The work is a 45-minute song-cycle that fuses folk and classical music together in a setting of emotionally-charged texts of tombstones from an historic New Hampshire cemetery. The events will be both musical and literary, as five internationally recognized poets have contributed new poems commissioned specifically for the project. The world premiere, a commercial recording of the piece, and a tour of the work to Carnegie Hall are planned for the 2007/2008 season.

Performed by the Grammy-award winning University Symphony Orchestra conducted by Kenneth Kiesler, tenor Nicholas Phan, and the noted folk/punk singer Tim Eriksen (recently heard on the soundtrack to the film Cold Mountain). Renowned poets Keith Taylor, Jane Hirshfield, Paula Meehan, Richard Tillinghast, and Thomas Lynch, who was recently featured in a PBS Frontline documentary, will read new poems commissioned for the event. The premiere will be paired with Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring.

“‘The Old Burying Ground’ made magic… The songs were by turns tender, rousing and stern… The melding of sung and spoken word was elegant and affecting” wrote Susan Isaacs Nisbett of The Ann Arbor News.

Free to the public

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