Duende Project – White Plains Public Library – September 3, 2014
This event was part of the White Plains Jazz Festival, though it was more of a poetry happening. First there was a series of open mic poetry readings (talk about some really short sketch windows – maybe 5 minutes tops), then the featured Duende Project, only partially represented by Brown and Lanning-Cafaro, and finally a poetry slam. Some of the poets didn’t stick around even to the end of Duende (way to support your fellow artists, guys!); oh well, no signatures there, and I’m leaving them off. Duende was really smoove, Brown reciting, backed by Lanning-Cafaro on bass or guitar. Simpkins is a bit chameleonic, and signed as AJ Poet; it’s hard for me to grasp what about her I captured – sometimes in the right illumination it (at least the original) seems to parse the light into counterintuitive suggestions of refracted colors. No, I don’t understand.
Tony Brown
Steven Lanning-Cafaro
AJ Simpkins
Eugene T. Holmes