"I am 3/4ths Canadian, and one 4th New Englander - I had ancestors on both sides in the Revolutionary war." - Elizabeth Bishop
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Saturday, October 6, 2012

33 Years Today

"—the little that we get for free,
the little of our earthly trust. Not much.
About the size of our abidance
along with theirs: the munching cows,
the iris, crisp and shivering, the water
still standing from spring freshets,
the yet-to-be-dismantled elms, the geese."
—Elizabeth Bishop, “Poem”

"Each day with so much ceremony
begins, with birds, with bells,
with whistles from the factories…."
—Elizabeth Bishop, “Anaphora”

Today marks 33 years since Elizabeth Bishop’s death. With so many creative projects happening around the world inspired by and in tribute to Elizabeth Bishop, her legacy is alive and well.

One of the most exciting of these projects is the Elizabeth Bishop Legacy Recording being done in Nova Scotia by Suzie LeBlanc (www.suzieleblanc.com) and her fantastic team of composers and musicians. Music was an abiding love for Bishop, all kinds of music, and to honour her with a CD of glorious settings of her poems (including “Anaphora”), is appropriate indeed. All of the music being recorded was premiered in 2011 during the Elizabeth Bishop Centenary Festival in Nova Scotia.

A crowd-source fund-raising campaign is underway to raise money for this independent project. You can find out more, learn about it progress and make a contribution at www.eb100legacyrecording.blogspot.ca. Contributions have come from all over the world and we are deeply grateful for this support.

A SPECIAL FUND-RAISER IN AUSTRALIA!

I am thrilled to tell you about a special fund-raising event for the Nova Scotia Bishop CD, which will happen in Australia! Acclaimed Australian composer Dindy Vaughan will be holding a fund-raiser in Melbourne on Sunday, 28 October 2012. It will be a gathering of singers and musicians from Dindy’s wide circle, who will perform in support of this Bishop project.

Dindy Vaughan

Suzie LeBlanc and Blue Engine String Quartet performed one of Vaughan’s “Sea shells on Bruny” during the final EB100 gala concert on 3 October 2011.

In a recent email, explaining her reasons for offering this amazing support, Dindy wrote: “I am passionate to make things such as this [the CD] happen; women have to work extremely hard to be recognised. Many of the friends I have invited have worked with me for years on different aspects of the women’s movement, and we all care deeply that women’s achievements, such as Elizabeth Bishop’s, are not swept under the carpet. So, the prospect has fallen amongst a very committed gang of Australian friends.”

We are profoundly grateful to Dindy and her friends for this interest and support. It demonstrates the global reach of Elizabeth Bishop’s and Suzie LeBlanc’s art. It is thrilling to imagine these distant friends taking up the cause, raising funds through their own songs.

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More about Dindy Vaughan:

“Dindy Vaughan is a composer, environmentalist, organiser, writer and educator. Her music is frequently performed live and has been broadcast on 3MBS FM and the ABC. Happiest in the thick of artistic, intellectual but above all practical, activity, she thrives in social groups where imagination and creativity combine with plenty of grass roots growth in a hurry.

In 1996 Dindy was awarded the prestigious University of Sydney Alumni Award for Achievement in Community Service. The award was given for her innovation, stimulation of new ideas and services, creativity, dedication and leadership in the areas of arts and education. She was nominated and selected for inclusion in Who’s Who in the World, Millennium 2000 edition, having demonstrated ‘outstanding achievements in (her own) fields of endeavour… thereby, contributed significantly to the betterment of contemporary society’.” This information has been taken from the following website:  http://www.move.com.au/artist/dindy-vaughan

Check out these websites for even more information about Dindy:

 

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