The Bucolics Project

Vermont composer Brendan Taaffe, The Bucolics Project reimagines Manning’s award-winning 2007 collection Bucolics as song.

The Berry Center will host Vermont musician Brendan Taffe and renowned Kentucky poet Maurice Manning for an Agrarian Voices Lecture.  Born out of a ten-year collaboration between Kentucky poet Maurice Manning and Vermont composer Brendan Taaffe, The Bucolics Project reimagines Manning’s award-winning 2007 collection Bucolics as song. Each song is based on an archival recording of Eastern Kentucky singers like Addie Graham, Roscoe Holcomb, and Old Regular Baptist congregations. 

Performed by an all-star cast including Sarah Kate Morgan, Erin Shea Hogan, Sarah Gibson, Stefan Amidon, and Brendan Taaffe, The Bucolics Project encompasses ballads, hymns and fiddle tunes along with spoken word by Maurice and a ‘crankie’ (also known as a moving panorama, a crankie is an illustrated scroll cranked from one side to the other in a wooden puppet theater). 

This event is open to the public and presented thanks to a Research Fellowship from the Appalachian Sound Archives at Berea College and by a Creation Grant from the Vermont Arts Council as well as the generous support of The Josephine Ardery Foundation, Tallgrass Farm Foundation, Virginia Lee Harrod, Tony Perry and Jeff Ricketts, and Cindy and Scott Anderson.

For those who cannot attend, this live public presentation will be recorded and broadcast on The Berry Center’s YouTube channel at a later date.