Stompin' at The Grand Terrace: A Jazz Memoir in Verse

In a celebration of family, history, culture and Chicago's South Side--as seen and heard through the eyes and ears of two lifelong friends who share an abiding love of America's great art form jazz--award-winning writer Philip S. Bryant presents a remarkable new collection of poems and prose pieces. A brilliantly conceived memoir in verse, Stompin' at The Grand Terrace arcs, spins, dances and whirls across 'an infinite universe' of music that helped define a country, an era and the author's life.

Bryant beautifully captures the past in imagery taut, colorful and enduring, while describing the sound, motion and power of music as it mixes with memory. In the great tradition of jazz poetry, Stompin' at The Grand Terrace fuses the two art forms into something new, personal and transcendent.

An accompanying CD features more than a dozen original compositions-inspired by Bryant's poems-by renowned jazz pianist Carolyn Wilkins. As lifelong Chicago friends, Phil and Carolyn perform A Stompin' Suite: he reads, she plays-a cross-country collaboration over time and place.