Marcus Coleridge, bass-baritone and fifth great-grandson of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, will perform a recital at St Michael’s Church, Highgate (where Coleridge is buried) on Oct. 21, 2026, the poet’s 254th birthday.

Titled “The Romantic Imagination: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Through Poetry and Song,” the program was conceived by the performer alongside pianist Henry Smith as a musical exploration of Coleridge’s literary legacy.

Instead of setting Coleridge’s own poetry directly, the recital interweaves English songs by Vaughan Williams, Somervell, Quilter, Ireland, and Finzi, which are set to texts by Shelley, Tennyson, Rossetti, Housman, Masefield, and Shakespeare. Also on the program are spoken readings from Coleridge’s own writing, including “Frost at Midnight,” “The Kiss,” and “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.”

“I had wanted for some time to create a recital in honour of my fifth great grandfather Samuel Taylor Coleridge, but I hadn’t quite found the right framework for it. The idea really came together during a family visit to St Michael’s in Highgate, where Coleridge is buried. We had gone to see his coffin in the crypt, and while I was there I discovered that the church also ran a concert series. As a singer with a particular love of English song, it suddenly felt like the perfect place to explore his literary legacy through music,” Coleridge told OperaWire. “The challenge was that relatively little of Coleridge’s poetry has entered the standard English art-song repertoire, so rather than forcing the programme around direct settings, I began looking at the wider literary world he inhabited and influenced. The result is a conversation between Coleridge’s own poetry and songs setting writers such as Shakespeare, Shelley, Tennyson, Rossetti and Housman. For me, it became less about illustrating Coleridge and more about exploring the extraordinary imaginative tradition of which he was such an important part.”

The recital takes place at 12:30 p.m.