Harwinton writer’s poem to be set to music
HARWINTON — Poet and author Jack Sheedy is one of six Connecticut poets chosen to have their poems set to music by singer/songwriter Sarah Marze.
Songs Marze created from the poems will be performed by high school voice students Nov. 4 on the University of Connecticut campus in Storrs.
Marze, a voice and composition student at UConn, received a UConn IDEA grant to compose music to accompany the works of Connecticut poets. She created a program called “Let Us Sing: Contemporary Art Songs for Young Singers” and recruited high school singing students to perform the poems she set to music.
Sheedy’s lighthearted poem, “If You Go Out (Towards a Cat)”, inspires a cat to make up its mind whether to go outside or stay indoors.
Marze’s light operatic rendition resembles a Gilbert and Sullivan recitative, with piano accompaniment that often sounds like a cat stepping on the keys.
Other art songs include: “One Life”, by Susan O. Nedd; “Hush”, by Mary Hills Kuck; “Dust,” by Sandy Carlson; “To All the Children Who Run Away,” by Melanie Rose Greenhouse; and “Trying to Teach Travis,” by Ginny Lowe Connors.
Marze said, “An art song is generally defined as a piece of music (averaging around 1.5-6 minutes in length) for a solo singer and piano, which defines a poem as lyrics. The purpose of art song, in my view, is to amplify a poem through compositional techniques – stretching the moments of a poem to be several minutes long.
A performance of the six art songs will be broadcast live from the von der Mehden Recital Hall on the Storrs campus on November 4 at 5 p.m. To access the live stream, go to https://www.kaltura.com/index.php/extwidget/preview/partner_id/2090521/uiconf_id/36463151/entry_id/1_almc4hoz/embed/dynamic.
To listen to samples of the artistic songs, go to https://www.sarahmarze.com/let-us-sing/recordings.
