Prudence Johnson will offer a look at the life of free-spirited poet Edna St. Vincent Millay.
Prudence Johnson will present A Girl Named Vincent at 7:30 p.m. May 21 at the Arrowhead Center for the Arts.
Sponsored by the North Shore Music Association, A Girl Named Vincent is a multimedia concert in which a free-spirited young poet of a century ago comes to life in stories, pictures and songs. Edna St. Vincent Millay was one of America’s greatest poets. She would become a national celebrity and, at 31, won the Pulitzer Prize. Thomas Hardy would say there were really only two great things in the United States: the skyscraper and Millay’s poetry. To those close to her, she was known simply as Vincent.
Prudence Johnson’s career has taken her from honky-tonks to Carnegie Hall, from the theater stage to the silver screen, from the Midwest to the Middle East. She is a regular guest on Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion, broadcast on National Public Radio stations across the country, and appears in Robert Altman’s 2006 A Prairie Home Companion movie. Her film credits also include Robert Redford’s A River Runs Through It.
Johnson’s 10 album releases include Little Dreamer, a collection of international lullabies, Moon Country, which features the music of Hoagy Carmichael, and s’Gershwin, a collaboration with pianist Dan Chouinard. She recently collaborated with four Minnesota composers to create A Girl Named Vincent, a presentation of the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay set to music, to be released on CD this year. She is a 2001 recipient of the McKnight Artists Fellowship for Performing Musicians and enjoys a steady schedule of concert appearances across the country.
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