The Brooklyn Rail

I knew Cole Heinowitz, a prodigious poet and translator, and interviewed her about these activities on the radio in 2022.¹ However, I saw her perform as a musician more times than I saw her do readings or give lectures, and collaborated with her on small-scale music collaborations—autonomous, with no objective other than doing it—on numerous occasions.

Seeing the band Satan’s Black Acid—Cole’s group with William Staples—play their first ever show at Green Kill impressed me (Kingston, NY, February 2019). They commenced with sonic overload, and a few folks in the audience began walking out almost immediately due to the confrontation (volume). I was impressed though. In the noise and air was bravery, experimentation, and other aesthetics in sound and language I admire. After the show, chatting up William, I learned certain intervals included improvisation (my particular interest) inside general structures cultivated for each piece.

They both had great drive to play and make music, and special appreciation for Albert Ayler. I also learned, during an interview when they performed two months later on WGXC, that Ornette Coleman was Cole’s melodious hero.² They played in a cloud, literally, in the Hudson Valley Poetry Bands festival in Widow Jane Mine that summer; Most Serene Congress, a sound improvisation ensemble I’m part of, was also on the bill. Four years later, our bands played together at Green Kill.³

One late summer night in 2019, Cole and Will, with my wife Amy Hufnagel and I, improvised music in their living room above the Esopus Creek, just for fun. The activity was semi-spontaneous, sans structure, beaming with gusto. Things I learned about Cole that night include that she loved playing the recorder, had prowess on the violin in a unique way, and liked to add music—LP sides—from a nearby turntable into the mix as part of the movement or texture of sound. It was a quirky gesture, but I liked it. I don’t suppose she was being strictly strategic in her selections, which were relatively obscure and never overtook what was otherwise going on (and definitely contributed to the aural milieu). Cole possessed a nice collection of small instruments, some percussion, some wind, and a wide-ranging album collection. In Satan’s Black Acid she plays saxophone, which I don’t remember ever being part of any of the several jam sessions we had in New York and Connecticut, but it may have been.⁴

Amy, a visual artist, joins in with an interactive “talking” globe, one of our kid’s childhood toys she held on to. From the first night onward, she used it as an instrument, as an intervention, as a geo-political machine text, which became part of the improvisation. Doings of our group became labeled Globe (i.e., it was only a loosely named “band,” nothing serious or objective in a professional way). On two other visits to Boiceville, I played music with Will and Cole with an assortment of instruments and styles: sometimes rhythmic and song-ish, sometimes collagiste, sometimes quiet, sometimes noisy, and never the same twice. I have revisited documentation of only the two most recent Globe-related sessions, but recordings of every gathering exist. What might be most reflected in them, I imagine, is that we were having a good time, were listening to each other, and having a different kind of conversation while building fused expressions in sound.

After Satan’s Black Acid ended, Abe Etkin and I began playing music with Cole in summer 2024. I agreed when she asked me to collaborate, on the condition that no computers would be used, only microphones and amplifiers. Our rehearsal space is a large music and arts venue where Abe is a manager. We met when our lives could overlap. Musically, anyone was allowed to do anything they wanted at any time, though we did set intentions for how long each session would last overall. Cole and I agreed that playing for ninety minutes or so helped us both maximize our energy and focus, and was also enough to make the effort of making it all happen worthwhile. We gave ourselves time in a capacious and echoic place to make music. Cole played saxophone, used her voice a lot, as well as an mbira, and, of course, the recorder. Since it corresponded with the spirit of what we had done before, the project came to be referred to through variations of the word globe (e.g., globo, Glob O, e glob). Cole and I framed it within the mode of Globe, but it was also very different. It was, by need of coordination and efficiency, a little more organized in general. After our first meetings, two other musicians, Mayuko Fujino and Pat Gubler, also joined in. In all, this group had four engagements in Hudson.

Just before Amy and I vacated our rental in Staatsburg, on a property known as the Quadrangle (March 2025), we hosted a house-colding party, which was amped-up for performances by “Glob O” (Cole, Amy, and I) and Most Serene Congress (David Hirmes, Leonard Nevarez, and I). The occasion was Glob O’s first “public” “concert.” Amy played globe and electronic foot massager; Cole was on recorder, voice, violin, mbira, and other percussion; and I played singing bowls, kalimba, canjo, and nose flute; towards the end, Abe joined in on bass. We did some conceptual and aesthetic strategizing beforehand (e.g., what instruments we’d play and what clothing we’d wear), otherwise the performance was unrehearsed and invented on the spot. All we knew was Amy would play her globe. Watching the video of it all the way through a month after Cole’s passing was difficult, but the whole thing is perfect and wacky in the best ways. Heartbreaking on a certain level, for sure, but as a representation of what we did in general, who we are, and how we work collaboratively, the footage is brilliant and beautiful. The last few minutes, after Abe joins in, is one of my proudest moments ever playing in a group. Playing music with Cole (and others involved) was a real pleasure. We all wanted it to sound good, and did our best to make it so, listening and responding to each other. I recommend tracking down the documentation of the June 2025 Poet Ray’d Yo tribute to Cole to hear how intimate she becomes with her engagement with the globe towards Glob O’s conclusion that day.⁵ I can imagine how this one performance of the group would lead to many more, yet now things are very different.

In all our music sessions, Cole was willing to take the lead, or at least play first, and often did. She was also perfectly capable of going along with, and adding texture to, what others were doing as the playing evolved. Cole was a very intuitive musician. Although in the past she has written songs with structure, in my experience she was—like myself—using intuition and exchange, seeking to listen, absorb, and respond in the present. We could be playing semi-melodic duets together, or playing in a type of contrast with each other (and others), and she knew how to make it sound right, and I did my best to catch on quickly. I know we both thought of things we’d bring to the group’s mix, but they mainly consisted of a couple of baskets of instruments and very informal ideas. At different times, we both brought pre-recorded natural sounds to play for sonic texture. During our final Hudson session, Cole did a duet with her pre-recorded self on her iPhone. I remember how thrilled she was by the idea, and then doing it! I know she wanted this project to continue, further expand, and was interested in doing performances as a group.

The music Cole made diverges from her work as a poet and writer, which is superb yet exists within a specific and sometimes (by definition) rigid construct. In her music, no such constraints are presented, and it was basically produced on-the-spot. We always made it up as we went along, anticipating but never fully knowing what to expect. Cole was okay with music and expression being spontaneous, erratic, and noisy; this is something she recognized, was familiar with, reflected, and acted on. She was also deeply invested in creating romanticism and beauty, and seemed to never have a problem weaving those elements into what she did.