MSU music department presents ‘Shakespeare in Song’

Contact: Allison Matthews

STARKVILLE, Miss.—Mississippi State’s Department of Music will present “Shakespeare in Song” at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday [Feb. 9] in the Robert and Freda Harrison Auditorium of the university’s Giles Architecture Building.

The program is free and open to all, and a reception sponsored by Sigma Alpha Iota International Music Fraternity will follow. 

Karen Murphy, coordinator of collaborative piano, and Nancy D. Hargrove, William L. Giles Distinguished Professor Emerita of English, co-founded this interdisciplinary program of poetry and song in 2008. Previous poetry and song programs have featured Sylvia Plath, Emily Dickinson, T. S. Eliot, Langston Hughes, e.e. Cummings, Robert Frost and Walt Whitman.

For this year’s Shakespeare program, Murphy will serve as the pianist, and Hargrove will give a commentary with illustrations. Singers will be faculty and students of MSU’s music department. 

The first set on the program will be three madrigals on love performed by the MSU Madrigal Ensemble, directed by associate professor and choral activities director Gary Packwood.

The second set will consist of songs such as “Under the Greenwood Tree,” “Fear No More the Heat o’ the Sun” and “Orpheus” on a variety of subjects, while the third set will feature songs on the many aspects of love, such as “It was a Lover and his Lass” and “Desdemona’s Song.”  These two sets will be performed by MSU music students. 

The final set, performed by voice faculty in the Department of Music, will feature three songs from the hit Broadway musical “Kiss Me, Kate,” based on Shakespeare’s “The Taming of the Shrew” with music and lyrics by Cole Porter. These well-known songs are “So in Love,” “I Hate Men” and “Brush Up Your Shakespeare.”

Faculty soloists include Tara Warfield, soprano; Jeanette Fontaine, mezzo-soprano; and Ryan Landis, tenor. Gary Packwood is director of choral activities.

Student soloists are Cori Reece, soprano; William Tiffin, tenor; Callie Ellis, soprano; Jeonai Batista, tenor; Bailey Smith, soprano; Haylee Glenn, soprano; Blake Breedlove, tenor; James Rusthaven, tenor; Jasmine Lasster, soprano; Brittany Gusmus, mezzo-soprano; and Christon Bertrand, baritone.

Murphy received her doctoral degree from the University of Minnesota, joining the MSU Department of Music as collaborative pianist in 2007. She teaches piano classes and performs often with singers, instrumentalists and choirs. She has performed throughout the United States, as well as in France, Spain, Canada and Brazil.

After 38 years in MSU’s Department of English, Hargrove retired in 2008, but continues to publish, give lectures, and teach, on occasion, in the Shackouls Honors College. An internationally known scholar on the works of T. S. Eliot and Sylvia Plath, she has published three books and received numerous awards including five Fulbright grants.

MSU is Mississippi’s leading university, available online at www.msstate.edu.