Ken Takata Ensemble: Musical Settings for Literature

Ken Takata Ensemble: Musical Settings for Literature

Free Admission

Saturday, January 31, 2026
2:00 to 3:30 pm

George Latimer Central Library
(Magazine Room, 3rd floor)
90 West 4th Street
Saint Paul MN 55102

In this show, we celebrate literary works from William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Paul Verlaine, and other authors. We’re performing musical settings of their texts.

The Austen settings commemorate her 250th birthday and her connection to modern literature and narrative forms. Some of the Shakespeare settings look at the links between both authors.

Other settings suggest ways to stage several of Shakespeare’s plays (Henry V, Twelfth Night, The Merchant of Venice, The Tempest, As You Like It, The Winter's Tale, and more).

The Shakespeare settings also focus on the women in his plays. Only 16 percent of the characters in Shakespeare are female. Meanwhile, often at least half of the audiences who go to see Shakespeare are women. Is it possible to use musical settings to bridge this demographic gap and emphasize the words and perspectives of the women in Shakespeare’s plays?

Performers feature Sarah Callahan, Sophie Caplin, Laura Lenz Landstad, and Sarah Zuber on vocals.

Musical styles include glam rock, Western swing, European art song, early 1950s R&B, Scots-Irish folk music, New Orleans piano ballads, bossa nova, Weimer cabaret, jug band songs, homages to the Second Viennese School, period correct (i.e., circa 1600), parodies of radio ads from the 1940s, and several other genres, in other words, a little something for everyone.