• “The Thinking Heart: The Life and Loves of Etty Hillesum” will be presented at First Parish Portland, 425 Congress St., on Holocaust Remembrance Day, May 1.

“The Thinking Heart” is an ensemble work in two voices, with cello. It is an original arrangement of the diaries and letters of Etty Hillesum, taking the form of poems by Martin Steingesser.

Additional Photos

“Before the Storm,” a watercolor by Lisa Roderick, is part of the Maine Women in the Arts show at the BrickStore Museum in Kennebunk. Courtesy photo

He and Judy Tierney will present the piece with cellist Robin Jellis. The music is mostly improvisational.

Hillesum was a Jewish woman in Amsterdam during the Nazi occupation, and wrote a diary and more than 70 letters, collected in “Etty: The Letters and Diaries of Etty Hillesum.” The book documents her life in Amsterdam and subsequent internment by the Nazis. She died in Auschwitz in 1943.

Steingesser, of Portland, was the city’s first poet laureate, from 2007 to 2009.

Tierney has been presenting poems in Maine for several years. She was creator and host of the radio program “Walking in the Air” on WRFR in Rockland.

Jellis has performed in Maine for more than a decade, and is on the faculty of the Portland Conservatory of Music.

Admission is a requested donation of $5 to $15.

• Maine Women in the Arts will host a three-day show at the Brick Store Museum’s program center in Kennebunk at 4 Dane St.

The group’s annual awards show can be viewed from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. May 6, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. May 7, and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. May 8.

A clothesline show of art priced at under $100 will be hung outdoors in the museum courtyard, weather permitting. Admission is free.

For more information, visit mainewomenarts.com.

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