Jazz Poetry Superjam #2 at The Pheasantry

MICHAEL HOROVITZ with Special Guests JOHN HEGLEY, PETE BROWN, THE WILLIAM BLAKE KLEZMATRIX BAND featuring ANNIE WHITEHEAD, PETE LEMER and JENNIFER MAIDMAN, plus ADAM HOROVITZ and VANESSA VIE

In the words of William Blake “Art Is Religion, Religion Is Politics, Politics Is Brotherhood”. Join Britain’s pre-eminent Beat poet, Michael Horovitz, and a host of special guests, in a celebration of everything worth celebrating at Easter and Passover, plus his own 80th birthday on April 4th. Tonight's guests include the ‘scandalously talented’ (Sunday Times) comedian, poet, performer, Radio 4 favourite and People’s Poet Laureate John Hegley; Cream songwriter and beat poet Pete Brown, as well as the Horovitz-led William Blake Klezmatrix featuring celebrated trombonist Annie Whitehead, pianist/composer Pete Lemer, and bass guitarist Jennifer Maidman; poet Adam Horovitz, and singer-songwriter Vanessa Vie....

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MICHAEL HOROVITZ with Special Guests JOHN HEGLEY, PETE BROWN, THE WILLIAM BLAKE KLEZMATRIX BAND featuring ANNIE WHITEHEAD, PETE LEMER and JENNIFER MAIDMAN, plus ADAM HOROVITZ and VANESSA VIE

In the words of William Blake “Art Is Religion, Religion Is Politics, Politics Is Brotherhood”. Join Britain’s pre-eminent Beat poet, Michael Horovitz, and a host of special guests, in a celebration of everything worth celebrating at Easter and Passover, plus his own 80th birthday on April 4th. Tonight's guests include the ‘scandalously talented’ (Sunday Times) comedian, poet, performer, Radio 4 favourite and People’s Poet Laureate John Hegley; Cream songwriter and beat poet Pete Brown, as well as the Horovitz-led William Blake Klezmatrix featuring celebrated trombonist Annie Whitehead, pianist/composer Pete Lemer, and bass guitarist Jennifer Maidman; poet Adam Horovitz, and singer-songwriter Vanessa Vie.

MICHAEL HOROVITZ

An early champion of oral and jazz poetry, whose flamboyant performances have energised every kind of audience on both sides of the Atlantic, Michael Horovitz has been variously described as:

“an original poet, with an original voice” (Margaret Drabble);

“a Cockney, Albionic, New Jerusalem, Jazz Generation, Sensitive Bard” (Allen Ginsberg);

“a dreamer, a maverick … transmedial crusader” (Martin Amis).

In 1959, his final year at Oxford, he founded New Departures, an irregular periodical that was the first to publish the likes of Samuel Beckett and William Burroughs (including drafts of what would become 'Naked Lunch'). He was instrumental in organising the first International Poetry Incarnation at The Royal Albert Hall – the single largest poetry event ever in Britain – and would tail the 60s with the anthology Children of Albion.

Horovitz also founded the inimitable Poetry Olympics, an ongoing live poetry event that has included performances from both fledgling voices and the more illustrious likes of Patti Smith, Pete Townshend, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Kylie Minogue and Damon Albarn. “The thing I most admire about Michael is his spirit,” says Albarn, who has contributed mesmerising input to Poetry Olympics SuperJams. “The unique thing about his poetry is the way that it connects the electric to the mystic.”

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