Paul Hecht‘s ongoing series celebrating the birthdays of poets with words and music continues this Monday with an evening devoted to the life and work of Langston Hughes. Hosted & directed by Hecht, featuring the mighty and sometimes mohawked Malesha Jessie, pianist Ellen Mandel, and actors Denise Burse, Michael Early and Phillip James Brannon.

Feb 13, 6pm. Visit our lovely website or call 212/989-9319 to make reservations.

The fiery hand of Ted Berkowitz has steadily chronicled our Café since he first wandered downstairs in the early oughts. An exhibition of his work, variegated figures caught in between glances and strikes of the keys, opens at 5:30 this Tuesday eve in our back room.

That same night at 7, we celebrate the birth of Cornelia Cuvée. After decades of tasting, and many awards for our wine list, we have finally succeeded in putting our name behind, and our labels on, two wines grown and vinified for us in California by the Millbrook Winery which makes some excellent New York State wines less than 90 miles up the Hudson from us.

They own vineyards in California, where they make a small amount of exceptional Pinot Noir and Chardonnay.

Our designer John Morrison in tandem with Wine Czar/Minister of Culture/Dean of Faculty Robin Hirsch has designed these beautiful labels

Appellation: Central Coast, California

Clones: Pommard, David Bruce, #667 and Calera Burgundian Dijon clones

Blending Information: 100% Pinot Noir

Harvest Date: Sept. 17, 2009

Harvest Brix: 24.5 degrees

Time in Oak: 8 months

Bottling Date: June 24, 2010

Sensory Evaluation: The cooler temperatures California’s Central Coast vineyards make this the ideal site for cool climate varietals like Pinot Noir. Ripe flavors of cherry, plum and strawberry and soft tannins encompass this well-balanced wine.

Appellation: Central Coast, California

Clones: #76, #95, #96 Burgundian
Dijon clones

Blending Information: 100% Chardonnay

Harvest Date: Oct. 1, 2010

Harvest Brix: 24.2 degrees

Time in Oak: Oak was not used

Bottling Date: April 30, 2011

Total Production: 667 cases

Sensory Evaluation: Bright and floral on the nose with a touch of ripe peaches and pear. On the palate, the wine is fresh with good richness and flavors of exotic fruit.

“Sooner or later, the whole world passes through.”

On January 11th, Robin took to the stage as he often has, this time not as emcee but reader, Café Stories in hand. The chapters chosen that evening told of how he’d come to invert his vagabond world and make a one-room West Village hideout into an improbable magnet for the dispersed many. It was a perfect inauguration to the Café’s first-ever JewFest, a monthlong performance series gathering together some of those far-flung Jewry to speak, play and sing what all they’d encountered in their travels. JewFest brought to Cornelia Peri Smilow, songstress of the American Jewish songbook; Daniel Cainer, “Comic Bard of Anglo-Jewry”; kinetic mystic Yehuda Hyman, who resuscitated Nachman’ s Seven Beggars, and Larry Josephson, veteran apostle of a free radio powerhouse still felt today. Throughout the festival, artist and chronicler Ted Berkowitz bore witness by hand. His work now hangs in the Café’s back room, awaiting its opening this Tuesday eve, at which point we do hope you’ll pass through too.

$75 per person

($60 if you pair it with any of the shows)

a la carte menu available in the bar room & downstairs

(Click here to view the NYE menu (PDF))

…and in our downstairs cabaret

10:30pm – The Arturo O’Farrill Quartet

Arturo O’Farrill, piano; Bill Ware, vibes; Alex Blake, bass; Jaime Affoumado, drums  

We are thrilled to have the great Arturo O’Farrill–Grammy Award winning pianist, composer, educator, and winner of the Latin Jazz USA Outstanding Achievement Award–return to Cornelia Street with his sensational quartet.  Son of the legendary Cuban-American composer and bandleader, Chico O’Farrill, he was born in Mexico and grew up in New York City. He has played piano with Carla Bley, Dizzy Gillespie, Steve Turre, Freddy Cole, The Fort Apache Band, Lester Bowie, Wynton Marsalis, and Harry Belafonte. He is the founder and leader of the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra and their first album Song for Chico (Zoho Records) won the GRAMMY Award for Best Latin Jazz Album of 2008.  In February of this year, Arturo and the ALJO released their third and newest album, 40 Acres and a Burro, which has been nominated for a GRAMMY in the Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album category for 2011.

For more on Arturo, visit his website  and watch the video below about his return to Cuba.

Oye Cuba! A Journey Home

Early shows in the cabaret:

5:30 pm – Andy Christie’s Liar Show

For this special New Year’s Eve edition, The Liar Show welcomes Leslie Goshko (Manhattan Monologue Champion), Andy Ross (Mad Magazine), Andy Christie (NY Times; WFUV), Ed Gavagan (The Moth Radio Hour)

8:00pm – The O’Farrill Brothers Quintet

As the sons of GRAMMY award-winning pianist Arturo O’Farrill, Adam and Zachary O’Farrill have performed in some of the most prominent jazz settings, including the Carefusion Newport Jazz Festival, Monterey Jazz Festival, Marian’s Jazz Room, and the Mount Fuji Jazz Festival. They are now stepping forward with their own band, and their own debut album, Giant Peach, which Wall Street Journal says, “bristles with confidence and creativity.” The band provides an eclectic mix of styles in jazz, with innovative, original compositions. Ever since their formation in2009, the O’Farrill Brothers Band has performed in some of the most exciting venues in NYC, such as Birdland Jazz Club, The Jazz Gallery, Cornelia Street Café, and more. The band members have performed with the likes of Joshua Redman, Stefon Harris, Esperanza Spalding, Arturo O’Farrill, DJ Logic, Branford Marsalis, Bob Mintzer, and Slide Hampton.

Please call 212/989-9319 or visit www.corneliastreetcafe.com for reservations. 

in the 60′s michael left an anemic rock beat at newsweek to help co-found rolling stone. he started out tagging along as part of the national psychedelic entourage but his writing and candor brought him closer to the center, sat him next to mick jagger on rough flights and made janis joplin suggest maybe he wanted to pick up a harmonica and give it a try too. matched with encouragement from his the likewise excellent and dedicated pianist ellen mandel, he began new life as a loving crooner. file under: writer-musician/musician-writer/all-around-mensch.
michael lydon plays cornelia street cafe tuesday december 12th at 830.

music: “midnight in manhattan” & “love at first sight”

How’d it come to be that these folks in Rochester enlisted you to make an album around Patchen’s work? How did they find you, or you them? What had been your knowledge of/relationship with Patchen’s work prior to that?

I got a call from Richard Peek at the University of Rochester library who told me that for Kenneth Patchen’s 100th birthday they were doing an exhibition of his verbal & visual work—paintings and drawings, covers for records, books. Turns out there’s a patron of the University who’s a jazz lover and was keen to fund a recording of some kind. So they asked me if I wanted to get involved, and I thought it would be a really interesting project for the Claudia Quintet, so I went for it. I started working about a year ago, over the holidays. I couldn’t find any Kenneth Patchen books in the bookstores, so I went to the library filled up on everything he did; there’s also a good biography out there, and that helped. When I found something that hit, I’d write that down, and I ended up with a list of 20 or so poems. His work varied but there were at least five  genres that he was working in, and I take a cross-section of those. That’s how it started coming together.

What in particular are the challenges in setting poetry to music? Did you work with Theo & Kurt on the compositional side, or did you compose alone then hand them the music & let them work magic in their singing of it?

This week Cornelia Street Café marks the loss of Paul Motian, a legendary drummer and powerfully influential musician whose long career coursed through many transfigurations of Jazz. Motian performed regularly and in the company of musicians young and old up until the very end of his life, sustaining an inimitable verve & intelligence while battling persistent illness. Of late Motian became the closest Cornelia has had to a house drummer, appearing nearly a dozen times with stalwarts and upstarts from Dan Tepfer to Tony Malaby to Samuel Blasser; his last performance at the Café came at the end of September, with Kris Davis. His absence will be deeply felt in our Downstairs, as it is through the world of Jazz and beyond.

On Thursday Brant Lyon’s mainstay word & music series Hydrogen Jukebox will release Hydrogen Jukebox with The Ne’erdowells: brain ampin’, inscribing forever in polycarbonite plastic their Café-honed home brew of poetry and live improvisatory music. For over two years Lyon & his compats have come together in our Downstairs alongside ageless vetrans and upstart open-mic astronauts, turning loose planned spontaneity every month like fine-cut spinning tops.  The album is a full-stop studio-made production that, in these words from Mr. Lyon’s latest message to the press, “brims with all the unpredictability and verve of poets performing at Hydro Juke’s live shows, while brilliantly showcasing the talents of the band—Davey Patterson, guitar; Matt Riganese, keys; Mary Noecker, bass; and Ry Pilla, drums—and their uncanny ability to strike the right note in endlessly inventive ways.”

The spoken word, meanwhile, “covers a dizzying array of topics ranging from the dangers of a hyper-digitalized world and virtual reality dystopias, to a neo-Beat groove, gospel-inflected tribute to Langston Hughes and Allen Ginsberg, a punk rock romp through a phantasmagoria of mind-bending images, bittersweet Coney Island reminiscences, and more.” All this intoned by familiar names; the record features work by David Lawton, Jane LeCroy, Peter Carlaftes, Thomas Fucaloro, Karl Roulston, Puma Perl, Brant Lyon, Frank Simone, Robert Gibbons, Jane Ormerod, and Kat Georges, no strangers to our Café and its friends.

Hydro Juke will celebrate the birth of their CD baby at an All-Star Show & Release Party to be held Thursday, October 27th from 6-8pm. Artists featured on the record will present their work alongside ziggurat stacks of freshly shrink-wrapped compact discs, gleaming in anticipation of your embrace. For those who don’t know Brant & his crew, it’ll be top-knotch 101; for longtime fans, surely a happy reunion, and a great chance to directly support work from the artists you cherish.

When you sit down at the piano, is there anyone you’ve got in mind, performance-wise, you’re aiming to emulate? Where in the sizable range of lounge-appropriate genres would you locate your work? What are some of your favorite sounds/feels/idioms to play with? 

Well, I grew up listening to the great singer-songwriters of the 60s and 70s, especially piano-playing ones like Elton John, Billy Joel and Carole King. Also the Beatles, Paul Simon…The list goes on. I also really love standards by the likes of Gershwin, Rodgers, Jimmy Van Heusen, Harry Warren… . I don’t really try to emulate anyone. As a performer, I try mostly to hit the notes vocally and put my hands on the right keys.

That said, I do think anybody who considers himself an artist tries to come up with his own unique sound. As a writer I think my songs definitely have their own individual stamp and I care very much about the craft.  In whatever genre I’m working in, I’ve always got some weird melodic —  and especially harmonic — twists. In bridge or B sections, I like to go as far out harmonically as I can and then somehow seamlessly find my way back home. I’ll also throw in things like 9-bar phrases – just because I can! I don’t write a lot of songs because I set very high standards for myself. I don’t want to listen to half-baked crap – even if it’s my half-baked crap!

As for feels/idioms/genres, I first came to Cornelia Street as part of Frank J. Oteri’s Twenty-First Century Schizoid Music series, which I played twice – meaning I’m doubly schizoid! I’ve written everything from pop to show tunes to swing and bebop, country, and even a few art songs. Anything that’s harmonically interesting, doesn’t require sampling, heavy percussion or vocal pyrotechnics is fair game for me.But there’s almost always a jazz influence, usually quirky chord substitutions even if it’s a pop tune with plain triadic chords.

What’s the songwriting process like for you? How and how soon does it come to be that a song is Done? How does your music change when introduced to the rest of your band?  

I’ve written songs any number of ways. I’ve written music first, lyrics first, I’ve set lyrics to other people’s music and I’ve set music to other people’s lyrics.  Usually I sit down at the piano and come up with the tune. Then the title. Then the words.  A couple of years ago I was dating a woman who was good friends with some great guitar players and I discovered that guitarists seem to write differently from piano players. They strum chords and kind of improvise a melody over it and go from there. So, for one piece, Lullaby, I first came up with a set of chord changes – mapped the whole thing out from first to last measure. Then I wrote a melody over it and then set the lyrics. It’s a really pretty piece, if I do say so myself.

I used the same approach for a very different tune, “I’ve Been Unfriended On Facebook,” which, like many of my songs, is loosely based on experience. It’s a mock horror song, perfect for Halloween, which I describe as Steve Reich meets the Ramones meets Dr. Demento. The music doesn’t change much when I’ve got the band playing – it just sounds much better. The people I work with are top-flight musicians who “get it” right away. And I’m open-minded about what they bring to the table as well. So, there’s not a lot of rehearsal or explanation needed.

What are some of the places you’ve played, in the City or elsewhere? How do differences in the venue change the experience of performing there? Where does Cornelia fit in?  

Being a full-time lawyer and starting a new business, I don’t gig much. And I don’t mean to be a shill, but I really love playing at Cornelia Street. Since Robin expanded the stage and got Jed Distler’s Yamaha grand up there, it’s really an ideal venue for someone like me who likes an intimate setting and to interact with the audience. While I don’t quite do a cabaret act, I do set up the songs a bit and talk to the audience more than just, say, playing an hour’s jazz set at the Vanguard. The sight lines are very good, I’ve always had excellent sound and the food and drink is much better than most of the other clubs I go to.

Last time you suggested burgeoning songwriters buy a rhyming dictionary. Any other advice? 

Learn your craft. Get a good songwriting and/or lyric writing book. There’s plenty out there. And learn about the business. Don Passman’s “Everything You Need To Know About the Music Business” is the best introduction. It’s well-written and I used it in both the music publishing and recording industry courses I’ve taught. I should be getting royalties from recommending it so often!

Describe the ideal cover art for a hypothetical LP of your work. Feel free to include illustrations or diagrams if you wish. 

One would be an M.C. Escher print I have hanging on my wall. It’s fairly well known – two hands drawing themselves. Life’s about reinventing yourself and that image is how I look at songwriting. As someone who writes both music and lyrics, I can freely change one element to accommodate the other. If a melodic phrase and a lyric don’t quite work, I don’t need anyone’s approval either to modify the music or change the lyric and I usually do a bit of both as a song progresses. And I’ll do at least 3-5 drafts – sometimes more – of a lyric. That’s why I’ve always got my lyrics up on stage with me. The tune and the chord changes are much easier to remember than which version of what verse to sing.

Pressing deadlines… people re-emerging from your past… As the great Yogi said, “it’s déjà vu all overagain” for piano-playing professor, Marc Ostrow. Join him on and his merry band on October 19th at 6pm as they play through some new songs on old themes and dusts off a few favorites in myriad moods and styles from the memory trunk of tunes. Call 212/989-9319 or visit www.corneliastreetcafe.com for reservations. 

Tell us a little about your background. Where were your first forays into theatre, music and dance? Where’d you first encounter the Hasidic storytelling tradition, or, for that matter, Judaic mysticism? 

I was born in Los Angeles. My father was a Polish Jew who came to America just before the Holocaust. He lost his whole family. My mother was born in the Caucasus Mountains of Russia and her family had to leave because of the Russian Revolution. She grew up in Istanbul, then came to the U.S. and met my father here. Growing up, my mother danced my brother and sister and me around the house and my father once taught me a Hasidic dance – so dancing and music was there from the start – also language, as my parents spoke to each other in Yiddish. My first time on stage was when I played King Ahashuerus in the Purim play at my synagogue at age 12. I was hooked. From then on, it was always theatre. I’ve had several chapters in my theatrical career – starting as a classically trained dancer who went on to work on Broadway and in film – an actor, then, a choreographer, alternating between concert work and commercial work, then focusing on playwriting. Now I feel like I’m putting everything together.

I first heard of Hasidism when I learned that beautiful little dance from my father (he was not a Hasid but he had clear memories of them in his town of Ratno, Poland). I can’t pinpoint when I first heard a Hasidic tale – but I know that even as a child I loved them – these fantastical tales that fired me up. Things really came into focus when I took my first trip to Israel in 1992. I wound up in the town of Tsfat in the North – home to the Kabbalists who escaped from Spain in the 15th Century. It was there that I met Rabbi Noach Chefetz  – a Breslover Hasid.  He told me that I needed to dance and then he gave me an orange – and that’s how I entered the world of Rabbi Nachman’s “7 Beggars.”

For readers who may not be familiar, who was Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, and what are his thirteen fables about? What drew you to adapt “The Seven Beggars” in particular?  

Rabbi Nachman was the great-grandson of The Baal Shem Tov – the Rabbi who founded Hasidism.  He was born in the 18th Century and died in 1810 at the age of 38 from tuberculosis.  One of the unique things about him–and there are many–is that his followers never had another living Rebbe but the Breslover sect continues to bloom and grow.  Each year, over 20,000 of his followers make a pilgrimage to his gravesite in Uman, Ukraine to “pray with him” for Rosh Hashanah. I went in 2000. It was a difficult experience in some ways but tremendously inspiring. I definitely could feel his spirit -which is a very poetic and beautiful spirit. During the last years of his life, he felt that the Jews were in a spiritual depression – he likened this to being asleep.  He felt that by telling them stories, he could wake them up.

His stories are all disguised parables and Kabbalastic teachings.  But he felt that it was very important to present them as little stories – which is why they appeal to people of all ages, children are very taken by them.  He told 13 stories – he never wrote them down – they were written down later by his scribe, Nosson.  “The 7 Beggars” which forms the basis of my play, “The Mad 7″ was the last story he told. It is an intricate tale that begins with a dying king who wants to pass his kingdom on to his son – but the son is too depressed to receive it.  So the king tells his son a story. Then we meet an orphan boy and girl who encounter 7 beggars in the woods – each with a disability (blind, deaf, stuttering. etc.).  Each beggar later returns and tells an amazing tale to the orphan boy and girl.  Rabbi Nachman told this story over the last 3 weeks of his life.  He did not complete it. A few days before his death, he said that the end of the story could not be revealed until the Messiah came.  Well, that in itself would have been enough to intrigue me! When I first encountered The 7 Beggars, I was moved, fascinated, mystified and energized to try and find a way to dramatize them.  It has been an 18-year “collaboration” – going deeper and deeper into The 7 Beggars and a very slow process. I’m still working on it!

What were some of the challenges you faced in translating–literally and metaphorically–these stories for a modern and often secular audience? Has there been any reaction to your work by scholars of the source material? What about modern Jewish scholars?

The biggest challenge was trying to tell all of the 7 Beggars tales within the context of one evening – each tale could be an evening in itself. The other challenge has been finding the balance between Nachman’s tale and my tale of Elliott Green, the main character of the play, a contemporary man who encounters the “Beggars.”  With the help of my wonderful director and collaborator, Mara Isaacs, we have searched for every way to make this story accessible to a modern audience, always going for the simplest, clearest way to tell the story.  From the reaction of the audiences on this last tour (I just came from a tour of the West Coast and the Midwest), I feel that they are truly with it and that makes me so happy. The cultural and religious make-up of the audience has been very mixed – from religious Jews to secular Jews to non-Jews. I did one performance for students at a Catholic High School in New Jersey and they really got it.  I haven’t heard from any “scholars of the source material.” I would love to.  There have certainly been many Rabbis and Jewish educators who have come to see the show and as far as I know their reactions have been positive (but than again, if they hated it they probably wouldn’t come backstage and tell me!).  I’ve just been asked by a Professor in Austin, Texas for permission to include THE MAD 7 in her syllabus on Jewish contemporary performance. That’s cool!

How will your performance differ, if at all, done on our tiny basement stage, versus say the more capacious theatre you’ve been home at in Princeton? What’s it like performing in close quarters with your audience? 

This week (before the show) – I am making adjustments to the show to fit into the tiny space (of which 1/4 is taken up by a grand piano!). Rather than fighting it, I’m making friends with it – you know, an obstacle is always a great inspirer to making something new out of what you have.  So I’ll be finding every little wedge of real estate on that postage stamp stage and using it.  I love performing in close quarters and I am really excited about being right there together with the audience at Cornelia. I’m really a closet cabaret entertainer at heart.

“The Mad 7″ will be performed Monday, October 10th at 6pm. Reservations at 212/989-9319, or www.corneliastreetcafe.com