Caught in the Rhythm

...a superb arsenal of poets who unravel their works with razor-sharp conviction and clarity... wondrous... like engrossing short films, all of which demand concentrated engagement.
DownBeat

For a decade now, saxophonist, composer, and Fulbright scholar Benjamin Boone has artfully merged the works of vital, contemporary poets with the in-the-moment creations of astute, innovative jazz musicians, first through his two critically acclaimed recordings with U.S. poet laureate Philip Levine, and most recently with 2020's The Poets Are Gathering, providing a striking platform for the spoken word. The dance of imagery and rumination set in motion by Patrick Sylvain's "Caught in the Rhythm" supplies a running theme for this exploding kaleidoscope of diverse voices, with Ambrose Akinmusire, Greg Osby, Kenny Werner and Ben Monder being a few of the interacting musical voices, offering an aural front page of dispatches, reveries, declamations, and narratives from past and present. Leave it to music, melding with shadow and light, to make the case for poetry. That's what this album—and its varied supplications to the muse—are for.

"...important poetic works in the context of sound and emotive playing. There is no line of demarcation, only artistic unity afloat in a solution of truth."
All About Jazz

Production Info:

Produced by Donald Brown
Co-produced by James Miley
Recorded by:
Mike Marciano at Samurai Hotel Studio, Astoria, NY, Jan. 5-6, 2019
Eric Sherbon at Maximus Media, Fresno, CA, Oct. 23, 2021
Benjamin Boone at Coraville, Limerick, Ireland, Dec. 2-4, 2022
Mixed & mastered by Mike Marciano
at Systems Two, Long Island, NY
Cover design & layout by John Bishop

Reviews of Caught in the Rhythm

Jazz Weekly (George W Harris)
Most of the times, when you listen to an album, you compare it to something that you've heard before that might be similar to it. That doesn't work with this album, as it is quite unique in its concept and delivery. Carry on… An ambitious project by composer and saxist Benjamin Boone is recorded here, as a mix of not only poems, but poets, and ...

Amazon (Dr. Debra Jan Bibel)
Benjamin Boone continues his lauded project of uniting poetry with jazz. After the two volumes of The Poetry of Jazz, featuring the poems and narration of Laureate Philip Levine, followed by A Gathering of Poets, 11 narrating their own often dark and angry social commentary, he presents his most interesting, expansive, and musical combinations that ...

All About Jazz (Paul Rauch)
4 1/2 STARS The connection between poetry and jazz music is a delicate one. It has been documented so infrequently, in performance and recordings, that one still conjures the flicker of an image of Jack Kerouac reading in some dark Greenwich Village cafe with Steve Allen or Zoot Sims, surrounded by beret-wearing, cappuccino-sipping beatniks. The w ...

Jazz'n'More (Switzerland) (Michael van Gee)
For a decade now, the saxophonist and composer Benjamin Boone has successfully dedicated himself to combining works by contemporary poets with jazz compositions from his own pen. The collaboration with the award-winning poet Philip Levine in The Poetry of Jazz Volume Two (posthumous 2018) and The Poets Are Gathering (2020), both released by the Ori ...

Take Effect (Tom Haugen)
An artist who is well versed in composing and playing the saxophone, Benjamin Boone brings the work of contemporary poets with spur of the moment jazz ideas across these 13 adventurous tracks. "Mississippi 1955 Confessional" opens the listen with Hashem Assadullahi's soaring sax and Peter Brendler's well timed bass complementing T.R. Hummer's f ...