As the dog days of summer emit the last of their heat, students looking for an alternative to spending their lunch with the outdoor buskers will have a new reason to keep lunch musical.

In a collaboration between the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art and the OU School of Music, noon concerts will be offered in the spacious Sandy Bell Gallery at the bottom floor of the museum.

The noon concerts last thirty minutes and will feature the performances of School of Music students and faculty members, talent otherwise offered for fees at weekend formal events.

"This is a wonderful venue for the school of music," said Eric Lee, director of the museum. "I'm especially excited for the students who can perform and attend the concerts."

Each week The School of Music will offer a different noon concert, be it strings, brass or piano.

"You can't beat the combination of music and the museum," Lee said. "It's a great break. It's a short walk from the oval and it's fairly informal. You can come for five minutes and leave. You don't have to sit until the very end."

The museum scheduled the concerts for Tuesday because it is the museum's free-of-charge day.

"If it were Wednesday and Thursday there would be a charge for the general public, but we wanted the concerts to be open to as many as possible," Lee said.

Last week the OU Faculty Brass Quintet performed the inaugural noon performance.

"The response and turnout was great. The sound in the museum was really good," said Stephanie Royce, communications officer for the museum.

Irvin Wagner of the OU Faculty Brass Quintet played trombone at last week's show.

"It went terrific and we were pleased," Wagner said. "We had a nice crowd and a nice mixture of students, adults, university people and non-university people there. We had a lot of people here and it's good for the community."

Students who have enough of a gap in their lunchtime schedule will be attending, though some still prefer the music offered in the union.

Royce said food was not allowed in the museum for reasons of "art preservation."

Melissa Caddell, music and linguistics senior, plays the cello in the orchestra.

"I'm a music major so ... I'm there," Caddell said.

The concerts will continue this year through November and continue February through April 2006.

At noon today the sounds of OU Fleet Ensemble will echo through the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art.
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