FULL LONDON SONG FESTIVAL celebrating Amy Lowell and Gertrude Stein London 2024 Harriet Burns, Lotte Betts-Dean

Information on the Performance

• Work Title: London Song Festival celebrating Amy Lowell and Gertrude Stein  
• Composer: various  
• Libretto: various  
• Venue & Opera Company: Hinde Street Methodist Church, London, UK  
• Recorded: September 5, 2024
• Type: Concert Live
• Singers: Harriet Burns, Lotte Betts-Dean
• Conductor:   
• Orchestra: Nigel Foster, PIANO  
• Stage Director:   
• Costume Designer:   

Information about the Recording

• Published by: London Song Festival  
• Date Published: 2025  
• Format: Streaming
• Quality Video: 4 Audio:4
• Subtitles: yessubs, ensubs, gensubs  

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS PERFORMANCE

This concert celebrates two American poets, born just six days apart in 1874 – Amy Lowell and Gertrude Stein. The programme focusses on love poems that they wrote to and about their respective life-partners; Ada Russell (Amy Lowell) and Alice B Toklas (Gertrude Stein), and is a tribute to these two female poets, and to same-sex love. The programme includes three world premieres: a song commissioned by the London Song Festival by Errollyn Wallen, recently appointed as the first black woman to hold the post of Master of the King’s Music, and the first black woman to have her work performed at the BBC Proms; she also wrote the music for the Opening Ceremony of the London Olympics and Paralympics in 2012. The programme also includes the premieres of ‘Nine Steins’, a sequence of quotations from Gertrude Stein that have been set to music by the American composer Juliana Hall, and of two linked songs written by the trans activist, composer, singer and educator CN Lester.

List of songs and readings

1) Amy Lowell’s love poems to Ada Russell: Amy and Ada at home and in the garden
Reading: The Giver of Stars (extract)
Song: A Decade from Three Poems by Amy Lowell – Carl Engel
Reading: Aubade
Song: Anticipation and Madonna of the Evening Flowers – C N Lester – WORLD PREMIERE
Reading: Mise en Scene
Song: Bright Sunlight – Jack Redman
Reading: The Blue Scarf (extract)
Song: A Sprig of Rosemary from Three Poems by Amy Lowell – Carl Engel
Reading: Venus Transiens
Song: Interlude from So Free Am I – Ben Moore

2) A Gertrude Stein Interlude
Nine Steins – Juliana Hall – WORLD PREMIERE
1) An Occasion
2) Anything Suitable
3) The Best Way
4) There is no Use
5) Giving it Away
6) And That
7) Suppose There Is
8) Clean
9) Return Gratitude
with readings mostly from ‘Baby Precious Always Shines’ – selected love notes between Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas

3) Amy Lowell: Songs of the Seasons
SPRING: Song: Primavera – Celius Dougherty
SUMMER: Reading: July Midnight
AUTUMN: Songs: from Six Poems by Amy Lowell – Lyell Cresswell
1) Autumn, 2) Circumstance, 3) Autumn Haze
WINTER: Song: A Winter Ride – Gus Tredwell (b.1990)

INTERVAL

4) More Amy Lowell love poems to Ada Russell: Extremes of Passion
Reading: Carrefour
Song: Granadilla – Errollyn Wallen – WORLD PREMIERE
(Commissioned by the London Song Festival with grateful thanks to the Marchus Trust for their support).
Reading: The Giver of Stars (extract)
Song: Opal from Love Songs of Amy Lowell – Julian Philips
Reading: Wheat-in-the-ear
Song: A Gift from Love Songs of Amy Lowell – Julian Philips
Reading: The taxi

5) Another Gertrude Stein Interlude
Song: In the Country from Three Gertrude Stein Songs – Wayland Rogers
Reading: quotes from Gertrude Stein
Song: I am Rose – Ned Rorem
Reading: Tender Buttons (extract)
Two Stein Songs Op 1 – Christopher Berg
1) Susie Asado
2) George Hugnet

6) An Amy Lowell Finale: Love and Music
Reading: The Artist
Song: Portrait of a Lady – Celius Dougherty
Reading: At Night
Song: Music – Celius Dougherty
Reading: Listening (extract)
Song: An Opera House Op 120 – Lowell Liebermann

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