FOR RELEASE:  IMMEDIATE                  DATE:  4/5/06

CONTACT: LESLIE SCHALER, COMMUNICATION ASST., 413-545-0162

UMass Amherst Librarian performs
Lyrical Intermezzo II - The Poetry of Heinrich Heine

Amherst, MA – Tenor and UMass Amherst librarian, Peter W. Shea and friends will perform on Saturday, April 15, 2006, at 8:00 p.m. at The National Yiddish Book Center, Hampshire College, 1021 West Street, Amherst, MA.   The program will commemorate the 150th anniversary of the death of the German Jewish poet Heinrich Heine with the second part of a musical exploration of his works. Tickets are $6.00 and reservations are suggested. 

Lyrical Intermezzo II is the second part of a two-part journey through Heine's most popular poems. Each program includes 33 songs in a multitude of languages and musical styles. In this second concert, the composers will include Hugo Wolf, Edvard Grieg, Johannes Brahms, Felix Mendelssohn, and Robert Schumann, and three world premieres, two written specifically for this program. Peter Shea's vocals will be accompanied by pianists Gregory Hayes and Elise Jackendoff, mezzo-soprano Jane Hanson, clarinetist David Schneider, and oboist Geoffrey Burgess.

Peter W. Shea has sung professionally since 1972 throughout New England and the Hudson Valley. He is a frequent tenor soloist with groups such as Arcadia Players, Hampshire Choral Society, Commonwealth Opera, and the Brattleboro Community Chorus.  He also performs regularly with vocal and instrumental chamber ensembles, including the vocal ensemble Cantabile, and with Singers' Project, Novi Cantori, and the Blanche Moyse Chorale.  A music cataloger at the Du Bois Library at UMass Amherst, Shea presents this program as the last of six concerts for his sabbatical project on musical settings of the German/Jewish poet, Heinrich Heine.

Heinrich Heine (1797-1856) was one of the greatest of German lyric poets.  His writing reflects the strong influences of both classic and romantic German literature. Despite Heine's conversion to Christianity, Jewish themes frequently figure in his works, His works include Buch der Lieder, Neue Gedichte, Romanzero, and Letzte Gedichte. Schumann composed music for Heine's poems, as did Schubert, Mendelssohn, Liszt, and many others. His lyrics have been used in more than 12,000 compositions.

The National Yiddish Book Center is a nonprofit organization dedicated to rescuing Yiddish and other modern Jewish literature and celebrating the culture they contain. Cultural and educational programming at the National Yiddish Book Center is a project of the Jack and Ruthe B. Cowl Center for Jewish Culture.  For more information, call (413) 256-4900, email yiddish@bikher.org, or visit their website at www.yiddishbookcenter.org.