N.B. jazz composer to be featured on NJN
BY JENNIFER AMATO Staff Writer

Vince di Mura

NORTH BRUNSWICK - A township resident will be jazzing up the local television station New Jersey Network (NJN) with a spoken words performance that will air over the next week.

Vince di Mura will be featured in the State of the Arts "Making History" program on Friday, April 18, at 8:30 p.m. and on Wednesday, April 23, at 11:30 p.m. He collaborated with Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa on di Mura's spoken word jazz opera "For Lost Words."

Komunyakaa has authored more than 10 books of poetry and several critical essays. His poems on the Vietnam War led to the creation of "For Lost Words," which was recently recorded at the Passage Theatre in Trenton. It features di Mura on a multiplicity of keyboards, the vocal stylings of Annielee Moffett, and Jasper McGruder as "The Poet."

Di Mura said he met Komunyakaa at Princeton, and in 2005, when asked to musically direct "Hair" for the fifth time, he decided to take a new approach by using some of the poet's work. He said the two talked for four hours, and diMura got the insight he needed to produce a onehour composition using nine poems over the course of a year.

"I didn't choose Yusef 's work only because I like Vietnam poetry; I like everything Yusef writes. I think he's the finest poet on earth and the finest poet alive," he said.

Interested in the romantic relationship between a man and a woman during war, di Mura said his professional piece would be based on Komunyakaa's Vietnam poems. Focusing on the sensual relationships among couples, and why society writes so much about it, obsesses so much over it and why we deem it so important, di Mura said, if "you put this in a time of absolute chaotic war, what does it do to the people?"

Yet he said that his work is not gratuitous, but holds its foundation in the love itself. He said he did release "The Darker Shade of Romance" in 2007, which was "one of the sexiest things I've done, profoundly sexy," but that was inspired by the love men and women have for their children, which he said is one of the most beautiful things two people can share.

"There is nothing more sensual than walking into a house with a newborn child. There is such a sense of well-being and, God-willing, love," he said.

He is also quick to note that his work is not a political statement nor antiwar; it merely deals with how love is affected by violent times.

Di Mura's experience in music dates back to his childhood. He said the first time he heard the Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," he was able to play it right after.

"I never had a choice where music was concerned. I was always going to be a musician," the 47-year-old said. "Talent is a gift; it is a grace; something you are given. I can't spell, I can't balance my checkbook; I have all kinds of learning challenges, but I can play music and I knew at a ridiculously young age. But of course when you have talent, you have to have training."

He was classically trained and studied in France and at the Manhattan School of Music. He grew up playing the blues, and said his teacher would get aggravated because he would play the blues instead of what he was supposed to be playing.

Then di Mura switched to jazz, which he said was easy, and has since become a composer, a pianist and a keyboardist. Most of his activities are in the theater - he creates music for theatrical and film events.

He also teaches jazz piano at the Lawrenceville School and is a musical consultant for theater and dance at Princeton University.

"I found that in jazz I had something to say. Jazz gave me a huge arena in which to be creative," he said, noting that classical music can be strict, restrictive, and is more about re-creation and interpretation than creating from the beginning. He said jazz allows the integration of European cabaret, Latin music, soul and classical all together.

"Jazz was the greatest thing that happened to me. Jazz saved my career," he said.

He received a grant from the New Jersey Council on the Arts for a composition, so he chose the jazz route. He said he was inspired by Charles Mingus, John Coltrane, Mozart, William "Count" Basie and Ella Fitzgerald.

He now has more than 20 huge compositions and a multitude of theater arrangements under his belt, including "My Way: A Sinatra Cabaret" and "I Left My Heart: A Tribute to Tony Bennett."

The other segments during the NJN special will feature Nell Irvin Painter, an eminent historian and author who is now a student at the Mason Gross School of theArts at Rutgers University who is pursuing a career as a professional artist; "3- 2-1," which is a new concerto for violin, electric violin and a large orchestra that premiered at the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra on March 28; and "Seat of Empire," about a chair made around 1800 for Napoleon's Council Room at his chateau in France.

For more information, visit www.NJN.net.