December 16, 2000

Funky Spoken Word Artist Returns

(North Adams, MA) On Tuesday, January 16, at 8 PM, MASS MoCA will bring Everton Sylvester and Searching for Banjo back for an encore evening of cool grooves and hip talk. Sylvester blends urban story-poems with Searching for Banjo's versatile reed, bass and percussion trio that plays a funky, get-in-your-bones jazz.

Their performance last year was one of the most sensual and talked-about events of the year. According to The Berkshire Eagle, "Sylvester's rich, deeply burnished voice with its Jamaican inflections was an instrument unto itself, above and beyond the manifest meaning of his words and the suggestive power of the trio's music."

In a compelling, Jamaican-accented baritone, Everton Sylvester comments on relationships, love, and the immigrant experience. Drawing from his experiences as a former Brooklyn High School teacher, optician, and New York City cab driver, his poetry combines the Caribbean passions of his youth with the rhythms and sounds of urban United States. Daily Variety called Sylvester's work "both wildly funny and scathing." The Berkshire Eagle said of his last MASS MoCA performance, "the musicians laid down insistent rhythms and grooves... which meshed effortlessly with Sylvester's hip, urban argot."

Sylvester is a 1993 James Michener Fellow and makes regular appearances at the Nuyorican Poets Cafˇ. He has also been the lead poet of The Brooklyn Funk Essentials, which was first conceived as a studio project in 1993 but quickly developed into a unique collective of musicians, vocalists, poets and DJs. The initial collaborative jam sessions formed the foundation for what would become the act's debut release Cool and Steady and Easy. By 1994 Brooklyn Funk Essentials had become a regular fixture on the New York City live venue circuit, and in 1996 they released In the Buzz Bag.

Tickets to Everton Sylvester and Searching for Banjo are $10 and are available through the MASS MoCA Box Office at 87 Marshall St. in North Adams from 11 am until 5 pm every day but Tuesdays. Tickets can also be charged by phone by calling 413.662.2111 during Box Office hours or on-line at www.massmoca.org

MASS MoCA, the largest center for contemporary visual and performing arts in the United States, is located on Marshall Street in North Adams on a 13-acre campus of renovated 19th-century factory buildings.

For Immediate Release
Contact: Katherine Myers
(413) 664-4481 x8113
katherine@massmoca.org