This Friday evening, March 1, the Brooklyn Art Song Society will present “February House”, a collection of songs by artists who lived at or were associated with the house at 7 Middagh Street, later demolished to make way for the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, which got its name from the fact that several of its inhabitants had February birthdays. The house was owned by George Davis, a literary editor, who resolved to have as many interesting people living there as possible. The result is described in Sherill Tippins’ book February House. Among those who lived there during the early 1940s were the poet W.H. Auden, the composer Benjamin Britten, the novelist Carson McCullers, and the ecdysiast Gypsy Rose Lee who, while resident there, wrote her mystery novel The G-String Murders.
The concert will be held at the First Unitarian Congregational Society, 119 Pierrepont Street (corner of Monroe Place). Beginning at 7:00 there will be a pre-concert lecture by Tippins. The concert will begin at 7:30 and will include several works by Britten, as well as songs by Kurt Weill who, while not a resident of the house, was a close friend of Davis and no doubt was a guest there on occasion. Four of the Weill songs on the program are based on poems by Brooklyn poet and legend Walt Whitman.
You may purchase tickets here.
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