UMaine Faculty Recital Offers “American Voices” Concert
Contact: George Manlove at (207) 581-3756
UMAINE FACULTY RECITAL OFFERS “AMERICAN VOICES” CONCERT
ORONO — The UMaine faculty recital, “American Voices,” on Saturday, Sept. 25 features two musicians and a narrator celebrating song collaborations of American composers and poets.
The evening includes works by nationally acclaimed composers William Goldberg and Joyce Suskind, putting some familiar poetry classics to music.
The performance begins at 7:30 p.m. in Minsky Recital Hall in the Class of 1944 Hall building. Admission is $6.
Art song literature, according to UMaine music Prof. Nancy Ellen Ogle, is the musical setting of a poem that already has been published. Poems will be sung.
“The effort is to show these poems in an expressive way,” she says, by putting popular poetry to music.
The music can aid in the interpretation of the poetry, Ogle says. “One feels the poem as it first inspired the composer to set it.”
Performers include pianist Ginger Yang Hwalek, soprano Nancy Ogle and poet Kathleen Ellis of the UMaine English Department, who will provide commentary on the program.
Some of the poets whose work will be featured include Emily Dickinson, William Blake and W.H. Auden. More contemporary poets whose work will be performed include Ruth Stone, Harold Siegelbaum and Benjamin Friedlander, who also is an assistant professor of English at UMaine.
“This program will present some of the loveliest and most engaging works Hwalek and I have found in our research in this genre,” Ogle says.
Goldberg, formerly a New York City composer and piano teacher — and influenced by the free-flowing New York-Greenwich Village Bohemian era — is now a Hallowell, Maine resident, where he continues to compose and perform around the state.
“He