The Portland Press Herald / The Maine Sunday Telegram

USM vocal students get pointers from professional opera singers

By Bob Keyes bkeyes@mainetoday.com
Staff Writer

PORTLAND — A song is like a box of chocolates.

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USM vocal student Jesslyn Thomas listens to advice from soprano Angela M. Brown on Friday at First Parish Church in Portland. “Let the words taste delicious in your mouth, like a piece of Godiva chocolate just melting there,” Brown said.

Gordon Chibroski/Staff Photographer

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Molly Harmon, a USM vocal student, concentrates as opera singer Angela M. Brown teaches her to bring her eyes into the performance during a master class Friday at First Parish Church in Portland.

Gordon Chibroski/Staff Photographer

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IF YOU GO

WHAT: Longfellow birthday concerts, presented by the Longfellow Chorus and Orchestra, conducted by Charles Kaufmann with guest vocalists Angela M. Brown and Robert Honeysucker

WHEN: 8 tonight and 3 p.m. Sunday

WHERE: First Parish Church, 425 Congress St., Portland

TICKETS: Suggested donation of $20

INFORMATION: www.longfellowchorus.com or 772-1160

ALSO: The Maine Historical Society, at 489 Congress St., celebrates Longfellow’s birthday with a family party from 10 a.m. to noon today with poetry readings, performances and other activities.

Each word and each line should be savored, just as we might appreciate a forbidden confection.

“Let the words taste delicious in your mouth, like a piece of Godiva chocolate just melting there,” opera singer Angela M. Brown told Jesslyn Thomas, a vocal student from the University of Southern Maine.

A soprano with a world-class resume, Brown is in Portland this weekend for a two-concert series that celebrates the birthday of Maine’s best-known wordsmith, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

The concerts at the First Parish Church on Congress Street, where Longfellow and his family worshipped two centuries ago, will feature the Longfellow Chorus and Orchestra, a professional ensemble dedicated to preserving and encouraging musical works inspired by the words of Portland’s first poet.

Best known for the epic poems “Evangeline” and “The Song of Hiawatha,” Longfellow was born on Feb. 27, 1807.
In addition to the Longfellow Chorus concerts tonight and Sunday, the poet’s native city will celebrate his birthday with a party from 10 a.m. to noon today at the Maine Historical Society. It will include readings of poems and Longfellow-inspired puppet performances for the family.

On Friday, Brown and fellow guest vocalist Robert Honeysucker held a master class for promising vocal students. In addition to Thomas, three young singers from USM – Joshua Miller, Molly Harmon and Joseph Murphy – signed up for the opportunity for one-on-one tutoring with Brown and Honeysucker.

They gathered at the church late in the afternoon. Friends, students and teachers filled a handful of pews as each vocalist sang a selection of his or her choice from the opera canon, then soaked in the response and advice from the two-person panel of professionals.

Friday’s workshop was a backdrop for the concerts. In his day, Longfellow saw many of his poems set to music, and wrote his words with music in mind, said Charles Kaufmann a Longfellow historian and the director of the chorus.
In 2007, for the poet’s 200th birthday, Kaufmann formed the chorus to celebrate Longfellow in song.

The next year, he challenged fellow composers to write new music set to words written by Longfellow, and got responses from all over the world. Each year since, he has continued the competition for composers. In three years, the chorus has premiered 30 new settings of Longfellow poems.

This weekend’s concerts, with Brown and Honeysucker as guest vocalists, will feature many newly commissioned works, as well as aperformance of “The Death of Minnehaha,” with music written by the noted black composer Samuel Coleridge Taylor.

“The allure of Longfellow remains strong,” Kaufmann said. “He was very popular in his day, and then fell out of favor. But he remains a looming figure in the world of literature and music.”

Staff Writer Bob Keyes can be contacted at 791-6457 or at:

bkeyes@pressherald.com