Annie Yim: The Poet Speaks: From Debussy To Pärt

Annie Yim, pianist and founder of cross-arts curators MusicArt London, presents the seventh in their Conceptual Concert series.

This lunchtime event combines the recorded voices of composers and writers with live piano, juxtaposing poems from two centuries with musical responses to them by Debussy, Ravel, Cheryl Frances-Hoad and Philip Glass. Arvo Pärt’s Für Alina will be performed alongside a newly commissioned poem by the acclaimed Zaffar Kunial whose collection Us will be published by Faber in Summer 2018, and John Cage’s 4′33″ will be performed in a new version incorporating Ed Baker’s poem A Kind of Silence.

Other writing included ranges from French poetry by Aloysius Bertrand and Charles Baudelaire to a personal love poem by Cage; from Else Lasker-Schüler’s expressionist poem Versöhnung (Reconciliation), which inspired Franz Marc’s woodcut print, to Allen Ginsberg’s anti-war poem Wichita Vortex Sutra. Each pairing of musical composition and poem reveals tributes, friendships, and artistic affinities.