GUILFORD — Friends of Music at Guilford presents “Lucy Terry Prince & The Black Man in Song” on Saturday, Feb. 22, at 3 p.m. at Guilford Community Church.
Featured performers include Guilford-based educator Linda Hecker and tenor Irwin Reese and pianist Julia Bady.
Hecker will share insights into the life of Lucy Terry (1730-1821), who grew up a slave in nearby Deerfield, Mass., married a free man, Abijah Prince of Northfield, and raised a large family in Guilford, then recently established.
Lucy Terry Prince, often credited as Lucy Terry, is considered the first major African-American poet, and was a skilled orator, having successfully defended a case before the Vermont Supreme Court, among her other achievements.
Reese and Bady will perform art songs by five noted 20th-century African-American composers, as well as special arrangements of four spirituals.
Their repertoire's centerpiece is “The Letters” (2003), a four-part commission by Reese from composer Richard Pearson Thomas (b. 1957) based on texts by African-American scientist, botanist, educator, and inventor George Washington Carver (1864-1943).
A Colonial-style tea reception follows.