"...The Red Skies Music Ensemble has created in their program a captivating experience of Emily Dickinson’s everyday musical world. Their evidence and musical selections reveal the young poet as an accomplished pianist attentive not just to hymnody and the classical repertoire, but also to ballads, marches, jigs, and political tunes – in fact, the whole of 19th-century popular music.” Jane Wald, Executive Director, Emily Dickinson Museum
Emily Dickinson: Accomplished Musician, Emerging Poet
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Co-Authors: George Boziwick & Trudy Williams
George Boziwick and Trudy Williams (co-authors) bring research to the stage in a series of shows centered on Emily Dickinson's personal sheet music collection (her "binders' volume" which is in the Houghton Library at Harvard University) that illustrate both the continuity and variety of Dickinson's musical activities within the context of her life and times. Each performance focuses on a new and insightful element of Dickinson's musical background, all of which served to uniquely inform her emerging poetic voice.
An engaging narrative, highlighted with large-screen images of archival artifacts from a variety of sources, is interwoven with selections from her correspondence and poetry, musical performances and theatrical performance uniquely scripted from Dickinson’s own wit and words. These elements combine to bring audiences on an experiential journey that contextualizes fascinating historical, social, and musicological facts, providing new insights into the daily musical life and artistic development of one of America's beloved poets. Programs include opportunities for audience participation, and conclude with Q & A. "My Business is to Sing: " Emily Dickinson, Musician and Poet situates Dickinson's daily musical engagements in the context of her talent and her times, along with her encounters with the music-making of the local community, the Dickinson's Irish and African American servants, and the New England hymn tradition, all of which payed a vital role in shaping and informing her unique poetic voice. "My Wars and laid away in Books - " Emily Dickinson's Music Book: A Prelude to the Civil War takes audiences on a rich journey through the musical engagements, social context and historical events that informed and enlivened Dickinson's poetic voice that was emerging just as our country plunged towards Civil War. Emily Dickinson in her Elements: Accomplished Musician, Emerging Poet focuses on Dickinson and her times, tracing the influence of Dickinson's musical engagements on her poetic development within the context of music, nature, Amherst and New England. The Musical Parlor of Emily Dickinson introduces audiences to the intimate setting of music-making at the Dickinson Homestead. Performances of popular ballads, Irish dance music and minstrel tunes from her bound book of sheet music illustrate how Dickinson and her family collected, listened to and performed the music of her time. "Musicians Wrestle everywhere": Sacred and Secular Music in the Poetic Synthesis of Emily Dickinson illuminates Dickinson's journey through the musical, educational, and religious engagements within the context of mid-ninetieth century American liberalism and expansions that helped shape her personalized spirituality that would ultimately assist her in the synthesis of a unique poetic voice. Dickinson's Musical Eden: Emily and Lavinia: Music Making in the Homestead presents rarely performed vocal and piano pieces that Emily loved and played from her own collection of sheet music, as well as selections of the popular sentimental songs sung by her sister Lavinia. This program, first presented at the Emily Dickinson Museum, likely marks the first time that many of the pieces have been played directly from the digitized version of the sheet music in Dickinson's own music book. Reading from correspondence illuminates and animates both the music and the musical relationship between the two sisters. Emily and Lavinia: Music Making and Dickinson's Eden presents a lively seldom seen side of the sisters' sibling love and competition in their shared passions for music, gardening and the natural world. Dialog, correspondence excerpts, poems, songs and a piano duet convey their unique interests and lively relationship as they are inspired by, and tend to, the elements of the homestead's Eden that surround them. With contributions from Marta McDowell. 
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 Index from Emily Dickinson's music book.
Emily Dickinson's Music Book, Houghton Library, Harvard University
Emily and Lavinia: Music Making and Dickinson's Eden
Dialog from the 2018 performance. In this live performance excerpt, Emily Dickinson (Suzanne Lenz) and her sister Vinnie (Sara Banleigh) exchange views and feelings abut music, nature and each other.
According to her friends and neighbors, Emily Dickinson was an expert improviser at the piano. They recalled her "heavenly music" and her "weird and beautiful melodies all from her own inspiration". She may have been inspired at one point by this tune popular in her time. Music manuscript: Elias Howe, Ethiopian Flute Instructor, 1846.
"Our reading Club still is, and becomes now very pleasant - the last time Charles came in when we finished reading, and we broke up with a dance - " Johnson, The Letters of Emily Dickinson, no. 44. 19th century advances in print and distribution technologies meant vernacular dance tunes like this one from Emily's music book, were 'codified' and crossed over into the parlor for playing pleasure or dance accompaniment.
Performances
The recordings are from various live performances 2012 through 2018 at sponsors' locations: the The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts Public Program series at Lincoln Center; the Houghton Library, Harvard, and American Repertory Theater Special Programs at the Oberon; Emily Dickinson International Society (EDIS) Conference at Amherst College; Emily Dickinson Museum in Amherst; and the Yale Institute of Sacred Music, New Haven. Images of Emily Dickinson's music book: Houghton Library, Harvard University; Emily Dickinson daguerreotype: Archives and Special Collections, Amherst College; Elias Howe manuscript: The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Music Division; "There's a Good Time Coming." Boston: Oliver Ditson, 1846.
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Copyright 2023 George Boziwick and Trudy Williams. The Red Skies Music Ensemble: Co-founded in 2010 by George Boziwick and Trudy Williams