The Living Theatre Presents - The Charles Mingus Jazz Workshop with Kenneth Patchen.

New York: The Living Theatre,, 1959. "In the last two weeks of March 1959, the jazz bassist Charlie Mingus and the beat poet Kenneth Patchen performed on stage together at the Living Theatre in New York City. Mingus and his band improvised to jazz themes at the back, while Patchen read simultaneously from his poetry at the front. The Patchen/Mingus performances marked the climax of the jazz/poetry fusion which had been becoming increasingly popular both at live gigs and on record releases. Mingus's autobiography, Beneath the Underdog, published in 1971 to great controversy, significantly references the performance, commenting that Patchen was a "real artist." It is of this type of merged text-music performance that Patchen's biographer Larry R. Smith wrote, describing 'the basic musical compositions [which] provide a context or environment out of which the musician's or the poet's statement acts in counterpoint or reinforcement'...Patchen's various jazz and poetry performances were part of the so-called "beat generation's" drive during the late 1950s and early 1960s to bring jazz music into the poetry arena, to make it both accessible and "hip" at the same time" ( Farrington, "I improvised behind him...ahead of time": Charles Mingus, Kenneth Patchen and Jazz/Poetry Fusion Art, Journal of American Studies, Vol. 41, No. 2, 2007). Both Patchen and Mingus committed themselves to other jazz/poetry collaborations at this time, but this appears to have been one of the more successful and meaningful fusions. Unfortunately there are no known recordings of these gigs. Two colour printed poster (326 x 217 mm). Light toning, a few superficial creases, but overall very good.