Guest Artists for Spoken Word

As GUITAR AMERICA 250 – REVOLUTIONARIES AND ROCKSTARS features spoken word by Trevor Neal, Charles Coe, Jeffrey Lependorf, and myself, I decided that the album release concerts should also feature spoken word. So, I decided to invite poets, musicians, speakers, and writers to join me. I am honored by their trust and can’t wait to see what happens!
Learn about the artists by reading the brief biographies below.

The Concerts and Performers (click for links):

• April 10 – Wellfleet Preservation Hall • Guest Felice Coral & Jeannette de Beauvoir •
• April 11 – Arlington Street Church Chapel, Boston • Guest Jeffrey Lependorf
• April 14 – King’s Chapel, Boston • Guest Lloyd Schwartz
• April 19 – The Music Mansion, Providence, RI • Guest Trevor Neal
• April 25 – Unitarian Society of  Northampton, MA • GUEST Jeffrey Lependorf
• April 30 – Jacob Edwards Library, Southbridge, MA • Guest TBA
• May 3 – Charlene Larsen Center for the Performing Arts, Astoria, Oregon • Guest TBA
• May 16 – Upham’s Corner Library, Dorchester, MA • Richard Hoffman, poet

Poet-musician and friend, Charles Coe, passed away in November 2025. He and I had performed Words & Music programs many times for Convergence Ensemble over the last few years. We had planned to tour again this spring and summer, but it was not too be. Because of his loss and his immense presence works in his honor are on each program. 

Jeffrey Lependorf, April 11 & April 25 – Boston & Northampton, Mass.
Jeffrey Lependorf is a composer and visual artist, and is also a certified master of the shakuhachi, a traditional Japanese bamboo flute. In 2025 he became the director of the John Cage Trust. Lependorf’s music has been performed around the globe — literally, in fact: a recording of his Night Pond for solo shakuhachi was launched into space when the shuttle Atlantis took off on May 15, 1997 and remained for a year aboard the Russian space station Mir. Recently, he has made a return to his first love, visual art, focusing on collage. http://jeffreylependorf.com/

Jeannette de Beauvoir, April 10 – Wellfleet, Cape Cod, Mass.
Jeannette de Beauvoir is a poet and novelist who lives in Provincetown, on the tip of Cape Cod. She writes mystery and historical fiction, and her work has appeared in the Looking Glass Review, Avalon Literary Review, and the New England Review, among many others; she received the Mary Ballard Chapbook Prize and the Outermost Poetry Contest national award. More at jeannettedebeauvoir.com

Felice Coral, April 10 – Wellfleet, Cape Cod, Mass.
Host of Café Classical on WOMR Outer Cape Radio.
https://provincetownindependent.org/tag/felice-coral/

Trevor Neal, April 19 – Providence, Rhode Island
Hailed for his “extremely warm and rich baritone” by Opera News, GRAMMY®-nominated Trevor Neal (he/him) has built an exciting international career that makes him a favorite among audiences in the United States, Europe, Asia, and South America. A 2018 Metropolitan Opera National Council Audition award winner and finalist, Neal has performed leading and supporting roles with renowned companies such as New York City Opera, The Dallas Opera, Opera Philadelphia, Sarasota Opera, Virginia Opera, and Opera San José. 

Lloyd Schwartz, April 14 – Boston, Mass.
Lloyd Schwartz is currently Somerville’s Poet Laureate, for which he has been awarded a major fellowship from the Academy of American Poets. His latest book, “Who’s on First? New and Selected Poems,” is published by the University of Chicago Press. His work has been selected for “The Best American Poetry,” “The Best of the Best American Poetry,” and the Pushcart Prize, and he is the recipient of a 2019 Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship for his poetry. The longtime classical music critic for NPR’s Fresh Air, he was also the classical music editor of The Boston Phoenix, for which he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 1994. He is the Frederick S. Troy Professor of English Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Boston.

Richard Hoffman, May 15 – Dorchester, Mass.
Richard Hoffman is the author of five books of poetry: Without Paradise; Gold Star Road, winner of The Barrow Street Press Poetry Prize and the Sheila Motton Book Award from The New England Poetry Club; Emblem; Noon until Night, which received the 2018 Massachusetts Book Award for Poetry, and his most recent, People Once Real. His other books include the memoirs, Half the House and Love & Fury; Interference and Other Stories, and the essay collection Remembering the Alchemists. His Each Child a Disappearance: New & Selected Poems, and Children Elsewhere: Collected Series, Sequences, & Suites are forthcoming in September. He is Emeritus Writer in Residence at Emerson College and Nonfiction Editor of Solstice: A Magazine of Diverse Voices. https://richardhoffman.org/

Charles Coe (1952-2025) – Everywhere
Charles Coe (1952–2025) is the author of three books of poetry: “All Sins Forgiven: Poems for my Parents,” “Picnic on the Moon,” and most recently “Memento Mori,” all published by Leapfrog Press. His novella “Spin Cycles,” about a homeless man living on the street in Boston, was published by Gemma Media. “Peach Pie,” a short film by filmmaker Roberto Mighty based on his poem “Fortress,” has been shown in film festivals nationwide. https://www.charlescoe.org/

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