A Wendell actor and writer have teamed up with a four-time Grammy Award-winning cellist for an improvised poem performance at The Workroom at 33 Hawley St. in Northampton on Feb. 1. Showtime is slated to begin at 2 p.m.
Court Dorsey will collaborate with Eugene Friesen to create “Poems with Wings,” in which the former will improvise music to poems from “Tiger Stripes: Poems of Shadow and Light,” Dorsey’s 2024 collection of mystical poems, and works by other poets.
“We’re really excited about it,” Dorsey said, adding that selecting the poems to read has taken up a great deal of his time recently. “We won’t rehearse too much, because [Friesen] is an improviser.”
Prior to the Northampton show, ‘Poems with Wings’ was performed in Wendell and Putney, Vermont.
“Court Dorsey is the rare poet whose live performance takes his inspired language and messages to another level entirely,” Friesen said in an email to the Greenfield Recorder. “He’s like a great jazz player but with words — great sense of swing, rhythm, dynamics, pacing — and the result is a powerful presentation that’s immediately accessible. Our collaboration really takes off in our improvisations, the energy builds on itself, surprising us and our listeners.”
Friesen is active internationally as a concert and recording artist, composer, conductor and teacher. He has worked and recorded with the likes of Dave Brubeck, Martin Sexton, Toots Thielemans, Betty Buckley, Dar Williams, and Will Ackerman. His improvised music has been featured in concerts all over the world with Paul Simon, the Paul Winter Consort, and with Trio Globo. Friesen is also an artist-in-residence at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, and is a professor at Berklee College of Music in Boston.
Dorsey said he and Friesen first performed together in June 2022. They were commissioned by Mark Fraser, director Mohawk Trail Concerts series, to be a part of the concerts with Dorsey reading poetry by Billy Collins, as well as his own work, in collaboration with Friesen’s cello improvisations.
“[Friesen] is a real excellent musician … and is one of the best improvisers with poetry, probably, in the country. He’s really a remarkable improviser,” Dorsey said. “I’m really looking forward to working with Eugene again.”
Dorsey has been writing songs, poems, short stories and works for the theater for 50 years. He most recently penned “Swamped,” a four-person play that centers around the relationship between a widowed and grouchy Vietnam War veteran and transgender personal care assistant.
Tickets are $15 in advance, $20 at the door.
Visit www.courtdorsey.com/events for advance tickets.