Unique House Festival Honors Chicago Literary Classic in Song

The Chicago Literary Hall of Fame and Working In Concert invite you for three different spoken word and song programs in a 2-weekend festival celebrating this iconic work from the 1910s, and featuring some of Chicago's finest singers and actors:

CHARACTERS — Fridays, September 13 and 20 

Directed and curated by Iris Lieberman, eight leading lights of Chicago theatre spin a tale of characters from honest, hardworking, chaste, and churchgoing to corrupt bankers, abusive husbands, unfulfilled wives, sexual deviants, and failed dreamers…brought back from the dead by Jerry Bailey, Mary Bonnett, Sharon Carlson, John Green (and his guitar), Gary Houston, Adjora Stephens, and Joanie Winter.

CLASSICAL — Saturdays, September 14 and 21 

Song settings by composer Lita Grier and art songs from the period, curated by Carl Ratner, with pianist and music director Dana Brown, sopranos Michelle Areyzaga and Marissa Howard, baritone Dorian McCall, and tenor Seth Johnson, with narrator Paul Geiger as Edgar Lee Masters.

CABARET — Sundays, September 15 and 22 

Jonathan Lewis brings together the songs and the cast of Ruth Fuerst, Claudia Hommel, Daniel Johnson, Jace McCloy, Barbara Smith, David Stephens, and Joanie Winter, with music director Howie Pfeifer, to share what the Spoon River folk would have sung had they lived long enough!

All shows begin at 7 PM, followed by artist talk-back and reception with light refreshments. VERY LIMITED SEATING. Live stream will be available for one of each program.

Spoon River was made famous by a collection of poems written in 1914-1915 by Edgar Lee Masters who was raised in nearby Lewistown, Illinois. He moved to Chicago as an adult and set up house in Hyde Park where his law partner Clarence Darrow, writers Sherwood Anderson, Carl Sandberg, and Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore were frequent guests, sometimes for seances. 

Spoon River Anthology contains Masters's impressions of small-town life. “The connections of this artistic project are uncanny!” exclaims Claudia Hommel, Executive Director of Working In Concert and producer of this festival. The idea came about when she realized her good friend and fellow cabaret performer Ruth Fuerst lives in Masters' former residence. Later, she met Lita Grier, the composer of a Spoon River Song Cycle, broadening the scope of repertoire for the festival's exploration of poetry intersecting with song.

Finding a partner in Don Evans and the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame cemented the project. The CLHOF inducted Masters into the Hall of Fame in large measure because his Spoon River Anthology, a series of graveside monologues, "captures the voice of the Midwestern people, their values and their struggles that he knew so well.” 

Carl Ratner, baritone and artistic associate director Working In Concert's Bellissima Opera shares, “When I visited the Hyde Park house on its tree-lined street, I felt connected to the free verse poems and Masters' process of developing and honing them. They are little masterpieces of simplicity and human insight. For the “Classical” evening, we are especially excited to have soprano Michele Areyzaga who premiered Grier's recording with Cedille Records. We honor the recently deceased Grier by performing her exhilarating cycle, a rare opportunity alongside other American songs that evoke the period—this is a not to be missed event.”

Don't Miss a Chicago News Story
Sign up for all the news on the Summer season, discounts & more...