-1-jlXX K—
Moeser to
perform
in concert
___I
By Danell McCoy
Staff writer
Known to much of the Lincoln community
as chancellor of the University of Nebraska
Lincoln, James Moeser s talents extend beyond
the toils of campus admin
istration.
Tonight. Moeser will
show off his musical back
ground and extensive edu
cation at the Lincoln I
Symphony Orchestra's
concert, “Baroque
Banquet," at Kimball
Recital Hall, 12Ih and R
Moeser streets
Moeser s wife, Susan, a professor of music
at UNL, will also perform.
“The chancellor and his wife are performing
with the intention of emphasizing the link
between the university and the Lincoln
Symphony," said Jeth Mill, executive director of
the Lincoln Symphony. “Moeser serves as a
member of our board and he supports our mis
sion.”
Moeser earned his bachelor's degree in
music with honors from the University ofTexas.
He earned his doctorate of musical arts at the
University of Michigan.
Culture
Hie Facts i
What: James and Susan Moeser with
the Lincoln Symphony Orchestra
Where: Kimball Recital Hall, 12th and R
streets
When: Tonight at 7:30
Cost: $30, $24, $18 and half-price for
students
The Skinny: Big guy breaks out organ
for the masses
In 1966 he started at the University of
Kansas as an assistant professor and chairman in
the department of organ. He was then promoted
as dean of the department of fme arts.
He was dean of arts and architecture at Penn
State. And before coming to UNL in 1996,
Moeser was vice-president of academic affairs
at the University of South Carolina.
Until 1993, the UNL chancellor was an
active performer and had earned an internation
al reputation as a concert organist.
Tonight Moeser is a soloist in Handel’s
Concerto in B Flat Major, while his wife is a
soloist for Handel’s Concerto in F Major for
Organ and Orchestra.
Moeser and his wife aren't the only per
formers tonight to be connected to UNL.
Other talents include a duet performance
with Dennis Schneider and Darryl White.
Schneider, w’ho is celebrating his fiftieth
year as a professional musician, is a former pro
fessor of music at UNL.
Previous to that, he taught at the University
of Denver Lamont School of Music and is the
former artistic director of the Jazz by Design
music series in Denver. Schneider is also the
founder of Pretext a jazz quartet.
His successor, White, is a professor of music
atUNL.
Together, they will perform Vivaldi’s
Concerto for Two Trumpets with Schneider as a
soloist.
Kenneth Slowik, artistic director of the
Smithsonian Chamber Music Society and a
leading authority of Baroque music, will be the
guest conductor for the performance.
“Baroque Banquet” will be the debut perfor
mance of Moeser and his wife with the sympho
ny. It will also be one of the few concerts Moeser
has performed since 1993.
“We know Moeser as a musician,” said Mill.
“But not a lot of the community knows his con
nection to music or his musical background.”
Tickets are available by calling the Lincoln
Symphony at (402) 423-2211.
MAX SPARBER, the cultural editor of the Reader, wrote the play “Minstrel Show,” which has been professionally produced. It has been nation
ally acclaimed after first being put on by the Blue Barn Theatre. Although the Blue Barn produced the first showing, it was performed at the
Douglas County Courthouse rotunda, the site of the original lynching.
from coast to coast
culture writer
Max Sparber
has turned an Omaha tragedy
into a success story
Sen. Ernie Chambers decried
it as racist and called for a
boycott. The Omaha World
Herald praised it as “Pick of the
Week,” and audiences in Denver,
New York and California leapt to
their feet at every curtain call.
The play is called “Minstrel
Show: The Lynching of William
Brown,” a retelling of the blood
curdling 1919 Omaha lynching of
a black man accused of raping a
white woman. Told through the
confessions of two fictional black
minstrels who shared a jail cell
with Brown, “Minstrel Show”
sparked conflict and adoration for
its portrayal of the long-neglected
minstrel tradition and its interpre
tation of the events leading to
Brown’s murder.
On Sept. 28, 1919, a frenzied
crowd of a few thousand people
stormed the Douglas County
Courthouse and dragged out the
rheumatic and aging Brown,
whose guilt was questionable to
say the least. As the sacked court
house burned in the background,
the crowd dragged Brown’s
stripped body through the streets,
hanged him from a light pole at
18th and Harney streets and rid
dled him with bullets.
He was finally burned on a
pyre of railroad ties, and drug
through streets once again before
army troops arrived to disperse the
mob.
Although not mentioned in the
play, it’s interesting to note that the
incensed crowd had also attacked
the protesting mayor and lynched
him along with Brown; he was
saved and resuscitated by a hand
ful of police officers.
Introduction
Max Sparber, a Minneapolis
native and current cultural editor
for the Omaha weekly paper. The
Reader, penned the play after only
2Vi years in the city. His first play
to be professionally produced,
“Minstrel Show,” received wild
reviews on both coasts and is being
geared up for a new season in larg
er venues in both California and
New York.
Despite the sudden flush of
success, Sparber spends most of
his days at The Reader, where he
labors over art, film and music
reviews along with assigning and
editing all the paper’s cultural con
tent.
Covering Omaha’s cultural
scene may seem a little beneath a
burgeoning playwright whose first
performed work was nominated
for an Oppenheimer Award, but
Sparber’s first love was culture
coverage and at The Reader he
pursues it with a rare zeal.
Resident 1
Writers
m A semeterlong loot at
Nebraska literary culture and
the people who create It.
With a peal of calm earnest
ness, Sparber comfortably rattles
off his mission at The Reader:
“What we try to do here is open the
arts up for the reader and provide a
more critical voice for the reader
that is both positive and negative.
“The Reader has a very active
role in the arts and culture of
Omaha. It offers critical analysis
and critical support.”
Sparber rose rapidly to the edi
tor’s desk after a year and a half as a
film critic and culture reporter for
the paper. He is undaunted by the
fact that reviewing movies and cri
tiquing modem art are not general
activities for someone with a reli
gious studies degree, which he
acquired from the University of
Minnesota in the late ’80s.
At U of M, he followed up on
his high school hobby of collecting
and writing plays and screenplays.
His first published writing
appeared when he was a culture
writer for the college newspaper,
The Minnesota Daily.
Rising action
Having graduated with creative
writing never far from his mind,
Sparber chose the path that so
many writers follow: the one that
leads to Los Angeles and the
doorstep of Hollywood.
“That was when I completed
my first screenplay,” Sparber said.
“I worked in a theatrical program
started by Shelley Winters, an old
school Hollywood actress ... kind
of a nutty old woman right now.”
Story by Bret Schulte
5hoto by Scott McClurg
The theatrical program was
designed to pull kids off the street
and out of homeless shelters and
get them involved in the arts: a sort
of escapism and enlightenment all
in one. Despite the efforts of
Sparber and others, the program
fell apart when many teens failed to
take it seriously and an aging
Winters balked at the stark realism
of the company’s productions.
“She obviously wasn’t comfort
able around these teen-agers,”
Sparber said. “She was a little
frightened that these plays were
getting a little too close to real life
and so she withdrew her support.”
After moving around, returning
to the West Coast and then leaving
California dreams behind for good,
Sparber, then 27, settled in Omaha
on the advice of friends and quick
ly got involved in the city’s pop and
fine culture scenes.
The plot
It wasn’t long before he stum
bled across the story of the William
Brown lynching and started trans
forming it into a two-man dialogue
exchange between visiting min
strels from the South.
Sparber’s fictional characters
represent a very real period in
American history, and one that is
often ignored in cultural chroni
cles. Minstrel shows throughout
the South and penetrating into the
high North demonstrated the cre
ativity and richness of the oral his
tory tradition through theatrical
shows, spontaneous comedy and
elaborate storytelling. It was also a
preservation of culture and means
Please see SPARBER on 13