The Writings of Poe, Clemens & Wilde 
Featuring Mike Kennedy
Co-starring the collection & expertise of the librarians in the Rare Book Department

Mike Kennedy is a guitarist, composer, recording artist, and music educator. He has been performing in Philadelphia and the Mid-Atlantic regions since 1989 and continues stretching his boundaries. Originally from Lansdale, Pennsylvania, Mike moved to Philadelphia in 1987, where he began studying jazz guitar at the University of the Arts and received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees. Mike is currently the Guitar Department Chairperson at UARTS. He has performed at the Mann Music Center, Walnut Theater, The Patriot Theatre, The Kimmel Center, The Keswick Theatre, Theatre of The Living Arts, Santander Performing Arts Center, Longwood Gardens Wine and Jazz Festival, Center City Jazz Festival, Media by Night Jazz Festival, Collingswood Jazz Festival, Bucks County Community College Jazz Festival, and jazz performances throughout Philadelphia and the region with his own band as well as a sideman.

Over three previous concert seasons at the Parkway Central Library, veteran and up-and-coming Philly musicians have explored some questions. What has the Great Migration meant to music in Philadelphia? What happens if librarians commission composers to write music inspired by resources culled from Parkway Central’s subject departments? Musicians answered with concert suites build around children’s books exploring mass incarceration, seedy crime novelettes from Philbrick Hall, historic letters found in our Newspaper and Microfilm Center urging 19th-century African Americans to move to the northern cities, and much more. 

Now, for its fourth season with the eminent Philadelphia Jazz Project, our Mysterious Travelers series returns with Further Investigations to generate more new music inspired by library collections. We’re expounding on last season’s internal investigations theme to include more library departments and more musicians. And it’s still completely free!  Get ready for concerts touching just about every department in the library and every brick in Philly history. This season musicians will explore voodoo and the afterlife with the Education, Philosophy, and Religion Department; railway maps of Philadelphia with the Maps Collection; Brazilian and Cuban percussion with the Music Department; Oscar Wilde, Clemens, Edgar Allan Poe with the Rare Book Department; and more.  One Monday a month, settle into your seat in the Montgomery Auditorium in the Parkway Central Library—the site where musicians met with librarians to find their musical muses—and let the music find you. 

All events in this series are free. All concerts start at 7:00 p.m. and will be held in the Montgomery Auditorium.

The Philadelphia Jazz Project (PJP) works to inspire a network to support, promote, archive, and celebrate the diverse elements within the Philadelphia jazz community, with the larger goal of connecting to the global community. www.philajazzproject.org

Parkway Central Library | Montgomery Auditorium
1901 Vine Street, Philadelphia, PA 19103

Accessibility: A wheelchair ramp is located at the Library’s Wood Street entrance, and an elevator for the public is located next to the building’s northeast courtyard.

For more information, full biographies, and the most up-to-date details, visit freelibrary.org or call 215-686-5316.