Sospeso performs Brian Ferneyhough's setting of Jackson Mac Low's setting of cantos by Ezra Pound on December 14, 2002, as well as one of Mr. Mac Low's chamber works at Tenri on January 23, 2003.

Jackson Mac Low, born 12 September 1922 in Chicago, is a poet and composer and a writer of performance pieces, essays, plays, and radio works (mainly produced at WestdeutscherRundfunk, Cologne). He is also a painter and multimedia performance artist (often with his wife, Anne Tardos). Author of 26 books, his work has also been published in many anthologies and periodicals and read publicly, exhibited, performed, and broadcast in North and South America, Europe, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand. He has read, performed, and lectured throughout North America, Europe, and New Zealand.

He has taught at many schools, notably New York University (1966-73), and in recent years has taught creative writing at SUNY-Albany (1984), SUNY-Binghamton (1989), Temple (Philadelphia, 1989), UC-San Diego (Regents' Lecturer, 1990), Naropa Institute (Boulder, 1975, 1991, 1994), Schule fuer Dichtung in Wien (Vienna, 1992, 1993), Bard College (MFA program, 1994), and Brown University (1994).

He has received fellowships and grants from CAPS (NY State, 1974, 1977), the NEA (1979), PEN (1974, 1982), the Guggenheim Foundation (1985), the Fulbright Foundation (for New Zealand, 1986), the Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council (N.Z., 1986), the New York Foundation for the Arts (1988), and The Fund for Poetry (1988-89, 1991-92).

His visual works have been exhibited in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Austria, France, Italy, and Australia, most recently at Galerie 1900-2000 (Paris, 1989); Galleria F. Borghese, (Rome, 1990); the "Ubi Fluxus ibi motus" pavilion, Venice Biennale (1990); Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane (1990); Salvatore Ala Gallery (NYC, 1990); Emily Harvey Gallery (NYC, 1990-91, 1991-92); Plug In, Brian Melnychenko, and 1.1.1 galleries (Winnipeg, 1991); Galerie Krinzinger (Innsbruck, 1991); Tapeziererwerkstatt Wolfgang Radeczecki (Vienna, 1991), and in Cork, Ireland (1995).

His recent publications include the books Bloomsday (1984), French Sonnets (1984, 2nd ed. 1989), The Virginia Woolf Poems (1985), Eight Drawing-Asymmetries (1985), Representative Works: 1938-1985 (1986), Words and Ends from Ez (1989), Twenties: 100 Poems (1991), Pieces o' Six: Thirty-three Poems in Prose (1992), 42 Merzgedichte in Memoriam Kurt Schwitters (1994), and Barnesbook (1995) and the compact disc (with Anne Tardos and seven instrumentalists) Open Secrets (1993).

From Penn's Modern & Contemporary American Poetry.  Photo by Anne Tardos.