The culmination of a week of music-making, dialogue, and a shared journey toward enlightenment, our Season Finale brings together many of the extraordinary artists who have shaped Screen Door Festival 2025. At the heart of the program is the U.S. Premiere of Songs for Judith, a deeply moving work by Canadian composer Matthew Ricketts (see interview below,) setting nine poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay to music. The cycle will be performed by baritone Jesse Blumberg with Balourdet Quartet and the pianist Danny Zalibor. Also featured in this celebratory evening are mezzo-soprano Devony Smith, Palaver Strings, The Westerlies, Vuyo Sotashe, pianist-composer Chris Pattishall, and piano duo Michael Shinn and Jessica Chow Shinn. This final gathering is not only a closing, it is a convergence: of artistic voices, dynamic collaborations, and the open-hearted listening that has defined our time together this summer.
Tickets: Age 35+: $38 | 22-34: $20 | 21 & Under: Pay What You Wish.
Honorary Concert Sponsors: Ronald Stern and Elisse Walter
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!