On May 4 at the Dock Street Theatre, Holy City Arts & Lyric Opera (HALO) presents Singers & Stanzas, a world premiere presentation bringing together the words of Lowcountry poets with the musical talents of nationally-known composers and performers.
The event began as a collaboration between HALO and Marcus Amaker, Charleston’s first Poet Laureate, as a way to “find the space for new work combining local artists with visiting talent,” said Leah Edwards, HALO’s co-founder.
It’s a fitting collaboration for HALO, a multidisciplinary arts organization that hosts unique productions throughout the year with the intent to reignite passion and interest in the classical arts.
“A lot of audiences are not aware that classical art is a living art form and a lot of new music is still being created everyday,” Edwards said. “[Singers and Stanzas] is really emphasizing the collaboration and marriage of poetry and music, and how both are in fact evolving and contemporary.”
From poetry to lyrics
Marcus Amaker invited local poets Abby Duran, Brittany Porcher and Columbia-based Evelyn Berry to each write a poem about love. Those poems are set to music composed by friend of HALO, composer Lauren Jobin-Acosta, who is based in New York City.
Duran, whose poetry collection Between Words released was 2023, said she was excited by the prompt. “When they said, ‘We want you to write about love, but not romantic love,’ that was exciting, because everyone’s got their own take on love,” she said. “It was cool to get a diverse look at how people interpret love.”
Duran’s piece discusses forgiveness, which she said is “the ultimate form of love for yourself or somebody else.” And Brittany Porcher, who is also a spoken word artist, contributed a poem on self-love.
Porcher said, “[Self Love] is like swimming upstream. And with this piece, it’s going to seem like I’m toggling between denying myself of self love and then coming to acceptance of what I need to do to be able to love myself more. It’s a cascading effect.”
For composer Jobin-Acosta, the most difficult part of composing the program, she said, was asking the poets to cut, add and rearrange their words.
“I felt like I was butchering this amazing piece of art, but that’s part of working with somebody who’s living,” she told the Charleston City Paper. “I did my absolute best to leave parts untouched. It led to the creation of some really interesting and unique forms and directions — something that a clear structure wouldn’t originally allow me to explore.”
Duran said that collaboration between composer and writer is just what makes this program special: From poet to composer to performer, each person involved will add their own meaning to the work, allowing audiences to see how the essence of the art collapses and diverges based on interpretation and storytelling.
She said, “as writers, we know it’s hard to edit our own work, but I think with music, you just have to be really open to it because it’s going to be a different interpretation than what you imagined.”
Tying the performance together
The resulting compositions will be performed by vocalists Schyler Vargas and Lindsay Metzger and accompanied by pianist Isaac Hayward.
Vargas, who will be performing the song written by Amaker, said his hope is for his performance is that he can serve as a vessel for the poetic words written by Duran, Amaker, Berry and Porcher.
“As a performer, everything I do is making choices in the hope it makes the audience feel something…That’s what I really love to do, let the music speak, let the text speak and just be a vessel for it,” Vargas said.
All of the artists involved expressed great anticipation to see how the collaboration comes together. As specialists in their respective crafts, the cross-pollination of art forms brings something new and different to Charleston’s already-rich arts community.
“Leah and I talked about how Charleston is a hotspot for up-and-coming poets,” Jobin-Acosta said. “The community is pretty big for poetry and music, but not together. I feel this will bring together a new kind of audience. It’s one of the first times we’re actually going to see this collection…In my experience, I have not seen a lot of poets and composers uniting forces.”
Edwards said she’s grateful to get to make an event like this happen through creative collaboration. “Our vision of the organization is we are a collaborative unit of artists creating magic for this community. It really is storytelling,” Edwards said. “I cried when Laura [Jobin-Acosta] sent me the first round of compositions. Each time you produce something new and all the different elements actually do come together, you stand in awe of the process and creation. “
Tickets are $25 for Singers & Stanzas at holycityarts.org. 2 p.m., May 4, Dock Street Theatre.
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