photo courtesy of Anja Koehler
Dickinson’s Poetry Comes to Life as Music
No Prisoner be—
Where Liberty—
Himself—abide with Thee—
No poet was able to compress so much meaning into so few words as Emily Dickinson.
Joyce DiDonato and Time for Three will perform “No Prisoner Be,” Kevin Puts’ musical setting of Dickinson’s crystalline poetry, Feb. 14 at the Folly Theater. The concert is being presented by the Harriman-Jewell Series.
“We kind of joke that it’s not our intention to program Joyce every year,” Clark Morris, artistic director of the Harriman-Jewell Series said. “But when she has these incredible projects, how can we not bring them to Kansas City?”
The Grammy-winning Time for Three features violinists Nick Kendall and Charles Yang and double bassist Ranaan Meyer. The three are also singers. Kevin Puts is a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer whose previous works include the operas “Silent Night” and “The Hours.”
“‘No Prisoner Be’ is a theatrical song cycle based on about 25 selected works of Emily Dickinson,” Morris said. “It’s part theater, part song cycle, part opera. It’s a very dramatic setting for the music.”
After it had its premiere in Vienna last summer, Morris says it received rave reviews.
“The audience went crazy for it,” he said. “You never know how a new work is going to turn out until it’s actually birthed, but it was a smashing success. We couldn’t be more thrilled to present it on its debut tour.”
Time for Three are all classically trained musicians from Philadelphia.
“They play classical repertoire, but they play all kinds of genres,” Morris said. “They’ll do covers of rock and modern songs. There’s nothing that they won’t take on. We brought them in for our gala this fall to do a short set to introduce them to our patrons, and they were just fantastic. We also took them to Liberty North High School, and they had an early morning workshop with about 900 students that was electric.”
Morris says that Puts’ music complements Dickinson’s poetry beautifully.
“He’s a modern composer, but writes beautiful music that’s easy to enjoy even the first time you hear it, and that’s not true of all modern composers,” he said.
Morris notes that the concert is on Valentine’s Day and is also the day after DiDonato’s birthday.
“It’ll be a very happy weekend in Kansas City.”
For more information, www.hjseries.org.
