Doors at 8:30 pm; Show at 9:00 pm
Tickets are $17 Advance / $20 at the Door
Black, Brown and Beige: A Celebration of The Harlem Renaissance in word and music. Bay Area poets, artists, and cultural leaders D. Scot Miller, giovanni singleton, Mark Sabb, and Michael Warr read excerpts from literary works of the Harlem Renaissance, with music of the era by the Tiffany Austin Quartet.
curated by Bay Area poet, novelist, and AfroSurrealist D Scot Miller
Vocalist Tiffany Austin’s tradition-rooted yet totally modern style has established her as one of the fastest rising jazz stars in Northern California. Austin’s music and voice draw upon influences such as Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone, and Aretha Franklin, yet she also infuses songs with her own signature style that is precise, intelligent, and soulful. In fact, her arrangements vary from classic swing to contemporary R&B à la Robert Glasper or Jose James. Her emotional and nuanced delivery has caught the attention of eminent artists, whom she has joined onstage: vibraphonist Roy Ayers at Motion Blue (Japan), drummer Tommy Campbell at the Blue Note (NYC), and saxophonist John Handy for a three-night engagement at Dizzy’s (NYC) commemorating his 1965 Monterey Jazz Festival performance.
D. Scot Miller is a Bay Area writer, visual artist , teacher, curator. He sits on the board of directors of nocturnes review, and is a regular contributor to The East Bay Express, San Francisco Bay Guardian, Popmatters, and Mosaic Magazine. He is completing a book of poems, his Afro-surreal novel, Knot Frum Hear, and has recently published his old fashioned manifesto simply titled: AfroSurreal.
giovanni singleton is the author of the poetry collections AMERICAN LETTERS: works on paper (2017) and Ascension (2011), which won a California Book Award for Poetry. The book earned praise for its evocative use of white space, silence, and omissions. Poet Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon noted that singleton’s “poems are minimalist, while engaging a concern for the historical, the personal, the spiritual, as expanses… The buildup is slow, and culminates as play, in the clear space left as we literally watch an I disappear. Thereafter, we find the blank page again. And time to make another poem.”
singleton is founding editor of nocturnes (re)view of the literary arts. Her honors and awards include fellowships from the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, Cave Canem, and the Napa Valley Writers Conference. Her work has been anthologized widely and appeared on the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts building. Coordinator for the Lunch Poems reading series at the University of California–Berkeley, singleton has taught at Saint Mary’s College, Naropa University, and New Mexico State University.
Michael Warr is the Poetry Editor for Of Poetry & Protest – From Emmett Till to Trayvon Martin (W.W. Norton, 2017). He received a Creative Work Fund Award for his multimedia project Tracing Poetic Memory in Bayview Hunters Point in which he partners with Digital Artist Mark Sabb. His poems are being translated into Mandarin by poet Chun Yu in their collaboration Two Languages / One Community. In 2017 he was named a San Francisco Library Laureate. Other awards include a PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award for Excellence in Literature, Black Caucus of the American Library Association Award, Gwendolyn Brooks Significant Illinois Poets Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship, and more. Often working with musicians, visual and performing artists, his poems have been dramatized for theater, depicted on canvas, and set to original musical composition. For more visit hisAmazon Authors page and armageddonoffunk.tumblr.com.
Mark Sabb is a digital strategist, artist, and designer dedicated to the intersection of arts and community. Through independent collaborations Mark has cemented himself as a cutting edge digital artist in San Francisco, and in 2014, along with Michael Warr, Mark was granted the Creative Work Fund award as a part of the multimedia project, Tracing Poetic Memory in Bayview Hunters Point.
