Sum of Its Parts: The Possible 4 ft. Ilya Kaminsky, Tarfia Faizullah, & Franny Choi

From Slovenia, Serbia, and just outside of Chicago, The Possible 4 is a never-before-seen collaboration between internationally acclaimed jazz artists Jure Pukl (saxophone), Vladimir Kostadinovic (drums), Marko Churnchetz (piano), and Harish Raghavan (bass).

Don’t miss your chance to witness these heavyweight talents tear up the Alphabet City stage, with different combinations of musicians and poets each night!

Featured Musicians:

Jure Pukl is recipient of the highest award of the Republic Slovenia for achievements in the arts (Nagrada Presernovega sklada 2015) and is one of the most prolific and creative saxophonists of the younger Slovene jazz generation. His music has won him many awards; among others the 2005 first Jury Prize and Best Composition Audience Award at the Jazz on International Music Workshop and Festival in Novo mesto, Slovenia. Pukl dedicates himself to modern interpretations of jazz. What he creates is a unique type of modern jazz, avantgarde, free jazz and impressionistic contemporary music performed with a great deal of knowledge and love, giving prominence to the interplay between band members.

Vladimir Kostadinovic, award winning drummer (Tuscia in Jazz 2008 Italy, Jimmy Woode Competition) bandleader, composer & arranger is one of the Europe jazz music scene’s most sought after drummers. ​He published 2 CD’s under his own name and received rave reviews all over the globe among others in the influential Modern Drummer, Jazz Times, Jazzthing, Jazzpodium and All About Jazz. He is currently writing music for his upcoming album and continues to headline concerts internationally. Vladimir has spent a lot of time playing and recording in NYC with many great jazz musicians on the world scene.

After arriving in New York in 2007, bassist Harish Raghavan has begun to make a name for himself among the rising stars of his generation.  Raghavan grew up in Northbrook, Illinois, just north of Chicago. In 2009 he was a semi-finalist in the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Bass Competition. Raghavan is a regular instructor at the Stanford Jazz Workshop and the Jazz at Centrum summer program in Port Townsend, Washington. He is featured on pianist Taylor Eigsti’s 2010 Concord release, Daylight at Midnight.

Marko Churnchetz (Slovenian spelling Črnčec) is one of Slovenia’s most heralded contemporary musicians and renowned exports, based in NYC. On the international scene he is known as a formidable young multi-instrumentalist, composer, arranger and producer who easily works across genres and in particular jazz, classical and popular music. Churnchetz’s latest album PLACE TO LIVE (Fresh Sound New Talent, 2019) features his outstanding jazz trio with Harish Raghavan on doublebass and Justin Brown on drums.

Featured Poets: 

Ilya Kaminsky is the author of the widely acclaimed Deaf Republic (Graywolf, 2019), which Kevin Young, writing in The New Yorker, called a work of “profound imagination.” Poems from Deaf Republic were awarded Poetry magazine’s Levinson Prize and the Pushcart Prize. He is also the author of Dancing In Odessa (Tupelo Press, 2004), and Musica Humana (Chapiteau Press, 2002). Kaminsky has won the Whiting Writer’s Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Metcalf Award, the Dorset Prize, a Ruth Lilly Fellowship, and the Foreword Magazine’s Best Poetry Book of the Year award. Recently, he was on the short-list for the Neusdadt International Literature Prize.

Tarfia Faizullah is the author of two poetry collections, Registers of Illuminated Villages (Graywolf, 2018) and Seam (SIU, 2014). Tarfia’s writing appears widely in the U.S. and abroad in the Daily Star, Hindu Business Line, BuzzFeed, PBS News Hour, Huffington Post, Poetry Magazine, Ms. Magazine, the Academy of American Poets, Oxford American, the New Republic, the Nation, Halal If You Hear Me (Haymarket, 2019), and has been displayed at the Smithsonian, the Rubin Museum of Art, and elsewhere. In 2016, Tarfia was recognized by Harvard Law School as one of 50 Women Inspiring Change. Born in Brooklyn, NY to Bangladeshi immigrants and raised in Texas, Tarfia currently teaches in the Writing Program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago as a Visiting Artist in Residence.

Franny Choi is a poet, performer, editor, and playwright. She is the author of Floating, Brilliant, Gone and the chapbook Death by Sex Machine. Her poems have appeared in Poetry Magazine, American Poetry Review, the New England Review, and elsewhere. She is a Kundiman Fellow, Senior News Editor for Hyphen, co- host of the Poetry Foundation’s podcast VS., and member of the Dark Noise Collective. Her second collection, Soft Science, was published by Alice James Books in April 2018. A current Zell Postgraduate Fellow at the University of Michigan, she is currently based near Detroit, MI. Find her online at frannychoi.com

Bewketu Seyoum is an writer, poet, essayist, and entertainer, born in Mankusa, Ethiopia. Honored as Ethiopian Best Novelist of the Year in 2008 and Best Young Author in 2009, he is widely regarded as one of the leading poets of his generation. He has published six books of stories, poetry, novels, and collections of essays in English and his native language Amarhic. He is also well-known for his comedic writing and performing his short sketches. Common themes in his work include corruption of government officials, police brutality, and the absurdities of tribalism. He frequently uses humor in his work to broach politically and socially taboo subjects rarely aired in the Ethiopian public sphere. Bewketu is currently a writer-in-residence at City of Asylum Pittsburgh.