In his debut as a leader, Brooklyn-based saxophonist and composer Sam Sadigursky has set ten poems to song, featuring the unmistakable voices of Heather Masse, Becca Stevens, Monica Heidemann, and Noam Weinstein. The Words Project, released on New Amsterdam Records in 2007 (www.newamsterdamrecords.com) was named one of the top ten CD's of the year by Steve Smith in Time Out New York, who described it as "that rare anomaly: a jazz-and-poetry record that sounds utterly natural and convincing."

Brad Walseth of Chicagojazz.net wrote, "Words and music – a union not always equal or necessarily tranquil. Serious words, expressing perceptive thought in an artful way is hardly the norm in jazz or any music, especially since music is generally constrained by beats and measures in a way much modern poetry is not. As such, the combination of the arts of poetry and music is a rarely attempted feat and one that is hardly ever pulled off successfully, with most lyricists reverting to moon and June rhymes and shallow platitudes. Thankfully, Sam Sadigursky’s The Words Project is the exception to this norm in its brilliant combination of poems by poets like Donald Justice, Paul Auster, and Maxine Kumin... a satisfyingly emotional and haunting experience" Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.