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NPR host Neal Conan and Ensemble Galilei will perform at the UA's Centennial Hall this month.

UApresents is hosting National Public Radio's "Talk of the Nation" host Neal Conan for an evening of poetry readings and musical interpretations accompanying large-scale images from the Hubble Space Telescope.

"Universe of Dreams with Neal Conan and Ensemble Galilei" will be held Feb. 12 at 8 p.m. at the University of Arizona's Centennial Hall, located at 1020 E. University Blvd.

Ensemble Galilei musicians envisioned a "Universe of Dreams" and invited Conan to work with the group to select poetry and music to correspond to the Hubble images for the event, which is sponsored by Kate Garner and the Kohl Family Foundation.

Carolyn Anderson Surrick, a viola da gamba specialist, said she came upon the idea when she saw a Hubble Space Telescope image affixed to a telephone booth. 

"I was like, we can do better. We can take these incredible pictures and do better," Surrick said.

Incidently, the ensamble was named after Galileo Galilei, the physicist and astronomer. Last year's International Year of Astronomy honored Galileo's first scientific use of the telescope 400 years ago.

"I was convinced that the Hubble Space Telescope would change how we view ourselves in the university in as dramatic a way as when Galileo took his telescope to the sky," Surrick said.

She said members of the ensemble chose images based on their artistic nature and that the poetry and prose is set to match in a complementary and "powerful" way. 

Conan will read works of poets ranging from Stanley Kunitz and Jim Harrison to Shakespeare and a Navajo creation myth, while Ensemble Galilei provides sonic texture on instruments including hand percussion, fiddle, oboe, recorder, Scottish small pipes and Celtic harp. 

A familiar voice on NPR for the past quarter century, Conan has won multiple awards for his continuous, live coverage of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Before taking the helm of "Talk of the Nation," Conan spent five years as host of NPR's "Weekly Edition: The Best of NPR News." He also has served as editor, producer and executive producer of "All Things Considered" and, at various times, acted as NPR's foreign editor, managing editor, and news director. 

"It's a really beautiful show," Surrick said. "We do a number of multidisciplinary shows and this is one of the most beautiful. The poetry is incredible and the images are just stunning."