The SpillJoy Ensemble — Ken Arkind, Danny Sherrard, Jon Sands, Shira Erlichman
Mollie & Jacob w/ Shira Erlichman in Honolulu
Sounds Like
A human heartbeat
searching through fingertips to find a better world, not quite able to make out the shape, but i swear, it's on the front of our tongues right now, escaping in the form of noisemakers, shaking ourselves vulnerable, smacking chips on tables without fully understanding the card in our hands. I am a generation attempting to conceive a living and a difference in the same breath. Cracked pots, forever glued back together, wearing inexperience in a nametag that someday, if we're lucky, might say solution.
"Jon Sands in one word: real. Without pretension, he walked the audience through Brooklyn streets and his fantasies, navigating such issues as politics, race, and love with freshness and ease. His energy had listeners peeing their pants laughing and yet at moments seriously reconsidering their daily existence. He knows how to work the small moments of life and help you to find beauty in the bottom of coffee cups. Honest and accessible, even for audiences new to slam. As a show organizer, I really appreciated his flexibility and willingness to work with our needs and interact with students before and after the show. He put on a great performance... book him now, cause soon, I wouldn't be surprised to see a national title and higher price tag."
--Lewis & Clark College
"The New York City Poetry Slam didn't know what to make of Jon Sands when he first exploded onto our scene -- I mean, how does a kid from suburban Ohio get away with having so much soul? -- But we soon learned not to question our luck. Instead, we have let ourselves be charmed by Sands' lean, taunt verse, seduced by his fresh, uninhibited performances and awed by his unstoppable and undeniable passion for life. To witness the poetry of Jon Sands is to come face-to-face with a force of nature. He is a baby-faced cyclone, a wild twister of poet who isn't afraid to use everything he's got to move an audience, to absolutely blow them away."
-- Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz, author of "Words In Your Face: A Guided Tour Through Twenty Years of the New York City Poetry Slam"
"Jon Sands took Stuyvesant High School by storm! His loving, generous, barbaric yawp of a performance thrilled both teachers and students, and afterwards the kids from our literary magazine were given a rare treat: a high quality, inspiring writing workshop conducted by a writer who commanded the attention of a rock star.
Though he performed for 150 students without a microphone, you could hear a pin drop during Jon Sands' reading at Stuyvesant High School, and two days later, the students in our American Literature classes were still feeding off his positive energy as they discussed Walt Whitman's influence on the contemporary slam poetry community. Even our most reticent students couldn't help but be engaged by his joyful and openhearted poetic embrace." --Stuyvesant High School: Emily Moore, English Department
"Jon Sands is willing, caring, and a lot of fun. As a performer, Jon rocks the audience with the energy of a bull! I experienced how it is to be onstage with Jon, poet like no other. Jon Sands poems is really descriptive and really got attention from people. Jon Sands is really energetic and what it was like performing with Jon really helped me in my performances. He has a lot to offer and students should be open-minded to know Jon Sands in person."
--Malcom Bonilla; High School Student, Bronx, NY
track details:
"Turbulence" - Ukulele by Shira Erlichman
"Being Human Being" - Instrumental work by the Paranormals
"Am" - Beatboxing by Warner Asch & Benjamin Levi Ochstein
For booking inquiries contact sands.jonathan@gmail.com
Purchase Being Human Being CD
Purchase Being Human Being Chapbook
!
Jon Sands is a full-time independent teaching & performing artist, as well as a recipient of the 2009 New York City-LouderARTS fellowship grant. He has represented New York City multiple times at the National Poetry Slam, subsequently becoming an NPS finalist. Jon has performed and facilitated workshops with university and arts organizations throughout North America, and is currently the Director of Poetry and Arts Education Programming at the Positive Health Project, a needle exchange center located in Midtown Manhattan. He is also one-fourth of the nationally acclaimed electricity-fest, The SpillJoy Ensemble. Jon lives in New York City, where he cooks better tuna salad than anyone you know.
"I have been bringing writers to the Bronx to perform for our high school students for the past four years. In that time, I have never seen a poet who commanded the students' attention like Jon. He won them over instantly with his energy, passion, and honesty. He even spontaneously invited a student to come onstage and perform with him. After the performance was over, the students flooded Jon, bringing questions and drafts of their own poems. He spent close to an hour with the them, attending to each one. I was blown away, not only by his talent, but by his generosity."
-- Bronx Academy of Letters; Elana Bell, writer-in-residence and writers' forum coordinator
"Jon Sands does for poetry what Robert Johnson does for the blues: the man’s got more soul than a sock with a hole. Sands’ beautiful verse pairs itself lovingly beside a delivery that never fails in picking an audience apart, heartstring by heartstring. Finding a more engaging performer – or a nicer guy, for that matter - is nothing but a fool's errand."
-- Fairleigh Dickinson University
"If you’ve been praying for a poet who can combine the lightning strokes of page poetry with all the panache of the kind of performance that takes absolute possession of a room, your long wait is over: Jon Sands is the answer to your prayers!"
-- Jack McCarthy
“With wit, truth, surprise, and always a lot of heart, tearing from his throat like a swollen freight train, Jon Sands sneaks up on you when you least expect it…challenges the dusty cynic under your ribcage and dares you to believe.”
-- Carlos Andrés Gómez
I MISS YOU. ITS NOT FAIR. YOU AND I NEED TO GO BACK TO ALASKA, AM I RIGHT? SEE THE PLACE? WE HAD TO LEAVE SO ASAP, ESPECIALLY YOU. ALSO, YOU SMELL GOOD EVEN FROM HERE, I CAN TELL. PS MY CAPS LOCK IS STUCK. PPS CANT STOP ME FROM WHISPERING INSIDE THE SHOUT.
i'm that one kid who opened at empyrean in spokane. thank you, all of you, but thank you for gracing us with your words! hopefully you'll see spokane again soon.
words. after you hit albuquerque, let me know what's good there. i'm going to be driving through there couple days after you. miss you / hope all's well
YO City Cat~ Thanks for coming through da NO-town on your last stop in Cali. Everybody had a great time @ the show and hangin' out under the lights of the Tower District even tho' it was soooo cold! Get at me if you have others who need to experience what we got in our neck of the woods. And on a personal level, I got to say bro, it was good getting to know you a bit; you ROCK! Come back anytime you want, you got a place here in Fresno. -Country Cat (Aka B. Medina)
