This February during Black History Month I've been writing about the discovery, history, and my subsequent impressions of a scrapbook featuring the life and career of a mid-20th Century Afro-American musician and singer Lawrence "Hank" Hazlett who played with a swing Jazz quartet The Cats and the Fiddle from Chicago and then with his own Hank Hazlett Trio out of Minneapolis. 

In the scrapbook this creased and folded sheet of 6 numbered inspirational quotes was pasted on a page. They must have been meaningful to him, so I composed some music and read the quotes as a spoken word with music piece this month. The quotes are from (in order) M. B. Whitman, Henry David Thoreau, Lloyd C. Douglas, Helen Keller, Herbert Kaufman, and Ambrose Bierce.

The Parlando Project combines various words (usually literary poetry) with original music in differing styles. We've done over 800 of these combinations, and you can hear any of them and read about our experiences with the pieces at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org

Here's Alice Dunbar Nelson's passionate love poem from the last decade to be called The Twenties performed as a song. I just saw this poem this morning, but I was so taken with it that I spent my afternoon composing some music to perform it with. 

The Parlando Project combines various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in differing styles. We've done over 800 of these combinations, and you can hear them all and read about our encounters with them at hour blog and archives located at frankhudson.org

Our Black History Month celebration this month is more focused on new articles on the Parlando Project blog, but I thought it'd be good to provide some new musical pieces too. Here's Langston Hughes' poem "Dreams"  which I've cast as a blues for acoustic guitar, bass, and piano for this performance.

The Parlando Project takes various words (mostly literary poetry) and performs them with original music (in differing styles). We've done over 800 of these combinations over the years and you can hear them all and read what I wrote about our this Project at our blog and archives, located at frankhudson.org