A local professor’s new album aims to celebrate the beauty of New England through art song and bring hope to listeners.
Jamie-Rose Guarrine, a soprano and professor of voice at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, recently released a new album called “Filled with the Light.” This album features poems by Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost and Charlie Pratt set to music. It also includes musical works by composers Alice Parker, Scott Gendel, Juliana Hall, Richard Pearson Thomas, Gwyneth Walker and Gregory W. Brown.
With deep roots in New England, these writers and composers capture the true spirit of the region. The music builds on local culture and natural beauty, shining a spotlight on the magic of daily life — from the rhythm of making cider to the drama of a sudden storm.
“There’s a rich culture here. Some of it is based in faith, and some of it is based in the community and the really mundane things of life, like plowing your field and your neighbor comes over and bugs you, but you’re gonna take the time to make sure that you connect with neighbors,” she said.
Guarrine, originally from Illinois, discovered when she moved to New England more than a decade ago that Massachusetts has “this poetry, this amazing, deep well of beautiful poetry that is so tied to the region.” Her home state has “a lot of cornfields,” so coming to the East Coast changed her perspective.
“Coming here and being taken by the beauty of the land and the beauty of the poetry … and going by Emily Dickinson’s house every day on my way to work, it was kind of shocking,” she recalled.
Beyond the regional focus, Guarrine wanted to create works for cello and solo soprano that were accessible enough for students to perform. In fact, the title of the album is, to some degree, a direct message to Guarrine’s students. “You are filled with the light. You have to bring your light into the world,” she said.
It was a notion that stuck with Guarrine when she released her last solo album in 2020, which highlighted iconic poets like Walt Whitman and e.e. cummings. Emily Dickinson was featured on that record as well. “Anytime I do any work, I’m gonna always put a little Dickinson on there,” Guarrine said.
Navigating the COVID-19 pandemic to finally release a second album has been “a journey of hope,” she added. “We have to get accustomed to the dark, but we ultimately will be filled with the light.”
Ironically, given this album’s heavy focus on New England, it wasn’t recorded in the region at all. Instead, Guarrine recorded it at her alma mater, the University of Wisconsin-Madison. That decision was in part because she wanted to involve her former coach, Martha Fischer, who had a significant impact on the start of her career.
It also came down to a very simple financial reality. “I was able to get the hall for free,” Guarrine said.
Her other options were the Bezanson Recital Hall at UMass, which would have required the college’s physical plant to turn off all of the air conditioning and the heat to avoid background noise; and Mechanics Hall in Worcester, which she said would have cost many thousands of dollars. Instead, she was able to record in Wisconsin thanks to grant funding, and it allowed her to get back to her roots as a performer.
“Otherwise, it’s clang-clang-clang,” she said. Recording in Wisconsin was covered through grant funding and allowed her to get back to her roots as a performer.
Now that the album is out, Guarrine is working on plans to perform it on tour. She hopes that the album — and especially live performances — will give people a sense of hope and a sense that life “isn’t so bleak,” she said.
Before joining the UMass faculty, Guarrine performed in opera for 15 years, during which she liked to say a particular prayer before taking the stage: “Dear God, please let my performance bring some joy to those who come in.”
“They’re bringing into the theater with them anything that’s going on in their lives, and my hope when they would come to the theater is that they could shut out whatever their noise is in their own lives, whatever’s bringing them down, and that when they hear the music, that it’ll uplift them,” she said. “That’s my wish for this. That’s why we do what we do.”
“Filled with the Light” is available now on major streaming platforms.
Correction, July 16, 2026 4:36 pm: A previous version of this article incorrectly reported the building that would have cost Guarrine thousands of dollars to record in. It has been updated to reflect that building as Mechanics Hall in Worcester.
