Jazz Poetry 2024: Andy Milne Trio, Noah Arhm Choi, Jonathan Moody, Justin Perez, & Monica Sok

Jazz Poetry continues into its final week, welcoming Juno Award–winning pianist Andy Milne all the way from Canada. Andy Milne’s Unison Trio will be sharing his new album, Time Will Tell,  which explores the intersection between heritage, identity, and destiny. Performing with Andy are renowned poets Justin Perez (a leading Deaf storyteller sharing work via visual vernacular), Kundiman and Sewanee Writers Conference fellowship awardee Noah Arhm Choi, winner of the Cave Canem/Northwestern University Press Poetry Prize Jonathan Moody, and Monica Sok, a recipient of the Discovery Prize from the 92nd Street Y.

Each Jazz Poetry program begins with a 40-minute performance by the band, followed by 30 minutes of collaborative performance with the featured poets. In these collaborations, poets share their work while the musicians interpret and accompany their poetry with jazz, adding a unique, improvisational dimension to each performance.

ASL interpretation will be provided by Jenni Bloodworth and Josh Stresing. 

Featured Musicians:

About the Musician:

Award-winning pianist/composer Andy Milne has spent 30 years demonstrating boundless versatility, collaborating with dancers, visual artists, poets and musicians spanning jazz, classical, pop, folk, and world music. With UNISON, enriched with creative insights from his multiple projects, Andy returns to his first love: exploring the intimacy of the piano trio. The synchronistic relationship Andy has enjoyed with bassist John Hébert since 2010 is matchlessly rounded out with drummer Clarence Penn, who represents complementary threads within the fabric of Milne’s piano trio philosophy — the intersection of texture and groove. In 2020, Sunnyside Records released UNISON’s debut, “The reMission” which won the 2021 JUNO Award for Jazz Album of the Year:Group.

About the Poets:

Noah Arhm Choi is the author of Cut To Bloom, winner of the 2019 Write Bloody Prize. They received a MFA in Poetry from Sarah Lawrence College and their work appears in Apogee, The Rumpus, Split this Rock, and elsewhere. Noah was nominated for Best of the Net in 2022, shortlisted for the Poetry International Prize, and received the 2021 Ellen Conroy Kennedy Poetry Prize, alongside fellowships from Kundiman, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. A Lambda Literary Writer in Schools, they work as the Director of the Progressive Teaching Institute at a school in New York City.

Jonathan Moody received his MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Pittsburgh where he was the recipient of the Ed Ochester Award as well as fellowships from Cave Canem. His poetry appears in the African-American Review, The Common, Gulf Coast, and Harvard Review Online to name a few. In addition, his work is forthcoming in the anthology Dear Yusef: Essays, Letters, and Poems, For and About One Mr. Komunyakaa. Moody is the author of The Doomy Poems (Six Gallery Press, 2012), and Olympic Butter Gold: winner of the 2014 Cave Canem/Northwestern University Press Poetry Prize. Moody teaches English at South Houston High School and lives with his wife and three sons in Pearland, TX.

Justin Perez was born and raised in Houston, Texas and was a student at Texas School for the Deaf. He has always been fascinated by American Sign Language (ASL) performance art and storytelling styles. Throughout his teenage years, Justin had incredibly deep bonds with several of his close friends who also enjoy sharing a variety of ASL stories, and that was where he defined numerous storytelling techniques along with sign language expressions. The more he shared his stories with the public, the more people asked him to continue. That fueled his creativity and innovative persona in pushing new sign language art performances, and his passion for the artform. Justin started receiving offers and opportunities all over the world, including being a Visual Vernacular (VV) teacher at Texas School for the Deaf, ASL tutor at National Technical Institute of the Deaf, ASL model and expert with TRUE+WAY ASL curriculum, and many more. In 2017, he won the ASL Elements national ASL competition with his fan favorite, a Super Mario Kart story. He ultimately aims to bring his Visual Vernacular performance art to the World. Justin is available for presentations, workshops, modeling, performing and potential contractual work. 

Monica Sok is the author of A Nail the Evening Hangs On (Copper Canyon Press, 2020). She has received fellowships from Hedgebrook, Kundiman, MacDowell, National Endowment for the Arts, Poetry Society of America, and the Wallace Stegner Program at Stanford University. Her poems have appeared in Best American Poetry, New Republic, Paris Review, POETRY, Kenyon Review, and The Washington Post. Monica is a daughter of Khmer Rouge regime genocide survivors and stands in solidarity with Congo, Palestine, and Sudan. She lives in New York City.

About Your Visit: 

Doors open at 5pm. 

The in-house restaurant 40 North is open for dinner from 5-9pm. Please visit Open Table or call 412-435-1111 to make a reservation.