The Chadron State College Guitar Ensemble will be in the Veath Planetarium in the Math Science Center of Innovative Learning tonight with a special show combining music and art.
Performances are at 7:00 and 7:40 with first-come first-served seating in the 39-seat dome.
Guitar Ensemble leader Jeremy Quick picked the songs that will be synchronized with graphics designed by Art Professor Mary Donahue and the 3 students in her Graphic Design Practicum course.
The ensemble performed in the dome last year, too, but to commercial videos. Planetarium director Kinsley Mason says last year’s concert was fun and well received, but she’s excited about what she calls the “genius” new collaboration between art and science.
Donahue says it began with a casual chat she had with Quick in a hallway when he asked if her graphic design students might be interested in designing visuals for the planetarium concert. She says it sounded like a great collaborative experiment and they got to work.
Donahue says she and her 3 students all took different approaches to the project before finally settling on videos Donahue took during the recent CSC Spring Daze roller skating event as the core material for the concert graphics.
She says her class experienced a pleasantly surprising moment of serendipity when they realized they could hear the Guitar Ensemble practicing for the show in the room above their classroom in Memorial Hall while her students were planning their graphics.
The Guitar Ensemble is playing 5 classic 1970s rock hits but in funk and jazz arrangements done by the members of the group, which Quick says made the project even more of a student collaboration.
He sees the result as a project that spans multiple disciplines and engages interaction across campus with the planetarium providing a unique atmosphere that presents a multi-sensory experience for the audience.
All the members of the Guitar Ensemble are Nebraskans with Riley Snyder of Rushville, Cooper Reichman of Chappell, and Micah Schneider of Sidney on guitar, Bradd Collins of Chadron on drums, and Quick on Bass.
The art students who created the graphics with Donahue are Allison Acosta of Oro Valley, AZ, Madison Kinney of Gering, NE, and Hannah Wohl of Hay Springs, NE.