KFB FRIDAYS | OCT 12TH

BARRY WALLENSTEIN accompanied by guitarist ALEX LUKASHEVSKY with Special Guest Poet JACLYN PIUDIK

knife | fork | book
at The Dark Side Studio | 244 Augusta Avenue | 2nd Floor | Kensington Market | Toronto

Doors 6:30 Poetry 7

Access: We are a second floor walk-up with two all-gender washrooms. Please remove your shoes upon entrance.

BARRY WALLENSTEIN was born in New York City. He received his PhD in Literature and Modern Poetry from New York University in 1972. From 1965 until 2006 he taught literature and writing at the City College of New York where he founded the journal Poetry in Performance and the Poetry Outreach Center,[*] which in 2012 celebrated its 40th anniversary. His poems first appeared in 1964, and since then he has published nine collections. In the early 1970’s he began collaborating with jazz artists in the performance and recording of his poetry, establishing long term relationships with renowned jazz musicians, including saxophonists Arthur Blythe and Charles Tyler, and pianist John Hicks. He currently performs in New York City with pianist Adam Birnbaum and the internationally known French horn artist Vincent Chancey. Barry continues to collaborate with musicians internationally. In recent years, he has worked with Serge Pesce in France, Massimo Cavalli in Portugal, and the band Drastic Dislocations in Switzerland. In 2012 he composed lyrics for 8 ballads by the saxophone artist and composer, Pepper Adams. He continues to work on lyrics for jazz composers.

Born in the Soviet Union, ALEX LUKASHEVSKY began playing the violin as a young child, and went so far as to study the instrument in a conservatory there. By the time he was 14, his family had relocated to Calgary, Lukashevsky turned his attentions to the steel-string acoustic guitar, and eventually picked up an electric as well. One of the things that make Lukashevsky’’s solo guitar work so extraordinary is how he finds a free-flowing dialogue between his picking and his incisive, literate and articulated lyrics. “There’s the meaning of the words, but then there’s also the meaning of how the words sound, and also how the guitar or melody plays against that, whether it’s accompanying it or whether it’s mocking it,” said Lukashevsky. “But there’s definitely a dialogue — they’re both talking at the same time, it’s not necessarily an accompaniment that I just sing over. I try not to think of it that way, even in the traditional songs, I try to  especially when I perform — kind of entangle them more so that they’re both creating these two elements that collude or collide and create one meaning. And a lot of it’s instinctual, too, like I’m obviously not super-scholastic about it. A lot of it is just like, ‘Oh yeah, that feels like the right thing.’” – Kevin Hainey, Exclaim Magazine

JACLYN PIUDIK is the author of To Suture What Frays (Kelsay Books 2017) and two chapbooks, Of Gazelles Unheard (Beautiful Outlaw 2013) and The Tao of Loathliness (fooliar press 2005/8). Her poems have appeared in numerous anthologies and journals, including New American Writing, Columbia Poetry Review, and Contemporary Verse 2. She received a New York Times Fellowship for Creative Writing and the Sellers Award from the Academy of American Poets. She holds an M.A. in Creative Writing from the City College of New York, and a Ph.D. in Medieval Studies from the University of Toronto.