Musical Theatre Symposium Celebrates Murphy Hall Anniversary

This symposium, hosted by Paul Laird, professor of musicology, and John Staniunas, chair of the Department of Theatre & Film and associate professor of theatre and film, will be held in Swarthout Recital Hall and the Robert Baustian Theatre, both in Murphy Hall.

This event will celebrate and commemorate Broadway theatre of 1957, covering theatre productions including The Music Man. The symposium will feature presentations by noted musical theatre scholars, discussions, master classes and performances, all in honor of Murphy Hall's 50th anniversary.

The featured keynote speaker is Professor Carol Oja of Harvard University. Oja is William Powell Mason Professor of Music and Acting Chair of the History of American Civilization at Harvard University. She is at work on a book titled Bernstein on Broadway, to be published by Yale University Press in the "Broadway Masters" series.

Her book, Making Music Modern: New York in the 1920s (Oxford University Press, 2000), won the Lowens Book Award from the Society for American Music and an ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award. Other books include Aaron Copland and His World, Colin McPhee: Composer in Two Worlds, A Celebration of American Music: Words and Music in Honor of H. Wiley Hitchcock and American Music Recordings: A Discography of 20th-Century U.S. Composers (ISAM Monographs). She was one of the directors for Harvard's "Leonard Bernstein—Boston to Broadway," a conference and festival that took place in October 2006.

"We are excited that the departments who share Murphy hall have decided to combine their resources and talents for the symposium," said Laird. "We've attracted experts from all over the country to participate in our symposium, and we've set up the two-day event so it runs in conjunction with KU's production of The Music Man. We know this will be a memorable weekend that should interest all musical theatre fans in the area, and we hope everyone will come out to celebrate Murphy Hall." -- www2.ku.edu