Milwaukee Early Music

See You at Shakespeare in the City!

This summer, we're once again partnering with Optimist Theatre in their free Shakespeare in the City series, playing live Renaissance music before the 80-minute performances of "The Taming of the Shrew" in parks around the city!

Our musicians are Tim Sterner Miller (lute) and Brett Lipshutz (recorder), and Charlie Rasmussen (viola da gamba).  They will play at 4:10pm on the dates below, and the play will begin at 5:00pm. More information about the plays, locations, and how to attend can be found at: https://www.optimisttheatre.org/shakespeare-in-the-park-2025.html

Wisconsin Lutheran College – Saturday, July 12,
Washington Park – Sunday, July 13
Humboldt Park – Saturday, July 19
Sherman Park – Sunday, July 20
Mitchell Park – Saturday, July 26
Grant Park – Sunday, July 27
Lake Park – Saturday, August 2 
Forest Home Cemetery & Arboretum – Sunday, August 3
Kern Park – Saturday, August 9 
Lincoln Park – Sunday, August 10
Wisconsin Avenue Park – Sunday, August 17

In our partnership with Optimist Theatre, EMN musicians will be performing music written during the Renaissance, with several selections inspired by the plays of William Shakespeare. It is ironic to provide live music for this production of The Taming of the Shrew, as this was one of very few plays written by the Bard that does not include a single song. Not one note of instrumental music from Shakespeare’s plays has been preserved, but lyrics are often recited in performance. 

Shakespeare's plays are filled with music: they include more than 2,000 references to music, over 400 separate musical terms, and approximately 100 songs. It was customary in Tudor and Stuart drama to include at least one song in every play, sung by servants, clowns, fools, rogues, and minor personalities. Major figures never sing, except when in disguise or in distracted mental states.

Music is crucial to any Elizabethan theatrical performance – the power of music helps establish location, period, status, and mood. Shakespeare used various instruments referentially, as certain instruments had symbolic significance for his audience. Oboes and trumpets were ill winds that blew no good; their sounds presaged doom or disaster. Flutes, recorders, and plucked instruments, such as the lute, were perceived by Elizabethans to act as benign forces over the human spirit; they often eased conflict. It is this later grouping that performs this summer’s prelude to Optimist’s Theatre’s The Taming of the Shrew.