Parlando - Where Music and Words Meet

A poem written by a teenager who grew up to be me. In my youth I was writing here about the images of Mid-Century America and the costs in hardly grown children. I just found my handwritten manuscript of this almost 60-old-poem while cleaning out old things and thought I'd present it here in this month of Armistice Day. The Parlando Project combines various words (usually other people's literary p...

This is a contemporary poem written this autumn by American poet Henry Gould. The musicality and lush imagery of this short poem so captured me when I read it on Halloween night that rushed to do a song setting the next morning. Gould has been generous enough to allow me to share it with the Parlando Project listeners. The Parlando Project combines various words (mostly literary poetry) with origi...

Here's delightfully wicked little poem written by Vachel Lindsay now made into a short song for Halloween. The Parlando Project combines various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in differing styles. We've done over 850 of these combinations, and you can hear any of them or read more about our encounter with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org

To make this I joined a short plaintive piece of new music with some lines excerpted from Sylvia Plath's poem. The full poem is longer and deals in greater detail with the state of awakening from sleep. To fit the music and as part of our series for Halloween and the Days of the Dead, I selected lines from Plath's poem that I heard as speaking of death and remembrance. The Parlando Project combine...

Here's a poem turned into a little song for the more light-hearted side of Halloween. English Romantic-era poet Leigh Hunt tells us about fairies' mischief in the apple orchard. The Parlando Project takes various words (mostly literary poetry) and combines them with original music in differing styles. We've done over 850 of these combinations, and you can hear any of them and read more about our e...

This is a poem about Autumn by Minnesota poet Phillip Dacey, who wrote many poems about marriage and family that gracefully combine clear surfaces and images with more complex undercurrents.  The Parlando Project has done over 850 of these sorts of combinations, talking mostly literary poetry and performing it with original music in differing styles.  You can hear any of them by visiting our blog...

I translated Paul Eluard's French poem about natural law into English for this new song.   The Parlando Project combines various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in differing styles. We've done over 850 of these combinations, and you can hear any of them or read about our encounter with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org

In our last piece I wrote about finding some old writing by my late wife who died decades ago. I was charmed by this poem, which was likely written while she was in college in the mid-1970s and studying writing with Howard Mohr and Phil Dacey.  I performed this a spoken word piece to my own music, and yes, yes it was rewarding to inhabit words she wrote after all these years. The Parlando Project...

Here's a short poem I wrote about an old man going through storage boxes and finding things his late wife had packed away in the 1980s.  The Parlando Project combines various words (usually literary poetry) with original music in differing styles.  We've done over 850 of these combinations, and you can hear any of them at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org

Humorist and poet Dorothy Parker presented this sly account that I suspect many other creatives will recognize. Well, I got around to setting it to music. The Parlando Project combines various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in differing styles. We've done over 850 of these combinations, and you can hear any of them and read about our encounters with the words at our blog and ar...

The Indian Pipe or Ghost Flower serves as the initial image in this strange late Emily Dickinson poem, In this musical performance using acoustic guitar, tanpura, and tabla drums I try to carry forward the elusive feeling of this work. The Parlando Project combines various words (mostly literary poetry) with music in differing styles. We've done over 850 of these combinations, and you can hear all...

Each year, on the anniversary of Jimi Hendrix's death, I play guitar to remember him. In the last decade this has led to a public piece each September, and this is this year's. The words for today's piece are taken from mermaid and siren poems written by Tennyson, Beckett, De la Mare, Symonds, Eliot, and Yeats. The music and guitar playing is mine.  The Parlando Project combines various words (mos...

This is one of D. H. Lawrence's most esteemed poems, yet I found it exists in two versions, and the one I perform today is the lesser-known of the pair. This version differs from the other by a more raw and disturbing utilization of the Persephone myth where the sexual violence in that story is less smoothed over.  If you feel you might need a content warning for that, please consider this note on...

English poet Anna Wickham wrote "To be sung" under the title of this, so I wrote music for it and did so. My appreciation for the poem about the transience of beautiful things deepened as I worked with it for performance. The Parlando Project combines various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in differing styles. We've done almost 850 of these pieces, and you can hear any of them...

No fair-minded person would say the thoughts in this piece's lyrics justify its title, but then that's part of the point it makes.*   Edmund Vance Cooke wrote this in 1917, and after all these years I thought it might be appropriate to make a song out of it for today. The Parlando Project combines various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in differing styles. This one has wailing...

I sometimes like to take Emily Dickinson's 19th century poetry and recast it inside music that takes on the 1960s psychedelic approach. If severed from the drug associations, this style opens up paths to use sounds in unconventional ways which I think mirrors Dickinson's startlingly novel use of language and observation. This poem is a short tale of a productive spider and its mundane domestic fat...

Another Summer departure from our usual fare. In this satire I appear as guest on a podcast about Folk and Americana music to discuss some new protest songs decrying the current American administration's tampering with famous Universities.  There's a special reveal in last minute of this piece. What is our usual thing? The Parlando Project normally combines various words (mostly literary poetry) w...

I made this song using an extraordinarily musical sonnet by Elinor Wylie. I think her sonnet, and now this song, speaks about the desire to escape fate by fleeing to an Edenic pla ce — but wait, deathly undercurrents are aleady there. The Parlando Project combines various words, mostly literary poetry, with original music in differing styles. We've done over 800 of these combinations, and you can...

As I approach the 24th anniversary of my late wife's death, I decided to perform this Child Ballad about the closeness and separation of lovers.  The Parlando Project generally combines other people's literary poetry with original music, but this time the piece's music as well as the words are by that prolific and mysterious author and composer Anonymous. We've done over 800 combinations over the...

As part of this month's atypical series recounting long past live performances from my youth, this is an original song from a lo-fi tape of the LYL Band performing at the University of Minnesota's Wiley Hall in 1981.  "China Mouth" is a Surrealistic discontented Summer song, somewhat of a contrast to the LYL Band's usual early Eighties repertoire that focused on satire and comment on current event...

From a lo-fi tape of the LYL Band's 1981 concert at the University of Minnesota, the LYL Band's live performance of Dave Moore's song adaptation of Kevin FitzPatrick's poem about who faces the guns for minimum wage.  The Parlando Project combines various words (usually literary poetry) with original music in differing styles. We've done over 800 of these combinations, and you can hear any of them...

A topical song the LYL Band sang in 1980 about privilege and the attempted assassination of President Reagan. This is part of an atypical series I'm running this summer about some performances I've been a part of over the years. What the Parlando Project normally does is combine various other people's words (usually literary poetry) with original music in differing styles. We've done over 800 of t...

My first live performance, a public spoken word reading from Leonard Cohen's novel Beautiful Losers I did back in The Sixties. I had just turned 19 years old. No music this time, but usually the Parlando Project combines various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in differing styles. You can hear any of the more than 800 of such combinations we've done at our blog and archives loca...

This Emily Dickinson poem about our fixation on losses seems to me informed by early 19th c. popular ballads, so I sang it as one. The Parlando Project combines various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in differing styles. We've done over 800 of these combinations, and you can hear any of them and read about our experience of working with the poems at our blog and archives locate...

A sonnet from a series I've been writing about Alzheimer's disease, recorded as the LYL Band has traditionally done this kind of spoken word performance: live in the studio with the band's two poets improvising on their instruments as the poem is performed.  This kicks off your summer series where the Parlando Project will be doing things somewhat differently than we do the rest of the year. What...