MAC Spring Concert Series 2026 – Charles Coe Tribute with b.mez

Charles Coe Tribute with b.mez

Join us for an evening of Charles’ poetry read by his colleagues, accompanied by backing music from b.mez. Poets who will read are: Amy Alvarez, Toni Bee, Linda Carney-Goodrich, Matthew Henry, Aidan Parkinson and Cecily Miller.

Charles Coe (1952-2025) was a noted writer and poet with several published collections. Mr. Coe received a fellowship in poetry from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and was selected by the Associates of the Boston Public Library as a “Boston Literary Light in 2014.”. He spent 2017 as an Artist-in-Residence for the city of Boston, creating a project that collected oral histories of people who live and work in Boston’s Mission Hill neighborhood. He served as poet-in-residence at Wheaton College and at the Chautauqua Institution in western New York and taught in Dingle, Ireland for the Bay Path University MFA Abroad program. He was also an adjunct professor of English at Salve Regina University in Newport, Rhode Island, teaching poetry and non fiction. Coe and Ken Field of b mez collaborated on an acclaimed music & poetry project titled “A Symphony of Crickets” from 2022-2024. https://www.charlescoe.org

b.mez is a project developed by 3 members of Birdsongs of the Mesozoic: Michael Bierylo, Ken Field, & Rick Scott, joined by Roger Miller, the original co-founder of Birdsongs.  In May 2019, the group had the opportunity to record for three days at Hearstudios in Camden, Maine. The results appear on the Cuneiform Records album “Under Circuitous Skies,” released February 27, 2026, and available at https://cuneiformrecords.bandcamp.com/album/under-circuitous-skies. The music of b.mez is completely improvised, and each piece takes the listener on a journey, sometimes calm, other times aggressive, a balance of consonance and dissonance where nothing is gratuitous. While electronics play a big part in the sound, it doesn’t come across as electronic. Looping and effect processing are a part of each player’s voice, extending their inherent musical sensibility without sublimating it. Their music represents a coherent musical statement, true to the players’ instincts as they manifest themselves in each performance. https://bmez.live