Join Michael Dodge and Arianna Arnold for an evening celebrating the life and works of English composer Ivor Gurney, whose music has been tragically overlooked and lost in time. This concert and lecture will include performances of Gurneys Five Elizabethan Songs and his tenor song cycle Ludlow and Teme, as well as the premiere performance of several of Gurney’s unpublished works.

Ivor Gurney (1890-1937) was recognized for his musical prowess from a young age, studying composition at the Royal College of Music in London before leaving to fight in World War I. Gurney, and incredibly prolific composer and poet, was hailed as a musical genius by many of his contemporaries, including Ralph Von Williams, Herbert Howells, and Gerald Finzi. Unfortunately, he also suffered throughout his life due to several mental health issues, including paranoid schizophrenia, depression, and bi-polar disorder, which combined with his experiences in the war led to his mental breakdown and eventual incarcerating in mental institutions for the last 15 years of his life. Despite writing over 300 songs during his lifetime, primarily for voice, only around 100 of his songs have been published. Many of his manuscripts are housed in the archives in the Gloucester Library.

At the Gurney Project, we hope to spotlight this composer who has been wrongly forgotten in part due to the mental illness that plagued Gurney’s life. With this concert, we aim to share Gurney’s incredible life story and music, including several of his unpublished works, with a wider audience.

Michael Dodge is a Baltimore based tenor and performer of art song and opera, hailed by the Baltimore Sun for his “eloquent phrasing” and “persuasive acting.” Arianna Arnold is a soprano and current graduate student studying vocal performance at The Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University.