SUNDAY, AUGUST 4, 2024 AT 2:00PM
Burchfield & Whitman in Opera and Song:
Buffalo Opera Unlimited Performs the Music of Nell Shaw Cohen
Burchfield Penney Art Center, Buffalo, NY
Next month the Burchfield Penney Art Center in Buffalo, NY presents a full concert of my opera and art songs comparing the works of two iconic American artists: painter Charles E. Burchfield and poet Walt Whitman.
Tenors Joe Dan Harper and Alexander Kosmowski join Matthew Marco, pianist and Artistic Director of Buffalo Opera Unlimited, in this special event presented in conjunction with the Burchfield Penney Art Center’s exhibition Embracing Earth: Burchfield & Whitman.
My musical interpretations of Whitman’s Poem of The Road and Laws for Creations will be performed alongside the exclusive World Premiere of Proofs of Coming Fullness, which is based on text from Whitman’s memoir Specimen Days.
This will be followed by a staged production of my 2014 work The Coming of Spring: a one-man opera illuminating Burchfield’s artistic evolution. In this work, a series of poignant chronological episodes reveal how perceptions of nature framed Burchfield’s life experience: from days collecting insects during his rural Midwestern childhood to the years in which he supported his large family by producing popular images of industrial and suburban scenery in Buffalo.
Burchfield’s mission to develop the expressive power of his art—and to convey the transition from winter to spring in a single image—leads to a revelation in 1943 with the completion of the monumental titular painting.
Originally scored for tenor with a six-piece chamber ensemble, The Coming of Spring will be performed here in piano-vocal reduction.
Free and open to the public, with limited seating. More information here.
