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February 23, 2008:
AJA-MONET & MARITRI
Spoken Word and a little Folk Jazz made for a really soothing Saturday. The snow and ice might have been melting outside but we warmed up to the fiery words of AJA-MONET and comforting heat of MARITRI. Come, get cozy…
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Bob Holman eloquently describes her as a, “glutton for love and beauty…classically surrealist. I haven’t heard a ‘humming bird released from a mother’s ribcage’ in the last week or two, wow.”
A Cuban-Jamaican from East NY, Brooklyn, at only 20 years old, Aja-Monet is currently the 2007 Nuyorican Poets Café Grandslam Champion and placed top 20 out of hundreds of poets across the nation. She has been on the Urban Word NYC Slam Team in 2005 and represented New York City at the Brave New Voices Inter-National Poetry Slam in San Francisco, reigning, as the first NYC team to ever win the Youth National Poetry Slam team title.
Aja-Monet’s poetry is a startling, soul warbling movement with a voice whose cadence dances strong and beautifully on the ear. Often received by both poetry and Hip Hop crowds, her poetry moves one to a place of inspiration and sincere thought. Her work is a vulnerable internal reflection conveying a love and emphasis of human compassion and connection.
She has been featured in Say It Loud magazine, The Brooklyn Rail, Beyond Race Magazine, and on the MNN television channel. Monet has shared the stage and performed for the likes of Russel Simmons, Reverend Run, Foxy Brown, Doug E Fresh, Wyclef Jean, Ice T, Roxanne Shante as well as countless others. A vivid, raw, and real expression of her experience and imagination, Aja-Monet moves audiences of all sorts. She has been reviewed in the New York Times along with Camille A. Brown and Dancers for her “bold, glistening spoken word imagery” as quoted by Gay City News.
Monet currently dedicates her time working with inner-city youth and poetry for non-profit organizations such as Urban Word NYC, In Arms Reach, and Odyssey House. She attends Sarah Lawrence College where she is studying Writing and Religion.
Visit Aja-Monet online
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There aren’t many artists who can move from one form to another and do it well. Maritri has a gift for music, learning instruments with an ease that is impossible to describe and equally impossible to forget.
Maritri taught herself to play guitar last year and a second later was performing on stage. She picked up the cello in the summer of 2005 and in six months’ time, made her debut as a cellist at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
Few singers talk about stories of love, life, and loss the way Maritri can. Her poignant, bittersweet lyrics, tells “grown folks stories” in a poignant way that will break you down to the core. Maritri was destined to share her gift of music with the world. As a two-year-old in Southern California, Maritri developed her love of music when she began playing the piano under the loving and watchful eyes of her parents. Even then, it was clear that she was something special.
Maritri studied jazz with Grady Tate and Geri Allen and classical with Raymond Jackson and Russell Baldwin. She received a B.S. degree in Biology from Fisk University in Nashville where she also was a world renowned Jubilee Singer. Maritri also holds a Bachelors in Composition and a Masters in Jazz Studies from Howard University, Washington, D.C.
In 2002, Maritri made her classical piano debut at Steinway Hall in New York. She was subsequently commissioned, along with cellist Shana Tucker to compose music for two ballets at the Washington Ballet under the direction of Mary Day at the Kennedy Center and at the Witts Theatre in Johannesburg, South Africa. Maritri has opened for Gladys Knight, The Five Blind Boys of Alabama, Stanley Jordan, Toshi Reagon, Hiram Bullock, Muzz Skillins, Vinx and the Indigo Girls with her band Hue; appeared on BET on Jazz as a musician and host, performed at Nina Simone’s family memorial with Patti LaBelle, Nina Simone, Valerie Simpson, Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis. Maritri was also chosen as one of the background singers for Barbara Streisand at the Clinton inaugural gala.
Maritri’s TV credits include BET on Jazz and BCAT’s Straight Up! With Stella Winston. Her recent performances include Def Poetry Plugged In at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, hosted by Danny Simmons; the Apollo Theater with Sekou Sundiata and Ani Di Franco, the Cutting Room, Central Park’s Summerstage, the Women’s Jazz Festival at the Schomberg Center with Tamar Kali, Borders Books, Bar Sputnik, 4W Circle, New York City’s Triad Theatre, the 92nd Street Y-Makor/Steinhart Center, the New School and Aaron Davis Hall with Sekou Sundiata as part of “The America Project,” Rush Arts Gallery, The Knitting Factory, BRIC Studios, Riverbank State Park, Joe’s Pub, Ashford & Simpson’s Sugar Bar, BAM Café’.
Visit Maritri online
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