Bach Choir debuts poetry as jazz

Pianist Tom Roberts and guitarist Joe Negri seem happy to be treading down the path the director of the Bach Choir of Pittsburgh is blazing.

And both are pleased to have composed a new work that will be premiered this weekend at concerts by the choir.

"You're starting to think of me as a writer of choral works, right?" says Negri, a jazz guitarist who also has written a musical mass. "That's all right. I like that."

He and Roberts have taken 14 poems by three seminal black poets and put them to music for a jazz quintet and choir. The pieces will make up the choir's concert called "The Poetry of Jazz."

Roberts, who splits his time between work in this area and New York City, found the project to be well worth a change in his plans.

The Pittsburgh native was going to go to New Orleans to begin work on his doctorate in music when choir director Thomas Wesley Douglas approached him with the project.

"I said, 'Heck, that's worth staying ... here for another year,'" say Roberts, a master of stride piano and ragtime classics.

Douglas says he wanted to use these concerts to take a look at the black experience in America by working with some of the classic writers who recorded it. Roberts says he liked the idea of putting the poetry of Langston Hughes, W.E.B. DuBois and Paul Laurence Dunbar into music -- even if it went a little away from his experience.

"I have always loved jazz, but I just don't understand it," he says. "I had to let Tom and Joe figure out the way it would go."

Douglas also jokes about how Roberts would find arcane connections between the poetry and the music of jazz greats such as Duke Ellington or Sidney Bechet.

"He's like a walking history book," he says of Roberts. "Every time I would talk to him, it would be like going to class."

The composers return his compliments by talking about the artistic director's work with the choir. Douglas has titled this season "Beyond Borders" and has performed different types of music in different settings at each concert.

"He just has a good grasp of the theatrical concept of it all," Negri says about Douglas's use of various sites and of presenting the choir in different settings.

Roberts calls Douglas "a great musicians and a good businessman" for the way he has tried to create a different image for the choir by doing works that generally aren't connected to it.

Primarily, though, they both are enthusiastic about how the poems lend themselves to music.

"It's almost like they were lyrics waiting for a song," Roberts says. "It's almost like Fats Waller went up to Langston Hughes and asked for help with a song."

Or, he says, some of the pieces hint at a specific style. "Harlem Sweeties" suggests music of the '30s from New York, he says.

"It's almost like I made the voices into the five saxophones of the Ellington band," he says.

Negri adds some of the poems almost demanded music. One of Hughes's works is called "Same in Blues."

"Well, you can imagine where I went with that," he says.0 Additional Information:

'The Poetry of Jazz'

Featuring: Tom Roberts, Joe Negri and the Bach Choir of Pittsburgh

When: 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday

Admission: $22, $16 for senior citizens; $8 for students

Where: St. Agnes Church, Carlow University, Oakland

Details: 412-394-3353