"Into the Woods," a poetry score by Christopher Atamian and Ann Hirschfeld

Image borrowed from Michael Harris Austin.

Poetry Scores will premiere a new work "Grandchildren of Genocide" at The Schlafly Tap Room at 10 p.m. on Saturday, November 21. Old Time favorites Dugout Canoe will open at 9 p.m., and indie rockers Accelerando will close at 11 p.m. It is a free show.

"Grandchildren of Genocide" is a new score of modern poetry from Armenia co-produced by Robert Goetz and Chris King to bear witness to the centennial of the 1915 onset of the genocide of the Armenians by the Ottoman Empire.

Here is one demo from the project: Ann Hirschfeld's score of Christopher Atamian's poem "Into the Woods." Ann scored it as a three-song suite, corresponding to the poem's three numbered parts.





Produced, recorded and performed by Ann Hirschfeld.

Ann Hirschfeld: acoustic guitar, electric guitar with slide, vocals



Produced, recorded and performed by Ann Hirschfeld.

Ann Hirschfeld: bass, drum loop, electric guitar, keyboard, vocals



Produced, recorded and performed by Ann Hirschfeld.

Ann Hirschfeld: acoustic guitar, electric guitar (in drop D tuning for bass line, outro solo), percussion (back of guitar, cardboard box, cabasa, shakey, tambourine, wood blocks, handclaps) and vocals

*

INTO THE WOODS
for N.S.

By Christopher Atamian


I
Into the woods I go
Ever faster ever slow
As green gives way to red
I walk along the riverbed
Some trees become fairies
Others soar in lofty aeries
Great armies doing battle
Young lovers kissing, prattle
A history of my world
Told daily, how it unfurl’d
In the morning and late at night
Like a martyr I go into the light.

II
Into the woods I go
Contrite that I do not know
How to save my people
How to pray in a steeple
From Cilicia and Mt. Lebanon
They came
Refugees all the same.
On Riverside Drive I think of them
As a young Orthodox maiden rips her hem.

III
Into the woods I go
Full of hope, full of dope.
I will not fast I will not slow
Just as I want I go.
I do not know many things
As I pull lightly on my silver rings-
Vincennes is what?--3000 miles away
And yet and yet
I think of Sarafian
Night and day.
Into the woods I go
And now blissful it begins to snow.


(c) Christopher Atamian, who reserves all rights

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Other composers of the scores for "Grandchildren of Genocide" include Nick Barbieri, Steve Carosello, Marc Chechik, Robert Goetz, Chris King, David Melson, Tony Pupillo, Sherman S Sherman and Mark Stephens. The composers will perform the scores live at the Tap Room with a little help from their friends.

Other poets scored include Peter Balakian, Gregory Djanikian, Adrian Oproiu, Marine Petrossian (self-translated from the Armenian) and Alan Semerdjian. The poets have all endorsed the project, including co-publication of the resulting songs through Hollywood Recording Studio.

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PREVIOUS POSTS

Poetry Scores to premiere "Grandchilden of Genocide" Nov. 21 at Tap Room

"Dark Wings," a poetry score by Gregory Djanikian and Robert Goetz

Love for Armenian women leads to project to recognize Armenian genocide

Poetry Scores' ancestry traces back to a birthday party for an Armenian girl

"In This Way," a poetry score by Alan Semerdjian and Three Fried Men

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Christopher Atamian

Ann Hirschfeld

"In This Way," a poetry score by Alan Semerdjian and Three Fried Men

Chloe Day's chalk improvisation, no longer extant,
on the concrete floor of The Skuntry Museum.

Poetry Scores will premiere a new work "Grandchildren of Genocide" at The Schlafly Tap Room at 10 p.m. on Saturday, November 21. Old Time favorites Dugout Canoe will open at 9 p.m., and indie rockers Accelerando will close at 11 p.m. It is a free show.

"Grandchildren of Genocide" is a new score of modern poetry from Armenia co-produced by Robert Goetz and Chris King to bear witness to the centennial of the 1915 onset of the genocide of the Armenians by the Ottoman Empire.

Here is one demo from the project: Three Fried Men's score of Alan Semerdjian's poem "In This Way."

It is a cell phone voice app demo recorded in The Skuntry Museum with Chris King on vocal, David Melson on bass, and Elijah "Lij" Shaw on acoustic guitar. At 0:16 there is a text message squirble.




IN THIS WAY
By Alan Semerdjian

One wraps a hand around it
before sleep, one likes
to play forget, one casts
for forgiveness, a bible for his head.
One lies to children,
one doesn’t speak at all,
a morning upsets one,
another then another
and another night
without call, or hate
or enemy or in-
visibility or cash or voice enough
to yell into dissolve, and that
which won’t go away
is still a mountain
in a story on the other side
of a map with one line
separating the throat from
the neck, and the heart
that follows is one last
sad geography of evidence,
one that won’t go away,
and in this way,
they pass the time.
In this way, genocide
blows past the family’s eyes.

*
Poetry (c) Alan Semerdjian, who reserves all rights
*

Other composers of the scores for "Grandchildren of Genocide" include Nick Barbieri, Steve Carosello, Marc Chechik, Robert Goetz, Ann Hirschfeld, Tony Pupillo, Sherman S Sherman and Mark Stephens. The composers will perform the scores live at the Tap Room with a little help from their friends.

Other poets scored include Christopher Atamian, Peter Balakian, Gregory Djanikian, Adrian Oproiu and Marine Petrossian (self-translated from the Armenian). The poets have all endorsed the project, including co-publication of the resulting songs through Hollywood Recording Studio.

*

PREVIOUS POSTS

Poetry Scores to premiere "Grandchilden of Genocide" Nov. 21 at Tap Room

"Dark Wings," a poetry score by Gregory Djanikian and Robert Goetz

Love for Armenian women leads to project to recognize Armenian genocide

Poetry Scores' ancestry traces back to a birthday party for an Armenian girl

Poetry Scores' ancestry traces back to a birthday party for an Armenian girl

 

Monica and Skoob at a recent high school reunion in Granite City.

Poetry Scores will premiere a new work "Grandchildren of Genocide" at The Schlafly Tap Room at 10 p.m. on Saturday, November 21. Old Time favorites Dugout Canoe will open at 9 p.m., and indie rockers Accelerando will close at 11 p.m. It is a free show.

"Grandchildren of Genocide" is a new score of modern poetry from Armenia co-produced by Robert Goetz and Chris King (that's me) to coincide with the centennial of the 1915 onset of the genocide of the Armenians by the Ottoman Empire.

Robert brought the project to Poetry Scores to honor an Armenian woman. I took the idea to heart right away, because one of my best friends growing up was an Armenian girl, Monica Fanning. We were part of a large circle of best friends that also included her little sister, Leigh Ann, and their house was one of our safe havens, where our hostess was their Armenian mother, born Clara Takmajian.

This was in Granite City, Illinois, a steel town, where in our parents' generation "white people" was just starting to become synthesized out of more than a dozen fairer-skinned ethnicities drawn to the steel mill. In our generation, it still meant something if your parent was, say, Armenian (or half-Armenian, in the case of Clara). To me, it meant you were smart, outspoken, amazing looking, hilarious, and adventurous, like Monica and her sister (their mom, Clara, was pretty cool, too).

 

Leigh Ann and Monica with Jay, one of the other guys in our friendship circle

As Robert and I started to work on "Grandchildren of Genocide," it started to sink in how fitting it was for Poetry Scores to be doing an Armenian poetry project. Because, as a matter of fact, the earliest roots -- the seed, actually -- of Poetry Scores was our first, adolescent gig in an Armenian girl's basement.

For Monica's thirteenth birthday party, me and another guy from our friendship circle, known as Skoob, performed our first concert. Our band was called Superpig on Broadway. The instrumentation was Skoob on autoharp and harmonies with me on lead vocals. It was an all-original set. Heavy Billy Joel influence, a little McCartney and Doors (on autoharp, mind you). Monica remembers dousing the basement lights and the audience members illuminating Superpig on Broadway with flashlights.

We rehearsed hard for that set, perched on the window ledge of my upstairs apartment bedroom. We were so sure of our future success that we made coupons for a free copy of our first record, already pre-titled the eponymous "On Broadway," and handed them out to our friends at the basement birthday party. Monica somehow held onto hers.

Original Superpig on Broadway coupon (1979). Collection of Monica Fanning.

Nine years and a lifetime later, Skoob returned to Granite City after graduating from college on the East Coast. I was hanging around waiting to start graduate school at Washington University, and for summer kicks we started up the band again. Superpig on Broadway was reborn as Enormous Richard and the Love Turkeys, which got shortened to Enormous Richard by the time we finally reached the stage -- as an actual rock band; we left the autoharp behind and grew guitars and amps. Our very first gig was written up in the daily newspaper. We quickly built a local following, started to book shows out of town and then ended up on the road for five years, undergoing a name change to Eleanor Roosevelt along the way.

Skoob got out of the van to start a career, eventually, but I stayed on the road. The rest of our band, my friends from Washington University, transformed ourselves into a field recording collective called Hoobellatoo. We recorded oral narratives of elders, an African drummer's entire cultural repertoire, mountain fiddlers and banjo players, a one-man band in Boston, the neglected blues legend Rosco Gordon, and a bunch of poets at an independent publisher in Connecticut. One of the poets, Leo Connellan, stood out to us, and we decided to set his hitchhiking epic "Crossing America" to music. It was our first poetry score, and it was featured on the BBC. So we decided to focus on what was working. We became Poetry Scores. We're still doing it, setting poetry to music (and other media).

So Poetry Scores came from Hoobellatoo, which came from Eleanor Roosevelt, which came from Enormous Richard, which came from Superpig on Broadway, which had its debut at the thirteenth birthday party of an Armenian girl.


PREVIOUS POSTS

Poetry Scores to premiere "Grandchilden of Genocide" Nov. 21 at Tap Room

"Dark Wings," a poetry score by Gregory Djanikian and Robert Goetz

Love for Armenian women leads to project to recognize Armenian genocide

Monica (third from front) and Leigh Ann (front) kicking it
with a Takmajian cousin and another best friend of ours, Mush.

Love for Armenian women leads to project to recognize Armenian genocide

 

Leigh Ann and Monica Fanning, daughters of Clara Takmajian Waterson

Poetry Scores will premiere a new work "Grandchildren of Genocide" at The Schlafly Tap Room at 10 p.m. on Saturday, November 21. Old Time favorites Dugout Canoe will open at 9 p.m., and indie rockers Accelerando will close at 11 p.m. It is a free show.

"Grandchildren of Genocide" is a new score of modern poetry from Armenia co-produced by Robert Goetz and Chris King (that's me) to coincide with the centennial of the 1915 onset of the genocide of the Armenians by the Ottoman Empire.

Robert brought the idea to Poetry Scores, initially, to honor an Armenian woman friend of his. That was amazing to me, because one of my closest friends growing up was an Armenian girl, who became an Armenian woman, Monica Fanning (her mother Clara was a Takmajian). Monica had an enormous influence on me growing up -- it's no exaggeration to say I would not be the same person today were it not for her.

I liked the idea of approaching a subject as supremely depressing as genocide from the angle of loving someone who is very much alive. Monica and I were in a best-friendship circle at the time we all began to discover ourselves as women and men, rather than girls and boys, and she and I made some of those precious early discoveries together. Monica was a blunt truth-teller, none more blunt nor truthful. She was also a gifted athlete who could compete with the guys in pretty much any sport, and we played them all together. Really, the unique kind of person Monica is and her quirky beauty -- a very Armenian beauty, as we knew even in middle school -- will always partly define for me what it means to be interesting and attractive.

So this project is not, for me, about genocide. It's about surviving and making love and having children who grow up to make love and have children. That's the beauty, anyway, of the Alan Semerdjian poem title that Robert and I adopted as the name for our project. We are talking about the "Grandchildren of Genocide," which implies that the people survived the genocide, and their children survived to have children. If for no other reason than Monica Fanning, her little sister Leigh Ann Fanning, and their mother Clara Takmajian Waterson, I thank God that the Armenian people survived.

PREVIOUS POSTS

Poetry Scores to premiere "Grandchilden of Genocide" Nov. 21 at Tap Room

"Dark Wings," a poetry score by Gregory Djanikian and Robert Goetz

Leigh Ann and Monica Fanning, daughters of Clara Takmajian Waterson

"Dark Wings," a poetry score by Gregory Djanikian and Robert Goetz

Poetry Scores will premiere a new work "Grandchildren of Genocide" at The Schlafly Tap Room at 10 p.m. on Saturday, November 21. Old Time favorites Dugout Canoe will open at 9 p.m., and indie rockers Accelerando will close at 11 p.m. It is a free show.

"Grandchildren of Genocide" is a new score of modern poetry from Armenia co-produced by Robert Goetz and Chris King to coincide with the centennial of the 1915 onset of the genocide of the Armenians by the Ottoman Empire.

Here is one demo from the project: Robert Goetz's score of Gregory Djanikian's poem "Dark Wings" from Gregory's poetic sequence about the Armenian genocide, "So I Will Till the Ground" (20007). It is a home demo, with Robert on acoustic guitar and vocal.






Other composers of the scores for "Grandchildren of Genocide" include Nick Barbieri, Steve Carosello, Marc Chechik, Chris King, David Melson, Ann Hirschfeld, Tony Pupillo, Sherman S Sherman and Mark Stephens. The composers will perform the scores live at the Tap Room with a little help from their friends.

Other poets scored include Christopher Atamian, Peter Balakian, Adrian Oproiu, Marine Petrossian (self-translated from the Armenian) and Alan Semerdjian. The poets have all endorsed the project, including co-publication of the resulting songs through Hollywood Recording Studio.

Previously posted: a more complete event announcement.

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Gregory Djanikian

"Dark Wings"
(Gregory Djanikian)


Now is the time to say
something for the animals

felled by gunshot and broadax
cluster bomb and bayonet

who have lain curled in their own blood
without succor or consolation

their flanks torn apart,
their fibulas shattered,

the muscles of their rippled
animal strengths untendoned,

horses in their heavy tranquility,
dogs snuffling the marshy grass

by river bank, by well-spring,
the sleek, undaunted cats, the goats

meandering by olive groves
without notion of bullet or

impending boom of artillery,
a hot sharp sting of pain

felt in the deepest folds
where nothing, neither claw, nor tooth,

nor talon, nor the brightest shoots
of light has ever reached


*
"Dark Wings" is (c) 2007 by Gregory Djanikian "So I Will Till the Ground" (Carnegie-Mellon University Press)

Robert Goetz

*

Image "Black Wing" be Sergey Nivens borrowed from All Posters.

Poetry Scores to premiere "Grandchilden of Genocide" Nov. 21 at Tap Room

Photo borrowed from Fedgeno.

Poetry Scores will premiere a new work "Grandchildren of Genocide" at The Schlafly Tap Room at 10 p.m. on Saturday, November 21. Old Time favorites Dugout Canoe will open at 9 p.m., and indie rockers Accelerando will close at 11 p.m. It is a free show.

"Grandchildren of Genocide" is a new score of modern poetry from Armenia co-produced by Robert Goetz and Chris King to coincide with the centennial of the 1915 onset of the genocide of the Armenians by the Ottoman Empire.

Composers of the scores include Nick Barbieri, Steve Carosello, Marc Chechik, Robert Goetz, Chris King, David Melson, Ann Hirschfeld, Tony Pupillo, Sherman S Sherman and Mark Stephens. The composers will perform the scores live with a little help from their friends.

Poets scored include Christopher Atamian, Peter Balakian, Gregory Djanikian, Adrian Oproiu, Marine Petrossian (self-translated from the Armenian) and Alan Semerdjian. The poets have all endorsed the project, including co-publication of the resulting songs through Hollywood Recording Studio.

Robert Goetz brought the project to Poetry Scores in an effort to honor a dear Armenian friend, the artist Gina Alvarez, born Gina Korakian. It so happens Chris King, Poetry Scores co-founder, had a best friend from high school, Monica Fanning, who was part of a large Armenian family in Granite City, the Takmajians. You could say the producers' hearts are in this project.

Robert started learning about Armenia out of love for an Armenian, but he came to focus on the genocide by reading "Black Dog of Fate: A Memoir" by Peter Balakian -- remarkably, one of the poets who ended up graciously contributing work for the project when Chris pitched him blindly.

Peter Balakian then suggested we invite the poet Gregory Djanikian and shared his contact information. On that sparkling recommendation Gregory sent us an entire book of his poetry on the genocide, "So I Will Till the Ground," with permission to score any or all of it.

Poetry Scores owes a special thanks to another one of the contributing poets, Christopher Atamian of New York. Contacted out of the blue on the recommendation of a mutual friend, the translator Susan Bernofsky, Christopher contributed poems by himself and his friend Alan Semerdjian (who is also a songwriter). Alan's poem "Grandchildren of Genocide" provided the evocative title for the Poetry Scores project.

Susan Bernofsky also put the producers on the trail that led to the other two participating poets, Marine Petrossian and Adrian Oproiu, who had work in "Trafika Europe 4: Armenian Rhapsody," an online publication that Susan suggested as a resource. Poetry Scores now plans a separate project devoted entirely to the work of Marine Petrossian.

As for Adrian Oproiu -- another musician -- he is the one featured poet not of Armenian descent. He is a Romanian who lives in Croatia. But Adrian liked the idea of the project and agreed with the producers that his poem "Woodcocks," which appeared in "Armenian Rhapsody," also belongs in "Grandchildren of Genocide."

The producers would like to note that not all of the Armenian poetry we are scoring is about the genocide. Not all of it is especially depressing. And the composers have not been directed to brood upon the tragedy, but rather to write the best songs in their own voices to the poems that speak to them. Obviously, the Armenian people survived, despite their terrible losses. It is their survival that we celebrate in song.

The Schlafly Tap Room (2100 Locust St. in St. Louis) makes tasty beers in many varieties, stocks a full bar, and serves delicious tavern (and beyond) food. Chef Andy is mulling over adding an Armenian lunch special the week of our show. Recipes welcome!

Poetry Scores is an international arts collective based in St. Louis, Missouri, that translates the poetry of the world into other media, including music, visual art, cinema, spirits, food, games and happenings.

The Poetry Scores blog will be updated with demos and finished scores as they emerge from the poems.

 

Borrowed from "Armenian Flag," Armenian genocide on Twitter

 

 

 

The other bands

Dugout Canoe rocking a square dance.

Accelerando live at Lemmons.





Tick Tock to host listening party for "Poetry Scored" by Nick Barbieri

 

 

Nick Barbieri performs his score of a poem from Josephine Miles' "Ten Dreamers in a Motel" with Heidi Dean, Tracy Swigert, Adam Long and Eileen Gannon.

Nick Barbieri will host a listening party for his debut record as a leader, "Poetry Scored," 7 p.m. Thursday, August 13 at The Tick Tock Tavern, 3459 Magnolia in South St. Louis.

It's a free event. There is a cash-only bar. The Tick Tock connects to Steve's Hot Dogs, serving hot dog classics and creations, and they'll deliver your dogs to the tavern.

"Poetry Scored" is a 12-song effort with a brief instrumental intro. Nick took the title from the idea of a poetry score, a poem set to music like you would score a movie. It's another way to describe the classic form of the song setting, the poem set to music, introduced by the St. Louis-based arts collective Poetry Scores.

Nick writes in a wide range of styles, giving the record something of a musical sampler quality. The through-line is rock and pop, but he also writes a smoldering soul blues, a folk ballad for harp, a vocal quartet, a fanfare, and a synth dance number intentionally made to sound cheesy, in keeping with the tone of the poem.

Nick is a drummer who sings like a bird and can also play a little bit of everything. He is accompanied by all sorts of extremely talented musicians, playing guitars and harp and horns and strings and keyboards and vocals: Brian Henneman, Eilen Gannon, Carl Pandolfi, Alex Mutrux, Obeid Khan, Mark Buckheit, Tony Ostinato, Dino Monoxelos, Frank Catalano, Phil Jost, Nathan Pence, Meghan Gohil, Jay Lauterwasser, Adam Long, David Melson, Heidi Dean, Tracy Swigert and Lyris Hung.

Nine of the twelve songs on "Poetry Scored" are actual poetry scores -- most, but not all, composed for Poetry Scores projects. For Poetry Scores, Nick set to music poems by Josephine Miles ("Longing to Find Myself Out"), Mary Dalton ("The Swallowing," scored as a four-song suite) and Andreas Embirikos, translated from the Greek by Nikos Stabakis ("Desire").

There is a good story about "Desire." Poetry Scores commissioned Barbara Harbach to score selections from Embirikos' Surrealist classic "Blast Furnace," and she discarded six of the prose poems we had selected for her to score. Surrealists adore the concept of chance, and it occurred to me there are six sides to a die for each of those six discarded poems.

So the night of the art invitational for Embirikos, we had six songwriters, including Nick, agree to roll a die the second they walked in Mad Art and score the Embirikos poem we had randomly assigned to that number. They had the three hours of the invitational to write and record it. Nick rolled for "Desire" and scored it that night in a corner of Mad Art where the chairs get stacked, his wife Beth encouraging him and giving him feedback.

Nick also scored Albert Saijo for Poetry Scores Hawai'i, Poetry Scores' first affiliate outside of St. Louis, housed at the Art Department at the state university in Hilo, with a focus on poets of Hawai'i. Saijo was born in the San Fernando Valley, went to high school at a Japanese internment camp in Wyoming and befriended Jack Kerouac in San Francisco, but he lived his best, last years in Volcano, just up the volcano on the Big Island from Hilo. .

Nick also scored two poems by yours truly, Chris King. Though I co-founded Poetry Scores and first invited Nick to compose for us, these songs had other origins. "The Shape of a Man" is the title track, so to speak, from my second chapbook of poetry, and Nick scored it on his own initiative. I love how this song struts and rocks, earning an extremely rare comparison from me: to Lou Reed.

I wrote the poem "Man with Briefcase at #2968443" for a Laumeier Sculpture Park project. Eric Hall invited people to score sculptures, and I decided to write a poem to the Jonathan Borofsky sculpture of the man with briefcase silhouette, and then score my own poem with David Melson. I invited Nick to improve upon my melodic sketch and sing it with stacked harmonies. The song is now in Laumeier's permanent collection.

"Man with Briefcase at #2968443" by Jonathan Borofsky at Laumeier

Though I'm totally psyched and honored that Nick picked up on our idea of scoring poems and ran so far with it, even scoring one of my own poems, he includes two songs he wrote with his own lyrics, "The Ground" and "Fireworks," which are as good as anything on "Poetry Scored." Steve Pick of KDHX said to me that "Fireworks" is a "perfect pop song," and I agree absolutely.

Nick also includes one cover by St. Louis songwriter Chuck Reinhart. "Midget's" is a song I first heard at a Guitar Circle and have held very dear to my heart ever since. A group of musicians associated with Poetry Scores is working on a very occasional series of covering fellow local songsters. This performance was really transformed in the mixing process by Meghan Gohil, the Poetry Scores partner in Los Angeles.

Meghan Gohil (Hollywood Recording Studio) co-produced "Poetry Scored" with Nick Barbieri. He also mixed all but two of the songs. It was mastered by Poetry Scores' co-founder and East Nashville partner, Elijah "Lij" Shaw (The Toy Box Studio). Adam Long mixed the other two songs and recorded three of Nick's vocals. Nick recorded everything else.

"Poetry Scored" by Nick Barbieri is distributed digitally by Hollywood Recording Studio and should be available wherever music is downloaded or streamed (iTunes link). Nick also pressed actual physical CDs that you can  pick up at The Tick Tock on August 13, or through Nick (nickbedrock gmail com).