SAXTONS RIVER — The poem, the song, and the harp will be featured in a concert by soprano Kristen Carmichael-Bowers, harpist and composer Carol Wood, and poet John Wood on Saturday, March 24 at 7:30 p.m. at Main Street Arts.
Carmichael-Bowers of Dummerston will sing art songs - in settings by Carol Wood for harp and voice - of poems by William Blake, Walter de la Mare, W. B. Yeats, Robert Herrick, Sara Teasdale, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Matthew Arnold, e. e. cummings, Vachel Lindsay, and John Wood.
John Wood will also present some of his own poems.
Admission is by donation.
Carmichael-Bowers studied at the New England Conservatory and completed both bachelor's and master's degrees in music, with a focus on vocal pedagogy, at Smith College, where she studied with soprano and Professor of Music Jane Bryden.
Carmichael-Bowers has performed in both operatic and musical theater settings, and she teaches both bel canto and contemporary belt-singing techniques. She enjoys singing a variety of music, from the works of the Renaissance to song cycles by contemporary composers.
In addition to teaching voice at the Brattleboro Music Center, where she is the founder/director of the “Get Real!” summer programs, she teaches at The Putney School and Northern Stage, where she works with a singers whose expertise ranges from amateur to professional.
Before moving to Saxtons River, Carol Wood was a professor of English literature. She finds that much of what she composes is inevitably influenced by the great poetry she spent so many years teaching.
She has written many art songs for harp and voice based on works by American, British, and Irish poets, and her song cycle “What They Thought about the Moon,” using poems by Vachel Lindsay, was composed for the Main Street Arts Children's Chorus in 2010.
As a harpist, Wood has performed from Houston to Paris and has released 10 collections of music.
John Wood is an award-winning poet, critic, and photographic historian whom The Southern Review called “the most lucid and engaging of the post-modern Southern poets.” He was awarded the 2009 Gold German Photobook Prize for Endurance and Suffering, a book of his poems based on 19th-century medical photographs.
In addition, Wood co-curated the landmark 1995 Smithsonian Institution exhibition “Secrets of the Dark Chamber,” and the book based on the exhibition was named by The New York Times Book Review as one of the “Best Books of 1995.”
John Wood has published seven books of poetry, six books on 19th-century photography, and has written and/or edited more than 40 books on contemporary photographers. He holds a Ph.D. in English literature, held professorships for 30 years in both English literature and photographic history, and directed the MFA program in creative writing at McNeese University in Louisiana.
Carmichael-Bowers and Carol Wood are also collaborating on “Composers in Our Midst,” a performance of songs by regional composers on Saturday, March 31 at All Souls Church in West Brattleboro. Guitarist Richard Ullman and composer and pianist Clifton “Jerry” Noble are joining them for this Brattleboro Music Center presentation.
Information about the Main Street Arts performance is available at www.mainstreetarts.org, [email protected], or by calling 802-869-2960.