Troy Savings Bank Music Hall

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A Tribute to Pablo Neruda October 30, 2004 Saturday at 8:00 p.m. Troy Savings Bank Music Hall 7 State Street, Troy NY / 518-273-0038 $26 & $23 Students:$15 (Note: Fee not by Writers Institute)

Readings of Neruda's Poetry by David Yezzi (Substitute for Ilan Stavans)

Inti-Illimani, one of Latin America's premier music ensembles, performs a special one-night concert to celebrate the centennial anniversary of Nobel Prize-winning Chilean poet Pablo Neruda (1904-73). The evening brings the passionate poetry of Neruda, recited by Mexican-American writer and translator David Yezzi, together with the music of Inti-Illimani. The special Saturday event is cosponsored by the New York State Writers Institute and the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall.

Now in its 37th year, Inti-Illimani combines powerful vocal choruses with exquisite guitar work, delicate Andean flutes, scintillating percussion, and the music of dozens of indigenous Latin American instruments. "Few Latin American acts can rival the Chilean group in terms of the sheer beauty of sound," asserts the "Los Angeles Times." The "Washington Post" calls them, "one of the finest vehicles ever for Andean music and progressive Latin songwriting." Performing at numerous benefits for Amnesty International, the group has shared stages with Sting, Wynton Marsalis, Bruce Springsteen and Peter Gabriel. Pronounced "Inte-E-gee-manee," the band's name comes from the Ayamara dialect and refers to a South American "sun god."

Current members of the group include Jorge Coulon, Marcelo Coulon, Daniel Cantillana, Juan Flores, Manuel Meri�o, Christian Gonz�lez, and Efren Manuel Viera. In November 2002, Inti-Illimani released its first studio recording in five years, "Lugares Comunes" (Common Places).

"Few Latin American acts can rival the Chilean group in terms of the sheer beauty of sound. Much like a Zen affirmation, Inti-Illimani's music floats within your soul, filling it with calmness and hope." - "Los Angeles Times"

David Yezzi's books include the poetry collections "Sad Is Eros" (Aralia Press) and "The Hidden Model" (TriQuarterly/Northwestern), as well as his forthcoming edition, "The Zoo Anthology of Younger Poets" (Zoo Press). His poems have been published in literary journals including "The Yale Review," "The Paris Review," "The New Republic," "Poetry Daily" and "The New Criterion." Mr. Yezzi is associate editor of "Parnassus: Poetry in Review," and his literary essays and reviews have appeared in "The New York Times Book Review," "The New York Sun," "The New Yorker," "The Wall Street Journal," "The (London) Times Literary Supplement," "Poetry" and elsewhere. As an actor and co-founder of Thick Description, a San Francisco theater company, Mr. Yezzi has performed in works by Shakespeare, Shaw, Brecht, Goethe, Williams and others in the United States and Europe. His libretto for a new chamber opera by composer David Conte, Firebird Motel, received its world premiere in 2003 and will be published by E. C. Schirmer.

Before becoming Director of the Unterberg Poetry Center of the 92nd Street Y in New York City, Mr. Yezzi was chief administrator of The New York Institute for the Humanities at New York University. He earned a B.F.A in theater from Carnegie Mellon and an M.F.A. in creative writing from Columbia University School of the Arts. His poetry earned him Columbia University's David Craig Austin Memorial Award and The Academy of American Poets College Prize. In 1992, Herbert Leibowitz gave Mr. Yezzi his first editing job at Parnassus: Poetry in Review; since then, he has held editing positions at The New York Observer and The New Criterion, returning to Parnassus as associate editor in 2000. In 1998, Mr. Yezzi was awarded Stanford University's prestigious Wallace Stegner Fellowship.

Pablo Neruda, often called "the Homer of South America," is one of the titanic figures of modern poetry. Upon awarding him the Nobel Prize in 1971, the Swedish Academy declared, "In his work a continent awakens to consciousness." Translated into scores of languages, his collections have enjoyed bestseller status throughout the world. Known throughout his life as "the People's Poet," Neruda communicated in direct, accessible language.