Poetry and song coming to life at MSU

Contact: Leah Barbour

STARKVILLE, Miss.--Combining poetry with music, Mississippi State's William L. Giles Distinguished Professor Emerita of English will collaborate with the university's music department to offer new interpretations of E.E. Cummings and Robert Frost.

The free, public MSU Chamber Singers' poetry and music concert, "The Poetry of E.E. Cummings and Robert Frost in Song," will be performed Tuesday [Feb. 18] at 7:30 p.m. in Giles Architecture Building's Harrison Auditorium.

Nancy D. Hargrove, MSU English professor emerita, will offer commentary, while music department instructor and accompanist Karen Murphy, will perform. Other faculty members and students also will participate in the performance.

Hargrove said her commentary will offer insights into the poets, their works and the music.

The program will begin with 10 songs set to Cummings' poetry, while the second part of the program will feature six songs set to Frost's work.

"As performers of these songs, we become storytellers and share the poems through music with our audience," Murphy said.

The program is dedicated to Michael Brown, head of the music department and conductor of the Starkville-MSU Symphony Orchestra. After the performance, MSU's Sigma Alpha Iota, the campus chapter of the international fraternity of music, will hold a reception in the auditorium's lobby.

"It should be an enjoyable program with a great deal of variety and wide appeal to a general as well as a specialized audience," Hargrove said.

For more information, contact Murphy at 662-325-6641 or kmurphy@colled.msstate.edu.