Howl: A Performance with Percussion and Cornet

Come experience this new recitation and musical interpretation of Allen Ginsberg’s ground-breaking poetic masterpiece Howl, performed by Justin Jay Hines (percussion) with master jazz improviser Kirk Knuffke (cornet).

Completed in 1955, Howl – a rage against conformity and censorship, and a typically Ginsbergian mixing of the sacred with the profane – was first performed at the Six Gallery in San Francisco on October 7 that year. Its publication by Lawrence Ferlinghetti of the city’s famed bookseller-publisher City Lights led to an obscenity trial. Supported by the ACLU, Ferlinghetti prevailed, with Judge Clayton Horn decreeing that the poem was of “redeeming social importance.” Howl has stood the test of time and remains one of the signature literary achievements of the Beat Generation.

The 2010 movie Howl depicts the trial, with James Franco playing the poet, and Andrew Rogers the publisher.

The venue, Bowery Poetry Club, is an even mix of seated and standing.
$25 seated ticket / $20 standing ticket.

Justin Jay Hines

Percussionist, composer, and educator Justin Jay Hines has performed with the New York Philharmonic, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Moab Music Festival, Alarm Will Sound, Either/Or, BridgeMusik, Austin Classical Guitar, and the Chamber Music Society of Detroit. Broadway orchestra credits include Pippin, Tarzan, and In the Heights. He has served as a New York Philharmonic Lead Teaching Artist since 1997 and has hosted several Young People’s Concerts, including this season’s The Future is: Innovation. He has collaborated with The Juilliard School, St. Louis Symphony, New World Symphony, 92nd Street Y, Lincoln Center Education, Carnegie Hall, New Jersey Symphony, and the Caramoor Center for the Arts as a leader of aesthetic education experiences.

His classical compositions have been performed by his group Classical Jam at venues throughout the US and Asia. Currently, he is a composition mentor for the NYP’s Very Young Composers Program, and is the artistic director of Living Arts Collaborative, Inc. He joined the Manhattan School of Music faculty in the fall of 2022 with the Center for Career Readiness and Community Impact and is a recipient of Manhattan School of Music’s Pablo Casals Award for Community Outreach.

Kirk Knuffke

Reflecting on his guiding artistic impulse, cornetist-composer Kirk Knuffke says: “I’m concerned with making beautiful music. Even when the music is free and avant-garde, I want it to reach into people’s hearts. I like to play fast and loud and high, but beauty is always first.” He has made 20-plus albums, including Gravity Without Airs (2022), which earned 4.5-stars from DownBeat, while Cherryco (2017), his homage to Don Cherry, was NPR’s Jazz Album of the Year. Brightness: Live in Amsterdam (2020) included his hip, soulful vocals. Knuffke has performed with a who’s who of sage musicians, from Tootie Heath, Frank Kimbrough and Karl Berger to Myra Melford, Billy Hart and William Parker. In addition to working with the Matt Wilson Quartet, he is a member of drummer Allison Miller’s Boom Tic Boom sextet and guitarist Charlie Hunter’s Quartet. An educator as well as a virtuoso musician, Knuffke regularly passes along his expertise and experience at international jazz camps and in university masterclasses. He has received a Jerome Foundation Composers Grant.

[image: Justin Jay Hines, percussion and Kirk Knuffke, cornet. Photo by Natasha Marco]