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Two poets and four jazz musicians will be giving their art forms different shapes this evening in what seems like a experiment in undirected freedom.

"That uneasiness is nice," says poet Romella D. Kitchens, a member of the Pittsburgh Poetry Exchange.

She is talking about "The Cap Gun Quartet Meets the Poets," a show on the South Side that will feature her, fellow poet Michael Wurster and the Cap Gun Quartet blending words and music.

Roger Dannenberg, trumpet player with the group, says the work with the poets is so undefined "it frees the band up."

That also seems to be the liberation Wurster is expecting for the poets.

"This won't be a show where the band will be backing us up," he says. "We will be like other instruments in the band."

The show also will feature the quartet playing some numbers on its own before becoming involved with the poets.

The idea for the encounter goes back to October when the quartet worked with Kitchens at a show put together by Wurster at the Hill House in the Hill District, Dannenberg says. The group's bassist, Jeff Stringer, liked the results so much he started arranging this show.

Dannenberg says he had some trepidation about the structure of the show, but that disappeared as they began rehearsing.

Those get-togethers, he adds, shouldn't impinge on the idea of improvisation, he says. The show will be mostly unstructured, but the performers had to do some planning because they approach the arts in different ways.

"You have to know what you are doing," he says. "You have to find out how you get to the ending before you stop."

That difference exists even among the poets.

Wurster says, for instance, he writes most of his poetry with the aim of publishing it. Kitchens, he says, is more of a "performance poet," whose work is geared to public recitation.

She agrees, saying such presentations are a part of her black heritage in which poets sometimes set up on streets and made observations.

Kitchens has done shows like this before and says she is fascinated with the way musical rhythm affects the words of the poets. She also says at times the sound of the poet's words shape the sounds the musicians produce.

"There is a real synthesis between the music and the words that will create its own being," she says.

One number, Dannenberg points out, will feature the poets creating non-word sounds that are shaped by the music.

Wurster admits he is not performance-oriented in his poetry, but says his experience with jazz-poetry events in the past has made it easy to go in that direction.

"I've always loved jazz," he says. "This type of show will led me be a jazz improvisor and find about another art I love."

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