‘Poetica Instrumental’ debut album by Poetica at Peaceful Radio Internet Radio
25 January 2022 Artists
Click on photo for Poetica’s website.
POETICA INSTRUMENTALS is a cinematic, stylistically expansive album that deftly fuses Jazz, Classical, New Age and Americana. Composed by producer/multi-instrumentalist Rachael Sage with Grammy® nominated cellist Dave Eggar, this evocative soundtrack features clarinetist David Krakauer, guitarists Gerry Leonard (David Bowie) and Jack Petruzzelli (Patti Smith), trumpeter Russ Johnson (Elvis Costello), harmonica player Will Wilde, and drummers Doug Yowell (Suzanne Vega) and Quinn (Janelle Monáe). Poetica is the brainchild of alt-folk-pop composer, producer, and poet Rachael Sage.
A cinematic, stylistically expansive odyssey, Poetica calls to mind such poet/musicians as Leonard Cohen, Patti Smith and Laurie Anderson. Adventurous yet familiar in its intimacy, Sage’s voice is perfectly at home in the absence of typical song structure, while her musical arrangements fuse elements of jazz, classical and Appalachian folk with surprising agility. Only rarely does Sage enlist her more widely-known singing voice to punctuate these recordings, from which her signature piano playing is notably – and intentionally – absent.
Beginning as a duo collaboration under lockdown between Sage and her longtime cellist Dave Eggar (Esperanza Spalding, Duncan Sheik, Corinne Bailey Rae), the project soon evolved into a full-blown, cinematic spoken word album, with Sage producing and engineering the project in isolation with limited gear she happened to have with her while on tour while sending files back and forth to bandmates and guest musicians from every genre. From over 200 poems written both during and prior to lockdown, Eggar – whose parents are both poetry professors – volunteered to help Sage select the 18 spoken-word pieces that eventually comprised the album, whose initial goal Sage admits “was to create something that would literally keep me from going insane while locked by myself in an attic for the better part of a year and a half.”
In addition to three-time Grammy® nominee Dave Eggar, contributors to Poetica include renowned klezmer clarinetist David Krakauer, Spooky Ghost guitarist (and longtime David Bowie bandmate) Gerry Leonard, jazz trumpet player Russ Johnson, drummer Quinn (Janelle Monáe) and UK-based blues harmonica player Will Wilde. Frequent musical partners Kelly Halloran (Michael Franti), Doug Yowell (Suzanne Vega), Jack Petruzzelli (Rufus Wainwright), and James Mastro (Patti Smith) contributed violin, drums, and electric guitar, respectively.
With plans for a full-length book of her favorite poems as well as another volume of spoken-word recordings already in the works, Sage has never been more grateful for her relationship to the written word. “Writing song lyrics is very different for me than writing poems. Poems come from a much more subconscious, mysterious place that I would almost describe as a kind of soul-searching. It’s a very spiritual process for me and I usually learn something after the fact, once each poem is written. I’ve been really enjoying the absence of any kind of song structure while creating these arrangements, and I also greatly credit Dave Eggar for supporting this vision, and my writing, unequivocally.”
“magnetic and soothing…cinematic and stylistically expansive” – Parade
Benno Veugen Jazz, Peaceful Radio, Peaceful Radio Internet Radio, Poetica