June 10: 'Dreams and Meditations' at the West Medford Community Center

“At a time when so much seems to divide us, the spiritual impact of this music seems to pull people together, to invite not just listening to our own heartbeats, but to the world around us. If only for that, this is a wonderful antidote to divisiveness, and a wonderful accompaniment to being.” – Ari Davidow, KlezmerShack on Glenn Dickson’s recording Wider Than the Sky

Clarinetist/composer Glenn Dickson and poet Vijaya Sundaram combine their arts to create a captivating performance of words and sound on Saturday, June 10 at the West Medford Community Center, 111 Arlington St., Medford, MA. The 7:30 p.m. show is free. For information visit Dreams & Meditations | Facebook.

Thanks to a Medford Arts Council Grant, these two Medford residents are collaborating for the first time to weave together the dreamy, lush music of Dickson with the meditative, intimate poetry of Sundaram. "I look forward to the way Vijaya's poetry and my music will interact, the way one will enhance the other, bringing out different feelings and experiences in both," says Dickson.

Dickson creates deep moods with his solo clarinet, using live sound processing to layer sounds, transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary. Sundaram’s experience as a wordsmith, vocalist and instrumentalist give her a musician's sensitivity in the reading of her poems, which speak to topics including the transcendent joys of nature and the transformative possibilities in the everyday. The music and poetry will be presented together, allowing plenty of opportunity for spontaneous interaction and serendipitous synchronicity.

Glenn Dickson is a Medford-based musician whose career has taken him across the US and Europe, performing his own music as well as traditional klezmer music with his bands Naftule's Dream and Shirim. He is no stranger to collaborations, having worked with Maurice Sendak (on the Parents’ Choice award-winning recording Pincus & the Pig), public radio host & author Ellen Kushner (on the acclaimed The Golden Dreydl), as well as locally creating music for photography shows at the Griffin Museum of Photography. He is the recipient of a Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Grant in composition, and his music can be heard on the soundtrack for Woody Allen’s film Deconstructing Harry. Dickson has toured and recorded with the eclectic rock band Hypnotic Clambake and the Greek bands Revma and Taximi. He has performed his solo clarinet with electronics in the Boston area, as well as for the American Festival of Microtonal Music in New York. Of his 2023 solo release Wider Than the Sky, Grego Edwards of soundindepth.com wrote, “It is Avant Folk Primal…places the listener into a peaceful, dreamlike state and yet remains wholly cohesive and musically contentful.” Bob Pomeroy of Ink19 said, “Wider Than the Sky may be my top chill out album of the year.” Dickson teaches at The Waldorf School of Lexington and the Winchester Community Music School.

Vijaya Sundaram is a Medford-based poet of East Indian origin. She is also a guitarist, sitarist, songwriter, singer, an Assistant Professor in the English/Humanities at Bunker Hill Community College, and a home-schooling Poetry and Literature teacher. Her work has appeared in publications like The Rising Phoenix Press, the Stardust Review, and TELL Magazine, among others. This summer, Cervena Barva Press is scheduled to publish her first chapbook of poems.