The Trans-Nebraska Players will perform at 7:30 p.m. Nov. 4 in Westbrook Music Building, room 119. The concert is free and open to the public.
Founded in 2008, the Trans-Nebraska Players include David Neely, professor of violin, and Clark Potter, professor of viola, at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. They join Franziska Brech, lecturer of flute, and Noah Rogoff, associate professor of cello at University of Nebraska at Kearney and James Margetts, dean of liberal arts and professor of piano at Chadron State University.
Their program is titled “Shakespeare Reimagined.” The concert will feature arrangements of orchestra music inspired by Shakespeare, performed simultaneously with texts from those plays spoken in and around the music.
The ensemble will perform the program in Chadron on Oct. 31, Scottsbluff on Nov. 1 and Kearney on Nov. 3 before performing in Lincoln on Nov. 4. The Nov. 4 performance will also be live webcast.
Marguerite Tassi, UNK Shakespeare scholar, has chosen the texts, and Jim Hejduk, professor emeritus of choral activities at Nebraska, will speak the texts, along with the music of the Trans-Nebraska Players.
The music will include:
Arthur Sullivan’s “Bouree” and “Danse Grotesque” from “Masquerade Suite from The Merchant of Venice”
Edward Elgar’s “Interludes I and II” from “Falstaff: Orchestral Study” (with texts from “The Merry Wives of Windsor” and “2 Henry IV”
Henry Purcell’s “Chaconne” from “The Fairy Queen” (an adaptation of “Midsummer Night’s Dream”)
Mendelssohn’s “Overture” and “Nocturne” from “Midsummer Night’s Dream”
Korngold’s “Garden Scene” from “Much Ado About Nothing”
Tchaikovsky’s “Love Theme” from “Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture”
“The plays of Shakespeare have inspired so much fabulous music for symphony orchestra, but the great bulk of that music has no words of the Bard,” Potter said. “This program aims to present a different twist by attempting a pairing of the two.”
