeyrafitte.com

Michael Bisio:
As a recording artist Michael Bisio appears on over 50 cds, he is leader on 10 cds and co-leads 7 duet recordings. His recorded output has consistently met with critical praise. Michael's first international release, In Seattle, (Silkheart), was chosen as one of the "Best Jazz Records of the 1980's" in the Village Voice. Connections, (CIMP), 2005, as reviewed in Cadence Magazine. "...this is another important disc from Bisio and company that highlights Bisio's talents as a musician, composer and bandleader." Fourteen new releases in 2009 included two MBQ cds for CIMP and Not Two, two cds by Tomas Ulrich's Cargo Cult, and Old Dog, By Any Other Name, (Porter Records). The very beginning of 2010 saw the release of Session at 475 Kent, duets with the highly acclaimed pianist Connie Crothers on MutableMusic.
As a composer Michael Bisio has been recognized with nine project grants from various arts organizations; in 2003 he was awarded an Artist Trust Fellowship.
Paul DeBarros in Signal to Noise notes:
"For years free improvisers have explored the tactile aspect of performance, in which the nature of the encounter between the player and the instrument becomes the subject of the music itself. Bisio is one of the few musicians that has managed to meld this high-concept sense of physicality with the soulful charge of jazz. His fiddle-high, scraped overtones create a tangled choir that is impossible to resist; his expressiveness with the bow is unmatched. Having whirled the listener into a transportive state, he gently shows them the way out..."