February 28, 1997


Chanticleer Chorus Offers Soaring Sound

The splendid a cappella "orchestra of voices" of the 12-man vocal ensemble Chanticleer will present a shining performance of flawless sound from contemporary classical to medieval music to gospel and jazz at 8 p.m. March 8 in the Lied Center for Performing Arts.

The silky ensemble from San Francisco is the nation's only full-time professional, all-male, a cappella classical vocal ensemble and it shuttles with proficiency from Renaissance music to contemporary classical and jazz. "With the exception of opera, there does not appear to be any type of vocal music classical or vernacular that Chanticleer does not perform. And beautifully," the Chicago Tribune wrote of the group.

Chanticleer's "orchestra of voices" ranges from rich bass to exquisitely pure countertenor and consistently performs to sold-out houses with the enriching vocal repertoire that has led to commissions from an impressive array of composers and arrangers. "They are, to put it directly, one of the world's best," wrote the San Francisco Chronicle.

Clean and clear, the polished singers of Chanticleer are among the most versatile to be heard anywhere, with style, class and an infallible sense of pitch. They offer vocal pyrotechnics and for one reviewer, they offered time travel. The group "spiritually lifted the eerily silent audience back to an ancient monastery and left it there though an intermissionless one hour and 15 minutes," wrote a California reviewer.

Peg Kennedy, associate professor for voice at UNL, will present an educational 15-minute pre-performance talk in the Steinhart Room at 7:05 and 7:30 p.m. the evening of the performance.

Tickets for Chanticleer are $26, $22 and $18 and half price for youth 18 and under and students with valid identification from UNL, Nebraska Wesleyan University and Doane College. The Lied Center box office is open for walk-in business weekdays from 11 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and 90 minutes before the performance. Phone orders may be placed by calling 472-4747 or 1 -800-432-3231.

This Lied Center presentation of Chanticleer is made possible in part with support from the National Bank of Commerce. This is a Ruth K. Seacrest Memorial Concert.

Lied Center programming is supported by the Friends of Lied and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency, the Mid-America Arts Alliance; and the Nebraska Arts Council. All events in the Lied Center are made possible entirely or in part by the Lied Performance Fund, which has been established in memory of Ernst F. Lied and his parents Ernst M. and Ida K. Lied.

Tenth Street Danceworks Performs in March

The UNL Department of Theatre Arts and Dance will present Tenth Street Danceworks and UNL dance students in a concert of contemporary dance at 8 p.m. March 6 and 7, 2 p.m. March 8 and 7 p.m. March 9 in the Johnny Carson Theater in the Lied Center. A special guest appearance by students of the UNL School of Music will accompany Tenth Street Danceworks in two pieces for string quartet.

Tucson-based Tenth Street Danceworks offers performances that range from the beautifully dramatic to pure athletic fun. Founded in 1984, this innovative company has developed a reputation for adventure. Described by the Tucson Citizen as "Imaginative as tomorrow and just as eager," Tenth Street Danceworks presents a repertoire which stretches from James Brown to Bach, with projects that include the Tucson Police Department SWAT Teams or the Gospel Music Workshop of America.

In its Lincoln debut, the company will collaborate with a string quartet composed of students from the UNL School of Music in Vivaldi's Concerto Grosso in D Minor for Nancy McCaleb's "Desert Sextet," a lyrical dance of beauty and romance; and Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik in a fun romp choreographed by artistic director Charlotte Adams, also the director of the UNL Dance Program.

Associate artistic director Kevin Schroder, who has danced in the companies of Merce Cunningham, Lar Lubovitch, and Steve Petronia, will use UNL dance students and faculty in his piece "Mauriccio Cappriccio" along with company dancers in an understated, hilarious look at late night parties. Company member Thom Lewis presents "Everlast" to music by Lyle Lovett, a piece of love and heartbreak complete with boxing gloves. Dance faculty member Ann Shea will also premiere "Do You Wanna Dance?" with UNL dance students, athletes, and others.

Tenth Street Danceworks will be in residence in Lincoln for 10 days, teaching classes in the UNL dance program conducting lecture/demonstrations in the Lincoln Public Schools, and performing for University Foundations students and Lincoln high schools in the Johnny Carson Theater. A schedule of activities is available by calling the Dance Program at 472-1713 or 472-5803.

For interviews or more information, call Charlotte Adams at 472-1713 or Kari Swanson at 472-5803.

Peabody Trio to Perform at Sheldon

Winners of the 1989 Naumberg Chamber Music Award, the Peabody Trio returns to Lincoln for the fourth concert of the Lincoln Friends of Chamber Music 1996-97 series at 8 p.m. March 7 in the auditorium of the Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery.

The Peabody Trio (above, from left, Seth Knopp, Violaine Melancon and Thomas Kraines) has sustained a deep commitment to both the traditional repertoire and the music of today. They are frequent guests on National Public Radio's St. Paul Sunday and Performance Today.

The March 7 program will open with Hans Werner Henze's Kammersonate, and the Piano Trio of Maurice Ravel. The concert concludes with Franz Schubert's Trio in E-flat major, D. 929. Musicologist and critic David Breckbill will give a pre-performance talk at 7:30 p.m. The doors of the Sheldon open at 7 p.m., and a reception for the artists and the audience follows the concert.

Tickets can be purchased from Lincoln Friends of Chamber Music. Individual concert tickets are $25, with a special student price of $5. Reservations are requested. For ticket information, call 435-5454.

Nigerian Textiles Examined in Lecture

Colorful clothing worn by Kalabari women in Nigeria and innovative student designs inspired by those authentic African textiles will be shown in a month-long exhibit at the Textiles, Clothing and Design Gallery at the College of Human Resources and Family Sciences on East Campus. The display is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Thursday.

The exhibit, which runs through March 27, features authentic Kalabari textiles collected by Catherine Daly, an NU assistant professor of textiles, clothing and design who conducted field work in Abonnema, Nigeria, in the 1980s to examine changing forms of dress worn from childhood through adulthood. The exhibit includes photographs, mannequins and brilliantly-colored fabrics painted and dyed by student designers.

Daly will present a free public lecture regarding Kalabari dress at 5 p.m. March 4 in room 11 of the Home Economics Building.

Calling All Rising Stars . . .

Auditions for the Nebraska Repertory Theatre's 30th anniversary season will be from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and 1:30 to 5:30 p.m. March 8 and from 9:30 to 11:30 a.m. March 9.

Productions for the 1997 season will be "The Fantasticks," "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" and "The Foreigner."

Participants should prepare two contrasting monologues totaling no more than four minutes. If auditioning for the musical, prepare 16 bars of a Broadway song. For an audition appointment, call Todd in the theatre office at 472-2072.

'Big Night' for Movie Lovers March 6

The Nebraska Art Association and the Friends of the Mary Riepma Ross Theater will present a screening of Big Night at 7:30 p.m. March 6 in the Mary Riepma Ross Theater.

Tickets can be purchased in a $30 package that includes dinner at Grottos at 6 p.m., the movie at 7:30 p.m., followed by dessert and coffee at Sheldon. Tickets priced at $7.50 also will be available for just the movie and dessert.

For more information, call the Nebraska Art Association at 472-2540. Reservations are due by March 3.

Exhibit Offers Faculty Showcase

The Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery is presenting UNL Faculty Biennial: Past and Present, the UNL Department of Art and Art History Studio Faculty Biennial Exhibition. It runs through March 23.

This biennial exhibition showcases the recent work of 13 studio faculty, encompasses a variety of media, including painting, sculpture, ceramics, photography and prints. Included in the exhibition will be Ron Bartels, Shelley Fuller, Martha Horvay, Keith Jacobshagen, Gail Kendall, Karen Kunc, Mo Neal, Pete Pinnell, Dave Read, Doug Ross, David Routon, Pat Rowan and Joe Ruffo.

An added dimension to this biennial is a smaller exhibition of the work of former UNL faculty curated from the Sheldon's permanent collection presented in an adjacent gallery, which will include the work of James Eisentrager, Dan Howard, Dwight Kirsch and Sara Hayden. Pictured above is Thomas P. Coleman's small study - Mechanical Child 1965, photoengraving and etching.

A Different Kind of Love Story at Ross Theater

Portraying the Vietnamese immigrant experience through Kieu, Trinh T. Min-ha's A Tale of Love opens March 13 at the Mary Riepma Ross Film Theater. The film follows the quest of a women in love with "Love." A Tale of Love is loosely inspired by "The Tale of Kieu," the Vietnamese national poem of love, which Vietnamese people see as a mythical biography of their country branded by internal turbulence and foreign domination.

"[A Tale of Love is] a frankly erotic film that interrogates its own eroticism, challenging the audiences with its acting styles," said Jonathan Rosenbaum of the Chicago Reader. "Nothing else around is even remotely like it."

Writer, composer, teacher, critic and filmmaker, Trinh T. Minh-ha is an artist whose work resists categorization. As much about process as product, her films feel more like banners of celluloid unfurling in the wind than flat images projected onto a screen.

Frequently described as poetic, lyrical and sensual, her work is densely textured and rich with breathtakingly beautiful images, elegant camera work, and eloquent, multilayered soundtracks. Trinh T. Minh-ha visited UNL in 1989 to participate in the Ross Theater's Film/Video Showcase program.

A freelance writer, Kieu also works as a model for a photographer who idealizes the headless female body and who captures Kieu sheathed by transparent veils. Voyeurism runs through the history of love narratives, and voyeurism is one of the threads that structures the 'narrative' of the film.

A Tale of Love will screen March 13 and 15. Times are listed in the calendar.

The presentation is made possible, in part, with the support of the Nebraska Arts Council, a state agency.

Robin Becker to Present Reading March 10

Poet Robin Becker will read from her work All-American Girl at 7 p.m. March 10 in 228 Andrews Hall.

Becker is associate professor of English at Pennsylvania State University, a 1995-96 Fellow at the Bunting Institute of Radcliffe, and also serves as poetry editor for The Women's Review of Books. All-American Girl (Pittsburgh Press) is her fourth collection of poetry.

"All-American Girl is consistent in its presentation of both the intimate detail and panoramic focus, which is what the best art always offers, the familiar details of life seen in an astonishing overview of reality which we, who are too often bogged down in our everyday world, tend to forget, unless we occasionally climb to the top of a tree," wrote Phaedra Greenwood of The Taos News.

Prairie Schooner, Creative Writing, Women's Studies, Judaic Studies and the UNL Research Council are sponsoring Becker's appearance at UNL.

The reading is free and open to the public. For more information, call Prairie Schooner at 472-0911.


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