GUILFORD — Friends of Music at Guilford's “Midwinter Musicale” is on Saturday, Feb. 29, at 3 p.m. in the sanctuary of Guilford Community Church. This year's program is a multimedia presentation surveying the life, times, and work of Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet and author Carl Sandburg (1878-1967), whose musical passion is generally less well known.
Biographical information and selected poetry, prose, and a children's story will be offered by a diverse cast, including guest readers Tom Green and Charles Butterfield, among others.
The program's narrator is FOMAG administrator Joy Wallens-Penford, who visited Sandburg's “Connemara” home in Flat Rock, N.C., in 2014. The experience brought back memories of her introduction to Sandburg as a child in the 1950s, and inspired her to create a Sandburg-themed service for All Souls Church in West Brattleboro the following year.
She was asked to expand the program for an Osher Institute lecture as part of a history series in 2016.
An extensive slide show accompanying the presentation includes a tour of “Connemara,” which is the only private home managed as a National Historic Site by the U.S. Park Service. Videoclips, including a couple in which the poet is heard reciting his own work, bring Sandburg back to life, at least fleetingly.
A sampling of live and recorded music in folk, spiritual, and ragtime genres enhances the broad study of Sandburg's many interests in the arts and the social history of the U.S. Musical performers include Eva Greene on piano, Tom Baehr on flute and dulcimer, and Tom Green on guitar. Although Sandburg knew only a handful of chords, he loved to sing folk songs for friends and family, and nearly always did so for audiences on his lecture tours.
Although his formal childhood education in Galesburg, Ill., ended with sixth grade, Sandburg was always reading and writing. He later spent time in college but never completed a degree. A teacher-mentor with a small printing press helped him self-publish his first books of poetry.
While continuing to write verse, he went on to earn his living as a newspaper reporter, including stints as a war correspondent and critic. In addition to books of verse, Sandburg eventually produced a couple of novels, a six-volume biography of Abe Lincoln, children's stories from “Rootabaga Country,” and “The American Songbag” collection of nearly 400 folk tunes.
Wallens-Penford offers insights into Sandburg's development as a first-generation Swedish-American from Lincoln country in Illinois, including the influences that shaped his ideas and attitudes, personal and political.
His adult years are tracked from Chicago to Milwaukee and back, and include a retreat to the shores of Lake Michigan before the family's final move to North Carolina in 1945 when his wife - née Lillian “Paula” Steichen, sister of the famous photographer - needed more space for her prize-winning goats.
The $15 admission includes a warming teatime Soup Supper reception featuring homemade soups, hearty breads, appetizers, and desserts.