This summer, New Amsterdam Records will release a new album of material by chamber-jazz-folk quartet Tin Hat. The album, which is called The Rain is a Handsome Animal sets the poetry of e.e. cummings to the group’s ambitious and uncategorizable compositions. The group will preview the new material in two very special performances at Symphony Space this Friday.
This concert is presented as part of Symphony Space’s Gertrude’s Paris Festival, a month-long, multi-disciplinary festival devoted to the vibrant cultural milieu of Gertrude Stein’s Paris and the birth of the avant-garde. Tin Hat Takes On e. e. cummings takes place Friday, April 13 in two shows at 7:00pm and 9:30pm at the Leonard Nimoy Thalia Theatre at Symphony Space, located at Broadway and 95th Street. Tickets range from $15 to $30 and are available at symphonyspace.org or by calling the box office at 212.864.5400.
An official press release from the group notes: “In these two concerts, Tin Hat salutes the unique marriage of American and Parisian sensibilities that arose in the American expat communities of turn-of-the-century Paris. e. e. cummings, like Gertrude Stein, was an American living in Paris at the turn of the century. His poetry has a special affinity with Tin Hat’s music: ‘e. e. cummings’s language straddles the same aesthetic worlds as Tin Hat’s music,’ says violinist Carla Kihlstedt. The result is an eclectic mix of songs that are thematically, if not musically, linked: ‘Some of these songs are very accessible and melodic, some are like classical art songs, and some are instrumental — inspired by the poems in a less direct way.’ “
