Walter Savage Ensemble plays Goodfolk Friday

Jazz With A Fayetteville Attitude
Bassist and vocalist Walter Savage, who came to Northwest Arkansas a couple of years or so ago from the San Francisco Bay Area, will team up with three other local jazz greats at 8 p.m. Friday at GoodFolk in Fayetteville. Rather than simply a standard jazz show, the players will create a unique experience for the audience. They will tell stories of their music, the history of the songs, share information about the jazz composers and take questions from the audience. The Walter Savage Ensemble will feature Al Gibson on trumpet and flugelhorn, Nathan McLeod on saxophone and flute and Ben Harris on guitar. Tickets are $15 by calling 521-1812. The first 15 folks in the door will receive a free CD from Savage.

Miller Williams To Read
The poems in Miller Williams’ latest book of poetry, “Time and the Tilting Earth,” feel something like the rattles of a shaman being shaken over the reader. Magic. Transformation. Big questions are addressed. In the barber shop, in bed, at a wedding — the answers are in the questions themselves. Yet these big questions, about such things as the very existence of being, don’t feel heavy when Williams weaves them into a poem. With a seamless use of poetic forms, Williams lightens the load of why and how.
Hailed in the “Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture” as “one of the foremost American poets of the post-World War II era,” Williams continues to live and write here in Fayetteville after retiring from the University of Arkansas where he was a key figure in the university’s nationally known programs in creative writing and translation. He also was founder of the University of Arkansas Press.
Author, editor, or translator of 34 books, including 14 volumes of poetry, Williams uses language to illuminate rather than obscure the workings of this old blue planet.
In an essay titled “Nobody Plays the Piano but We Like to Have It in the House,” Williams writes, “I’m not offering a cure for the world’s ills, or pep pills for the despondent, or a way to happiness, but I am committed to the belief that poetry — as well as painting and sculpture, music and dance and drama — in a time when we are sometimes tempted to pull away from the world, in a time when there is so much to withdraw from, in a time when we may forget that to be a little bit numb, to be a little anesthetized, is to be a little bit dead, may in a small way help to keep us alive.”
Wake up and hear the poetry!
Williams will be reading at 7 p.m. Tuesday in the intimate setting of the new Nightbird Books on Dickson Street as the featured reader for Ozark Poets and Writers Collective. Wine, cheese and an open mic will follow.
— Ginny Masullo

“A Community At Peace”
Eureka Springs photographer John Rankine will show selected photographs from his “A Community at Peace” installation this month at Community First Bank, as part of the Eureka Springs May Festival of the Arts. Rankine photographed 550 people in Eureka Springs while they were visualizing, meditating on, praying for or thinking about peace. The individual black and white portraits were collectively used as part of a large installation last November. To view the entire collection of “A Community at Peace” photographs, go to eurekaspringsartists.com.

RAIN
The Beatles come to life at the Walton Arts Center this week. The Beatles look-alikes will perform songs from the early days to more recent years in shows that open Tuesday and run through Sunday. It will be a total Beatles emersion with actual film footage from the 1960s. Tickets are $25-$58.