“Transformations in Music & Words”

“Transformations in Music & Words”
Friday, April 2 @ 5:30PM
With Hermitage Fellows Henry Clarke & Denise Dillenbeck
The Hermitage Beach
Entrance at: 6660 Manasota Key Road, Englewood, FL 34223

Register here. $5 per person.

Music can transform a single life, and literature can transform a whole culture. Henry Clarke will read from his latest work, as he challenges us to explore how writing helps us to record, interpret, and shape our culture and society.

Violinist Denise Dillenbeck will share musical samples as she reads from her memoir: How Beethoven Saved Me, exploring the relevance of classical music and its power to transform a life. 

Capacity is limited to accommodate safe social distancing. Registration is required and early reservations are recommended. Masks are requested and strongly encouraged. Audiences members are invited to bring their own beach chairs and blankets.

Henry Clarke (pictured above) is a writer and actor. Television credits include Chuck, House, Lie to Me, Blacklist: Redemption, Power, The Good Fight, FBI, and a Chinese television show called Action English. He has performed Off-Broadway with the SourceWorks Theater and Mint Theater, and regionally with the American Repertory Theater, American Conservatory Theater, Hartford Stage, L.A. Theater Works, and Shakespeare & Co., among many others. As a writer, his plays have been performed in festivals and university theaters, and one was commissioned by the U.S. Embassy for two tours of China. Henry holds a B.A. in English from Harvard University, an M.F.A. in playwriting from Smith College, and an M.F.A. in acting from The Moscow Art Theater School. Henry is currently writing a triptych of novels that explores the overwhelming systems of power and privilege that keep the bad guys on top, and what the good guys can do about it.  

Denise Dillenbeck is a versatile musician with a focus in solo performance. She has toured Europe and America with the Philadelphia Orchestra, and has played with the Seattle Symphony, Baltimore Symphony, Pennsylvania Ballet Theater, Philly Pops, and many other orchestras across the U.S. She is currently concertmaster of the Yakima Symphony, York Symphony, Siletz Bay Music Festival Orchestra, Lake Chelan Bach Festival Orchestra and the Northwest Sinfonietta.  She was associate concertmaster of the Tacoma Symphony, and has served as concertmaster for orchestras across the states and in England and Germany. She is passionate about teaching, and has worked with dozens of violin students and young string quartets, and has also taught college courses on music, including a course on viewing world history and literature through the prism of Beethoven. As a teaching artist in the Philadelphia Orchestra’s Community Partnership Program, she led urban elementary school students in experiential music learning, and directed workshops on aesthetic education for classroom teachers and music educators. The San Francisco Chronicle hails her playing as “simply first-rate.”