Poetry and music are weaved together for “After Songs: An Evening of Poetry and Music” at 8 pm Thursday, April 3 in Nutt Auditorium.
University of Mississippi music department faculty Michael Rowlett (clarinet) collaborates with Adrienne Park (piano) and Philip Snyder (flute) to perform Valerie Coleman’s “Portraits of Langston,” based on poems by Langston Hughes. Rowlett is also premiering a piece by Oxford composer Price Walden.
Ethel Scurlock, Dean of the UM Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College, will be reading Hughes’ poems. This will be the first half of the program, and the world premiere of Walden’s piece, which was commissioned with an individual project grant from the Mississippi Arts Commission, will be the second half of the program.
“Michael Rowlett will be premiering my new piece ‘After Songs: Seven Nocturnes for Clarinet’ based on poems by Michael McFee, complete with the author reading the poetry,” Walden said. “It was an absolute pleasure to live in Michael McFee’s world, and an equal pleasure to write for a consummate artist like Michael Rowlett. It’s going to be a lovely evening, and we’re so excited to share this piece with you.”
Michael McFee, a poet, critic, and editor, who often sets his poems in his native North Carolina, are grounded in the particulars of place even as they explore themes of loss, memory, and family life.
Walden was commissioned by the Southern Foodways Alliance in 2011 for the cantata “Leaves of Greens,” which led Southern Living Magazine to name them a “Hero of the New South” in 2012.
The program is free and open to the public. For more information about the music department, go here.
