Jake Marmer is the Gen-X Jewish Beat poet who never made it to the Beat Movement, born 40 years or so late and in the wrong country. While Jack Micheline (if you get our daily Jewniverse email, you know who he is) and Denise Levertov were first-generation Americans, embracing the almost-English of free-verse poems with the joy of native English speakers, Jake takes his Russian upbringing and wraps it around his poetry, chews it up, and spits it out.
Last week, Marmer — along with Frank London and Greg Wall, two of the godfathers of the NYC alternative-jazz scene, and the Ayn Sof Arkestra — performed a massive new show, “The Jazz Talmud,” with pieces like “Jazz Golem” and “Mishnah of Loneliness/Mishnah of Silence.”
The entire thing is a sort of back-and-forth arguing/debating/epiphanizing of different kinds of art: the orchestra, the poet, and the soloists all dialogue and fight and create some pretty amazing music. I could tell you more about it, but the entire concert is online; why don’t you just go watch the show?
