Poems meet music in debut performance

BENNINGTON - Bennington Performing Arts Center will be a part of the weekend debut of “Unsaid Prayers - The Song Cycle,” based on poems by J.S. Lillie and composed by Nico Gutierrez, on Saturday, February 26, at 7:30 pm. As an introduction for the song cycle performance, BPAC will be hosting an encore reading of Lillie’s poems on Saturday, February 19 at 7:30 pm.
The debut of “Unsaid Prayers - The Song Cycle” will begin at Clark University in Worcester, MA, on Friday, February 25; then moves to Bennington Performing Arts Center on Saturday, February 26; and finishes up its tour at Smith College in Northampton, MA, on Sunday, February 27.
The project came about when Maestro Cailin Marcel Manson was touring concert venues as the new musical director of the Bennington County Choral Society. Last summer, as the book of poetry, “Unsaid Prayers,” was coming to fruition, Manson told Lillie he wanted to set her poems to music. A folder of hand-selected poems was created, shared, and the first Zoom meeting was set. “Unsaid Prayers - The Song Cycle” was born. The poems deal with hard subjects but they speak loudly to all involved. A poem written after the death of George Floyd is partnered with a poem talking about the experience of being a person of color and trying to explain it to others.
Get tickets to the reading and the song cycle performance at bpacvt.org/tickets or call the box office at (802) 447-0564. BPAC is at 331 Main Street.