Tomorrow is the 203rd birthday of one of Maine's most celebrated literary sons, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. It comes near the end of Black History month -- or African American History month, if you prefer -- and both events are being celebrated together musically over the weekend.

The Longfellow Chorus was formed four years ago by Maine-based musician and composer Charles Kaufman to celebrate the 200th birthday of one of America's most popular 19th Century poets. A concert has been held every year since, although due to a shortage of funding, this year may be the last one for the Longfellow Chorus, and Kaufman wants to make sure it's a memorable one.

Baritone Robert Honeysucker

Soprano Angela Brown tours the world singing opera, and is particularly well known for her portrayal of Verdi heroines. She's sung a number of times at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City, but today she's in Portland at the First Parish Unitarian Church rehearsing for a pair concerts with the Longfellow Chorus and an orchestra. Joining her, is acclaimed Boston-based baritone Robert Honeysucker - also an African American.

"We've got two of the best voices in the country here," says Charles Kaufman, who has enticed Brown and Honeysucker to Maine this weekend to sing a concert consisting entirely of works inspired by the poetry of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Featured heavily this year are works by a turn of the century British composer named Samuel Coleridge Taylor - not to be confused with the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who wrote Kubla Khan, among other things.

Unlike most European composers of the late 19th and early 20th century, Taylor was black, or least partially -- his father came from Sierra Leone. He was one of several composers, says Kaufman, who were attracted to the words of Longfellow: Others include Franz Lizst, Edward Elgar and Arthur Sullivan -- of Gilbert and Sullivan fame.

Charles Kaufman: "And then you've got Samuel Coleridge Taylor with his 'Ring', his three-hour long Hiawatha, a three-part version, and so I though this year, 'Yeah, let's do Coleridge Taylor.'"
Tom Porter: "Was it because of Black History Month and he was a black Englishman?"
CK: "No, it was more because I thought this is going to be interesting, I'm going to be doing it any month in any year. We did Elgar last year. Elgar actually got Coleride Taylor's career going. He turned down a job to write a cantata and gave it to Coleridge Taylor and that's how Hiawatha started."

Brown and Honeysucker will be joined by another soloist this weekend -- Freeport-based tenor Mark Sprinkle -- to perform, among other things, Coleridge Taylor's "The Death of Minnehaha", part of the Hiawatha trilogy he wrote in celebration of Longfellow's epic poem of the same name.

For Angela Brown it's a new challenge. "I'm very excited to be here in Portland and performing Coleridge Taylor. This is my first time working with his music, and it being Black History month, it's wonderful to be able to sing his music during this commemorative month."

Tom Porter: "You're probably not normally aware of thinking about what color you are when singing, but this weekend maybe?"
Angela Brown: "No! Hey I'm black everyday baby! I don't think about it."
TP: "Is it more relevant this weekend maybe?"
AB: "More relevant? I would like to think that black people of color are relevant every day of the year, but it's wonderful to have an opportunity to have this month set aside and for this music to be brought to the forefront."

"The fact of performing a work by a person of African descent is always of great import to me," says Robert Honeysucker. "I've always maintained a position, even in my recital work, I always include African American song compositions because my feeling is, if I don't, who will?"

For Honeysucker, this too will be the first time he's performed the Death of Minnehaha.

The concert also features a piece called "The Quadroon Girl", one of Coleridge Taylor's musical settings of Longfellow's "Poems on Slavery." It would be theoretically possible, says Charles Kaufman, to stage several weeks of concerts devoted exclusively to Coleridge Taylor's treatment of Longfellow's poetry -- in all he wrote 21 compositions based on Longfellow's words.

So what was it, I asked, that Coleridge Taylor, an English composer of African descent, found so appealing about the poet from Maine? Kaufman says Longfellow, as an abolitionist, struck a chord with many African American artists -- and in this case an African British artist -- in the period following the Civil War. "And it's amazing what he did, starting in 1842 with the slave poems, he's writing about African American history, African American experience."

And as the children of the emancipated slaves came of age, says Kaufman, they sought artistic insipiration wherever they could find it. "The first thing they turn to to create literary works, whether you're a composer or a writer, were the things that were published in white literature, because that's all they had, and Longfellow was one of them. So you see them imitating at first Longfellow and that's why Samuel Coleridge Taylor turns to Longfellow for music."

The Longfellow Chorus, plus an orchestra and guest soloists, will be performing the work of Samuel Coleridge Taylor, and others, at the First Parish Church Unitarian Universalist Church in Portland at 8:00 p.m. on Saturday February 27th, and at 3:00 p.m. the following day. For more information, visit www.Longfellowchorus.com.