BIG ENIGMA features Christine Correa, Matt Moran, John Carlson, Jeremy Udden, Frank Carlberg, John Hebert and Michael Sarin, with poetry by Ken Mikolowski.

Big Enigma is a new group dedicated to performing Carlberg’s settings of poems by select 20th (and 21st Century) writers. Their upcoming release, “Big Enigmas”, will feature new compositions to poems by Ken Mikolowski. Ken Mikolowski is the author of three books of poetry: THANK YOU CALL AGAIN, little mysteries, and Big Enigmas. He teaches poetry writing at the University of Michigan’s Residential College in Ann Arbor. For more than thirty years, along with his late wife Ann, he was editor, publisher and printer of The Alternative Press.

Jazz pianist and composer Frank Carlberg’s most recent releases of vocal music are Uncivilized Ruminations (2011) with poetry by Anselm Hollo, Kai Nieminen and Jim Gustafson and The American Dream (2009) on Red Piano Records. They have drawn critical acclaim including the Hartford Courant who called Uncivilized Ruminations “…melodic, challenging, intelligent, and fiercely original.” The American Dream, a 12-part song cycle with settings of poetry by Robert Creeley was commissioned by Chamber Music America and was called “…a masterful feast of music that suggests a beautiful portrait of Creeley’s poetry—joyous, reflective, plaintive, hopeful, and always radiating with great humanity” in All About Jazz. Other releases of settings include State of The Union (2006), In the Land Of Art (2003), Variations On A Summer Day (2000) and The Crazy Woman (1996).