Writer Maximillian Werner and Musician and Performance Artist Ken Critchfield
will read and perform from their works at the Salt Lake Public Library Main
Branch on Wednesday September 15th at 7:00.
Maximilian Werner lives in Salt Lake City and teaches writing at the University
of Utah. His poems, fiction, creative nonfiction, essays, and interviews have
appeared in several journals and magazines, including Matter Journal: Edward
Abbey Edition, The North American Review, Yale Anglers' Journal, ISLE, Weber
Studies, Fly Rod and Reel, Puerto del Sol, and Columbia. He is also an Academy
of American Poets prize winner. Mr. Werner's book Black River Dreams won the
2008 Utah Arts Council's Original Writing Competition for Nonfiction: Book and
was published in January by Barclay Creek Press.
Ken Critchfield is a psychologist (Ph.D. from University of Utah in 2002),
bassist, and composer. His musical work involves experimental forms developed to
explore aspects of dialogue, personality, and meaning. The CD "Foundation,"
produced in 1997 with the help of a Utah Arts Council/NEA grant involved use of
extreme structure (e.g., rigid and minimalist compositional forms) to explore
how organic, human elements impose themselves as "errors" relative to
expectation with just the two "voices" of drums and bass. More recent work with
the group "Seraphim," has involved use of free improvisation among a group of
musicians and poets, allowing structure, pattern, and meaning to emerge in a
very different musical context. Some of this work has been captured on the CD
titled "Hearing Voices". The focus on patterns that emerge through dialogue
parallels Dr. Critchfield's specialty area in psychology which involves focus on
how personality and identity emerge from relatedness with others. This will be
his third time performing for City Arts across the past decade or so, itself
representing an interesting meditation on possible convergences between pattern
and meaning found in literary forms, and those found in human "sound-making"
more generally. This particular performance will involve new material involving
solo improvisation on upright bass, followed by opportunities for audience
discussion about the experience.
The event is free and open to the public. City Art is sponsored by the Utah
Arts Council, the Salt Lake City Arts Council, Zoo, Arts, and Parks, X-Mission,
and audience donations. The featured reading will be followed by an open
reading.
Joel Long
