Last updated: August 19, 2024
Thing to Do
Summer Festival
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The Longfellow Summer Arts Festival brings music, poetry, and community to the East Lawn of the Longfellow House on Sunday afternoons through the summer. All events are free and open to the public.
Details
Duration
60-90 Minutes
Most events last 60-90 minutes. Some special events are longer. Participants are welcome to arrive and leave any time.
Activity
Live Music
Enjoy live music, poetry, and other community events on Sunday afternoons from June through August. Limited seating provided; consider bringing a folding chair or picnic blanket.
Age(s)
All ages welcome.
Pets Allowed
Yes
Leashed pets are welcome on the East Lawn.
Activity Fee
No
Entrance fees may apply, see Fees & Passes information.
Reservations
No
Season
Summer
Summer Arts Festival events take place on Sunday afternoons from June through August.
Time of Day
Day
Most events take place at 3:00 PM. Check detailed listing for more information.
Accessibility Information
The East Lawn is accessible via gravel pathways. All events use amplified sound and provide seating.
Free Music, Poetry, and Community on the Lawn
The Longfellow Summer Arts Festival brings music, poetry, and community to the East Lawn of the Longfellow House on Sunday afternoons through the summer. All events are free and open to the public.
In the case of inclement weather, poetry readings will be moved indoors. Concerts will be canceled or rescheduled.
The series is made possible with support from the Friends of Longfellow House-Washington's Headquarters, New England Poetry Club, and the Berklee College of Music.
Saturday May 18, 2:00 PM | Poets in the Garden
Join your host, Toni Bee, and poets Justice Brooks, Linda Carney-Goodrich, Charles Coe, and Parker-Vincent Alva, for an afternoon of outdoor poetry alongside the Longfellow House garden. Enjoy poetry performances, a seed giveaway, and garden walk!
Saturday June 1, 8:30-10:00 PM | Outdoor Movie Night: Giving Voice (2020)
Youth Creativity Weekend Part 1!Kick off a weekend of youth creativity with an outdoor screening of the 2020 documentary Giving Voice! This film follows the annual August Wilson Monologue competition and the thousands of high schoolers who enter the competition for the opportunity to perform on Broadway. Bring a picnic blanket or lawn chair to enjoy this inspiring film under the stars on the giant screen.
June 2, 3:00 PM | Longfellow Student Poetry Awards
Youth Creativity Weekend Part 2!Join a celebration of emerging poets! The Longfellow Student Poetry Contest is an annual competition of original poetry, with categories for high school, middle school, and elementary school students. Students will read their winning poems at this ceremony, followed by a celebration on the lawn. The ceremony concludes with the presentation of the Victor Howes Prize to an undergraduate student.
The contest aims to encourage and celebrate young poets in exploring their craft, and is co-sponsored by the Frank Buda Memorial Fund, New England Poetry Club, Friends of the Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters, and National Park Service.
Gail Mazur by Morgan Lacasse
June 9, 3:00 PM | Poetry Reading: 2024 Golden Rose Award with Gail Mazur
Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Gail Mazur grew up in Auburndale, MA. Since the 1960s she has lived primarily in Cambridge and Provincetown, with periods in New York City, Houston and Los Angeles. In 1973, she founded the Blacksmith House Poetry Series in Harvard Square which became, with its weekly readings, a center of poetry life, bringing national and international writers to read in a lively informal atmosphere.
As an activist with her late husband, the artist Michael Mazur and others Massachusetts writers and artists, she co-founded, in 1968, Artists Against Racism and the War, and later they were activists for a Nuclear Freeze. Blacksmith House presented benefit readings for, among other issues, the fight for AIDS research.
Her first collection, Nightfire (David Godine Publishers) was published in 1978, followed by The Pose of Happiness (Godine, 1986), The Common (University of Chicago , 1995); They Can’t Take That Away from Me (Chicago, 2001) finalist for the National Book Award; Zeppo’s First Wife: New and Selected Poems (Chicago, 2005), winner of The Massachusetts Book Prize and finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Paterson Poetry Prize; Figures in a Landscape (2011); and Forbidden City (Chicago, 2016). Her poems have been widely anthologized, including in several Pushcart Prize Anthologies, the Best American Poetry, Robert Pinsky’s Essential Pleasures. A graduate of Smith College, she has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Bunting Institute of Radcliffe College, and the Radcliffe Institute. She was for 20 years Distinguished Senior Writer in Residence in Emerson College’s graduate program and now teaches in Boston University’s MFA Program in Creative Writing and at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown where she has served for many years on the Writing Committee.
June 16, 12:30-3:00 PM | Juneteenth Gathering
Gather for Juneteenth to honor those who endured slavery and seized freedom on Brattle Street before the American Revolution, their living descendants, and the long history of Black freedom activism in Cambridge and beyond. This free, all-ages event will feature a community gathering with speeches by living descendants, Juneteenth # Pop-Up Poetry, A Denise Plays Hard Event; music, historical displays, family activities, and refreshments. Complete details and schedule here.
June 30, 12:00-3:00 PM | Pride Picnic
Rain date July 7
Celebrate Pride by bringing your favorite picnic blanket to lay out on the Longfellow House lawn between 12:00-3:00 PM! This collaborative event will highlight LGBTQ+ history with Queer History tours, lawn games, food, and music. All ages and abilities welcome. Some food and refreshments provided but we encourage you to bring your own picnic foods as well.
Presented in partnership with the Cambridge LGBTQ+ Commission.
June 30, 3:00 PM | Concert: Pete Smith Trio Pays Tribute to the Music of Wayne Shorter
Join us after the Pride Picnic for a concert on the lawn!
Wayne Shorter (1933-2023) is an American icon, whose compositions and performances on tenor and soprano saxophone have lead the way for modern music over the last 6 decades. The trio will focus on Shorter's music from the 60's, 70's and 80's and will feature Pete Smith on guitar, Gegory Ryan on acoustic bass, and Matt Garrity on drums.
Pete Smith is a New York City-based guitarist who performs in a wide range of musical settings. As a founding member of Grupo los Santos (Santos4tet), a vanguard Afro-Cuban and Brazilian-style quartet, he has played New York’s Town Hall and concerts throughout the U.S., Cuba & Austria. He has performed at the Berlin Jazz Festival and Montreal Jazz Festival, as well as concerts in thirty countries throughout Europe, Eastern Europe, Africa and Asia. He has worked with Norah Jones, trumpeter Donald Byrd, Cuban trombone master Juan Pablo Torres, Andrew Hill, Kat Edmonson, Vince Giordano & the Nighthawks, the Moonlighters, Madeline Peyroux, Natalie Merchant and Huun-Huur-Tu, and is a member of Michael Feinstein’s Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. Pete will be recording a new album with bassist Sean Smith (The Smith Duo) in 2024.
July 7, 3:00 PM | Concert: Mia Zeta (Berklee Summer in the City Series)
Due to high heat index, this event will be held indoors. Limited seating; first-come, first served.
Music for Mia starts from a completely playful and dreamlike place, a space in her head where she allows herself to explore both the conscious and the unconscious as well as experiment with reality and fantasy. Her greatest influence is Neo-Soul, but genres simply function as another resource to express what she feels and thinks.
With her EP already released titled "Realidades", Mia has captivated audiences at prominent venues such as Lollapalooza Argentina, Konex, Camping BA and Cosquín Rock Argentina. Her second EP titled "Hasta en los Sueños...", which has been featured on renowned editorial playlists such as Next Wave Soul, Fresh Finds. Currently, she is in the final phase of creating his long-awaited first debut album.
July 21, 3:00 PM | Concert: Victoria Marie (Berklee Summer in the City Series)
Rain date September 1
Victoria Marie is a singer-songwriter from New York. With many influences such as Lizzy McAlpine, Sara Bareilles, and many more. Her lyrically driven music tells stories of life, love and lessons. With two singles out now, her most recent the indie folk track “more than friends”, she is excited to get more music to you soon
July 28, 3:00 PM | Sarah Mesibov (Berklee Summer in the City Series)
Rain date September 1
Sarah Mesibov is a mezzo soprano vocalist, music director, and songwriter from New York. She is now based in Boston studying classical opera performance. As a vocalist, Sarah takes particular interest in neo-romantic art song and composers such as Bernstein, Poulenc, Wolf, and Ricky Ian Gordon. Through the things she has learned, the sentiments she has heard, and family she has found; she believes music is the closest thing we have to magic.
August 11, 3:00 PM | Poetry Reading: Sam Cornish Award with Gloria Mindock
Gloria Mindock is editor of Červená Barva Press and an award-winning author of six poetry collections and three chapbooks. Her poems have been published and translated into eleven languages. Her recent book, Grief Touched the Sky at Night (Glass Lyre Press, 2023), won the International Impact Award, the Speak-up Talk Radio International Firebird Award and the Independent Press Award. Gloria’s book ASH (Glass Lyre Press, 2021) won several book awards and was translated into Serbian by Milutin Durickovic and published by Alma Press in Belgrade in 2022. At the Winter’s Gate, La Portile Raiului, was translated into Romanian by Flavia Cosma and published by Ars Longo Press in Romania. Gloria has numerous publications including Ibbetson, Gargoyle, The James Dickey Review, Growth: Journal of Literature, Culture, & Art (Macedonia), KGB Lit, to name just a few. Gloria was the Poet Laureate in Somerville, MA in 2017 & 2018.
Elizabeth Bradfield by Lisa Sette
August 18, 3:00 PM | Poetry Reading: Elizabeth Bradfield and Kevin Goodan
Writer/Naturalist Elizabeth Bradfield’s recent books are Toward Antarctica, Once Removed, and the anthologies Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology, Poetry, co-created with CMarie Fuhrman and Derek Sheffield and winner of the 2024 Pacific Northwest Book Award, and Broadsided Press: Fifteen Years of Poetic/Artistic Collaboration, co-created with Alexandra Teague and Miller Oberman. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, Poetry, The Sun, and her honors include the Audre Lorde Prize in Lesbian Poetry and a Stegner Fellowship. Liz works as a naturalist and field assistant at home on Cape Cod, teaches creative writing at Brandeis University, and is Editor-in-Chief of Broadsided.
Kevin Goodan was born in Montana and raised on the Flathead Indian Reservation where his stepfather and brothers are tribal members. Goodan earned his BA from the University of Montana and worked as a firefighter for ten years with the U.S. Forest Service before receiving his MFA from University of Massachusetts-Amherst in 2004. He has taught at the University of Connecticut and has served as Visiting Writer at Wesleyan University. He currently lives in the Upper Valley region of New Hampshire.
Kymm Coveney by Cesc Anadon
August 25, 3:00 PM | Poetry Reading: Kymm Coveney and J. Kates
Kymm Coveney was born in Boston, raised in Scituate, and has lived in Spain since the 1982 World Cup. The pandemic caught this free-lance writer and translator sheltering in Jamaica Plain, where she now spends the summer months, far from Barcelona's heat. History of Milk, Kymm's translation of award-winning novelist Mónica Ojeda's poetry collection, will be published by Coffee House Press in 2026. Several poems have been published online, and Section V "De Quincey's Botany" is forthcoming in The Georgia Review's fall issue. Her non-fiction translations include Forest Bathing, by Héctor García and Francesc Miralles, and Tokyo Sketchbook, by Amaia Arrazola, both with Tuttle Publishing.
J. Kates, a minor poet and a literary translator, has published three chapbooks of his own poems and two full books, The Briar Patch (Hobblebush Books) and Places of Permanent Shade (Accents Publishing). He has been granted three National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships and an Individual Artist Fellowship from the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts, has translated a dozen books of Russian and French poetry, and edited two anthologies of Russian translations. A former president of the American Literary Translators Association and a co-diretor of Zephyr Press, he is also the co-translator of six books of Latin American and Spanish poetry.
Rescheduled September 1, 3:00 PM | Concert: André Bois (Berklee Summer in the City Series)
André Bois is a folk-rock singer and songwriter from Boston, Massachusetts. His songs combine authentic and nostalgic lyricism with a spirited roots and folky sound. He is inspired by the rawness and dependability of roots music and his passion for the natural world as well as the human world around him is evident in his singing and guitar playing. His act combines his original songs with some of his favorite covers.
Rescheduled September 8, 3:00 PM | Concert: Juventas New Music Ensemble
Juventas New Music Ensemble is a contemporary chamber group with a special focus on emerging voices. Juventas shares classical music as a vibrant, living art form. We bring audiences music from a diverse array of composers that live in today’s world and respond to our time.
November in Coimbra (2024) Oliver Caplan (b. 1982)
"Lilac" (2018) from Flower Catalog Stephanie Ann Boyd (b. 1990)
No Horns Barred (2017) Quinn Mason (b. 1996)
I. Restrained
II. Relaxed: Canzonetta
III. Unleashed
Sonatine (2005) Valerie Coleman (b. 1970)
Slipstream (2020) Stacy Garrop (b. 1969)
I. The Horizon Beckons
II. Riding Solo
III. Adrenaline Rush
Performers
Celine Ferro, clarinet
Anne Howarth, horn
Julia Scott Carey, piano
Sarah Audsley by Carolyn Kehler
Rescheduled September 29, 3:00 PM | Poetry Reading: Sarah Audsley and George Kalogeris
Sarah Audsley is the author of Landlock X (Texas Review Press). A Korean American adoptee, a graduate of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, and a member of The Starlings Collective, Audsley lives and works in northern Vermont. She is the Writing Program Director at Vermont Studio Center.
George Kalogeris’s most recent book of poems is Winthropos, (Louisiana State University, 2021). He is also the author of Guide to Greece (LSU), a book of paired poems in translation, Dialogos, and poems based on the notebooks of Albert Camus, Camus: Carnets. His poems and translations have been anthologized in Joining Music with Reason, chosen by Christopher Ricks (Waywiser, 2010). He is the winner of the James Dickey Poetry Prize, the Stephen J. Meringoff Award, and the Sheila Margaret Motton Prize. For the past two decades, he has been the Director of the Classics Minor at Suffolk University.
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