Music and art come together this afternoon as the Tuesday Noon Concert Series kicks off its free spring performances with works from composers Gilbert and Sullivan.

Today's concert marks the continuance of last semester's series of lunchtime showcases featured in the Sandy Bell Gallery of the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art. The series is a collaborative effort by the OU School of Music and the museum to showcase OU's musical performers in an artistic environment, said Eric Lee, director of the museum.

Spectators can expect a light-hearted time today, as OU opera students will vocally perform humorous pieces from Gilbert and Sullivan's political operettas "Ruddigore" and "Gondoliers," said Susan Johnson, director of today's concert.

"Gilbert & Sullivan are known for cultural and political satire," Johnson said. "What we're doing is very funny material."

While this afternoon's concert is an operatic performance, Johnson said the Gilbert and Sullivan Review and other future concerts were meant to be an occasion for people to sit down with a bag lunch and have a good time.

Steven Curtis, interim director for the OU School of Music, said he had similar sentiments. The informal nature of the series was a way to draw new audiences.

"We were hoping that the sound would go through the museum and would draw people downstairs," he said.

Out of convenience, the concerts will also have a very strict time limit of 30 minutes, Lee said.

"We want to start on time, and we want to be finished by 12:30, because some people are going to plan their lunch hour around this," Curtis said.

"It's meant to be kind of a standard thing that people do over lunch," Johnson said. "It puts the arts in your workday."

Curtis said although the musicians will be the featured guests, the idea for the series came from the museum directors. The space the Sandy Bell Gallery provided offered the perfect opportunity for the departments to come together.

"[The museum directors] had the idea that they would like to do some things to bring people into the museum and have something that's special," he said. "They contacted me and asked how I felt about it. I thought it was a wonderful opportunity."

Behind the singers in the gallery will lay artwork by Robert Rauschenberg, and other artists will be featured around the room, Lee said. The music, however, is meant to compliment the paintings and not to match up with them. This way, performers were free to choose the style of music they wanted to do, Curtis said.

"They choose things that work well in that space and for the size of the group that they have. But we didn't try to do any coordination with the art itself," Curtis said.

And variety is what is planned throughout the semester, as a range of music from bassoon performances to string quartets will be showcased.

The concert series will run every Tuesday until April 25, but Curtis said he hopes the series lasts much longer as audiences become more familiar with it.

"I think it's going to become something that's really popular here on campus," he said.
hello there & you too