A multimedia tribute built around the late poet Andrea Gibson's final live performance is headed to Ann Arbor, with a stop scheduled for November 8 at the Michigan Theater. The touring show pairs a film capturing Gibson's last set at Denver's Paramount Theatre in 2024 with live orchestral music and storytelling from Gibson's widow, poet Megan Falley, who will narrate the Ann Arbor performance.
Gibson, who served as Colorado's Poet Laureate at the time of their death, died on July 14, 2025, at age 49 in Longmont, Colorado, following a diagnosis with ovarian cancer four years earlier, according to CBS News. Governor Jared Polis had appointed Gibson as the state's 10th Poet Laureate in September 2023, and the outlet reported that the cancer diagnosis in 2021 ultimately ended Gibson's touring career, even as they continued to regularly sell out rock clubs earlier in their career. Over their career, Gibson authored five poetry collections and released seven albums, per MLive.
From a Sold-Out Red Rocks Night to a 14-City Run
The tour titled Love Letter From the Afterlife grew out of a single tribute concert on July 5 at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Morrison, Colorado, that sold out with 10,000 attendees and featured the Colorado Symphony alongside guest artists Sara Bareilles and Chris Pureka, according to Red Rocks Amphitheatre. Falley served as creative director for that original event and said the audience left feeling they had heard from Gibson directly, per MLive's reporting. The overwhelming demand for that single night prompted the production team to expand it into a 14-city North American tour, with Ann Arbor among the stops.
The tour launches November 4 at the Fitzgerald Theater in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and will also visit the Anthem in Washington, D.C., where the performance will feature the Washington National Opera Orchestra; Kings Theatre in Brooklyn, with the Wordless Music Orchestra; and the Auditorium Theatre in Chicago, backed by the Chicago Philharmonic. At each stop, the show features the Goosebump Orchestra or a local symphony orchestra performing an original score composed by Blake Neely, along with rotating guest artists from Gibson's creative community.
Why Ann Arbor, and Why the Michigan Theater
The Ann Arbor stop carries particular resonance given Gibson's history in the region: they won the inaugural Women of the World Poetry Slam in Detroit in 2008, an early landmark in a national performing career that later included two Independent Publisher Book Awards, according to the Bangor Daily News. The Michigan Theater itself is a historic 1,610-seat movie palace built in 1928 and operated by the nonprofit Marquee Arts, which appointed Executive Director Molly Rowan-Deckart to lead the venue in January 2025, per the Ann Arbor Observer.
Falley will also share stories connecting the tour's guest artists to Gibson's life and work as part of the Ann Arbor show, per MLive. She continues to write Gibson's Substack publication Things That Don't Suck, which reaches more than 200,000 readers, and the two co-authored the book How Poetry Can Change Your Heart in 2019. Falley has also authored three poetry collections of her own.
The Documentary and Musical Team Behind the Tour
The film capturing Gibson's diagnosis and relationship with Falley, Come See Me in the Good Light, won the Festival Favorite Award at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, according to the Sundance Institute, before its global release on Apple TV+ in November 2025. The Academy Award-nominated documentary was directed by Ryan White and produced by White alongside Jessica Hargrave, Stef Willen, and Tig Notaro, with the same production team behind Come See Me in the Good Light also mounting Love Letter From the Afterlife, per MLive's reporting. Neely, who composed the tour's original live score, also wrote the music for the 2025 documentary.
Pop artist Sara Bareilles, who performed at the original Red Rocks tribute, had already featured collaborative contributions from Gibson and Falley on her August 2026 album Good Grief, as Hoodline previously reported. In late 2025, Colorado cultural organizations also published Begin Where You Are, an anthology of previously unpublished Gibson poems built to fund an endowment for future state poets laureate, with participating writers donating all royalties to the fund.
Tickets and Tour Details
Tickets for the Ann Arbor performance go on sale August 14 at 10 a.m. local venue time. Additional tour information, including the full 14-city schedule, is available at andreagibson.org/events.
