A carnival ride of spoken word, opera, jazz, rock, electronic and stage acting blended into an entertaining mix that soothes and antagonizes and never lets you down.

12 MP3 Songs
JAZZ: Avant-Garde Jazz, SPOKEN WORD: Poetry

Details:
The Pruitt-Igoe housing project, built in St. Louis, Missouri has been regarded as one of the most infamous failures of public housing in American history. As a child, poet/artist Ted Washington walked past Pruitt-Igoe on his way to school. This marvel in architecture turned into a crime-plagued ghetto that even the poor wouldn't live in. After spending more than $5 million in vain, the St. Louis Housing Authority and later the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development declared Pruitt-Igoe unsalvageable and razed the mammoth, high-rise apartments.

Today, Ted Washington pays homage to this idea of something being so beautiful and terrible at the same time in his collaboration with Molly Wilmot (mezzo-soprano), Matthew Kerr (keyboards and samples), Jon Cordova (guitar), Chad Farran (percussion and flute), and Coco Cambell (dance). The members of Pruitt Igoe draw from their backgrounds in classical music, jazz, funk, ambient grooves, opera, rock, electronica, poetry, dance, theater, metal, and world beats.

Two years in the making the recording is a reflection of the times we live in; themes of love, loss, politics and self exploration. Lending their talents to this endeavor Harold Todd (saxophone, flute) from Lenny Kravitz Band and Bill Saxton (saxophone) Harlem and New York City jazz legend, who after seeing Pruitt Igoe in his club insisted on being a part of the recording project. The cd is a blast of free form jazz, poetry, opera, rock and electronica, packaged beautifully with art by Paul Body.

The result is at times serene or spastic, ambient, lustful, tonally chaotic, or concussive. Barbarella writes in her column in the San Diego Reader, "I was mesmerized by the cacophony of sound surging from the stage. If you've ever eaten a hallucinogenic mushroom, you may have experienced that scary moment when words around you seem to change and mutate into another language - this is what I experienced."

People who are interested in should consider this download.