Hutton Honors College

Darwin for the Day: Special Performance of the
Darwin Song Project

Wednesday, Oct. 7, 2009 * 7 p.m. * HHC Building (811 E. Seventh St.) * No sign-up required!

The Darwin Song Project, conceived of by Shrewsbury Folk Festival directors Alan Surtees and Neil Pearson, is intended as a tribute to Darwin's bicentennial. They reasoned that Darwin's influences have been widely felt in film, literature, and other media, but generally Darwin is less celebrated (or reviled, or generally mentioned at all) in a musical context. The two picked eight musicians from the United States and the United Kingdom to participate in a week-long retreat in the English countryside (Shrewsbury is where Darwin was born and raised) this past March, during which time they wrote songs with a Darwinian twist. The retreat culminated in a sold-out concert, which has since been released as a CD. Additionally, the BBC made a documentary about the week-long retreat, showing the evolution (if you will) of the songs from their earliest forms to their finalized versions.

This program, which is part of the College of Arts and Sciences' Themester programming, will feature Krista Detor, one of the eight artists, performing songs from the project, and local storyteller Arbutus Cunningham, reading from Annie's Box, a Darwin biography written by his great-great-grandson, and Darwin's The Voyage of the Beagle. Detor, who lives in Bloomington, is a songwriter, singer, and pianist. Her music has been featured on PBS, NPR, and the BBC, as well as at the Cannes Film Festival. Cunningham co-hosts the WFHB show Old Time Train 45. She writes her own stories, and will include some of her own work, inspired by the Darwin Song Project, in her portion of the evening's program.

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