I can't say completely different because I know and enjoy spoken word and I've done 10 albums of the stuff anyway, but this was poetry with jazz tune accompaniment from a capable classical player. So quite different. Stuart Long played the piano and Rohan Buettel wrote the poetry and performed it and presumably they chose the accompanying tunes to some degree together. Rohan also sings in a choir so has some songster skills but here it was recitation. 16 songs with 16 short poems on any manner of topic. First class went with Nice work if you can get it, which seems apt: apparently Rohan once got upgraded. Electricity wars went with My heart stood still, so two with some thematic relevance. I hear your voice with Skylark; Fruit bats with Someday my prince will come (?) and This too shall pass with Alice in wonderland. Plenty of others. Turnings was about a couple sleeping together intertwined and matched well with Tenderly. Trace spoke of leaving none and was matched with Suicide is painless; considerably more tragic then Wisteria with La mer and Cicadas with Summertime. Urban haiku took us back to the 70s with Red Baron, that catchy and popular tune from Billy Cobham's Spectrum album with Jam Hammer, Tommy Bolin, Lee Sklar, Joe Farrell, Ron Carter, Ray Baretto and others. I didn't catch all the lyrics live but revisited in my recordings. I was very impressed with joy and playfulness and some seriousness and the general response to language. The poems were short but Rohan's written more for several journals. A fascinating and somewhat unusual outing at Wesley.
Stuart Long (piano) accompanied Rohan Buettel (poet) at Wesley.
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