MATTHEW RICKETTS, composer (see interview below)
THOMAS CABANISS, composer

This FREE pre-performance talk features two composers whose original works will be played at Screen Door. Matthew Ricketts, whose Songs for Judith will be featured in the closing concert, and Thomas Cabaniss, whose Tiny Bits of Outrageous Love (excerpts) will be a part of the Well-Being Concert, will discuss the pieces along with their lives and overall work.

Matthew, a Guggenheim fellow based in New York, set nine poems by Camden Poet Laureate Edna St Vincent Millay to music, creating Songs for Judith. Many Maine residents and tourists are familiar with the Pulitzer Prize winner’s statue perched atop Mount Battie in Camden Hills State Park. Thomas, familiar to Bay Chamber audiences from pieces featured in previous seasons, wrote Tiny Bits of Outrageous Love for his wife Deborah. The deeply personal piece is composed for “piano four hands,” in which two musicians play the same piano. Join Matthew and Thomas for what is sure to be a fascinating and lively conversation, followed by tea and cookies.

There will be a donation basket for those who would like to support Bay Chamber.

Interview with Matthew Ricketts

The poems of beloved Camden poet laureate Edna St. Vincent Millay's will be put to operatic song cycle during Screen Door Festival 2025 at the U.S. premier of Songs for Judith by Canadian composer Matthew Ricketts. 

Matthew, a Guggenheim fellow, set nine poems by Millay (1892-1950) to music in honor of Canadian opera patron (and poetry lover) Judith Dalgleish. The work was commissioned by Canadian-Italian baritone Brett Polegato and Judith's husband Terry Dalgleish. Songs for Judith will be performed by baritone Jesse Blumberg with Balourdet Quartet and pianist Danny Zalibor at the Screen Door Festival Season Finale on Sunday, August 17 at 5:30 pm.

Millay, who was born in Rockland and grew up in Camden, won the 1923 Pultizer Prize for Poetry, the first woman to win the award. Then in 1943, Millay was awarded the prestigious Frost Medal for her lifetime contribution to American poetry. A statue of Millay looks out over Penobscot Bay in Camden's Harbor Park and a memorial plaque at Mt. Battie's summit features the first stanza of her famous poem "Renascense."

Matthew talks about Millay, the premier of Songs for Judith, and how this most unique song cycle came to be. 

Tell us about the origins of Songs for Judith. 

Judith and Terry were huge supporters of music in Canada, particularly opera and vocal music, and had become quite close to Brett Polegato with whom they shared a love of poetry. When Judith passed, Terry and Brett decided to commission a work in her memory, which is when I came on board.

You came to this commission with the idea to set Millay's poetry to music already in your head. Tell us about that.

While I've been aware of Millay’s poetry since high school, it wasn’t until I spent an intensely productive time in 2022 at Millay Arts (an upstate NY artists’ residency on the grounds where Millay lived) that her life and work really began to haunt me. Reengaging with her poetry planted an obsessive seed: I must find a way to work with her words.

What was the process of composing like? 

The poems are all drawn from Millay’s earliest published books. They are deeply entwined with themes of loss and memory, longing and absence. The final image of a disappearing tide pool is perhaps Vincent’s most striking metaphor. Musically, I have tried to maximize variety of tone within the overall elegiac and rather autumnal quality of the cycle. The epilogue revisits every previous song, running backwards until we return to the opening of the first song. 

Why did you chose Screen Door Festival as the place to premier the work in the U.S.?

I knew about the local connection to Millay who was born in Rockland and raised in Camden. Last summer I pitched Bay Chamber Artistic Director Manuel Bagorro on returning this summer for the U.S. premiere. We both agreed it would be a great fit and the rest is history!