Next N150 Lecture Announced
The next Nebraska Lecture will feature a Nebraska-inspired song cycle composed and performed by faculty of the state’s flagship, land-grant university.
“Nebraska Songbook” — an original composition for soprano and piano by Greg Simon, assistant professor of composition in the University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s Glenn Korff School of Music — is 3:30 p.m. Nov. 8 at Sheldon Museum of Art. The song cycle will be performed by Jamie Reimer, associate professor of voice, and Brenda Wristen, professor of piano and piano pedagogy.
Simon will open the lecture with a discussion of the meaning and inspiration behind the piece.
Wristen originally commissioned Simon for the work on behalf of the Nebraska Music Teachers Association’s 2018 conference. It was the first composition Simon created entirely in Nebraska.
Simon said having his work included in the Nebraska Lectures this year is special.
“It’s humbling,” he said. “Like many people who are not from Nebraska and who have not spent much time here, I think one thing that we outsiders share is this sense of awe at the amount of pride Nebraskans have in what it means to be from this state.”
During the lecture, Simon will talk about his compositional process and relationship to the texts.
“I think by the end of the lecture, my hope is that people are not only going to have heard a work that strikes them as meaningful and complex and emotional and evocative,” he said, “but also come away from it with an understanding of how a composer like me thinks about those materials and why I consider the act of writing songs to be an important artistic one.”
All talks in the N150-inspired Chancellor’s Lecture series are free and open to the public.
