Duke Performances 2019/20 Season Brochure

AMERICAN BALLET THEATRE GISELLE THURSDAY, MARCH 26 THRU SUNDAY, MARCH 29

MISTY COPELAND IN GISELLE

2018/2019 SEASON

CHAMBER ARTS VOCAL ENSEMBLE SERIES SERIES Pages 06 Chamber Arts Series #1

Escher String Quartet & Dover Quartet Saturday, September 28

11

Vocal Ensemble Series #1 Vox Luminis The Bach Dynasty Friday, October 18

12 Chamber Arts Series #2 Jerusalem Quartet Saturday, October 19

14 Vocal Ensemble Series #2

The Kingdom Choir

Saturday, October 26

31

Chamber Arts Series #3 Peter Serkin, Piano & Pamela Frank, Violin Saturday, December 7

19 Vocal Ensemble Series #3

Tenebrae | Joby Talbot's Path of Miracles

Tuesday, November 12

33

Chamber Arts Series #4 St. Lawrence String Quartet & Anne-Marie McDermott, Piano Saturday, January 25

46 Vocal Ensemble Series #4

Chanticleer Faith of Our Fathers

Friday, March 6

38 Chamber Arts Series #5

Doric String Quartet

Saturday, February 8 48 Chamber Arts Series #6

Belcea Quartet, Beethoven Cycle

Friday, March 13 thru Sunday, March 15 53 Chamber Arts Series #7

Calefax Reed Quintet

Saturday, April 4 60 Chamber Arts Series #8

Quatuor Ébène, Beethoven Cycle

Friday, April 24 thru Sunday, April 26

PIANO RECITAL SERIES 10 Piano Recital Series #1

Andrew Tyson

Friday, October 11 18

Piano Recital Series #2 Shai Wosner & Orion Weiss Saturday, November 9

36 Piano Recital Series #3

Jan Lisiecki

Friday, January 31 43 Piano Recital Series #4

Seong-Jin Cho

Sunday, February 23 52 Piano Recital Series #5

Nelson Freire

Friday, April 3 64 Piano Recital Series #6

Igor Levit

Saturday, May 16

2

59 Vocal Ensemble Series #5

The Tallis Scholars Rose Without Thorn

Wednesday, April 22

BALLET FUTURES

20 Alonzo King LINES Ballet

Friday, November 15 & Saturday, November 16

34 BalletX

Friday, January 31 & Saturday, February 1

40 American Ballet Theatre Studio Company

with Stefanie Batten Bland

Saturday, February 15 & Sunday, February 16 42 Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo

(The Trocks)

Saturday, February 22 50 American Ballet Theatre Giselle

Thursday, March 26 thru Sunday, March 29

BLACK ATLANTIC BUILDING BRIDGES: MUSLIMS IN AMERICA 54 Sona Jobarteh | The Gambia/UK

Monday, April 6

54 David Virelles | Cuba/USA

Tuesday, April 7

55 Cha Wa | USA

Wednesday, April 8

56 Etienne Charles Creole Soul | Trinidad/USA

Thursday, April 9

57 Cimarrón | Colombia

Friday, April 10

57 Orchestre Les Mangelepa | Kenya/Congo

05 Mumu Fresh

08 Mavis Staples

12 The Bad Plus

Thursday, September 19

Sunday, October 20

38 Still Dreaming with Joshua Redman, Ron Miles,

Scott Colley & Dave King Friday, February 14

62 Mary Halvorson Code Girl

Thursday, February 27

& MORE

04 Ambrose Akinmusire Origami Harvest

Thursday, November 7

44 Gnawa LanGus

Saturday, April 11

JAZZ

Saturday, September 21

16 Rafiq Bhatia Breaking English

Friday, May 1

Thursday, October 3

16 Sam Green & Yo La Tengo

The Love Song of R. Buckminster Fuller Friday, November 1

21 Imani Winds & Harlem String Quartet

Passion for Bach & Coltrane Saturday, November 16

23 Torry Bend Dreaming

Friday, November 22 thru Sunday, November 24

23 Isabelle Faust, Violin & Alexander Melnikov, Piano

Saturday, November 23

65 Ciompi Quartet

MUSIC MAKER 25

25 Pickers & Storytellers: Dom Flemons, "Blind Boy"

Paxton, Jake Fussell & Gail Caesar Wednesday, December 4

26 Southern Voices: Lonnie Holley & Alexa Rose

Thursday, December 5

27 Zydeco: Major Handy & Lil' Buck Sinegal

featuring Reggie Dural

Friday, December 6 28 Native American: Pura Fé, Cary Morin, Deer Clan

Singers & Lakota John & Kin

Saturday, December 7 29

Blues Revue: Cool John Ferguson, Alabama Slim, Pat "Mother Blues" Cohen, Pura Fé & Cary Morin; Music Director: Timothy Duffy Saturday, December 7

30 Gospel: The Branchettes with

special guest Phil Cook

Sunday, December 8 30 Gospel: The Glorifying Vines Sisters

Sunday, December 8

featuring The Lark Quartet & Laura Sewell, Cello Of the Cloth Sunday, November 24

32 Jeremy Denk, Piano & Stefan Jackiw, Violin

Ives Violin Sonatas with New York Polyphony, Voices Friday, January 17

37 Curtis Symphony Orchestra with Osmo Vänskä,

Conductor & Jonathan Biss, Piano Thursday, February 6

41 Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin Beloved Baroque

Saturday, February 15

45 Wye Oak JOIN

Friday, February 28

46 Leyla McCalla

Breaking the Thermometer to Hide the Fever Wednesday, March 4 thru Friday, March 6

49 Imani Winds & Cory Smythe, Piano

Revolutionary aka The Civil Rights Project Saturday, March 21

65 Ciompi Quartet

featuring Molly Morkoski, Piano Songs, Games & Messages

Sunday, April 5

58 Zakir Hussain

Thursday, April 16

63 Lila Downs

Tuesday, May 5

Cover image: ABT Principal Dancer Misty Copeland in Giselle.

Photo by Rosalie O’Connor.

3

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 19 | 8 PM VON DER HEYDEN STUDIO THEATER RUBENSTEIN ARTS CENTER Tickets: $25, $10 Duke Students General Admission Seating In 2018, Ambrose Akinmusire’s Origami Harvest tackled institutional racism and cyclical poverty on a brave and original album that The Guardian calls “a voyage through America that is both dreamlike and dystopian.” Akinmusire’s bold interpretation of the jazz idiom diverges from the trumpeter and composer’s previous masterworks, including the live extravaganza A Rift in Decorum. By fusing hip-hop, free improvisation, and chamber music, Akinmusire creates one of the most unforgettable soundscapes in Blue Note Records’ vast catalog. Synthesizing the threads of his impressive 15-year career — including an affecting contribution to Kendrick Lamar’s conversation with the ghost of Tupac Shakur on

4

To Pimp a Butterfly’s “Mortal Man” — Akinmusire deliberately resists classification and “takes jazz string writing to a new plateau” (DownBeat). Akinmusire kicks off Duke Performances’ season at the intimate von der Heyden Studio Theater with an ensemble that features rapper Kokayi, pianist Sam Harris, drummer Justin Brown, and Mivos Quartet.

BUILDING BRIDGES: MUSLIMS IN AMERICA SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 21 | 8 PM THE PINHOOK Tickets: $25, $10 Duke Students General Admission, Limited Seating Maimouna Youssef’s “regal combination of black power and Native American pride” (NPR Music) became most apparent on 2017’s pliant Vintage Babies LP, capturing her and collaborator DJ Dummy dreamweaving in and out of upbeat soul jams and activist-inspired dirges. As “a divine music healer” (Rolling Out), Youssef, or Mumu Fresh, grew up pivoting between genres and styles — singing gospel, jazz, and African-inspired songs with her mother in an African-American Muslim household in Baltimore, and gleaning religious practices and songs from her Choctaw and Muscogee grandparents.

By age 11, Youssef was transcribing and memorizing Wu-Tang Clan and Black Star lyrics — a practice that would inform her development as both an emcee and vocalist. Following a GRAMMY nomination for

her vocal work with The Roots, and recording as the featured artist on the DJ Jazzy Jeff-produced Chasing Goosebumps II, Youssef has blossomed into a wellrespected musical force. As part of its Building Bridges initiative, Duke Performances presents Youssef at The Pinhook in downtown Durham, the culmination of a multi-day residency on campus and in town.

5

6

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 28 | 8 PM BALDWIN AUDITORIUM

Tickets: $25, $10 Duke Students Reserved Seating The Escher and Dover quartets — two of the brightest chamber music constellations in America today — share the stage for a rare all-octet program. Both have assembled an impressive number of awards and residencies, and have been lauded for musical maturity that belies their youth: The Escher is “one of the major string quartets playing today” (Bachtrack), and the Dover is “the young American string quartet of the moment” (The New Yorker). This is an exceptional chance to hear their potent forces combined.

The ensembles will perform a program of three works for string octet, each composed by a teenage musical prodigy. Shostakovich’s “Two Pieces” shows the brilliance of the 18-year-old composer before his musical imagination became restricted by ideological entanglements with the Soviet Communist Party. The 19-year-old Enescu’s tour de force combines traditional forms with untraditional chromaticism. Mendelssohn’s piece — perhaps the best known and well loved of all string octets — was composed when he was only 16.

PROGRAM Shostakovich: Prelude & Scherzo: Two Pieces for String Octet, op. 11 Enescu: Octet for Strings in C Major, op. 7 Mendelssohn: Octet in E-flat Major, op. 20 7

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 3 | 8 PM CAROLINA THEATRE OF DURHAM Tickets: $65, $55, $40, $10 Duke Students Reserved Seating The Staple Singers were once called “God’s greatest hitmakers.” Roebuck “Pops” Staples formed the gospel group — a favorite of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. — in the mid-fifties with daughters Mavis, Yvonne, Cleotha, and son Pervis. The family never lost their gospel roots, even as their songs “Respect Yourself” and “I’ll Take You There” put them on the soul, rhythm-and-blues, and pop charts.

As a solo artist, Mavis Staples has continued her family’s musical tradition, singing uplifting songs that champion civil rights. Recently, the incomparable singer-activist collaborated with multi-instrumentalist Ben Harper on a new recording of inspirational songs, We Get By. Her date at the Carolina Theatre will be a return visit to Duke Performances for the multiple GRAMMY winner and audience favorite that NPR regards as “one of America's defining voices of freedom and peace.”

8

9

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 11 | 8 PM BALDWIN AUDITORIUM $10 O Duke Students FTickets: RIDA Y$25, , O CT BE R 11 • 8 P M Reserved Seating BA L DW I N AUDITORIUM Durham native Andrew Tyson has garnered Tickets: $25 • $10 Duke Students international praise as “a real poet of the piano” Reserved Seating (BBC Radio 3). In his debut recital with Duke Performances, he brings his musical imagination to Praised for its precise and energetic interpretations of larga hometown audience at Baldwin Auditorium with er-scale chamber works, the sound from the Academyartistic of St an adventurous concert.

His remarkable Martin in the Fields Chamber Ensemble is so brilliant it accomplishments include being a laureate of the nearly glows.

“Their sound is sweet and pure,and theirachieving work airLeeds International Piano Competition First(The Prize at the Géza Competition in veneraZurich. tight” Washington Post). Anda Formed in 1967 by the

an acutely original set of character pieces portrayed with different impressionist techniques. The evening closes with Schumann’s rhapsodic Symphonic aÉtudes, Schubertamasterwork.

Carl Nielsen’s compact Serenatathe in set of étude-variations exhibiting vano transformsdistinctive a melodic intertwining of clarinet and horn composer’s characterizations.

into a taut march underlined by double bass. Jean Françaix’s PROGRAM jovial Octet, written by the prolific French composer in Rameau: Gavotte variée Schubert's honor, pairs naturally with the magnificent Octet Chaminade: Autrefois inChaminade: F Major, D. 803, the varié largest-scale chamber work Schubert Thème ever wrote, scoredM.for43string quartet with double bass, basRavel: Miroirs, Schumann: soon, clarinet, Symphonic and horn. Études, op. 13

PROGRAM Rameau: Gavotte variée Chaminade: Autrefois Chaminade: Thème varié Ravel: Miroirs, M. 43 Schumann: Symphonic Études, op. 13 are lyrical pieces painted with glassy textures.

Invariée Durham, the group offers a horn-centric program conStaying in France, Tyson performs Ravel’s Miroirs, sisting of spirited takes on two twentieth-century gems and ble orchestra of the same name, the Chamber Ensemble has Tysoninternational begins with Rameau’s Gavotte variée, earned distinction through an extensive anda Gavotte and six impressive variations proving the award-winning discography, world tours, and the virtuosity to pianist’s baroque technique. Two short works follow play wide range of classic and contemporary by aCécile Chaminade — her Autrefoiscompositions. and Thème

10

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 18 | 8 PM DUKE CHAPEL Tickets: $34 Reserved Seating, $25 General Admission $10 Duke Students Reserved & General Admission Seating Vox Luminis conveys its passion for early music at every performance; this devotion has propelled the ensemble out of its native Belgium, where it formed in 2004, to critical acclaim and to an international career singing music from the 16th to 18th centuries. A surprise win of Gramophone’s Recording of the Year in 2012 helped secure its reputation for intelligent mastery of early music.

In its sophomore appearance at Duke Performances, Vox Luminis brings a program entirely by the Bach family. J.S. Bach was proud of his ancestry, and his genealogical research remains our most accurate information about the Bach family even today. Vox Luminis sets the style of the older Bachs in relief,

allowing the particularities of J.S. Bach’s cousins and nephew to shine new light onto how each of them approached the German choral tradition, entwining Lutheran chorales with new music.

PROGRAM

Johann Bach: Unser Leben ist ein Schatten Johann Bach: Sei nun wieder zufrieden Johann Michael Bach: Sei, lieber Tag, wilkommen Johann Michael Bach: Nun treten wir ins neue Jahr Johann Michael Bach: Herr, ich warte auf dein Heil Johann Christoph Bach: Der mensch, vom Weibe geboren Johann Christoph Bach: Lieber Herr Gott, wecke uns auf Johann Christoph Bach: Fürchte dich nicht Johann Ludwig Bach: Das Blut Jesu Christi Johann Ludwig Bach: Das ist meine Freude Johann Sebastian Bach: Jesu meine Freude

11

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 20 | 7 PM BALDWIN AUDITORIUM Tickets: $25, $10 Duke Students SA TUR D A Y , O CT O B ER 19 • 8 P M Reserved Seating

In the soaring and contemplative space of Duke Chapel, the forty-five member ensemble — selected from the 900 children in Reconfigured and reinvigorated following last year’s the choir’s training program — sings a program of sacred music critically Never II, Admission The BadSeating Plus — one Tickets: $45acclaimed Reserved Seating • $25Stop General of most celebrated contemporary jazz trios —from the renaissance to the present. The concert includes $10America’s Duke Students brings its powerful presence back to Baldwin Auditorium.Victoria’s intricate polyphonic rendering of a plainchant Ave Following the departure of co-founder Ethan Iverson,Maria, and continues in a Marian vein with Czech composer Founded in 1932, the Prague Philharmonic Children’s bassist Reid Anderson and drummer Dave King continueJan Novák’s Ave Maria; Schubert’s Salve Regina; Carl Maria Choir is the oldest and largest children’s concert choir in to press forward, still committed, after two decades, tovon Weber’s Maria Wiegenlied; and Ivan Kurz’s Maria, Mater the Czech Thisheritage award-winning ensembleflirting has been honoring Republic. the genre’s while skillfully withNostra. Among the living Czech composers on the program aless staple of Czech radio broadcasts, performances, common sounds and styles.orchestral The group’s new pianist is Slavomír Hořínka, whose Laudate Dominum is beautifully and2010 operaPew and Fellowship theater productions closeEvans, to a century. is winner for Orrin last seen evocative of ancient liturgical chant. at Duke Performances’ MONK@100, and aChapel formidable Like the Latvian Radio Choir (coming to Duke on bandleader in his own right, known for his work with the November 15), the Prague Philharmonic Children’s Choir PROGRAM Captain Black Biginstitution Band, Tarbaby, his and soloEastern projects.Haydn: Quartet in D Minor, op. 76, no. 2 (“Fifths”) is a beloved choral in the and Central The Bad Plus’ recent lineup change has hardly altered theShostakovich: Quartet No. 9 in E-flat Major, op. 117 European tradition and one of its country’s most prized combo’s reliable tightness or its musical potency, with Brahms: Quartet in C Minor, op. 51, no. 1 cultural exports.

BA L DW I N A U D I T O R I U M

The Washington Post hailing this latest incarnation “as sublime as the 1.0 version.”

12

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 19 | 8 PM BALDWIN AUDITORIUM Tickets: $42, $36, $10 Duke Students Reserved Seating The Jerusalem Quartet, firmly established as one of the top international chamber ensembles, returns to Duke Performances with a program of masterpieces spanning three centuries. The Jerusalem, which has performed nearly all of the essential quartet repertoire in nearly all of the world’s musical capitals, has recently recorded great but little-known music by Jewish composers of inter-war Central Europe.

The Jerusalem’s recording of Shostakovich quartets earned the ensemble declaration by Gramophone as “one of the most technically assured and tonally responsive quartets.” The composer’s Ninth Quartet offers the emotional extremes to verify that praise in live performance. Brahms’ first string quartet, an essay keenly aware of the burden of the form’s splendid past and the artistic demands of its present, brings the evening to a satisfying closure.

PROGRAM Haydn: Quartet in D Minor, op. 76, no. 2 (“Fifths”) Shostakovich: Quartet No. 9 in E-flat Major, op. 117 Brahms: Quartet in C Minor, op. 51, no. 1

Haydn’s “Fifths” Quartet — so called because of its opening violin motif — is a dazzling vehicle for the Jerusalem to display its flash and intriguing charm.

SUND A Y , O CT O BE R 20 • 8 P M BA L DW I N A U D I T O R I U M Tickets: $25 • $10 Duke Students Standing Room, Extremely Limited Seating

Amir Mohamed el Khalifa, or the incisive rapper and elegant producer Oddisee, grew up in two worlds. The son of an African-American mother and a Sudanese father, he spent his weeks in affluent Maryland suburbs, and his weekends in tougher D.C. neighborhoods. To his Sudanese family, he was the exotic Western cousin, raised on rap and big-city trappings; to his Washington family, he was the suburban Muslim nerd who watched too much news. That tension has made Oddisee a modern musical visionary, “a focused beam of hip-hop soul that rattles loudly in our present political moment,” as Pitchfork observed.

Oddisee arrives in Durham for Duke Performances’ Building Bridges project and ongoing Hip-Hop Initiative. At Motorco, with an airtight live band, he funnels his perspective as a Muslim Sudanese-American artist into his music. Oddisee’s songs sound joyous, with cascading horns and mellifluous keyboards. But as a lyricist, especially on 2017’s brilliant The Iceberg, he addresses broader questions about the American experiment. A daring thinker and rapper, Oddisee delivers hip-hop that makes us ponder the world’s trials and triumphs — one ebullient beat and breathless rhyme at a time.

13

14

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 26 | 8 PM DUKE CHAPEL Tickets: $34 Reserved Seating $25 General Admission Seating, $10 Duke Students Reserved & General Admission Seating Catapulted into stardom by its enrapturing performance at the 2018 wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, the Kingdom Choir makes its Duke Performances debut with its distinctive blend of gospel and pop music. Although the ensemble has been singing since 1994, its royal wedding performance amazed millions of viewers worldwide and laid the ground for a record deal with Sony Music.

builds community with its singing. Kingdom Choir will fill its program at the iconic Duke Chapel with its characteristic arrangements of modern pop and classic gospel songs, including its show-stopping rendition of “Stand By Me.” PROGRAM To be announced.

Led by Karen Gibson, Britain's “godmother of gospel,” the Kingdom Choir represents the best of the thriving British gospel tradition, and the effects of its performances stretch beyond purely musical events — it

15

BUILDING BRIDGES: MUSLIMS IN AMERICA 16

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 1 | 8 PM REYNOLDS INDUSTRIES THEATER Tickets: $34, $28, $10 Duke Students Reserved Seating R. Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983) was a farsighted inventor who registered 28 patents while ceaselessly striving to make the world work for 100% of humanity.

Best known for inventing the geodesic dome and Dymaxion House, Fuller was an engineer, architect, theorist, author, and early proponent of environmental sustainability. Singular “live documentary” filmmaker Sam Green and the legendary band Yo La Tengo recount the life’s work of the inimitable thinker with The Love Song of R. Buckminster Fuller, a thrilling portrait

of the visionary futurist. As Green narrates and cues telling images, Yo La Tengo performs its original, contemplative score. The result is a captivating experience that revives “the legacy of the prophetic engineer and architect who promoted independent design and sustainability when America was clear-cutting forests, paving wetlands, and driving the wasteful cars that almost put General Motors out of business” (IndieWire).

T U ES D AY , N OVEM B ER 12 • 8 PM D U K E C H AP E L Tickets: $25 • $10 Duke Students Reserved Seating

Praised for its precise and energetic interpretations of larger-scale chamber works, sound from the Academy oftouchstones.

St S AT U R DAY, A PR IL 6 • 8 PM Bach and the Beethoven are Anderszewski’s In Martin in the Fields Chamber Ensemble is so brilliant it nearly BALDW IN A U D I T O R I U M Durham, he begins with selections from The THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 7 | 8 PM of genre or categorization. BandcampWell-Tempered praised this sui glows. “Their sound is sweet pure, their Clavier, Bach’sand consummate set ofairtight” keyboard preludes and VON DER HEYDEN STUDIO THEATER generis full-length aswork “less about (The easily-understood Tickets:RUBENSTEIN $25 • $10 DukeARTS Students Washington Post).

Formed in 1967and by more the orchestra of itmay fugues.

Anderszewski endsvenerable the night with what be to hispush CENTER messages, about the passion takes Reserved Seating the same name, thethrough Chamber Ensemble earned internagreatest obsession, Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations, endless- a the barriershas that separate us.”anFollowing Tickets: $25, $10 Duke Students weeklong Building Bridges residency and in ly dynamic exploration ofand an 1819 waltz

by Anton Diabelli. tional distinction through an extensive award-winning dis-at Duke General Seating In 1990, duringAdmission the semi-finals of the Leeds International Anderszewski Durham, Bhatia’s performs at the played the trio Diabelli on thatBreaking fatefulofdayEnglish in Leeds cography, world tours, and the virtuosity to play a wide range Piano ACompetition, Piotr Anderszewski abruptly member of pianist heralded post-rock trioclassic Son Lux who vonwith der Heyden Studio Theater alongside His entrancing and kept it, endlessly honing his interpretation. vivand contemporary compositions. walkedhas off the stage. Though he had beenand a favorite to win, collaborated with Lorde Sufjan Stevens, visualofprojections. id reading Diabelli is spellbinding, delivered with technical he wasRafiq dissatisfied soundnative that day decided to the Durham, group offers a horn-centric consisting Bhatiawith — a his Raleigh andand theIn son of Muslim dexterity and deep emotionalprogram understanding. disqualify himself.parents This uncompromising immigrant — cannot be choice defined by anytakes oneon two twentieth-century gems and ofcatapulted spirited his career, stakingstyle. his spot as one of the world’s most intriguparticular The guitarist and composer bridges PROGRAM East and West, jazz and pop, and electronic, ing new pianists.

He has since won theacoustic rare Gilmore Artist Bach: Selected Preludes and Fugues from in ahis own way and going his own set purof rules.

Awardall and Royal Philharmonic MusicbyAward.

He has The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book II early works that hinted at his sued aFollowing deliberatelyimprovisational limited repertoire, working and reworking Beethoven: Thirty-Three Variations on a Waltz by Diabelli, hisapproach 2018 album Breaking English demonstrated piecestalents, until they perfection. op. 120 (“Diabelli” Variations) just how challenging and exciting his songcraft could be to listeners eager to break free from the predictability

17

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 9 | 8 PM BALDWIN AUDITORIUM Tickets: $25, $10 Duke Students Reserved Seating Shai Wosner and Orion Weiss, fellow alumni of Emanuel Ax’s piano studio at Juilliard, present a rare four-hand piano concert at Baldwin Auditorium. Both pianists are internationally recognized for combining technical mastery and intellectual curiosity, offering a unique chance to hear the duo perform with “virtuosity, determination, and an infectious glee” (The New York Times).

Wosner and Weiss have curated a program combining nineteenth-century masters with a modern star.

David Lang’s gravity meditates in the space between falling and landing, each moment a postponement of resolution; after gravity, also by Lang, who won

18

the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Music, instead floats into the surreal, still with no landing in sight. In Schubert’s “Grand Duo” — perhaps the pinnacle of the four-hand repertoire — the quicksilver themes constantly mutate. Brahms’ Sonata in F Minor for Two Pianos is an adaptation of his masterpiece, the Piano Quintet in F Minor; at the advice of his friend Joachim, Brahms rewrote the quintet for two pianos, the result being a formidable and worthy challenge to Wosner and Weiss.

PROGRAM David Lang: gravity for Two Pianos Schubert: Sonata in C Major for Two Pianos (“Grand Duo”), D. 812 David Lang: after gravity for Two Pianos Brahms: Sonata in F Minor for Two Pianos, op. 34bis

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 12 | 8 PM DUKE CHAPEL Tickets: $34 Reserved Seating $25 General Admission Seating, $10 Duke Students Reserved & General Admission Seating Tenebrae, one of the premier vocal ensembles of England, brings its signature work, Joby Talbot’s Path of Miracles, to Duke Chapel for an assuredly stunning performance. Formed in 2001 by former King’s Singer Nigel Short, Tenebrae quickly established a reputation for theatrical programming and precise performances in sacred and secular spaces. Its musical passion has led to several awards (including two BBC Music Magazine awards), nominations, and notable orchestral engagements.

Path of Miracles (2005), Tenebrae’s first major commission, explores the geography of the pilgrimage to Santiago through four movements. With a libretto

by Robert Dickinson, Talbot’s composition brings together texts from medieval and modern sources and music from east Asia and ancient hymns. Singing from memory and in candlelight, Tenebrae dramatically animates the pilgrimage for the audience. To celebrate its fifteenth anniversary, Tenebrae commissioned Footsteps by Owain Park, a harmonically lavish piece which will feature Tenebrae performing alongside singers from the Duke Chapel Music program.

PROGRAM Owain Park: Footsteps, featuring singers from the Duke Chapel Music program Joby Talbot: Path of Miracles

19

ALONZO KING FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 15 | 8 PM SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 16 | 8 PM REYNOLDS INDUSTRIES THEATER Tickets: $25, $10 Duke Students Reserved Seating Born in Georgia to Civil Rights activists, raised in California, and trained at the School of American Ballet, choreographer Alonzo King planted his company, LINES, in what may seem an unlikely place for ballet — San Francisco — in 1982. The city, he has said in conversation with the Kronos Quartet’s David Harrington, had a “unique feeling” to it. 37 years on, feeling — its emotional and kinetic weight — underlies King’s choreographic vision. Onstage, dancers push and comb space; elongations function like cantilevers, balancing meticulous partnered arrangements. Last at Duke Performances in 2010 with Jason Moran and

20

the Bandwagon, LINES returns for a paired program at Reynolds Industries Theater. On the bill: the company’s 2018 world premiere Common Ground, a lively, winding work whose score combines several Kronoscommissioned pieces, as well as repertory classic Handel, a set of movement studies created for the Swedish Royal Ballet in 2005.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 16 | 8 PM BALDWIN AUDITORIUM Tickets: $25, $10 Duke Students Reserved Seating Imani Winds is noted as much for its virtuoso musicality as for its exceptional record for commissioning, composing, and arranging works — particularly by African-American and Latinx composers — for the ensemble. Jeff Scott, French hornist of Imani Winds, composed Passion for Bach and Coltrane for the combined Imani Winds and Harlem String Quartet, supplemented by a jazz piano trio. The work synthesizes classical and jazz styles, highlighting the gifts of all the musicians onstage.

each composer — Bach’s Goldberg Variations and Coltrane’s A Love Supreme — and imagined what a chance meeting between Bach and Coltrane would have sounded like. The result is a piece that is “powerfully forward looking” (San Francisco Classical Voice), an enduring testament to the potential of musical creativity.

PROGRAM Jeff Scott: Passion for Bach & Coltrane

Inspired by the poetry of A.B. Spellman, Passion for Bach & Coltrane interweaves orated poems with music, in a manner similar to J.S. Bach’s Passion settings. Scott took two masterworks by 21

22

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 22 | 8 PM SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 23 | 8 PM SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 24 | 7 PM VON DER HEYDEN STUDIO THEATER RUBENSTEIN ARTS CENTER Tickets: $25, $10 Duke Students General Admission Seating Torry Bend is an award-winning puppet artist and Associate Professor of Theater Studies at Duke who premiered Love’s Infrastructure at Duke Performances in 2014. For her newest work, Dreaming, Bend reimagines an iconic American cartoon in collaboration with Howard L. Craft, the poet, playwright, and arts educator who created the first African-American superhero radio serial, The Jade City Pharaoh. This new theatrical work investigates the legacy of influential artist Winsor McCay and his famed comic strip, Little Nemo in Slumberland, which ran from 1905 to 1911 in The New York Herald. Dreaming confronts overtly racist imagery in McCay’s work, using puppetry to tell the story of McCay’s cast of characters on the event of his death; the characters must reconcile the fame they each found as stereotypes. Having first appeared as a work-inprogress at Sheafer Lab Theater, the final production of Dreaming debuts at the von der Heyden Studio Theater before its New York premiere at La MaMa in 2020.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 23 | 8 PM BALDWIN AUDITORIUM Tickets: $42, $36, $10 Duke Students Reserved Seating Seasoned duet partners Isabelle Faust and Alexander Melnikov make their Duke Performances debuts with a program demonstrating their musical mastery and meticulous attention to scholarship and detail. Both Faust and Melnikov are noted for their devotion to historically informed performance practice, and their recordings and performances have received consistent praise for drama and subtlety. Critics note this attention to sensitivity in their collaborations, and individually they are highly sought after as concerto soloists with the world’s top orchestras and conductors.

Their program at Baldwin Auditorium features two early Beethoven violin and piano sonatas; their recording of the complete Beethoven sonatas earned Gramophone’s Recording of the Year in 2010, giving audiences in Durham a chance to hear why The Guardian called this recording “essential listening.”

They will intermix the Beethoven sonatas with two 20th century masterworks — Stravinsky’s classically inspired Duo Concertante and Bartók’s acidulous First Sonata for Violin and Piano.

PROGRAM Beethoven: Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 1 in D Major, op. 12, no. 1 Stravinsky: Duo Concertante for Violin and Piano Beethoven: Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 5 in F Major, op. 24 (“Spring Sonata”) Bartók: Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 1, Sz. 75

23

Longstanding institutional barriers prevent many musicians from accessing the resources needed to live and make music. For 25 years, Music Maker Relief Foundation — a groundbreaking nonprofit organization based in Hillsborough, NC — has ensured that the voices of hundreds of extraordinary and unheralded blues and folk musicians are not silenced by poverty and time. In celebration of its 25th anniversary, Music Maker collaborates with Duke Performances for a weeklong music series and exhibition at The Fruit in downtown Durham that spotlights pioneering contributors preserving the rich musical traditions of the South.

24

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 4 | 8 PM THE FRUIT Tickets: $25, $10 Duke Students General Admission Seating Music Maker 25 opens at The Fruit with a celebration of the next generation of Piedmont Blues boundary-pushers and tradition-preservers. Founding Carolina Chocolate Drops member Don Flemons, 2018 GRAMMY nominee for Black Cowboys and “equal parts studious folklorist, multiinstrumentalist, and American griot” (St. Pete Catalyst), pulls from repertoire covering more than a century of American musical tradition. Hailed by The Wall Street Journal as “virtually the only music-maker of his generation playing guitar, banjo, piano, and violin to fully assimilate the blues idiom,” Jerron “Blind Boy” Paxton reaches back with his faithful renditions of 1920s and 30s songbook repertoire.

Two accomplished pickers — Durham-based Jake Xerxes Fussell and Pittsville, Virginia-based Gail Caesar — further demonstrate that the future of the music is in good hands.

Each artist will perform a short set and close out the show together in a finale of their favorites.

DOM FLEMONS "BLIND BOY" PAXTON JAKE FUSSELL & GAIL CAESAR 25

LONNIE HOLLEY & ALEXA ROSE THURSDAY, DECEMBER 5 | 8 PM THE FRUIT Tickets: $25, $10 Duke Students General Admission Seating Thursday evening at Music Maker 25 features individual sets from two distinct Southern voices — multidisciplinary visual artist and improvisational musician Lonnie Holley and Southwest Virginia mountain native and roots musician Alexa Rose. A journeyman and sculptor who recorded his first ever album of music in his sixties, Holley has lived an unparalleled life, one reflected in the captivating fare of 2012’s Just Before Music and last year’s sprawling MITH. Of that latter full-length, The Quietus hailed it as “a record that, far from being cartoonish or hackneyed, feels tangible and rings true.” Rose, compared to the likes of Joni Mitchell and Hurray for the Riff Raff, is developing a sound distinctly her own. Drawing inspiration from her Appalachian heritage, her voice “stands out with depth and complexity, capable of gymnastic yodels and deep resonance” (Cary Magazine).

26

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 6 | 8 PM THE FRUIT Tickets: $25, $10 Duke Students General Admission Seating

MAJOR HANDY & LIL’FEATURINGBUCK SINEGAL REGGIE DURAL

For one memorable night, the history and evolution of the Creole Zydeco tradition will be on display. A veteran of Buckwheat Zydeco and Rockin' Dopsie’s groups, as well as a seasoned bandleader in his own right, accordion virtuoso Major Handy has spent decades honing his craft.

Informed by his French Creole heritage and still going strong nearly a decade and a half following Hurricane Katrina, his music captures the potency and eclecticism of the zydeco genre. At 75, Paul “Lil' Buck” Sinegal still sees himself as a bluesman first. A mainstay of the New Orleans Jazz Fest and frequent member of departed accordionist Clifton Chenier’s band beginning in 1969, the guitarist “has long been a secret weapon for Louisiana music,” says The Acadiana Advocate. Buckwheat Zydeco heir Reggie Dural joins Handy and Sinegal, each artist trading off lead on an evening-length zydeco dance party heavy with accordion and rub board.

27

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 7 | 1 PM THE FRUIT Tickets: $25, $10 Duke Students General Admission Seating

PURA FÉ CARY MORIN DEER CLAN SINGERS & LAKOTA JOHN & KIN

At this Saturday matinee presentation, an intergenerational mix of performers from the U.S. and Canada demonstrates the extraordinary range of sounds and musical styles being advanced by Native American artists. Over the past 25 years, Pura Fé’s voice has graced records by the Indigo Girls, Robert Mirabal, and The Band’s Robbie Robertson, among others. Her own albums, with a capella trio Ulali as well as solo, place her mesmerizing vocals front and center. Born and raised in Montana, Crow tribal member Cary Morin shifted from the rock-oriented ensemble The Atoll to the acoustic fingerpicking now synonymous with his solo work. Sharing Tuscarora lineage with Pura Fé, the Deer Clan Singers bring indigenous traditions into the present. Pura Fé hosts the proceedings, with opening sets by Morin and Deer Clan Singers. Scarcely into his twenties, Pembroke-based Lumbee and Lakota guitarist Lakota John & Kin perform in the exhibition space at The Fruit prior to the performance.

28

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 7 | 8 PM THE FRUIT Tickets: $25, $10 Duke Students General Admission Seating Music Maker founder Timothy Duffy directs the house band for Saturday evening’s “Music Maker Blues Revue,” the organization’s signature traveling showcase. Left-handed lowcountry electric bluesman Cool John Ferguson started in gospel groups, building a reputation for outstanding live performances characterized by his upside-down guitar technique. He has earned high praise from the legendary Taj Mahal, who likened Ferguson to Jimi Hendrix and Django Reinhardt. Another blues authority, octogenarian Alabama Slim, recorded his debut album, The Mighty Flood, in 2007; that album and its 2010 follow-up Blue and Lonesome proved well worth the wait, each a robust collection of history and heartache. Joining them are longtime New Orleans singer Pat “Mother Blues” Cohen, blues polymath Pura Fé, and inimitable guitarist Cary Morin.

COOL JOHN FERGUSON ALABAMA SLIM PAT "MOTHER BLUES" COHEN PURA FÉ & CARY MORIN MUSIC DIRECTOR: TIMOTHY DUFFY 29

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 8 | 1 PM THE FRUIT Tickets: $25, $10 Duke Students General Admission Seating The Sunday proceedings at Music Maker 25 celebrate the gospel tradition. The matinee features The Branchettes, a Johnston County, NC duo composed of vocalist Lena Mae Perry and pianist Wilbur Tharpe, who are devoted to sharing the songs and congregational hymns that live in their hearts.

Having previously tapped Perry for his own Southland Revue shows and in other collaborative efforts, gospel’s influence on Phil Cook’s inimitable vocal delivery is unmistakable. Aquarium Drunkard praised his 2018 album People Are My Drug as a vital product of our times, adding that “the Durham-based singer/ songwriter clearly views his mission as a celebratory one, recognizing that the work required right now is good work to do.” In recent years, Cook has also worked with Hiss Golden Messenger and Mavis Staples, an indication of his impressive range. Cook joins The Branchettes for a special collaboration.

THE BRANCHETTES WITH SPECIAL GUEST PHIL COOK

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 8 | 7 PM THE FRUIT Tickets: $25, $10 Duke Students General Admission Seating Music Maker 25 closes out Sunday evening with a gospel set featuring the The Glorifying Vines Sisters. The Glorifying Vines represent a divine musical tradition, one that dates back to the singing quartets of the 1930s. Fittingly, The News & Observer once praised the gospel singing group for “bringing old-school tent-revival fervor to unexpected places.” Led by Alice Vines, the Eastern North Carolina family band has taken their gripping devotionals wherever the spirit leads them, no matter if the venue is sacred or secular. Alice Vines is joined by vocalists Audrey Vines, Melody Harper, Curtis Harper, Johnny Ray Daniels, and Anthony Daniels, who will trade off on lead and welcome additional family to the stage for guest performances, a triumphant close to this five-day celebration of Music Maker Relief Foundation, a North Carolina and national treasure.

30

THE GLORIFYING VINES SISTERS

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 7 | 8 PM BALDWIN AUDITORIUM Tickets: $25, $10 Duke Students Reserved Seating Peter Serkin and Pamela Frank, internationally acclaimed artists of passion and integrity who seem never to let a phrase pass without uncovering for it some emotional purpose, bring to Baldwin Auditorium an intense and intimate all-Bach recital. Both scions of prestigious musical families, they studied at the Curtis Institute of Music and have enjoyed celebrated dual careers as performers and pedagogues.

states, they are “sonatas for harpsichord concerted with solo violin.” The writing is at once dense and lively, offering these two extraordinary artists numberless opportunities to engage with their audience.

PROGRAM J.S. Bach: Sonata in B Minor, BWV 1014 Sonata in A Major, BWV 1015 Sonata in E Major, BWV 1016 Sonata in C Minor, BWV 1017 Sonata in F Minor, BWV 1018 Sonata in G Major, BWV 1019

The program of Bach’s Six Sonatas for Violin and Keyboard will reveal why Gramophone called one of their recordings “the best we have.” Avoiding the practice of his contemporaries, Bach allotted each instrument an equal standing; as an early manuscript

31

JEREMY DENK, PIANO + STEFAN JACKIW, VIOLIN + NEW YORK POLYPHONY, VOICES IVES SONATAS FRIDAY, JANUARY 17 | 8 PM BALDWIN AUDITORIUM Tickets: $42, $36, $10 Duke Students Reserved Seating Rescheduling a snowed-out concert from January 2018, Duke Performances presents an all-star cast of artists interpreting the works and inspirations of Charles Ives.

Jeremy Denk is perhaps the foremost interpreter of Ives today, and this performance is specially curated to expose the genesis of these compositions.

Denk and violinist Stefan Jackiw — a musician of “uncommon musical substance” (Boston Globe) — work backward through the sonatas, from the jarring number four to the impressionistic number one, highlighting Ives’ unique modernism. Denk and Jackiw pair each sonata with a vocal performance of the hymn tunes and song foundations of Ives’ sonatas, sung by the celebrated vocal quartet New York Polyphony, “singers of superb musicianship and vocal allure” (The New Yorker). Teasing out, reinterpreting, 32

and re-presenting the strains that make up Ives’ music, Denk, Jackiw, and New York Polyphony promise a provocative and engaging musical evening.

PROGRAM Ives: Sonata No. 4 for Violin and Piano (“Children’s Day at Camp Meeting”) Edgar P. Stites/John R. Sweney: “Beulah Land” Robert Lowry/Annie Sherwood Hawks: “I Need Thee Every Hour” Ives: Sonata No. 3 for Violin and Piano François H. Barthélémon/Robert Robinson: “Mighty God, While Angels Bless Thee (Autumn)” Ives: Sonata No. 2 for Violin and Piano George F. Root/David Nelson: “The Shining Shore” George F. Root: “Tramp! Tramp! Tramp! The Boys Are Marching” George F. Kiallmark/Samuel Woodworth: “The Old Oaken Bucket” Lowell Mason/Anna L. Coghill: “Work, For the Night Is Coming” Ives: Sonata No. 1 for Violin and Piano

SATURDAY, JANUARY 25 | 8 PM BALDWIN AUDITORIUM

The St. Lawrence closes the night with Debussy’s magical Quartet in G Minor.

Tickets: $42, $36, $10 Duke Students Reserved Seating

PROGRAM Haydn: Quartet in C Major, op. 20, no. 2 (“Sun”) Amy Beach: Piano Quintet Messiaen: Pièce for Piano and String Quartet Debussy: Quartet in G Minor, op. 10

Veterans of the Chamber Arts Series at Duke Performances, the St. Lawrence String Quartet returns with pianist Anne-Marie McDermott for a varied and intriguing program. The SLSQ, in residence at Stanford for 20 years now, is consistently ranked in the highest echelon of American quartets. The Philadelphia Inquirer proclaims McDermott as “one of the great American pianists of her generation.”

Participants in a new wave of artists celebrating Haydn, the St. Lawrence begins with his “Sun Quartet” from opus 20. McDermott then joins for two 20th-century quintets: Amy Beach’s Quintet (1908) is starting to gain its proper respect in concert halls; and Messiaen’s Pièce for Piano and String Quartet (1991), his final finished work, blends his beloved birdsongs with angular chords and lyrical melodies.

33

ickets

34

FRIDAY, JANUARY 31 | 8 PM SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 1 | 8 PM REYNOLDS INDUSTRIES THEATER Tickets: $25, $10 Duke Students Reserved Seating The letter “X” often functions like an open-ended signature, future-facing, representing an unknown quantity or quality. Taken on its own, it also resembles a figure with all limbs outstretched, reaching past one’s foreseeable ends. It makes sense, then, that the letter flanks the name of Philadelphia-based contemporary ballet company BalletX, whose charge is to innovate, experiment with, and reformulate classical ballet for the 21st century. Founded in 2005 by Christine Cox and Matthew Neenan, BalletX presides over the 5,000-square foot Center for World Premiere Choreography, the organization’s infrastructural incubator for new choreographic commissions by the

likes of Trey McIntyre, Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, and Lil Buck. Whether staging pop-up performances across Philadelphia’s historic sites and neighborhood parks or pushing the periphery of a traditional proscenium stage, BalletX’s ensemble of tremendous movers injects fresh energy into the classical ballet idiom. In its Duke Performances debut, the company presents Neenan’s playfully musical 2014 work Increasing alongside two additional repertory pieces.

35

FRIDAY, JANUARY 31 | 8 PM BALDWIN AUDITORIUM Tickets: $34, $28, $10 Duke Students Reserved Seating Canadian pianist Jan Lisiecki makes his Duke Performances debut at Baldwin Auditorium, furnishing a program replete with classics of the repertoire. Only 24 years old, Lisiecki has established serious artistic credentials: his recordings of Chopin at age 14 were praised by BBC Music Magazine for their “mature musicality,” and at 15 he signed an exclusive contract with Deutsche Grammophon. Rebuffing the “child prodigy” label, Lisiecki’s gifts are admirable in pianists of any age.

Bach composed the Capriccio when he was 19, ostensibly as his brother was leaving for Sweden; Lisiecki shows off his technical range in a piece comprising vignettes in various styles. Mendelssohn’s sixth book of Songs Without Words provides an introspective musical diary, while Chopin’s Nocturnes, 36

opus 27, present mysterious essays in mood. Ending with two rondos, Lisiecki steers through the intensity of Beethoven’s “Rage Over a Lost Penny” and the fantasy of Mendelssohn’s Rondo capriccioso.

PROGRAM Bach: Capriccio, “On the Departure of his Beloved Brother,” BWV 992 Mendelssohn: Songs Without Words, op. 67 Chopin: Nocturnes, op. 27, No. 1 in C-sharp Minor Chopin: Nocturnes, op. 27, No. 2 in D-flat Major Beethoven: Rondo a capriccio in G Major, op. 129 (“Rage Over a Lost Penny”) Mendelssohn: Rondo capriccioso, op. 14

WITH OSMO VÄNSKÄ, CONDUCTOR & JONATHAN BISS, PIANO THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 6 | 8 PM BALDWIN AUDITORIUM Tickets: $25, $10 Duke Students Reserved Seating Duke Performances offers a rare orchestra concert when the Curtis Symphony Orchestra comes to Durham, conducted by Osmo Vänskä and featuring Jonathan Biss on piano. The Curtis Symphony Orchestra is composed of about 100 students from Philadelphia's Curtis Institute of Music — one of the most selective schools in the world — and regularly features world-class conductors to lead the orchestra in concert. The captivating Vänskä, musical director of the Minnesota Orchestra, guides the young musicians through three works.

Curtis alumnus and current faculty member, joins the orchestra for Beethoven’s “Emperor” concerto, an epic struggle between the soloist and orchestra.

Sibelius’ austere second symphony concludes the evening, a work of which Vänskä has proved himself a formidable interpreter.

PROGRAM Gabriella Smith: New Work Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 5 (“Emperor”) Sibelius: Symphony No. 2 in D Major, op. 43

Curtis has commissioned young alumna Gabriella Smith, a “high-voltage and wildly imaginative” composer (The Philadelphia Inquirer), to compose a new work for the ensemble. Jonathan Biss, another 37

THU R S D A Y A PR I L 4 • 8 P M THE PI N H O O K Tickets: $15 • $10 Duke Students Standing Room, Extremely Limited Seating

Garage rock delivered in Farsi? That’s what Brooklyn band Habibi plays on Cardamom Garden, its delightful 2018 album.

At the start of its finale, singer Rahill Jamalifard launches into a pepped-up rendition of “Green Fuz,” a garage-rock classic, with a bold proclamation rendered in Farsi: “Here we come, and we’re coming fast.” It’s a fitting declaration for a group committed to such surprising unions of cultures and styles.

An unlikely juxtaposition of infectious surf pop and riff-heavy punk, imbued with the spirit of Iran’s own psychedelic music, these magnetic songs are hits in the making.

38

Though Jamalifard was born in Detroit, her family is from Iran. She spent summers visiting family there while absorbing Iranian melodies and practicing Farsi. While living in New York City, she bonded with guitarist Lenaya “Lenny” Lynch through a shared love of Persian culture; alongside their bandmates in Habibi (notably, three other women), they amplify that culture by fusing it with new influences. Habibi performs at Durham’s inclusive rock club, The Pinhook, as the culmination of a weeklong residency for Duke Performances’ Building Bridges project. It’s the perfect setting for rock ’n’ roll that rewrites the rules.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 8 | 8 PM BALDWIN AUDITORIUM Tickets: $25, $10 Duke Students Reserved Seating The Doric String Quartet, formed in 1998, makes its Durham debut. Based in the U.K., the Doric plays with less vibrato than most, producing an unusually “pure” sound. The Quartet achieves clear and steady pianissimos at the threshold of audibility without ever resorting to mutes. According to Lee Eiseman’s review of a recent concert, “The many surprising moments included some highly original left-hand pizzicatos, a democratic approach of seamlessly shifting dominance of parts, and niceties of accent and expression that were entirely their own."

Committed, like the St. Lawrence String Quartet, to the re-enthroning of Haydn, the creator not only of the symphony but also of the string quartet, the Doric begins the evening with his buoyant “Joke” quartet. The ensemble then alters the musical atmosphere by juxtaposing Benjamin Britten’s late Third Quartet, revealing as many similarities as differences between the two. This remarkable evening concludes with Schubert’s magisterial and uncompromising final string quartet.

PROGRAM Haydn: Quartet in E-flat Major, op. 33, no. 2 (“Joke”) Britten: Quartet No. 3 Schubert: Quartet in G Major, D. 887

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 14 | 8 PM BALDWIN AUDITORIUM Tickets: $42, $36, $10 Duke Students Reserved Seating Saxophonist Joshua Redman, last seen at Duke Performances’ MONK@100 festival, is a rare musical explorer with an instantly identifiable and accessible sound. Since the nineties, Redman has regularly challenged contemporary jazz’s fluid narratives as a prolific bandleader and sideman releasing acclaimed recordings that convey his admiration for the improvisational tradition. Still Dreaming is Redman’s heartfelt acknowledgment of his late father Dewey Redman's 1976-1987 band, Old and New Dreams — a tribute ensemble featuring alumni of the trailblazing Ornette Coleman Quartet. Redman teams with fellow torchbearers, including cornetist Ron Miles, bassist Scott Colley, and drummer Dave King, for a requiem of free bop virtuosity that is an “homage both to that group, and to its inspiration’s free and capricious spirit” (The Guardian).

39

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 15 | 6 PM & 8 PM SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 16 | 3 PM & 5 PM VON DER HEYDEN STUDIO THEATER RUBENSTEIN ARTS CENTER Tickets: $20, $10 Duke Students General Admission Seating For two weeks in January 2018, contemporary dance-theater choreographer Stefanie Batten Bland hunkered down in the Rubenstein Arts Center’s airy state-of-the-art “Dance Cube” studio with the American Ballet Theatre’s (ABT’s) Studio Company, the organization’s pre-professional program made up of twelve young adult dancers. Commissioned to create a three-part ballet for the company as part of ABT’s Women’s Movement initiative, Batten Bland guided the dancers through improvisational prompts to build a short work exploring the literal and theoretical realms of monuments: how they’re constructed, deactivated, and repurposed, within and outside ballet. This season, local audiences will 40

again have the rare opportunity to observe Batten Bland’s work-in-progress as the Studio Company’s second of three Duke residencies — the creative core of Duke’s unprecedented three-year collaboration with ABT — culminates in a series of public showings of the second part in a half-evening-length ballet that will have its world premiere at Duke in March 2021.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 15 | 8 PM

of favorite composers offers a chance to hear a periout of schoolyardensemble play. The result is a joyous of od-instrument that plays with celebration “fearless enyouthful movement that manages raise essential ergy, zest, and precision” (Theto Boston Globe).questions

Reserved Seating

PROGRAM in America.

Lully: Suite from “Phaeton,” LWV 61 “Dramatically brilliant, physically Handel: Concerto Grosso in B-flatexhilarating,” Major, op. 3,exclaims no. 2 The New York Times.

Duke Artist-in-Residence Vivaldi: Concerto in E Minor forPerformances Strings and Basso Continuo, RV 134 Pachelbel: Canon Camille A. Brown “is clearly a force of nature.” This visionary Handel: Concerto Grosso F, op. 3,trilogy no. 4,ofHWV choregrapher has created aninessential works315 that C.P.E. in E-flat Major,cultural Wq. 183/2 redefineBach: black Symphony identity within the evolving landscape J.S. Bach:country: Double Concerto forE. Oboe and Violin in C Minor, 1060a of this Mr. TOL RAncE, BLACK GIRL:BWV Linguistic

FRIDAY FE BRU A R Y 1 • 8 P M BALDWIN,AUDITORIUM SA TU R D A Y , FE BRU AR Y 2 • 8 P M Tickets: $25, $10 Duke Students REYNOLD S I N D US T R I ES T H EAT ER Tickets: $25its • $10 Duke Students Making sixth tour of the U.S., and its first stop at Reserved Seating Duke, Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin (Akamus) offers a panoramic concertPlay of ,its specialty — music In BLACK GIRL: Linguistic Camille A. Brown drawsof the 17th and 18th centuries.

Akamus is a unique enupon the rhythmic pulsation of double Dutch, the complexity semble in that its musical direction comes from four of step and tap, and the full-body percussion of juba to elevate rotating concertmasters, plus a regular roll of guest the cultural contributions of black girls to triumphant artistic conductors like René Jacobs. Founded in East Berlin expression. Inspired by Kyra D. Gaunt’s book The Games Black in 1982, Akamus has grown in artistic reputation over Girls Play, three duets recall childhood relationships that are the decades, receiving the prestigious Diapason d’Or both and bittersweet.

Brown explores how black girls and and playful a GRAMMY nomination.

women “perform” in order to meet social expectations, while Themaintaining program, their Beloved features still own Baroque, cultural language, andfamiliar translatestunes the like Pachelbel’s famous Canoninto in D, along withsneakerirresistspontaneous movement of youth sophisticated, ibly passionate

by Vivaldi, and stomping footwork.music The dancers smile asHandel, they move andC.P.E. lock Bach.

J.S.tussle, Bach’s double is patterns the highlight eyes as they reveling in theconcerto complicated that growof the program, a work showing Bach’s mastery of melody imbued with dance-like movement. The collection

about what it means to become and be seen as a black woman

Play, and ink. Her series of three one-week residencies at Duke Performances with her company, Camille A. Brown & Dancers, marks the first time a single presenter has staged this trilogy in its entirety. Separately, the shows function as breathtaking stand-alone pieces; together, they form a striking commentary on perceptions of black identity. A courageous, unified epic, her trilogy — presented here in reverse order — is at the vanguard of American dance.

41

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 22 | 8 PM CAROLINA THEATRE OF DURHAM Tickets: $60, $50, $35, $10 Duke Students Reserved Seating Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo comes with its own tagline: “The World’s Foremost All-Male Comic Ballet Company.” Affectionately known as the Trocks, the company is a small but stalwart corps de ballet that has been “dragging” the classical ballet canon since the mid-1970s, when it got its start performing late-night shows in loft apartments across New York’s Off-Off Broadway circuit. Whether in Harlequinade or Swan Lake, the Trocks use gender-bending performance to place a tight lens on ballet’s inherent theatrics, employing comedy and camp to tease the technical rigor underpinning it all. As the company commands the Carolina Theatre stage with pomp and circumstance, it also commands us as audiences

42

— humorously, lovingly — to ponder our assumptions about gender and our collective understanding of who tells the stories we have come to accept as canonical, and how.

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 23 | 7 PM BALDWIN AUDITORIUM Tickets: $34, $28, $10 Duke Students Reserved Seating In 2015, Seong-Jin Cho became the first South Korean to win the first prize at the International Chopin Piano Competition; only sixteen pianists in history have won, among whom are Martha Argerich and Maurizio Pollini. This victory led to a recording contract with Deutsche Grammophon at age twenty-one, and since then Cho has embarked on a distinguished career as an international recitalist and soloist.

Berg’s early Sonata, opus 1, “expansive, pessimistic, and unquestionably ecstatic” — fitting words for this one-movement student piece imparting Berg’s youthful fire. Cho closes with Liszt’s vast Sonata in B Minor, perhaps the zenith of romantic piano music.

PROGRAM Brahms: Six Pieces for Piano, op. 118 Franck: Prélude, Choral et Fugue Berg: Sonata, op. 1 Liszt: Sonata in B Minor

In his Duke Performances debut, Cho brings a substantial program of 19th and 20th-century masterworks. Cho performs the late Six Pieces of Brahms, which are among his most personal compositions.

The grandeur of Franck’s Prélude, Choral et Fugue comes next, challenging through its chromatic harmonies and transcendent form. Glenn Gould called 43

BUILDING BRIDGES: MUSLIMS IN AMERICA THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 27 | 8 PM MOTORCO MUSIC HALL Tickets: $25, $10 Duke Students General Admission Seating The Gnawa blended their own traditions with native religious beliefs — just as displaced sub-Saharan West Africans did in the Americas — and healing music was created for private use by a community that was not permitted to directly observe their relationship with Allah. Played with percussive instruments, Qarqaba (large iron castanets), polyrhythmic clapping, and a three-stringed, bass lute-like sintir — Gnawa music draws on an abundant African-Islam history of ritualistic music believed to heal people possessed by jinn, or spirits.

Gnawa LanGus (formerly known as Innov Gnawa), led

by GRAMMY-nominated sintir master Samir LanGus,

44

fuses the raw hypnotic power of the utterly singular and centuries-old North African tradition with Berber, Indian, Saharan, and Flamenco music. In its concert at Motorco Music Hall, the culmination of its weeklong Building Bridges residency, the ensemble showcases “a familiar musical idiom that can connect different worlds — the francophone with the anglophone, the trans-Saharan with the trans-Atlantic, [and] Africa with the Orient” (The New Yorker).

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 28 | 8 PM BALDWIN AUDITORIUM Tickets: $25, $10 Duke Students Reserved Seating For over a decade, Jenn Wasner and Andy Stack have collaborated under the moniker Wye Oak, a band known for “forging an audacious creative path” (NPR Music). Their partnership, long imbued with a sense of ambition and restlessness, has transcended genre, growing and shifting over the course of five critically acclaimed full-length records. But those paying close attention to the duo will also have noticed a list of additional aliases, collaborations, and experimentations that have fallen outside of the parameters of the project for which they are best known.

Now, for the first time, they are bringing together an expanded live band to present songs from all of their various projects — Wye Oak, Wasner's Flock of Dimes, Stack's Joyero, and others — abandoning previously set boundaries in order to perform whatever feels most vital in the present moment. These performances will be rare, and will feature new material, re-imaginings of songs from deep in their catalog, and hidden gems from over ten years of their parallel creative work.

45

46

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 4 | 8 PM THURSDAY, MARCH 5 | 8 PM FRIDAY, MARCH 6 | 8 PM VON DER HEYDEN STUDIO THEATER RUBENSTEIN ARTS CENTER Tickets: $25, $10 Duke Students General Admission Seating Since departing the GRAMMY-winning Carolina Chocolate Drops to pursue a solo career, HaitianAmerican artist Leyla McCalla continues to make distinctive and relevant music that rightfully demands one’s attention — from her 2014 Langston Hughes tribute Vari-Colored Songs to 2019’s boundarypushing Capitalist Blues. Befitting her family heritage, the multidisciplinary Breaking the Thermometer to Hide the Fever, commissioned and premiered by

FRIDAY, MARCH 6 | 8 PM BALDWIN AUDITORIUM Tickets: $25, $10 Duke Students Reserved Seating Now in its 41st year, Chanticleer remains at the vanguard of choral ensemble excellence in America.

Founded by a musicology student who wanted to perform the music he was studying, Chanticleer has grown into a twelve-member group adept with ancient masters and modern commissions. Along the way the ensemble has received several major music prizes, including two GRAMMY awards and Ensemble of the Year from Musical America, all while continuing in Billboard’s Top 10 best-selling classical artists.

Duke Performances, amplifies source materials from the Radio Haiti Archive at Duke to lift up everyday voices of resistance and celebration in late-20th century Haiti. Collaborator and director Kiyoko McCrae, known for her devised theater work, weaves together original music, archival recordings, dance, and video projection to create an unparalleled theatrical experience. In commemoration, the piece arrives twenty years after the assassination of Jean Léopold Dominique, the owner and activist behind the independent, Kreyol-speaking station, Radio Haiti-Inter, whose legacy influences McCalla as she synthesizes and premieres this live performance that explores the complexities of what it means to be Haitian.

in the 12th century, to English and American works, featuring highlights of the English renaissance and colonial American traditions, complemented by modern tributes to those styles. The choir stops briefly in the Spanish New World before concluding with Chanticleer favorites.

PROGRAM For the complete program, please visit dukeperformances.org

At Duke Performances Chanticleer brings a five-part program of sacred music, Faith of Our Fathers. The repertoire spans from Hildegard’s “O virtu sapientiae” 47

FRIDAY, MARCH 13 | 8 PM (CONCERT NO. 1) SATURDAY, MARCH 14 | 8 PM (CONCERT NO. 2) SUNDAY, MARCH 15 | 7 PM (CONCERT NO. 3) BALDWIN AUDITORIUM Tickets: $42, $36, $10 Duke Students Reserved Seating In honor of the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth, Duke Performances, for the first time, in collaboration with the Chamber Arts Society of Durham, proudly offers six concerts of the complete cycle of Beethoven quartets.

“There is no end to exploration of Beethoven’s riches; and yet what is most compelling is that his music speaks so directly to us as human beings.” As a preamble to its recording of Beethoven’s complete string quartets (2012), the Belcea Quartet articulates this artistic vision of expedition and self-discovery, a vision abundantly clear in its recordings and performances. A longtime audience favorite here, the Belcea undertakes to give us one half of Beethoven’s output in this genre over the 48

course of three concerts in one weekend. (The second three concerts will be offered by Quatuor Ébène in April.)

These concerts feature the brisk classicism of the early quartets, the engaging maturity of the middle quartets, and the glory of the late works that surpasses all understanding.

PROGRAM Concert No. 1 Quartet in F Major, op. 18, no. 1 Quartet in B-flat Major, op. 130, with the Große Fuge ending, op. 133 Concert No. 2 Quartet in A Major, op. 18, no. 5 Quartet in C Major, op. 59, no. 3 Quartet in E-flat Major, op. 127 Concert No. 3 Quartet in C Minor, op. 18, no. 4, Quartet in E-flat Major, op. 74 (“Harp”) Quartet in F Major, op. 59, no. 1

SATURDAY, MARCH 21 | 8 PM BALDWIN AUDITORIUM Tickets: $25, $10 Duke Students Reserved Seating Imani Winds has never shied from activism. From its very founding, the ensemble has been dedicated to expanding the wind quintet repertoire, exploring nonEuropean musical traditions, and recruiting culturally and racially diverse collaborators. Revolutionary aka the Civil Rights Project puts this dedication in the forefront, reflecting the past, present, and future of the movement which still surges on.

Following an arrangement of Sam Cooke’s anthem “A Change is Gonna Come,” Imani Winds performs several commissions from the past dozen years.

Frederic Rzewski’s Sometimes, commissioned by and premiered at Duke Performances in 2015, celebrates the legacy of John Hope Franklin. Vijay Iyer’s Bruits takes on race relations and gun violence in America and features pianist Cory Smythe, known

for his collaborations with Tyshawn Sorey and Hilary Hahn, among others, while Jason Moran’s Cane — a reference to his ancestral home near the Cane River in Louisiana — treats the impact of slavery within his own family history. Imani founder Valerie Coleman’s Bronzeville, also featuring Smythe on piano, commemorates poet Gwendolyn Brooks, setting three of her poems to incidental music.

PROGRAM Sam Cooke, arr. John Clark: “A Change Is Gonna Come” Frederic Rzewski: Sometimes Vijay Iyer: Bruits (for Wind Quintet & Piano) Jason Moran: Cane Valerie Coleman: Bronzeville (for Wind Quintet & Piano)

49

THURSDAY, MARCH 26 | 7:30 PM FRIDAY, MARCH 27 | 7:30 PM SATURDAY, MARCH 28 | 1 PM SATURDAY, MARCH 28 | 7:30 PM SUNDAY, MARCH 29 | 1 PM DURHAM PERFORMING ARTS CENTER (DPAC) Tickets: $85, $65, $55, $45, $10 Duke Students Reserved Seating American Ballet Theatre (ABT) was founded in the fall of 1939 with dual aims of developing a repertoire of the best ballets from the past and supporting the creation of new works by gifted young choreographers. 80 years later, ABT is one of the world’s preeminent classical ballet companies, a world-touring ambassador for the art form, a committed choreographic commissioner, and an energetic leader in ballet education and outreach. All of these qualities animate Duke’s historic three-year institutional collaboration with ABT; the partnership’s centerpiece is a run of performances

50

by ABT’s Main Company at the Durham Performing Arts Center of the romantic masterwork Giselle, an engrossing tale of unrequited love that fuses music, movement, and drama. This unmissable engagement also marks a watershed moment in statewide arts presenting: this is the first visit to North Carolina by ABT in 50 years.

51

NELSON FREIRE, PIANO

FRIDAY, APRIL 3 | 8 PM BALDWIN AUDITORIUM Tickets: $25, $10 Duke Students

FRIDA Y , F ESeating BRU A RY 2 2 • 8 P M Reserved B ALDW IN A U D I T O RI U M

Poèmes for piano shows his melodic creativity. Two of Rachmaninoff’s opus 32 preludes weave space and density, while three Chopin works manipulate form and theme.

Playing for the first time in North Carolina, Rana begins with PROGRAM Chopin’s charming and often-playful second set of Often called the best-kept secret in the world of the Mozart: 10aVariations on “Unser PöbelLikewise, Meint,” K. 455 Études, op. 25, perfect showcase forDummer Rana’s range. piano, Nelson Freire is well-known to his dedicated Tickets: $25 • $10 Duke Students Brahms: op.in 10his career, as an enthusiastic Ravel’s Miroirs —Ballades, written early fans for his musical maturity, warmth, and focus. He Reserved Seating Andanteofinhis D Minor the Scottish “Edward”) appreciation fellow (After avant-garde artists —ballad incorporates has garnered praise from Time as “one of the most Andante in D exquisite Major harmonies, and ecstatic Spansweeping arpeggios, exciting pianists of this or any age.” An international Beatrice Rana played her first scales when she was only six ish dances.

Intermezzo, Allegro in B with Minor Rana ends the night Guido Agosti’s electricareer blossomed after he left his native Brazil in months old, seated on her mother’s lap at the piano in a tiny fying Andante ConofMoto in B Major arrangement Stravinsky’s Firebird, a celebrated work 1957 at age 12, and he has since performed with the Italian town. The daughter of two esteemed pianists, Rana that never Zygmunt Poèmes Pour Piano, op. 39 losesStojowski: its thrillingAspirations, power. orchestras and conductors.

L’aspiration Vers L’azur (Prélude) recallsworld’s hearinggreatest her parents play Prokofiev and Rachmaninov Rachmaninoff: Prelude in B Minor, op. 32, no. 10 whileFreire’s she was program still in the at womb.

By nine, she had made her PROGRAM Baldwin Auditorium will confirm Prelude in G-sharp Minor, op. 32, no. 12 his plaudits.

Mozart’s ingenious variations a Rachmaninoff: orchestral debut. By twenty, she had claimed the silver medalon Chopin: Études, op. 25 theme

by Gluck Freire’s classical technique on Chopin: Barcarolle in F-sharp Major, op. 60 and the Audience Awardput in the Van Cliburn International Ravel: Miroirs Chopin: Nocturne in E Major, op. 62, no. 2 while leading Brahms’ opusrendition 10, allow Pianodisplay, Competition, to aBallades, chart-topping of him Stravinsky: The Firebird (arr. Agosti) to“Goldberg” navigate aVariations key romantic genre.

Chopin: Scherzo, op. 20, no.1 Bach’s and a 2017 winPolish-American as the BBC and Newcomer composerofZygmunt was highly Musicpianist Magazine’s the Year. Stojowski “Her tone is comregarded during lifetime, of his manding,” The Los Angeleshis Times declared.and “Herthe onlyfirst showiness is in showing how the music works.”

52

SATURDAY, APRIL 4 | 8 PM BALDWIN AUDITORIUM Tickets: $25, $10 Duke Students Reserved Seating The Calefax Reed Quintet returns to Durham for an evening of impressive musicianship, remarkable arrangements, and unorthodox unseated staging.

Formed in 1987 and based in Amsterdam, Calefax classifies itself as “a classical ensemble with a pop mentality.” Its vast repertoire ranges from the 12th century to the 21st. The quintet makes many of its own arrangements, eradicating the borders between early and new music. The ensemble frequently collaborates with living composers.

the audience from Vienna through the mountains of Switzerland. The second half of the evening contrasts the 18th-century Italian sinfonia of Locatelli with the lushness of Henriette Bosmans’ string quartet, the quirky complexity of two of Nancarrow’s “Studies” for player piano, and the epic misadventures of Strauss’s Till Eulenspiegel.

PROGRAM Mozart: Quintet in C Minor, KV. 406 Liszt: Années de Pelerinage Suisse Locatelli: Introduzione teatrale Bosmans: String Quartet (1927) Nancarrow: Studies for Player Piano No. 2 & No. 3c Strauss: Till Eulenspiegel

Calefax’s ambitious program opens with an arrangement of Mozart’s imposing C Minor string quintet, which was itself a rearrangement of a wind quintet. Liszt’s visionary “Years of Pilgrimage” carries

53

BLACK ATLANTIC THE GAMBIA/UK

CUBA/USA

MONDAY, APRIL 6 | 8 PM MOTORCO MUSIC HALL

TUESDAY, APRIL 7 | 8 PM MOTORCO MUSIC HALL

Tickets: $25, $10 Duke Students General Admission Seating

Tickets: $25, $10 Duke Students General Admission Seating

For the majority of its time in West African musical history, the kora has been the exclusive purview of men. All of that changed with London-born Sona Jobarteh, a member of a highly respected griot family from The Gambia (and second cousin to Toumani Diabaté), who proved virtuosic in her proficiency with this sacrosanct lute-bridge-harp.

Breaking the cycle while still honoring the legacy makes Jobarteh simultaneously revolutionary and traditionalist. Beyond the storytelling nature of her performances, her music has also appeared in more modern contexts, including the 2016 Roots miniseries. At Motorco Music Hall, Jobarteh kicks off Duke Performances’ third Black Atlantic festival, displaying her dexterity on her hallowed and complex instrument, and showing her command of contemporary Afropop sensibilities alongside more customary ones.

DownBeat Rising Star David Virelles, raised in a musical family in Santiago de Cuba and now a staple of the New York jazz scene, where he has collaborated with artists such as Henry Threadgill, Ravi Coltrane, and Román Díaz, has been hailed

by Cuban piano legend Chucho Valdés as “the most advanced of our pianists,” and as “the new school of pianists from Cuba” by tastemaker Gilles Peterson. In 2018, Virelles released Igbó Alákọrin (The Singer’s Grove) to critical acclaim, a heartfelt tribute to the music of his birthplace, featuring a range of Cuban styles — danzón oriental, son, and trova. For this special concert at Duke Performances, Virelles will explore a program of danzones by some of the legendary composers of this 19th century genre (considered the island’s national dance), informed by a contemporary approach. Virelles’ band will be rounded out by timbal (a percussion instrument originally used in típicas), congas, güiro, and acoustic bass.

54

The rich music of the African diaspora introduces us to the journeys of dynamic, ingenious, and resilient people. Much of the world’s most original and influential music is the result of Africans preserving ancestral traditions in radically new conditions, places, and cultures. Duke Performances presents its third installment of Black Atlantic spotlighting gifted demonstrators of this experience hailing from Colombia, the Gambia, United Kingdom, Cuba, Trinidad, Kenya, Congo, and the United States.

USA WEDNESDAY, APRIL 8 | 8 PM MOTORCO MUSIC HALL Tickets: $25, $10 Duke Students General Admission, Limited Seating Experts trace the origin of the Mardi Gras Indian tradition to French and Spanish rule, when enslaved Africans gathered to let off steam while celebrating their heritage at Congo Square in New Orleans’ Tremé neighborhood. Processionals of the richly costumed Indian “tribes” are led by “spyboys,” or lookouts, along a parade route. Fittingly, the funked-up Mardi Gras Indian band, Cha Wa, named its 2018 GRAMMY-nominated album Spyboy in tribute to this essential custom. Praised by Offbeat Magazine as “spirited” and “freewheeling,” Cha Wa, led by vocalist J’Wan Boudreaux, combines second-line and brass band music into its own signature New Orleans sound. Taking its name from the Mardi Gras Indian rallying call, “here we come,” Cha Wa will enliven Durham with this Crescent City tradition.

55

TRINIDAD/USA THURSDAY, APRIL 9 | 8 PM MOTORCO MUSIC HALL Tickets: $25, $10 Duke Students General Admission Seating Trinidadian trumpeter and improviser Etienne Charles is a passionate advocate for combining Afro-Caribbean rhythms with the framework of jazz. Making the case for Creole music and jazz being “one and the same,” Charles delivers a medley of roots and groove on Creole Soul, an album that supports his recognition as “an auteur” by The New York Times. On this project Charles champions cultural fusion and celebrates his heritage in one masterpiece. Between the reggae-influenced drums, calypso, and modern bop, Creole Soul entices both jazz enthusiasts and critics alike with a modern jazz concept that cleverly communicates “mixed ancestry through musical admixture” (The Guardian).

BLACK 56

COLOMBIA

KENYA/CONGO

FRIDAY, APRIL 10 | 8 PM MOTORCO MUSIC HALL

SATURDAY, APRIL 11 | 8 PM MOTORCO MUSIC HALL

Tickets: $25, $10 Duke Students General Admission Seating

Tickets: $25, $10 Duke Students General Admission Seating

Born along the Orinoco River plains of eastern Colombia and western Venezuela is the region’s crown jewel: joropo. Energetic and infectious, joropo is “the Colombian answer to bluegrass,” comprised of tribal whistling, cuatro guitar, maracas, Peruvian-flamenco cajón, Brazilian surdo, Afro-Colombian tambora, and percussive stomp dancing” (Chicago Reader).

Best capturing the genre’s distinctive global fusion is Cimarrón, a collection of dancers, vocalists, and musicians founded in 1982. Cimarrón’s impressive ability to entrance contemporary audiences while retaining its roots is best demonstrated by its reclamation of the Gipsy Kings’ iconic cover, “Bamboleo.” Billboard calls the tribute to the Venezuelan country song — originally titled “Caballo Viejo” — a “raw and infectious acoustic version of this Pan-Latin classic.” Cimarrón’s blend of Andalusian, Indigenous American, and African roots has won the Colombian folk stars a GRAMMY nomination and an Independent Music Award for Best Latin Album — solidifying their position as leaders of modern joropo.

Few bands can claim the long-standing respect and relentless spirit that makes for Kenya's celebrated Orchestre Les Mangelepa. Originally from the Congo, the group has become one of East Africa's most treasured sources of dance fusion, merging Kenyan benga and traditional Congolese rumba inspired by the band’s expatriate background. The result? A vivacious yet harmonious blend of snare, heavy brass, and serenading vocals that categorizes the hallmark sound fans of Orchestre Les Mangelepa still cherish today. Now in its fifth decade, the group continues to move feet and uplift spirits in Kenya's capital, Nairobi, the band's official birthplace. Since forming in 1976, Orchestre Les Mangelepa has released thirteen albums, responsible for several of Kenya's most popular East African dance songs. Orchestre Les Mangelepa pulls from its extensive catalog for this rare stateside show at Motorco Music Hall.

57

THURSDAY, APRIL 16 | 8 PM CAROLINA THEATRE OF DURHAM Tickets: $50, $40, $25, $10 Duke Students Reserved Seating Virtuosic tabla master Zakir Hussain is a legendary percussionist.

Son of the lauded tabla player Alla Rakha, Hussain serves as an international ambassador for Hindustani classical music. For decades, his improvisational skill has found him playing alongside artists both from his home country of India as well as throughout the world, including Western collaborators George Harrison, Mickey Hart, Pharoah Sanders, and Van Morrison. In 1974, he co-founded Shakti with Mahavishnu Orchestra leader John McLaughlin and L. Shankar, releasing three extraordinary albums with the worldly jazz fusion group in as many years. For this special return engagement in Durham, Hussain brings his trio, including Jayanthi Kumaresh on veena and Kala Ramnath on Carnatic violin.

58

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 22 | 8 PM BALDWIN AUDITORIUM Tickets: $25 • $10 Duke Students Reserved Seating The Tallis Scholars are undoubtedly the elder statesmen among Renaissance sacred music choirs throughout the world. Founded in 1973, the ensemble’s name is synonymous with early music excellence, which is why The Washington Post calls its performances of the repertoire “authoritative.” Its impressive discography has garnered several major music awards, including Gramophone’s Recording of the Year and three Early Music awards from the same magazine.

Josquin and Gombert, punctuated by Arvo Pärt’s brief Da pacem.

PROGRAM Taverner: Leroy Kyrie Byrd: Laetentur caeli Byrd: Tribulationes civitatum Fawkyner: Gaude rosa sine spina Chant: Da pacem Josquin: Missa Da pacem (Agnus) Pärt: Da pacem Gombert: Media vita Gombert: Magnificat III

At the acoustically pristine Baldwin Auditorium, the Tallis Scholars celebrate English and Franco-Flemish music of the 16th century, with a particular devotion to the “rose without thorn,” the Virgin Mary. Music

by Taverner, Byrd, and Fawkyner forms the first half, after which the ensemble jumps to the continent with 59

60

EBENE FRIDAY, APRIL 24 | 8 PM (CONCERT NO. 4) SATURDAY, APRIL 25 | 8 PM (CONCERT NO. 5) SUNDAY, APRIL 26 | 7 PM (CONCERT NO. 6) BALDWIN AUDITORIUM

STickets: ATURDA Y , FE BRU AR Y 23 • 8 P M $42, $36, $10 Duke Students B A LDWI N A U D I T OR I U M Reserved Seating

In the$48 notes itsDuke firstStudents album (2006), Quatuor Ébène Tickets: • $42for • $10 declared that it was “[impatient] to scale some of Reserved Seating the peaks of the Beethoven quartets.” Its time for that ascent In celebration of Beethoven’s Steven Isserlis’has richarrived: and muscular sound, combined with 250th birthday — and its own twentieth interpretive passion and ofsensitivity, has made anniversary him one — the the world’s Ébène is embarking on anPianist ambitious project of of preeminent cellists. and conductor performing continent in 2019/20, Robert LevinBeethoven has held a on postevery at Harvard for more than along with recording a seven-disc boxmusicianship set of the twenty-five years, where a prize for outstanding complete quartets Erato Warner. bears his name.

As afor performer, he is particularly known

for hishearts imaginative musicians first played With full ofcadenzas. passionThe for two tradition, Quatuor Ébène Beethoven’s Sonatas together in 2004, beginning of has been Cello captivating audiences withthe great success, an inspiring collaboration. playing has spirit converting listeners into “Isserlis’ avid fans of thealways chamber music to spare.The But performances the fortepiano ensures even fresherthe sense of genre. are soanconvincing, stage discovery to his cello odyssey,” The Guardian raves.

presence so charismatic, that one cannot escape the spellbinding magic of these masterpieces.

This weekend of concerts completes the Beethoven cycle begun by the Belcea Quartet in March.

In Durham, Isserlis and Levin perform three of the five Beethoven sonatas and a set of variations. They begin with PROGRAM theConcert first of the No.five, 4 Sonata No. 1 in F Major, in which the fortepiano with18, theno. cello, Quartet isinequal B-flatpartners Major, op.

6 which itself from time to timeinflies into the Quartet A Minor, op.high 132registers. They continue with the last of the five, No. 5 in D Major — concise, concentrated, Concert No. 5 and rich. They then interject a much lighter moment, the Quartet in D Major, op. 18, no. 3 delightful set of variations Beethoven wrote on the birdcatcher Quartet in F Minor, op. 95 (“Serioso”) Papageno’s aria from Mozart’s The Magic Flute. The program Quartet in E Minor, op. 59, no. 2 concludes with the grand Third Sonata, op. 69 in A Major, a Concert No. 6for this duo of perfectly matched musicians. fitting conclusion Quartet in G Major, op. 18, no. 2

P ROGR QuartetAM in F Major, op. 135 Beethoven: Sonata No.op.

1 in131F Major, op. 5, no. 1 Quartet inCello C-sharp Minor, Beethoven: Cello Sonata No. 5 in D Major, op. 102, no. 2 Beethoven: 12 Variations on “Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen” from The Magic Flute, op. 66 Beethoven: Cello Sonata No. 3 in A Major, op. 69

61

62

FRIDAY, MAY 1 | 8 PM VON DER HEYDEN STUDIO THEATER RUBENSTEIN ARTS CENTER Tickets: $25, $10 Duke Students General Admission Seating Mary Halvorson is one of New York’s most in-demand guitarists. Though most often labeled a jazz player, collaborating with artists including Anthony Braxton, Jason Moran, and Marc Ribot, among many others, her style stretches and transcends more often than it resides within more familiar confines. “When all her influences click into place, the result is like little else,” says Pitchfork of her catalog; her most recent bandleading proves no exception to that rule. 2018’s Code Girl, Halvorson’s first project for which she has written both lyrics and music, presents an adroit sextet of artists capable of executing Halvorson’s rock-adjacent ideas. Halvorson is joined at Duke Performances by Amirtha Kidambi (vocals), María Grand (saxophone, vocals), Adam O’Farrill (trumpet), Michael Formanek (bass), and Tomas Fujiwara (drums).

TUESDAY, MAY 5 | 8 PM CAROLINA THEATRE OF DURHAM Tickets: $60, $45, $40, $10 Duke Students Reserved Seating Known for her unique synthesis of Latin American folk, jazz fusion, and South American rhythms, GRAMMY and Latin GRAMMY winner Lila Downs is an internationallyacclaimed singer and songwriter from Oaxaca, Mexico.

Downs' full body of work is saturated in a story deep in strength, resistance, and cultural pride. Her latest album, Al Chile, marks her ninth — a collection of cumbiainspired beats and Mexican percussion, her impressive three-octave vocal range peppering the vibrant, yet nostalgic tracks. The album is meant to "pay homage to the chile,” states Downs. “With a mezcal in hand, we dream of a place with a palm tree where one falls in love and reflects” (The Mercury News). Downs returns to Duke Performances for a lively Cinco de Mayo celebration at the Carolina Theatre of Durham.

63

SATURDAY, MAY 16 | 8 PM BALDWIN AUDITORIUM Tickets: $25, $10 Duke Students Reserved Seating Bold, brilliant, and outspoken, Igor Levit is the pianist of the moment. “Perhaps the most formidable virtuoso of the younger generation” (The New Yorker), Levit is assertive in speaking his mind musically and politically.

Winning the prestigious Gilmore Artist Award in 2018 magnified his profile, and his intimate album Life has reaped critical praise as a non-traditional program and meditation on grief.

Levit’s first album was a recording of Beethoven’s late sonatas, a move which Gramophone declared “a debut of true significance.” In his second Duke Performances recital, Levit offers four early and late Beethoven sonatas. The Sonatas No. 9, 10, and 11 display Beethoven’s mastery of classicism, but distinctly carry

64

his charged voice. The monumental “Hammerklavier” took nearly a year to compose, and gives the pianist the challenge to elucidate the thorny connections between disparate musical ideas — a task perfectly suited for Levit.

PROGRAM Beethoven: Piano Sonata No. 9 in E Major, op. 14, no. 1 Beethoven: Piano Sonata No. 10 in G Major, op. 14, no. 2 Beethoven: Piano Sonata No. 11 in B-flat Major, op. 22 Beethoven: Piano Sonata No. 29 in B-flat Major, op.

106 (“Hammerklavier”)

FEATURING THE LARK QUARTET & LAURA SEWELL, CELLO OF THE CLOTH SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 24 | 4 PM BALDWIN AUDITORIUM Tickets: $25, $10 All Students General Admission Seating In its first of two concerts on Duke Performances’ season, the Ciompi Quartet presents a collaboration with the celebrated Lark Quartet. Following cellist Caroline Stinson’s departure from the Lark to join the Ciompi in 2018, the Lark Quartet announced that 2019 would be its final season; over 34 years, the all-female Lark was particularly esteemed for commissioning over thirty works by some of the greatest American composers.

The concert opens with Danish composer Niels Gade’s Octet, an exemplar of classical-romantic style inspired by Mendelssohn. The 2006 quartet “Of Light and Shadows”

by Füsun Köksal, a young Turkish composer, follows, a brief foray into her otherworldly soundscapes. The concert closes with the combined octet (including the Lark's founding cellist Laura Sewell) performing Durhambased Andrew Waggoner’s “Ce morceau de tissue,” commissioned by the Lark in 2016 — a work inspired by the writings of Moroccan feminist Fatema Mernissi.

PROGRAM Niels Gade: Octet in F Major, op. 17 Füsun Köksal: String Quartet, “Of Light and Shadows” Andrew Waggoner: “Ce morceau de tissu” for Two String Quartets Additional 2019/20 Ciompi Quartet concerts presented by the Duke Department of Music: TRIOS MODERNES Saturday, October 12 | 8 PM Nelson Music Room Tickets: $10, Students Free General Admission Seating Program: Debussy, Tōru Takemitsu, Stravinsky

FEATURING MOLLY MORKOSKI, PIANO SONGS, GAMES & MESSAGES SUNDAY, APRIL 5 | 4 PM BALDWIN AUDITORIUM Tickets: $25, $10 All Students General Admission Seating Molly Morkoski, a frequent collaborator with Ciompi Quartet cellist Caroline Stinson, joins the Ciompi for a program of new and old music. An arrangement of John Dowland songs for Piano Quintet by Durham-based composer Andrew Waggoner opens the program, presenting a fresh take on vocal works by the beloved Elizabethan composer. Morkoski, whom the Boston Globe calls “outstanding,” joins for another quintet, Weinberg’s opus 18; Weinberg, a Polish war refugee who established his career in Soviet Russia, looks backward to paragons of genre and form in this complex work.

These two quintets bookend Kurtág’s Hommage à Mihály András, a sort-of “micro-well-tempered clavier” according to the composer; and the world premiere of a new string quartet by Duke professor of composition John Supko.

PROGRAM John Dowland: “Suite of Songs” (arranged for Piano Quintet by Andrew Waggoner) Kurtág: 12 Microludes for String Quartet, Op. 13 John Supko: Continual Park (No. 17), World Premiere Mieczyslaw Weinberg: Piano Quintet in F Minor, Op. 18

MYTH-MAKERS FEATURING RACHEL YONAN, VIOLA & ALEX EZERMAN, CELLO Sunday, February 16 | 4 PM Baldwin Auditorium Tickets: $25, Students Free General Admission Seating Program: Strauss, Shulamit Ran, Fauré 65

147

DUKE EAST 4 CAMPUS

DUKE WEST CAMPUS 2 1

3

5

DUKE CENTRAL CAMPUS

6 7 8

DOWNTOWN DURHAM 10

9

147

1.

DUKE CHAPEL

5. NELSON MUSIC ROOM

9. DURHAM PERFORMING ARTS CENTER

401 CHAPEL DRIVE

(DPAC)

123 VIVIAN STREET

1304 CAMPUS DRIVE

2. REYNOLDS INDUSTRIES THEATER

6. MOTORCO MUSIC HALL

723 RIGSBEE AVENUE

125 SCIENCE DRIVE

3. RUBENSTEIN ARTS CENTER

7.

CAROLINA THEATRE OF DURHAM

VON DER HEYDEN STUDIO THEATER

309 WEST MORGAN STREET

2020 CAMPUS DRIVE

4. BALDWIN AUDITORIUM

1336 CAMPUS DRIVE

66

8. THE PINHOOK

117 WEST MAIN STREET

10. THE FRUIT

305 SOUTH DILLARD STREET

FOR TICKETS, FULL PROGRAM DETAILS & OTHER IMPORTANT INFORMATION VISIT DUKEPERFORMANCES.ORG

T I C KETS SUBSCRIPTIONS ON SALE TUESDAY, JUNE 11 | 11 AM Chamber Arts Series Beethoven Cycle Piano Recital Series Vocal Ensemble Series Ciompi Quartet Music Maker 25 Black Atlantic SINGLE TICKETS ON SALE TUESDAY, JUNE 18 | 11 AM DUKE STUDENT TICKETS ON SALE TUESDAY, AUGUST 27 | 11 AM

By Phone Call the Duke University Box Office between Monday and Friday, 11 AM to 6 PM, 919-684-4444. Credit card orders only.

Online Log on to Duke Performances’ web site any time at dukeperformances.org In Person Visit the University Box Office on the top level of the Bryan Center on Duke University’s West Campus between Monday and Friday, 11 AM to 6 PM. Box office will open at performance venues one hour prior to the start of each show.

TICKETING DETAILS FOR DUKE PERFORMANCES SHOWS AT THE CAROLINA THEATRE OF DURHAM & DPAC Mavis Staples Thursday, October 3 | Carolina Theatre of Durham Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo (The Trocks) Saturday, February 22 | Carolina Theatre of Durham American Ballet Theatre Giselle Thursday, March 26 thru Sunday, March 29 | DPAC Zakir Hussain Thursday, April 16 | Carolina Theatre of Durham Lila Downs Tuesday, May 5 | Carolina Theatre of Durham

Lost Tickets If you lose your tickets and need replacements, please call the University Box Office at 919-684-4444.

Performance Changes & Performance Cancellation Programs are subject to change without notice for reasons outside the control of Duke Performances. If a performance is canceled, you will be notified via email as early as possible and offered either an exchange or a refund.

If You Are Unable To Attend If you are unable to attend a program for which you hold tickets, you may donate those tickets in person or via phone at 919-684-4444 to the University Box Office for a tax credit.

Website & Email Updates Visit dukeperformances.org for updates on all events. We also encourage you to join Duke Performances’ email list which can be accessed through our website. We will use this list to inform you of any changes to the series.

Accessibility If you anticipate needing any type of special accommodation or have questions about physical access please contact the University Box Office at 919-684-4444 in advance of the performance.

Refunds Tickets are nonrefundable except in the case of canceled events.

G I VE TO DUK E PE R F OR M A N C E S We need your support to showcase world-class performance, make our offerings accessible, and facilitate engagement with artists, campus, and community. We offer more than 80 performances and 100 residency events year-round and pride ourselves on providing context for the art we offer through public events both on Duke’s campus and throughout Durham. With your support, we can continue to make our work deeper, richer, and more meaningful.

Visit supportdukeperformances.org to make your fully tax-deductible contribution to Duke Performances. If you have any questions about how to further support Duke Performances, please contact Maggie Brandt at maggie.brandt@duke.edu or 919-660-3314.

DUK E PE R F OR M A N C E S STA F F Maggie Brandt / Development 919-660-3314 / maggie.brandt@duke.edu

Carolina Theatre: 309 W. Morgan Street 919-560-3030, carolinatheatre.org

Suzanne Despres / Production Manager 919-660-3379 / suzanne.despres@duke.edu

DPAC: 123 Vivian Street, dpacnc.com, 919-680-2787

Michaela Dwyer / Community Engagement Coordinator 919-660-3374 / michaela.dwyer@duke.edu

Ticketmaster service charges will be applied to shows at The Carolina Theatre & DPAC. Duke students may purchase $10 student tickets to Carolina Theatre & DPAC shows through the Duke University Box Office in the Bryan Center.

I M P ORTANT I N F OR MATION Directions & Parking For full driving directions and parking information, please visit dukeperformances.org and click on the button marked VENUES. Late Seating Policy Please allow enough time to park, claim your tickets, and get seated before the start-time of performances.

Latecomers will be seated at the discretion of the house manager and Duke Performances staff.

Gloria Hunt / Business Manager 919-660-3356 / gloria.hunt@duke.edu Joel Peter Johnson / Art Director 919-660-3371 / joel.johnson@duke.edu King Kenney / Marketing Director 919-660-3348 / king.kenney@duke.edu Eric Oberstein / Interim Director 919-660-3359 / eric.oberstein@duke.edu Brian Valentyn / Manager of Campus & Community Initiatives 919-660-3175 / brian.valentyn@duke.edu

67

68

D U K E P E R F O R M A N C E S .O R G

SUBSCRIPTIONS ON SALE TUESDAY, JUNE 11 SINGLE TICKETS ON SALE TUESDAY, JUNE 18 DUKE STUDENT TICKETS ON SALE TUESDAY, AUGUST 27

DUKE PERFORMANCES DUKE UNIVERSITY BOX 90757 DURHAM, NC 27708

Nonprofit Org. U. S. Postage PAID Durham, NC Permit No. 60