The Center for Basque Studies and the Department of English in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Nevada, Reno have collaborated to host a magical evening of jazzy music and Shakespeare Sonnets with internationally acclaimed Basque performers, Joxan Goikoetxea and Olatz Prat.

“And Shakespeare Got Basque” will take place at 7 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 21 in the Hall Recital Hall located in the Church Fine Arts Building at the University. The concert, celebrating the 400-year anniversary of Shakespeare's First Folio, is free and open-to-the-public.

“This will be a fun evening of music and a chance to see how cultures are connected in more ways than we think,” Larraitz Ariznabarreta, assistant professor of Basque Studies, said. “People should come for the fun of it! I am positive they will leave with a new depth of intercultural understanding.”

Goikoetxea (piano and accordion) and Prat (singer) met in 2013 in the “Sortuko Dira Besteak” project. Since then, they have offered several performances together, spreading the music and poems of the Basque Country around the world. During the upcoming Sept. 21 concert, the duo will perform classic Shakespeare Sonnets translated into Basque.

The Center for Basque Studies' mission is to conduct, facilitate and disseminate original Basque-related research in the humanities and social sciences, in cooperation with appropriate academic departments at the University, as well as at other American and foreign universities. The Center is the leading research and educational institute of its kind outside the European Basque homeland with a unique tutorial Ph.D. program and an active publishing house that produces books on a wide variety of Basque-related topics.