Lani Spahr will talk on the use of music in Shakespeare’s plays. He will present surviving original songs and play them alongside contemporary settings, as well as discuss the wealth of settings by famous composers generated by these original songs.

Lani Spahr is well known to Lewes audiences as the presenter of the pre-concert lecture series for Coastal Concerts. His work as an audio restoration engineer, producer and annotator has garnered critical praise from Gramophone, BBC Radio 3, BBC Music Magazine, Fanfare, the London Sunday Times, MusicWeb International, Diaspason, Classical Source, International Record Review and many others. In 2016, BBC Radio 3 presented an hour-long documentary about his stereo reconstructions on Elgar Remastered.

Lani was a professional oboist, performing on period and modern oboes with the Boston Baroque, the Handel & Haydn Society Orchestra of Boston, the Colorado Springs Symphony Orchestra, The Colorado Opera Festival, the American Chamber Winds, the Maine Chamber Ensemble, and in Europe as the soloist on John McCabe’s Oboe Concerto with the Hitchin Symphony Orchestra in England. He has served on the faculties of Colorado College, Phillips Exeter Academy (New Hampshire), and the University of New Hampshire Chamber Music Institute. He has toured throughout North America, Europe and the Far East on period and modern oboes and has recorded for Telarc, Linn, Koch, Naxos, Vox, Music Masters, L’Oiseau Lyre and Musica Omnia.

The Shakespeare Festival, a program of the Lewes Public Library since 2015, seeks to provide the community with experiences that foster the understanding of Shakespeare and the world in which he lived and wrote. In addition the Festival fosters the development of new works celebrating the spoken word and hosting performances of classical texts.

Registration is required.

The Shakespeare Festival is partially funded by a grant from the Delaware Humanities, a state program of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and by a grant from the Delaware Division of the Arts, a state agency, in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts. The Division promotes Delaware arts events on DelawareScene.com.