Students in Princeton University’s spring course, “How to Write a Song,” offered by the Princeton Atelier at the Lewis Center for the Arts, will present a concert of original songs on Tuesday, April 22, at 3:00 p.m. in the Frist Film/Performance Theatre at Frist Campus Center on the Princeton campus. The students will present selected new songs with music and lyrics written over the past semester. The concert is free and open to the public. No tickets are required. Guests in need of access accommodations are invited to contact the Lewis Center at LewisCenter@princeton.edu at least one week prior to the event date.
Students, along with instructors Bridget Kearney and Bartees Strange, who will perform new songs they have written in the spring Princeton Atelier course “How to Write a Song.” Photo credit: Daeun Kim
“How to Write a Song” is co-taught this semester by Bridget Kearney, a founding member of the band Lake Street Dive, and Bartees Strange, who was named “Must-Hear Indie Artist of the Month” in June 2022 by Billboard. Each week the students, all with varying levels of literary and musical backgrounds, split into different groupings of four or five participants and wrote lyrics and composed tunes on an assigned emotional topic, such as gratitude, loss, protest, desire, joyousness, remorse, and defiance. At each class, the students performed their pieces for Kearney and their classmates, who then provided critiques. Guest critics and singer/songwriters joined the class to share their experience and to listen to and provide feedback to the student songwriters. Some of the guests this semester included El Kempner of the band Palehound and alt-pop artist Vérité a.k. Kelsey Byrne.
“Reflecting on the challenges unique to our times and those universal to the human experience, 2025 is a potent time to be writing songs,” said Kearney, “and these students have come in week after week with something profound to say and increasingly refined techniques to say it with. This concert will be the best of the best from the 100 plus songs that were written over the course of the semester and will no doubt draw some tears, get some butts shaking, and leave the audience humming as they leave the theater.”
The Princeton Atelier, which celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2024, was founded by Princeton Professor Emerita Toni Morrison and is directed by Paul Muldoon, Princeton’s Howard G.B. Clark ’21 Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Creative Writing. The Atelier brings professional artists from different disciplines together with Princeton faculty and students to create new work in the context of a semester-long course that usually culminates in the public presentation of the new work. Participating Atelier artists often select a project they want to explore and experiment within the context of a class with Princeton students before developing it for the professional art world. Previous artists have included the choreographer Jacques d’Amboise, cellist Yo-yo Ma, playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, multimedia artist Laurie Anderson, theater artist Basil Twist, choreographer Monica Bill Barnes, the theater ensemble Elevator Repair Service, percussionist Evelyn Glennie, and the Wakka Wakka puppet theater.
Kearney, who has co-taught “How to Write a Song” with Muldoon in past years, is a songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer. A founding member of the band Lake Street Dive, she has performed at Radio City Music Hall, The Hollywood Bowl, Red Rocks Amphitheater, and The White House South Lawn. Kearney has appeared on The Late Show with David Letterman, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, The Colbert Report, Ellen, and Conan. Her third solo album, Comeback Kid, was released by Keeled Scales last April. In 2020 Kearney released the album Still Flying on Verve Forecast, which was written and recorded in Accra, Ghana, through a collaboration with Ghanaian artists Aaron Bebe Sukura and Stevo Atambire, as well as Los Angeles-based producer Benjamin Lazar Davis. She also performs with various artists, having recently played bass with pop singer Ed Sheeran and folk singer Aoife O’Donovan. Kearney holds a Bachelors in Music from the New England Conservatory in Jazz Studies (bass) and Bachelor of Arts from Tufts University in English.
Strange was born in England and spent his childhood in Oklahoma. While working in the Obama administration, he played in hardcore bands in Washington D.C. and Brooklyn and began to chart a path as a solo artist. He released two records in quick succession in 2020: the EP Say Goodbye to Pretty Boy, which reimagines songs by The National, and his debut album proper, Live Forever, which was featured as Best New Music on Pitchfork and earned Strange a loyal cult following. His second album, Farm to Table, earned best-of nods from The New York Times, Rolling Stone, NPR Music, and others. Strange has performed on tour with Boygenius, Clairo, and The National, and he has been featured on multiple television and film soundtracks including Apple TV’s The New Look and A24’s I Saw the TV Glow. Strange co-produced with Jack Antonoff and Yves and Laurence Rothman his third album, Horror, which was released in February.
Visit the Lewis Center website to learn more about the Princeton Atelier, the Lewis Center for the Arts, and the more than 100 public performances, exhibitions, readings, screenings, concerts, lectures, and special events presented by the Lewis Center each year, most of them free.
