Contact: Allison Matthews
Photo by: submitted
STARKVILLE, Miss.--Mississippi State's music department will present "The Poetry of Walt Whitman in Song" at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday [Feb. 17] in the Harrison Auditorium of the Giles Architecture Building.
The collaborative concert is directed by Karen Murphy, who also will serve as pianist. Performers include faculty and students of the music department with Nancy D. Hargrove, Giles Distinguished Professor Emerita of English, providing commentary. Previous poetry and song programs have focused on Sylvia Plath, Emily Dickinson, T. S. Eliot, Langston Hughes, e. e. cummings, and Robert Frost, among others.
Following a brief summary of Whitman's life, Hargrove will comment on each of five sets of songs, based on Whitman's major themes: the poet, love, death, the Civil War, and the beauty and strength of America. Hargrove's commentary will be accompanied by PowerPoint illustrations.
The program will include such well-known Whitman works as "O Captain! My Captain!," "Joy, Shipmate, Joy," and "Song of the Open Road," set to music by composers such as Ned Rorem, Kurt Weill and Ralph Vaughan Williams.
Murphy received her doctoral degree from the University of Minnesota, joining MSU in 2007 as collaborative pianist. She has performed throughout the U.S. as well as in France, Spain and Canada.
Hargrove taught at MSU for 38 years before retiring in 2008. An internationally known scholar on the works of T. S. Eliot and Sylvia Plath, she has published three books and received five Fulbright lectureships.
Faculty soloists include Tara Warfield, soprano; Jeanette Fontaine, mezzo-soprano; and Ryan Landis, tenor; as well as retired faculty member Guy Hargrove, tenor. Gary Packwood will direct the State Singers, with Ji A Lee as accompanist.
Student soloists are Corinne Reece, soprano; William Tiffin, tenor; Jordan Dobbins, soprano; J.J. Haight, baritone; Cory Ramsey, tenor; Abby Weinstein, mezzo-soprano; Michael Becher, baritone; and Kourtney Holmes, mezzo-soprano.
The program is free and open to all and will provide both the MSU campus and community the opportunity to hear the musical settings of Whitman's poetry. A reception sponsored by Sigma Alpha Iota international music fraternity will follow the program in the lobby of the auditorium.
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