Parlando - Where Music and Words Meet

I've turned this late William Butler Yeats poem about worldly and spiritual battles into a song, because, at least to this one reader, this poem from another era of ravenous authoritarianism seems to speak to today's world and heart.  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...

Here's William Blake's other poem about children, poverty, and Ascension Day performed as a song.  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 them all and read about our encounter with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org

We may think of English poet Willam Blake as the writer of majestic mystical visions, but here he is simply observing the civic use of children of poverty on a religious holiday in this first of a pair of poems with this title. I've turned this poem from his Songs of Innocence   into what it says on the tin: a song.  The Parlando Project combines various words (mostly literary poetry) with origina...

This is Edna St. Vincent Millay's bald statement of mortality and grief performed with music. Her title says it's without music, because she wished to express that beauty does not mitigate loss, and perhaps my far-from-bel canto voice here follows her intent. The Parlando Project combines various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in differing styles. We've done over 800 of these c...

Here's a knotty poem about virtue, life, and star-dust by Langston Hughes that I've turned into a song.  The Parlando Project takes words (mostly literary poetry) and combines them with original music in differing styles. We've done over 800 of these combinations and you can hear any of them at our blog and archives at frankhudson.org

The great Afro-American poet Langston Hughes was a pioneer in Jazz Poetry, so it is appropriate that managed to finish this piece for International Jazz Day and the last day of National Poetry Month:  a performance of a short poem of his about Jazz, "Cabaret." The Parlando Project combines various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in differing styles. We've done over 800 of these...

Celebrating National Poetry Month and  International Jazz Day with this new sonnet about poets and poetry performed along with original music I composed for a Jazz quartet.  This is what the Parlando Project does regularly: we combine various words (usually literary poetry) with music we create in various styles. We've done over 800 of these combinations, and you can hear any of them at our blog a...

Emily Dickinson wrote these words in The Sixties, the 1860s. I just got done with this song performance of her poem as if it was the 1960s and this was a West Coast Folk-Rock band. I think Dickinson here is writing about those things left behind, missing, even in the delights of Spring. The Parlando Project combines various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in differing styles. We...

I set Emily Dickinson's "I dreaded that first Robin, so" to this music for National Poetry Month. Dickinson's poem casts a skeptical eye on Spring, at once alienated from it and yet closely, wittily, observing. My music mutates throughout to carry forward the coming of Springtime. The Parlando Project combines various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in varying styles. We've done...

An odd notion I had while planning for this year's National Poetry Month: could I perform an Amy Lowell poem with a rock band in the spirit of the Patti Smith Group?  Well, the result still sounds like me, but sections of this Amy Lowell poem do presage methods of later poetic expression. The Parlando Project performs various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in different styles....

A. E. Housman's poem of fleeting wildflowers set to music as part of our celebration of this month's U. S. National Poetry Month.  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 all of them and read about our encounters with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhu...

William Butler Yeats wrote this oft-quoted poem of the rise of evil in the world. I found it more challenging that many other Yeats poems to put to music and to sing, but tonight I've judged this full-rock-band version complete.  The Parlando Project combines various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in differing styles. We've done over 800 of these combinations over the years, an...

Here's another Edna St. Vincent Millay poem turned into a short spell-song for Spring and Poem in Your Pocket Day. 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 encounters with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org

This is a song made from a section of Carl Sandburg's 1928 poem "Good Morning America"   which I sang this month in order that it shed some light on the nation's current state. 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 encounter with the word...

I started doing an English translation of a poem from Chilean poet Pablo Neruda's youthful series of love poems, and in that process I thought of something else on my mind, and so began to connect the poem with two husbands taken from the US and their families based on dubious charges this Spring.  This poem from Neruda's series speaks of lovers separated. It was not so wild a leap to finish the t...

Our National Poetry Month celebration continues with a musical presentation of this sensuous Edna St Vincent Millay poem. Since I awoke this April morning to tree branches covered with wet April snow in my northern clime, I felt part of "the shared world" with this poet as I completed this song setting today. The Parlando Project combines various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music...

I might think of this as the first piece of my National Poetry Month observance this year, or as a piece the follows on from my Alice Dunbar Nelson "I Sit and Sew"   performance earlier in March.  "She Dreams of Sewing Machines"   is part of my set of Memory Car sonnets dealing with a daughter's experience of her mother's dementia.  The Parlando Project combines various words (mostly literary poet...

John "Paddy" Hemingway died this St. Patrick's day. Dublin born, and in Dublin he died, but he was in the news because he was the last surviving RAF pilot from the Battle of Britain during WWII.  I immediately thought of this Yeats poem, about a fatalistic Irish pilot during WWI who flew into battle having no love for the British Empire. His Wikipedia summary mentions nothing about his weighing of...

Poet e. e. cummings hopscotched across a page with this classic Spring poem. I've now made it into a little song for the first day of this year's Spring. The Parlando Project takes various words (mostly literary poetry) and combines them with original music in differing styles. We've done over 800 of those combinations over the years, and you can hear any of them or read about our encounters with...

Instead of literary poetry, here's a little SciFi. This is a Dave Moore song about R. A. Lafferty, the electrician turned daft Speculative Fiction writer, whose stories often sounded like they were spoken by an intoxicated man at a bar who needs just one more drink to wrap up his tale.  This is older piece, recorded as the Parlando Project was starting, that I remastered today in order to finish o...

Two Irish-American poets, now dead, used to lead a poetry reading every St. Patrick's Day in St. Paul. Earlier this week I presented a performance of a poem by one of them, Kevin FitzPatrick. Tonight, I release this song I adapted from a poem by the second poet, Ethna McKiernan.  I saw "Barn Burning" as a beautiful, wild, mystical poem. I hope my version presented as song with guitar, bass, piano...

Here's a performance of a poem from FitzPatrick's final collection done in remembrance of the St. Patrick's Day poetry readings he used to lead every year. That poetry collection, Still Living in Town, told of his life working on his life-partner's farm in Wisconsin. One of the characters in that book's series of poems about rural life was the farm's dog, an incongruous poodle named Katie. 

"I Sit and Sew"  is likely Alice Dunbar-Nelson's best-known poem, a strongly worded statement of a woman wishing to assuage the suffering of war. I've now made it into a short song, as that's what the Parlando Project does. I'll write a bit more about the particulars of the poem at the Project's blog and archives later today, but I thought her poem could speak well for itself on this International...

Long work this week to find a set of words I could use and sing, ones that would meet our world and times with some measure of hope and purpose. These are the ones I chose, written over a hundred years ago by early American Modernist poet and publisher Alfred Kreymborg.  The Parlando Project combines various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in differing styles. We've done over 80...

This February during Black History Month I've been writing about the discovery, history, and my subsequent impressions of a scrapbook featuring the life and career of a mid-20th Century Afro-American musician and singer Lawrence "Hank" Hazlett who played with a swing Jazz quartet The Cats and the Fiddle from Chicago and then with his own Hank Hazlett Trio out of Minneapolis.  In the scrapbook this...