“New Songs for an Old Poet” is a series of four concerts spanning July through December 2025. Organized by long-time Valley vocalist Peter W. Shea, who is also the principal performer, the series presents an enormous variety of songs, all of them musical settings of the great nineteenth-century German-Jewish poet Heinrich Heine, whose verses have been set to music more than any other poet. All are works that Shea has in some way helped to bring into the world, either by suggestion, commission, or premiere, as part of his thirty- year project on Heine and the music his poetry continues to inspire.
“The Parting Summer” showcases the music of composer and pianist Kaeza Fearn, a former resident of the Pioneer Valley who now lives on Cape Cod. The major work is her song cycle “Der scheidende Sommer” (The Parting Summer) for voice and piano, based on a group of sixteen poems about a love affair with a woman named Kitty. In 1834 Heine sent a dozen of them to a composer friend, who unfortunately thought they were merely a joke. This inspired Shea to commission Fearn to write a complete, modern musical setting of Kitty’s story in 2006. The resulting song cycle was premiered by Shea and Monica Jakuc Leverett in 2009 on Fearn’s graduate composition recital at The Hartt School in West Hartford, CT. This will be its fifth performance. The other works on the concert include two stand-alone songs, the toy piano suite “A Day in the Life of a Toy Piano,” commissioned by Jakuc Leverett in 2015, and two short piano pieces performed by the composer.
Later concerts in the series:
"Heinrich Heine Far and Near," Sunday, October 26, featuring sixteen songs, several in English translation, by thirteen composers from Germany, Canada, New York, Connecticut, Vermont and Massachusetts, that range widely in style, mood, and tonality. Shea is joined by mezzo-soprano and guitarist Justina Golden, pianist and guitarist Clifton J. Noble, Jr., and soprano Junko Watanabe.
“Seas, Birds and Trees,” Saturday, Dec. 13 (Heine’s 228th birthday), an evocative potpourri of works by a dozen composers, with several sea-related solo songs, a suite for piano four- hands, and four pieces for voice and multiple instruments, with a cast of thousands (well, nine really).
Earlier concerts in the series:
“The Noble Heine,” Sunday, July 6, music by local pianist and composer Clifton J. Noble, Jr., including his 2016 song cycle written in tribute to Robert Schumann, and four new works composed for the vocal sextet Cantabile, of which Peter is a member.
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