UConn's top puppetry program collaborates with Boston Pops

(AP) — When Boston Pops conductor Keith Lockhart asked the University of Connecticut to provide a guest narrator to read "A Visit From St. Nicholas" during a 2014 holiday concert at the school, he was expecting to get UConn's president or perhaps a distinguished professor.

The puppets will act out Prokofiev's "Peter and the Wolf" and provide visual accompaniment to a suite of several short pieces by composer Leroy Anderson, who arranged music for the Pops.

The production is schoolwork for the UConn students, the final product of a semester-long seminar in their studies for either a bachelor's or master's degree in puppet arts.

Martinez said the production has given him and other students valuable experience with everything from performing to puppet building to the art of pitching ideas to a client — in this case, Lockhart and his staff.