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 The Pruitt-Igoe housing project, built in St. Louis, Missouri has been regarded as one of the most infamous failures of public housing in American history. As a child, poet/artist Ted Washington walked past Pruitt-Igoe on his way to school. This marvel in architecture turned into a crime-plagued ghetto that even the poor wouldn't live in. After spending more than $5 million in vain, the St. Louis Housing Authority and later the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development declared Pruitt-Igoe unsalvageable and razed the mammoth, high-rise apartments. Today, Ted Washington pays homage to this idea of something being so beautiful and terrible at the same time in his collaboration with Molly Wilmot (mezzo-soprano), Matthew Kerr (keyboards and samples), Jon Cordova (guitar), Chad Farran (percussion and flute), and Coco Cambell (dance). The members of Pruitt Igoe draw from their backgrounds in classical music, jazz, funk, ambient grooves, opera, rock, electronica, poetry, dance, theater, metal, and world beats. The result is at times serene or spastic, ambient, lustful, tonally chaotic, or concussive. Barbarella writes in her column in the San Diego Reader, "I was mesmerized by the cacophony of sound surging from the stage. If you've ever eaten a hallucinogenic mushroom, you may have experienced that scary moment when words around you seem to change and mutate into another language - this is what I experienced." The debut CD "pruitt igoe ep" is receiving rave reviews. Michael Klam, in the September issue of Poetix.Net, says that this "incomparable CD" "is both haunting and sublime" and "surreal beyond anything you've heard on a spoken word album." "The CD is full of sex and war, the quest for peace and a piece of ass." "And you must listen. You must obey. You love sex, too. You'll laugh. You'll think. You'll blow your mind." Joan Seifried writes of Pruitt Igoe on SDVisualArts.Net, "This reviewer had always hoped that the dividing line between music and words, art and culture, time and situation would be blurred into a new performance art form, and here we have it, in this ensemble, right here in San Diego, which is more associated with navy bases than crossing artistic border lines." Pruitt Igoe thrills and confronts audiences in a wide variety of venues: The San Diego Museum of Art, Sushi Visual and Performance Art, Galerie D'Art International, The Casbah, Winston's, Kava Lounge and Capricorn Studios in San Diego; The Knitting Factory and The Rainbow Bar & Grill in Hollywood; and Bill's Place in Harlem, NYC. They have been awarded a grant from the Synergy Arts Foundation. They have appeared on The Illfonics Show on KSDS-FM Jazz 88.3, The Local Pyle 94.9 FM with Tim Plyes, and Big Sonic Chill on 94.9 FM in San Diego. |
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