A Site-Specific World Premiere
Do you like music? Do you like poetry? Do you like to walk?
Please join us for a site-specific premiere of a live musical performance along Hartford’s unique Wallace Stevens walk! Get your exercise and culture simultaneously.
The Pulitzer Prize Winning Poet Wallace Stevens lived in Hartford, and worked at The Hartford Insurance Company. He never learned to drive, so he walked to work, often composing poetry along the way. The Wallace Stevens Walk invites you to retrace the steps of the poet’s imagination from his workplace, The Hartford building at 690 Asylum Avenue, to his former home at 118 Westerly Terrace.
Thirteen Connecticut granite stones mark the course of the walk, each inscribed with a stanza from his poem, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.
Carrie Koffman, Associate Professor of Saxophone at The Hartt School, commissioned Connecticut composer Juliana Hall to write a work setting this text to music for soprano voice and alto saxophone.
You are invited to walk this 2.4-mile route with soprano, Cherie Caluda and saxophonist, Carrie Koffman. We will take brief stops (1-2 minutes) at each of the granite stones to perform each stanza of Juli’s musical setting of Stevens’ poem at each corresponding site.
At the end of the walk, you can either opt to walk back to the beginning of the route on your own, or you can make arrangements with another person or group of people to park a car near the end of the route in advance so that you can drive back to your original parking spot. If you look at the map on the website included below, you’ll also see that we pass right by a corner of Elizabeth Park, so perhaps you may want to consider planning your own picnic after the walk, and/or take a contemplative moment to read some more poetry while you rest.
Date: Saturday, Oct. 16, 2021, 1 p.m. (Meet at the first stone in front of The Hartford).
Rain Date: Sunday, Oct. 17, 2021, 1 p.m.
Bring: comfortable walking/hiking shoes, water, and snacks if you want them.
Information about the Walk: https://www.stevenspoetry.org/stevenswalk.htm
Parking at the Start: The Hartford insurance company, where the first stone is placed, allows parking in its Visitors Lot. There is also side street parking nearby.
Parking at the End: There isn’t a parking restriction near 118 Westerly Terrace. Westerly Terrace is a divided boulevard, one-way going North in front of the stone, and one-way going South above the grassy median where the last stone sits. Elizabeth Park is a couple of blocks away from the last stone, so you can also park in or near Elizabeth Park.
Updated information and weather status will be posted on this Facebook Page.
Additional Information of Interest: