This first CD from the Riprap features compositions by the band setting the works of Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Gary Snyder. The group was formed 5 years by musicians who were interested in exploring possible combinations of the Beat poets and jazz. They have been active in working out ways of combining music, text and improvisation. This has now become a collective of musicians and poets, collaborating with writers such as Ruth Padel, Grevel Lindop and Malcolm Guite , among others. They have been performing in venues such as the Royal Festival Hall for National Poetry Day, West Road Concert Hall, Cambridge, Essex University, Anglia Ruskin University, Boxford Jazz Club, Brighton Jazz Club, Peterbourgh Jazz Club and the BBC World Service.
"The Riprap Collective can take you back and forth across the porous borderland between music and poetry, contemporary poets inspiring new grooves whilst the music give the poets back their voice with a clean new music in it. Listening to Riprap is to discover that things are more than they are, and they give more than they have."
