SPECIAL EVENT: An Evening of Music & Poetry

What happens when music and poetry meet in performance? Is the result something new? Something different? Something magical? The accomplished young cellist Thomas Readett and Stonington’s Poet Laureate Christie Max Williams have joined in a pioneering collaboration that explores these questions with a project melding Readett’s performance of Johann Sebastian Bach’s great cello suites with Williams’ reading from his award-winning poetry.

The cello is the instrumental voice most closely attuned to the human voice. Readett and Williams will “sing” together in a duet that will simply be like no other musical coupling. The cello selections will be taken from Suites 1 and 2 of the Bach cycle, including the famous Prelude. Their deep and sonorous themes will be paired in emotional “keys” with poems from Williams’ book The Wages of Love.

Readett is the founder and Director of the Mystic Chamber Music series. He is also renowned as a solo and chamber music artist. Having studied at the Manhattan School of Music, he is a Teaching Fellow at Columbia University. He performs on an instrument created in 1748 by Carlo Antonio Testore.

Williams is an award-winning actor as well as poet, who has performed in many leading roles in New York, California, and Connecticut. His book of poems, The Wages of Love, won the William Meredith Poetry Prize. In Spring 2025, he won the competition that named him the inaugural Poet Laureate of Stonington.

All seating is first come, first served. Doors open at 5:30. No paper ticket needed-- simply give your name at the door.

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Host or Publisher La Grua Center