WordStage Vermont featured at Lincoln’s Bicentennial Birthday Bash at the Vermont State House.

WordStage Vermont is honored to be invited by State House curator David Schutz to join him and Howard Coffin in a the Abraham Lincoln’s Bicentennial celebration at the State House on Thursday, February 12th at 7:00pm. Soprano and pianist, Anne Fitch, pianist Eliza Thomas and WordStage Artistic Director, Tim Tavcar create and perform an entertainment titled - “A Salon for Mr. Lincoln.”

Lincoln’s love of many types of music and theater is not generally well known to today’s public. But from his early years as an Illinois State Senator, Lincoln was an avid aficionado of the performing arts – from the simplest folk songs to military band marches, to rowdy music hall revues to grand opera. As President, he hosted BI-weekly musical salons in the Red Room of the White House, where the programs ranged from opera arias by the likes of Jenny Lind and Adelina Patti to piano renditions of popular tunes of his day.

The WordStage Vermont entertainment, will feature a similarly diverse program, featuring an aria by Charles Gounod, four hand piano arrangements of Lincoln Era melodies and songs by two of the president’s favorite composers – Britain’s Henry Bishop and America’s Stephen Foster. WordStage Vermont is a Chamber Music Readers Theater designed to “entertain and inform.”

WordStage Vermont is currently in the midst of its second season, presenting five programs in Montpelier and Burlington, with the support of a creation grant from the Vermont Arts Council and the National Endowment of the Arts.