Jazz Icon Ron Carter Joins Poet Danny Simmons for ‘The Brown Beatnik Tomes’

Billboard

“For a Pistol” is the first single from the Blue Note live album coming June 7.

Remixing a chapter out of history that resonates just as loudly now.

That’s what happened on an autumn night inside Brooklyn’s BRIC House when bassist extraordinaire Ron Carter (Miles Davis’ Second Great Quintet, A Tribe Called Quest) and Tony-winning Def Poetry Jam co-founder/painter Danny Simmons merged their considerable talents to yield The Brown Beatnik Tomes — Live at BRIC House. The new album’s selections are drawn from Simmons’ 2014 book of poems and paintings The Brown Beatnik Tomes.

Buy The Brown Beatnik Tomes

Listen to “For a Pistol” from Ron Carter and Danny Simmons’ Forthcoming Album

JAZZIZ

Bass legend Ron Carter and acclaimed poet Danny Simmons will release a new album, The Brown Beatnik Tomes – Live at BRIC House, on June 7 via Blue Note. The album documents a night of jazz and poetry that took place last autumn at Brooklyn’s BRIC House – a project that began as a book, became an event and is now an album.

“I was trying to imagine myself as a Beat Generation poet in the ’50s,” says Simmons via a press release, “and how my concerns would be a bit different from Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s or Allen Ginsberg’s. In a way, the beatniks romanticized black people. They were hip, but they didn’t really see the plight. That scene largely was about the Negro experience but didn’t have the Negro in it.”

Buy The Brown Beatnik Tomes

Ron Carter and Danny Simmons Announce “The Brown Beatnik Tomes – Live at BRIC House” Out June 7 on Blue Note Records

Blue Note Records

Today, Ron Carter and Danny Simmons announce The Brown Beatnik Tomes – Live at BRIC House, a new album to be released on June 7. On the bass: Ron Carter (who will turn 82 next week) not only played in Miles Davis’ Second Great Quintet but, with well over 2,200 sessions to his name, is the Guinness-certified most-recorded jazz bassist in history. And on the words: Danny Simmons, a Tony-winning cofounder of Def Poetry Jam, not to mention a novelist, poet, gallerist, and neo-African abstract expressionist whose paintings have appeared in the Smithsonian and the United Nations HQ.

Listen to the lead track “For A Pistol”

https://CarterSimmons.lnk.to/ForAPistol

On one autumn night at Brooklyn’s BRIC House, Carter and Simmons turned raw-plucked bass lines and hotly read poetry into something that rang with meaning and felt like magic. What they created that night was, and still is, called The Brown Beatnik Tomes. It had began as a book, became an event, and is now an album. But what it really is, is an irresistible concept.

Buy The Brown Beatnik Tomes

Celebrate Fleisher! 30th Founder’s Award Honoring Diane Burko

On Thursday, June 6, Fleisher will honor Diane Burko with the 30th Founder’s Award. The award recognizes individuals who have made a significant commitment to providing access to the arts, promoting excellence in creative expression, and enriching Philadelphia’s cultural resources.

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Meet Movers and Makers whose humble beginnings inspired impressive creative feats.