Howard Jay Patterson
(aka Ivan Karamazov)
Author, Composer, Musician, Actor, Juggler, Bandleader, Ecologist
Founder: The Flying Karamazov Brothers
Director Emeritus: The Fighting Instruments of Karma Marching Chamber Band/Orchestra
Environmental Manager: Boise Eliot Native Grove
New Memoir
Jester Prince
How The Flying Karamazov Brothers Reinvented Theatre and Saved the World, Almost
The Flying Karamazov Brothers brought an erudite, esoteric, and decidedly goofy approach to performance, and let their anarchic, joyous energy explode across stages and screens around the world. Here's the story of how a young biology nerd surprised himself and his family by becoming a juggling, horn-playing, tap-dancing, stage-fighting, horseback-riding “New Vaudevillian” with big ideas and a drive to share them, inspired by the Hippie Revolution to try something unexpected just as that revolution was fading into the consumerist 1980s. He and his college friends brought a spirit of invention, irreverence and community to an unsuspecting theatre landscape and blazed a path to Broadway, movies, TV, Carnegie Hall, and around the world.
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“...a supremely conversational writing style. Patterson’s language is incredibly visual … a vibrant time capsule from a perspective that is fresh, distinctive, and alive. Very highly recommended.”
Asher Sayed,
Reader’s Choice
What Readers Are Saying
"JESTER PRINCE -- the memoir of Howard Patterson, one of the founders of the Flying Karamazov Brothers juggling troupe -- is by turns uproarious, fascinating, heartfelt, heartbreaking, astounding, amusing, and silly. It takes the reader from the San Francisco counterculture scene, to the earliest days of the New Vaudeville movement, through the founding and growth of the Oregon Country Fair, and to stages around the world from Broadway to Morocco with the peripatetic Karamazovs as they develop, redefine, and expand the very concept and meaning of juggling as an art form. Patterson's is a life well juggled, and if a few clubs and balls hit the floor from time to time, it's all part of the act. Read it, you'll love it."
David D. Levine,
Hugo- and Nebula-winning author
“Jester Prince invites readers into a world where play and discipline coexist, and where art is treated not merely as a spectacle but as a shared inquiry performed before a live audience. It’s one of the most fascinating books I’ve ever read.”
Carol Thompson,
Reader’s Choice
“... the Flying Karamazov Brothers, four American jester-princes with hippie roots and perpetually raised eyebrows who will be opening on Broadway later this month.”
Bob Morris, the New York Times
Jester Prince is the story of The Flying Karamazov Brothers comedy/theatre/musical/juggling troupe and their rise from San Francisco street corners and Renaissance Fairs to Broadway, television, film, and Carnegie Hall. It's not an official group biograpIt traces how the author's Ashkenazi and Scots-Irish ancestry launched him into a childhood in suburban Los Angeles just as the Hippie Revolution exploded, inspiring a biology prodigy to take up the juggling balls that would change the course of his life and open unexpected possibilities. In college, he and the unpredictable, ambitious Sephardic guy across the hall began to explore ways to invent handmade theatre, trying anything that worked, from madrigals to magic, tap dance to martial arts to ballet, to juggling sickles, hatchets and torches. The troupe’s climb, step by wild step from the bottomest bottom to the heights of fame (if not exactly fortune), is paralleled by the author's own attempts to live out his bold ideals of anarchistic community in both his professional and personal lives. Adventures with cultural icons and celebrities abound, including: living with counter-culture hero Ken Kesey, traveling with the Grateful Dead, doing laundry with poet Allen Ginsburg, and brandishing knives and guns with Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson; juggling in Jimmy Carter's White House, then insulting Ronald Reagan on stage at The Kennedy Center; film-making in Morocco, on horse- and camel-back, with Danny De Vito, Michael Douglas, and Kathleen Turner; stage and TV shows with Robin Williams, Dolly Parton, Frank Sinatra, Jay Leno, and Jerry Seinfeld; chats about The Theatre with monumental playwright Sir Tom Stoppard; and shenanigans aplenty with fellow "New Vaudevillians" Avner the Eccentric, Bill Irwin, Artis the Spoonman, and Penn & Teller. Their travels brought them around the (primarily) English-speaking world, from London's West End, the Edinburgh Festival and Ireland's biggest TV show to festivals and theaters in Germany, the Netherlands, Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand, Bermuda, and Israel, running their odd comedy experiment on vastly different populations and observing the sometimes surprising effects. The Karamazovs explored dozens of ways to evocatively demonstrate the inherent musicality of Juggling, and did their best to forever quell the feeling of universal disappointment for both audiences and jugglers when a club is dropped. Though the act of juggling with its philosophical, neurological, and metaphorical implications was their first love, the book endeavors to end the misconception that the Flying Karamazov Brothers have ever been "just" a juggling act.
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Past, Present, and Future Projects
Documentary by Clark Higgins
Pollinator Habitat Restoration Community Pocket Park
Original Jewish Liturgical Music
Under Construction
Profound Fools: The Flying Karamazov Brothers and the Art of Juggling
Documentary feature film by Rocky Friedman and Ward Serrill
The Comedy of Errors:
Live from Lincoln Center (1987)
To Be Released in 2027
About Howard Jay Patterson
Howard Jay Patterson is a musician, composer, author, actor, juggler, bandleader, and environmentalist, best known as a founding member of The Flying Karamazov Brothers. The troupe helped launch the "New Vaudeville" movement, blending comedy, juggling, theatre, music, dance, and social commentary in performances worldwide, including Broadway and London's West End, major international festivals, extensive North American and global tours, and collaborations with leading orchestras including the National Symphony, Boston Pops, and the Cincinnati Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. Their work earned an Obie Award, an Emmy, and nominations for Olivier and Ovation awards, along with hundreds of television appearances, including The Tonight Show and Seinfeld. The Karamazovs collaborated with artists such as Robin Williams, Dolly Parton, Bobby McFerrin, and The Grateful Dead, and set attendance records with their version of Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors, which represented the US in Classic Theatre at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Theater Festival, and which became PBS' first Live from Lincoln Center broadcast that was neither classical music nor dance. Their theatrical works include L'Histoire du Soldat, The Flying Karamazov Brothers in The Brothers Karamazov, Room Service, The Three Moscowteers, Club Sandwich, and L'Universe, a collaboration with MIT. They also appeared in the major motion picture The Jewel of the Nile, in which Mr. Patterson was an uncredited fight choreographer and wherein they did most of their own stunts.
Howard has worked extensively as an environmental educator and field ecologist. He holds a Masters in Environmental Management from Portland State University, specializing in macroinvertebrate analysis of fresh water quality, and was trained by the Hon. Al Gore to present live versions of An Inconvenient Truth – including his record-breaking eight-minute lightning version he presented in variety shows. He has worked with the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation and the East Multnomah Soil and Water Conservation District, and currently co-manages the Boise Eliot Native Grove habitat restoration pollinator pocket park project. He lives with his complicated family in Portland, Oregon, on land of the Chinook and Multnomah peoples, where he is blissfully enjoying extensive time with his delightful grandsons.