Performing with the Irreversible Quartet

December 7 | $15 Admission
7:30pm Poet Patricia Spears Jones / Luke Stewart
8:00pm Irreversible Quartet - Keir Neuringer, Aquiles Navarro, Tcheser Holmes, Luke Stewart

Arts for Art presents a weekend FreeJazz Residency at the Weeksville Heritage Center, featuring performances by Irreversible Quartet & poet Patricia Spears Jones on December 7, and In Order to Survive & poet Tracie Morris on December 8.

In the early 20th century, Bed-Stuy and Crown Heights welcomed a new wave of black residents making these black enclaves stand out cultural strongholds, with music integrated into every aspect of community life. A remarkable number of jazz musicians were nurtured and schooled in these neighborhoods. So much so, that by mid-century, the number of local jazz venues in Central Brooklyn had outdistanced the number in Harlem. In 2015, Weeksville unveiled 'Lost Jazz Shrines of Brooklyn: the Weeksville Collection', an exhibit that celebrated the spirited, liberating force of jazz that took root in Central Brooklyn between the 1930s and 1960s. Weeksville and Arts for Art are elated to continue amplifying this history.

Irreversible Quartet

Irreversible Quartet is the instrumental formation of Irreversible Entanglements, a free jazz + poetry quintet whose 2017 debut recording rocked the year-end lists of Wire Magazine, NPR, The Quietus, Stereogum and a host of others. The Quartet, featuring Keir Neuringer on saxophone, Aquiles Navarro on trumpet, Luke Stewart on bass, and Tcheser Holmes on drums, reps scenes in Philadelphia, New York, and DC. Tapping into key legacies in creative Black music in the US, their work has been described as “a kinetic bubbling over of collective political and spiritual energy” (Liz Pelly, Shadowproof). They bring an intensity and determination honed by a string of milestones garnered by their main project, Irreversible Entanglements (featuring poet/musician Camae Ayewa a/k/a Moor Mother) 

Patricia Spears Jones

Born and raised in Forrest City, Arkansas, longtime resident of New York City, poet Patricia Spears Jones is a cultural maven.. Art and music inform her poems, and she offers portraits of individuals in transit, engaging themes of class and social change with wry perception. In 2017 she was awarded the Jackson Poetry Prize, one of the most prestigious awards for American poets.