Nick Jaina
Performs at the John Natsoulas Gallery
April 21st at 8PM
The Poetry Night Reading Series is proud to welcome lyrical essayist and musician Nick Jaina on Thursday, April 21st at 8 P.M. He will be performing at the John Natsoulas Gallery at 521 1st Street in Davis.
Nick Jaina is a musician and writer from Portland, Oregon. His 2013 album Primary Perception was highly regarded by fans and critics alike. As Morgan Troper the Portland Mercury said, “I’d feel embarrassed describing Nick Jaina as a genius outright, and I’m sure he’d hate that too, but it’s so tempting—because he is so clearly the real deal.”
Jaina is a co-founder and musical director of the Satellite Ballet and Collective in New York City. He has composed music for three ballets and three contemporary dances with that group, featuring dancers from the New York City Ballet, Ten Hairy Legs, and Juilliard, performing at the Baryshnikov Center and the Joyce Theater. Their most recent performance was two sold-out shows at Brooklyn Academy of Music in May 2014. Of that show, the New York Times wrote, “[The] pure, pungent, earthy music for strings, piano, and percussion… was the most physically bracing part of the night.”
Nick Jaina’s new book, Get It While You Can, was called “a love song to music and to those who make it and live it” by the Los Angeles Review of Books. It is a warm, hopeful book about finding freedom and claiming it every day of your life, despite all the traps along the way. Perfect Day Publishing released the book in January of 2015 to voluminous praise.
Excerpts from Get It While You Can have appeared or are forthcoming in McSweeney’s Quarterly, Oregon Humanities, Under the Gum Tree, and Portland Mercury.
Nick Jaina’s live performance is an audio scrapbook. He loops together guitar melodies and found sounds and reads passages of his book over them. Potent words hang in the air as a guitar figure echoes out, leaving the listeners time to digest the sentiment. In the middle of this sea of ideas and emotion, Nick breaks the tension by playing a song.
Upcoming Readings:
May 5: Matthew Zapruder and Jason Bayani
May 19: Linda Lancione and Laurie Glover
June 2: UC Davis Professor Katie Peterson and her English 100P Students
Future: Other poets planned for the future include Richard Loranger, Rosa Lane, Nina Lindsay, Chris Erickson, Joshua McKinney, and Joshua Clover.
Media Contact: Andy Jones
Email: aojones@gmail.com
The John Natsoulas Gallery 530-756-3938
www.poetryindavis.com
See the Facebook page for this event:
https://www.facebook.com/events/240036739680930/
You are also invited to join the Poetry in Davis Facebook group mailing list:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2290130152&ref=ts
