Performing Arts: Poetic voices young and old work it out at Poetry Society Jam

the makeshift orchestra was in full effect, delivering pounding, screeching ovations, mostly n the command of convenor M'bala to bring on and send off the poets making their offerings at the Edna Manley College Amphitheatre, the venue where, for the last 25 years, the Poetry Society of Jamaica has been steadily perfecting the art of "nakedness through poetic expression".

Judging from the general quality of the presentations on Tuesday last, there was more than sufficient "exposure" especially from the young men, whom one may not necessarily expect to be vulnerable and open in other circles. Britton Wright led the charge with a slick yet impassioned rap calling for his peers to get away from the numbness and disconnection of social media and to "reconnect" with their elders and others and the substance of things past. A female poet elicited the expected whistles and catcalls  when she salaciously described peeling and eating a mango in a manner that strongly suggested that she object of her affections was far more than a fruit.
There was a moment of remembrance too, for poet Dubmaster Lynch, formerly one-third of the group, LSX, with surviving members Sage and X delivering rousing renditions (even singing at some points) of some of the better known LSX works.

Featured poet Millicent Graham, after a near rapturous intro from Mbala, entered and read pieces from her two collections, beginning with the more recent "The Way Home" (her debut was "The Damp In Things" both available from Peepal Tree Press), poems which tended to reaffirm Wright's earlier message of reconnecting with the things that have made us.

Even though, its well on in the performance poetry game after 25 years, the Poetry Society is still a very valuable arena for those with works in need of a "test drive". Feedback is immediate, honest and largely constructive. With Jamaican writers like Kei Miller, Tanya Shirley and (novelist) Marlon James increasingly making favourable impressions on the global stage, the Society's role is more valuable than ever:

The next great Jamaican poet will read here! 

Scoring Bolivar

Alberto Arvelo entrusted the film score for “The Liberator,” Venezuela’s Oscar entry, to a young composer who’d never before written music for film — but it was a pretty safe gamble on the part of the director, because the first-timer happened to be Gustavo Dudamel, the musical director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and one of the most vital and exciting figures in the world of classical music.

His presence at screenings and events certainly helped raise the profile of the epic film, in which actor Edgar Ramirez plays the South American revolutionary Simon Bolivar. And when the nine-film foreign-language shortlist was announced on Dec. 19, “The Liberator” was perhaps the most surprising to make the cut – as well as a movie that qualifies Dudamel in the Best Original Score category, too.

Both native Venezuelans, Dudamel and Arvelo had been close friends for more than a dozen years, and the maestro originally came to “The Liberator” as a musical advisor. “My wife was pregnant and we were expecting the baby soon, so I cleared my calendar for a month,” he told TheWrap. “I was there with the family, but at the same time I had a piano and I was reading the script. So I started writing a few little things.

“I played him some things and said, ‘I’ll give you these ideas, and then you can talk to somebody who can write the score,’” he added with a laugh. “And he said, ‘No, you are the composer.’”

All of those initial themes, he said, ended up in the score, which he completed from hotel rooms on the road a year later, while touring the United States with the Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra. The Bolivar orchestra, a former youth orchestra that Dudamel has been conducting since he was a teenager, recorded the score.

“When you are coming from my world, where you are used to interpreting all of the great composers, you see the genius of the orchestration and the power of the phrase,” said Dudamel. “But you have to be very careful what you give to a movie. You should bring a color, an atmosphere—but if the music becomes a main character, it is too much.

“I might come from the world of Wagner and Mahler and big orchestrations, and I started out writing full symphonic things. But in the end what I wrote was very simple.”

from TheWrap.com