Patti Smith's Horses
two-week
mini-course
April 10th and 17th
with special guest Lenny Kaye
Join rock-music scholar Walter Everett, session musicians Jack Petruzzelli (Patti Smith, Joan Osborne) and Cameron Greider (Sean Lennon, Chris Cornell) and special guest Lenny Kaye (on April 17th) for a two-week mini-course on Patti Smith's Horses.
Patti Smith is among the most creative poet-musicians of the past half century. She and her rock 'n' roll band, who have taken the stage about a hundred times a year, present a wide range of ever-changing story-songs spanning a recording career that began in 1975 with the album, Horses. Her rich poetic imagery and improvisatory skills shine as they interact with musical elements, especially in her song “Land," which offers a progressive, visionary perspective on gender and sex, as she negotiates the themes of command and surrender.
Joining us for the April 17 session will be guitarist Lenny Kaye, Smith's collaborator throughout her career since 1971, when his "harmonic fields" became the perfect improvisatory accompaniment to Smith's first poetry readings in Manhattan's Lower East Side and Village. A deeply knowledgeable journalist and scholar of rock 'n' roll history, Kaye is the author of the recent book Lightning Striking: Ten Transformative Moments in Rock and Roll.
Choose your level of involvement: just enjoy the online presentation and discussion, or stay on afterwards for a Seminar with author Walter Everett or a small-group “virtual band” recording project with Jack Petruzzelli or Cameron Greider.
Each session starts with All Together Now––a live multimedia presentation and discussion exploring the brilliance of Patti Smith's work from a scholarly perspective and from the point of view of musicians who have worked with her,
including her close collaborator Lenny Kaye.
For a deeper dive, stay on after
All Together Now for Seminar, for study and discussion with Walter Everett, or Virtual Band, where you'll learn and record a Patti Smith song together with a small group of musicians at your level, led by Jack Petruzzelli or Cameron Greider.
FACULTY
One of the foremost authorities on the music of the Beatles, Walter Everett is Professor of Music at the University of Michigan. His two-volume study The Beatles as Musicians (Oxford University Press) has been hailed as “a milestone in Beatles research” and “without a doubt, the most important work on the Beatles to date”.
One of New York’s most sought-after session and touring musicians, Jack Petruzzelli has played with Patti Smith, Joan Osborne, Ian Hunter and Rufus Wainwright, to name a few. A multi-instrumentalist triple threat on guitars, vocals and keyboards, he is also a founding member of the world’s foremost band for the Beatle-obsessed, The Fab Faux.
Guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Cameron Greider has worked with artists like Joan Baez, Sean Lennon and Chris Cornell as well as top-tier producers
T Bone Burnett and Steve Lilywhite. He is also a dedicated teacher of guitar, bass and piano.
WHAT PEOPLE SAY
The class was amazing. Challenging and at the same time accommodated all kinds of level of play.
I’d take it again in a heartbeat.
I came to the class thinking I knew so much….wrong! They pulled out all the stops for us. Music, history, class materials, guest speakers…They truly put the Beatles in context both musically and everything else. It’s an excellent deep dive.
Singing and playing for anyone else besides myself is a BIG stretch out of my comfort zone. One of the (many) terrific things about your class is how genuinely non-judgmental it was. Just pure encouragement.