Calliope’s Call – Emily and Edna

The concert features winning art songs set to poetry by Emily Dickinson and Edna St. Vincent Millay. R. Michael Daugherty won with his submission of “Bee! I’m expecting you!” from A Wagtail Dance for soprano and piano.

I wrote this about the song cycle: “When bees return to the hive, they need to communicate the location of suitable flowers, such as clover, to the other members of the hive. They do so by “dancing’ in a figure-eight pattern.

Emily Dickinson’s bee poems personify the bees, making them seem like important characters whose exploits should be carefully observed. The cycle begins with a letter to a bee, with the piano part imitating an insect in flight.”