Duke Performances 2017/18 Season Brochure

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DIRECTOR'S NOTE F O R T H E 2017/18 S E A S O N We live in anxious, uncertain times. Across our globe, in our country, our state, and even our city of Durham, there seem to be newly monumental consequences of our decisions, many of which feel beyond our control. Good art should offer sturdy tools for these unsteadying times — whether to grapple with our troublesome circumstances or to find space for reflection amidst the tumult.

For the 2017/18 season at Duke Performances, we have made a deliberate effort to program works that offer moments of provocation and instances of respite alike. You will find that contrast in our classical programming, epitomized by the Tallis Scholars’ topical War and Peace and a fiftieth-anniversary King’s Singers concert that includes selections from the ensemble’s wide-ranging repertoire, from renaissance polyphony to arrangements of contemporary spirituals. You will hear it in the gap between Bill Callahan’s assuring oaken baritone and the rapid-fire rhymes and intricate flow of Pharoahe Monch. These are chances to check in or check out, to make your own way through this world.

To offer a season of programming as responsive as this one, we had some help. This is my tenth season at the helm of Duke Performances — a benchmark that prompted the University to make an additional investment in our program. This has allowed for ambitious presentations, from the film-and-symphony rendering of Beasts of the Southern Wild that begins our season to the collaboration between illustrator Maira Kalman and the company Dance Heginbotham that anchors the season’s second half. It has enabled us to pursue major commissions and world premieres, including Simone Dinnerstein and Pam Tanowitz’s new dance setting of Bach's “Goldberg Variations,” which will have its world premiere in October at Reynolds Industries Theater.

The University’s support has also enabled us to build two audacious multipart projects this year, both designed to start and shape conversations about our cultural past, present, and future. First, there’s MONK@100, a two-week dive into the work of a North Carolina native and one of modern music’s true geniuses, Thelonious Monk. Then, in the spring, Black Atlantic explores connections between the west coast of Africa, the east coast of the Americas, and the cultures of the Caribbean, and the way those links have collectively shaped our society.

Within both series, as with this entire season, I trust you will find moments that both stir and soothe — necessary means for dealing with the world we all share.

AARON GREENWALD EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF DUKE PERFORMANCES

C O V E R I M A G E : A L S A R A H & T H E N U B AT O N E S , A P P E A R I N G T H U R S D AY, M A R C H 1 , 2 0 1 8 . P H O T O B Y N O U S H A S A L I M I .

THE LOST BAYOU RAMBLERS

OPENER: SHAMU GARÇON “A REVVED-UP VERSION OF CAJUN MUSIC, SHOT THROUGH WITH PUNK ENERGY AND PSYCHEDELIC FUZZ.” — NPR

TH U R S D AY, S E PTE M B E R 7 • 8 PM TH E PI NH O O K Tickets: $14 General Admission • $10 Duke Students

The Lost Bayou Ramblers begin Duke Performances’ 2017/18 season with an exclamation mark. Before joining the North Carolina Symphony to perform the score for Beasts of the Southern Wild, the Ramblers — a Cajun family band with influences that include garage rock and punk — will rattle the walls of the downtown Durham rock club the Pinhook. Singer Louis Michot “possesses one of the great keening voices of Cajun music,” according to The New York Times, and thanks in part to him the Ramblers have netted a GRAMMY nomination, tour dates with Arcade Fire, and a significant role in Beasts of the Southern Wild. The band shares the stage at the Pinhook with local collective Shamu Garçon, whose spirited mix of Cajun and country tunes offers the night’s ideal preamble.

BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD WORDLESS MUSIC, THE NORTH CAROLINA

WITH

SYMPHONY & THE LOST BAYOU RAMBLERS F R ID AY, S E P TE MB E R 8 • 8 P M & SAT UR DA Y, SE P TE MB E R 9 • 8 P M R E YN O L DS INDUSTRI E S T HE A T E R Tickets: $38 • $32 • $20 Ages 30 & Under • $10 Duke Students

Beasts of the Southern Wild — unequal parts fairy tale and adventure drama — is a Cinderella story of the film world. After unexpectedly winning major awards at both Cannes and Sundance, it picked up four Oscar nominations. Set in a remote southern Louisiana community called the Bathtub, the film follows the indomitable Hushpuppy and her father, Wink, as they contend with apocalyptic storms, rising sea levels, and prehistoric beasts set free by thawing glaciers. “This movie is a blast of sheer, improbable joy, a boisterous, thrilling action movie,” exclaimed A.O. Scott in The New York Times.

From traditional Louisiana rave-ups to glistening neoclassical miniatures, the score — written by Dan Romer and director Benh

Zeitlin and called the movie’s “unsung hero” by The Hollywood Reporter — played a central role in the film’s success, adding to its emotional heft and underlining its mesmerizing cinematography. For the past five years, the audacious New York company Wordless Music has undertaken the enormous project of producing screenings with the country’s top orchestras, giving film scores the spotlight they deserve.

Beasts of the Southern Wild with live orchestra has played Brooklyn’s Prospect Park and Manhattan’s Symphony Space, New Orleans’ historic Saenger Theatre and London’s Barbican. In Durham, twenty-five musicians from the North Carolina Symphony play the score two nights in a row alongside a screening of the film in a very special presentation launching Duke Performances’ 2017/18 season. Louisiana’s Lost Bayou Ramblers, the contemporary Cajun band that lent its talents to the movie, joins the symphony for this major undertaking, bringing the excitement of live performance to a film made of pure imagination.

VICENTE AMIGO “TECHNICALLY STUNNING AND EMOTIONALLY FREEFLOWING, AMIGO IS A QUICK-WITTED IMPROVISER AND A VISIONARY.” — SEATTLE TIMES SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 24 • 7 PM PAGE AUDITORIUM

Tickets: $45 • $35 • $30 $20 Ages 30 & Under • $10 Duke Students

Modern flamenco master Vicente Amigo began playing guitar as a young child after he saw Paco de Lucía — the dashing flamenco legend who rose to fame in the 1970s — performing on television. Two decades later, at the Universal Exposition of Seville, Amigo shared the stage with de Lucía, who became a lifelong friend, confidant, and collaborator. Before his death in 2014, de Lucía effectively passed the flamenco mantle to Amigo.

Over his three-decade career, Amigo has received a long list of accolades including a Latin GRAMMY for Best Flamenco Album, First Prize at the International Flamenco Guitar Competition, and the Gold Medal of the Merit in Fine Arts from Spain’s Ministry of Culture. Amigo’s dazzling style combines the soleá rhythm of puro flamenco with elements of bulería, bolero, rumba, tango, and alegría. An exceptional bandleader, Amigo will bring his expert quintet, along with a singer and a flamenco dancer, to Durham for this rare U.S. engagement. No less an authority than Pat Metheny called Amigo: “the greatest guitarist alive.”

CHAMBER ARTS SERIES

AMERICAN BRASS QUINTET SAT UR D A Y, SE P TE MB E R 30 • 8 P M BAL D W IN A UDI TORIUM Tickets: $42 • $36 • $20 Ages 30 & Under • $10 Duke Students

Famously dubbed “the high priests of brass” by Newsweek, the American Brass Quintet has built a world of its own over the last sixty years, sculpting new repertoire and setting the artistic standards for the modern classical brass ensemble. With the bright highs of two trumpets and the undergirding low of a bass trombone, the American Brass Quintet has expanded the reputation and catalogue of classical brass through both contemporary commissions and arrangements of canonical works not intended for horns. They’ve made it their mission to treat both past and present with equal zeal.

N E W P L AY W O R K S H O P R E A D I N G

THE CIVILIANS + ETHAN LIPTON SCHOOL PROJECT WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 4 • 8 PM MO T O R C O MUSI C HA L L

Tickets: $10 General Admission

The Quintet begins with a suite of renaissance music. The musicians mourn with John Dowland’s exquisite lute piece Lachrimae Antiquae; they reimagine the intricate canzonettas and madrigals of Thomas Morley, and they cavort through William Brade’s delightful Canzon. The night then turns toward the new with Joan Tower’s pulsing Copperwave, premiered for the hundredth anniversary of the Juilliard School, where the quintet has been in residence for three decades. They move next to Kenneth Fuchs’ second brass quintet, 2016’s “American,” which sometimes feels like a wonderfully warped fanfare. The night ends with Eric Ewazen’s bubbly Colchester Fantasy, whose intoxicating movements are named for the high times and engaging characters of English pubs in what is believed to be the oldest town in Britain.

PROGRAM Thomas Morley: Arise, Awake and I Go Before, My Darling John Dowland: Lachrimae Antiquae William Brade: Canzon Joan Tower: Copperwave Kenneth Fuchs: Brass Quintet No. 2 (“American”) Eric Ewazen: Colchester Fantasy

The Civilians, Duke Performances Artists-in-Residence and practitioners of investigative theater, approach their work as researchers of the national consciousness. They construct their kaleidoscopic shows from hundreds of conversations about life’s most vital questions with ordinary people and experts alike. This season Duke Performances hosts Obie-winning writer Ethan Lipton (The Outer Space) and Civilians artistic director Steve Cosson as they develop a new play, School Project. An examination of the debate over school choice and the validity of the charter school movement, School Project is based on interviews with North Carolina students and parents, lawmakers and lobbyists, advocates and analysts. The Civilians give a workshop reading, offering deep insight into one of the country’s most pressing political issues.

ESSENTIAL CLASSICS SPECIAL PROGRAM

WORLD PREMIERE

NEW WORK FOR GOLDBERG VARIATIONS

PAM TANOWITZ DANCE & SIMONE DINNERSTEIN, PIANO 2017 | 2018

Jerome Robbins’ own 1971 setting remained a firm touchstone.

Dinnerstein, who performed the Robbins setting with the Paris Opera Ballet in 2016, persisted. After all, as a choreographer, Tanowitz had long challenged and reworked classic dance forms and ballet motifs, playfully manipulating the past with wit and a touch of whimsy. Why not do the same with the “Goldberg”?

F R ID AY, OCTOB E R 6 • 8 P M SAT URD AY, OCTOB ER 7 • 8 P M R E YN O L DS INDUSTRI E S T HE A T E R

Tickets: $38 • $32 • $20 Ages 30 & Under • $10 Duke Students

When pianist Simone Dinnerstein and choreographer Pam Tanowitz began discussing an evening-length dance collaboration in 2015, they faced an obvious question: what would they perform? Bach was a clear choice for Dinnerstein, who became a sudden classical star in 2007 with her self-financed interpretation of “Goldberg” Variations. The New Yorker hailed Dinnerstein’s “unapologetically romantic way with Bach,” while Slate praised “the dreamlike fugue state that Dinnerstein induces,” calling her recording of the work “an extended fairy tale, a farflung journey recounted by firelight, a lullaby.”

Tanowitz’s extensive résumé, however, hinged largely on contemporary scores, so she hesitated to pursue Bach, especially since

Duke Performances — a longtime supporter of Dinnerstein and the lead commissioner for this project — presents the two-night world premiere of New Work for Goldberg Variations, an audacious setting for piano and seven dancers. Following a weeklong production residency at Duke, New Work for Goldberg Variations features Dinnerstein performing the Bach at center stage, with the ensemble dancing around the piano. It is a bold new piece.

“I desire to create something that will be inherently dangerous for both of us as artists,” says Tanowitz of the work, “in which everything we reveal to each other is woven into the fabric of her playing and my choreography.”

2017 | 2018

BILL CALLAHAN

OPENERS: NATHAN BOWLES + JAKE XERXES FUSSELL “DEATH KEPT YIELDING TO RENEWAL, WITH THE INEXORABLE MAGIC OF A THAW, IN THE SONGS THAT FILLED OUT BILL CALLAHAN’S SHOW.” — THE NEW YORK TIMES

S ATU R D AY, O C TO B E R 1 4 • 8 PM B AL D W I N AU D I TO R I U M

Tickets: $38 • $32 • $10 Duke Students

Bill Callahan took his time becoming one of American music’s most distinctive songwriters and most readily identifiable singers. During the early exploratory days of indie rock, under the name Smog, Callahan was a lo-fi acolyte, using cheap gear and simply structured songs to conjure a sort of musical impressionism. Over the next quarter century, though, he slowly sharpened his approach, honing his incisive observations and refining his oaken baritone voice. Since 2005’s stylistic breakthrough, A River Ain’t Too Much to Love — an unflinching ode to perseverance in a world of high anxiety and expectation — he has made a string of the most imaginative singer-songwriter albums of the century. He is, as The Guardian has proclaimed, “the natural heir to Leonard Cohen.”

Onstage, Callahan is the very image of intensity, his eyes locked on the audience and his chest square to the microphone. With his holler-deep tone, he mines the grooves of his words for new meaning, unearthing every layer of nuance buried in his emotional mysticism. In his first visit to the Triangle in nearly five years, Callahan steps out of his usual rock club setting and into the warm acoustics of Baldwin Auditorium. This is a rare solo appearance for Callahan, making it a special night with his songs and the singular way he sings them. By his special request, Nathan Bowles and Jake Xerxes Fussell — two recent Durham transplants who update historic southern folk music for modern times on outstanding recordings of their own — open with a special duo set.

M O N K @100

MONK@100 A CENTURY OF GENIUS

A COMPREHENSIVE CELEBRATION OF AN AMERICAN ICON.

M O N K @100

Like many avatars of American art, Thelonious Monk displayed esoteric and abstract qualities while simultaneously drawing on the most traditional and crowd-pleasing craft. His blend of avant-garde style and danceable swing connects to people from all backgrounds and interests. The 60 Monk tunes are all essentially in current circulation, something that cannot be said of any other jazz composer.

The JD Allen Trio, which includes Gregg August and Rudy Royston, offers a deep blues ethos and Monklike concision.

Three major voices will guest: Bill Frisell has done the most to put Monk on the guitar, Geri Allen is in the crucial lineage of swinging and surreal pianists, and Dave Douglas utilizes Monk-concepts for his own composition but can also find a casual vein of Monkish irony when needed.

The modernist side of Monk has traditionally been of interest to duos. Jason Moran, who was featured at the Duke Performances celebration of Monk a decade ago and created the project IN MY MIND under the auspices of Duke Performances, partners with the vital conceptualist and swinging drummer Tyshawn Sorey. Gerald Clayton, who created the well-received “Piedmont Blues” last year for Duke Performances, joins his brilliant associate Ben Wendel. All these musicians can seemingly play anything, so it will be interesting to hear how they approach Monk.

To make sure we play each one of Monk’s compositions at least once, five pianists will take turns essaying the complete songbook: Chris Pattishall, Frank Kimbrough, Jeb Patton, Orrin Evans, and myself. Pattishall, Kimbrough, and Patton are serious professionals with connections to Durham. Orrin Evans and I represent the future and the past of The Bad Plus, another group with connections to both Monk and Duke Performances.

Monk dropped out of high school to tour with an evangelist and eventually recorded a couple of spirituals. We are thrilled to host the stunning gospel trio the Como Mamas as part of our Monk celebration, to remind us of not just Monk’s roots, but also of the stunning tapestry of southern music that still exists today.

Monk would eventually settle on the tenor quartet as his preferred format, with a list of saxophonists that included some of the best: John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, Johnny Griffin, Charlie Rouse, and, at the end of his career, Paul Jeffrey, who would go on to be so important for jazz studies at Duke University.

To accompany a murderer’s row of modern tenor giants — Melissa Aldana, Ravi Coltrane, Houston Person, Chris Potter, and Joshua Redman — we are bringing down a classic New York rhythm section, David Williams and Victor Lewis, two veterans who have played with just about every significant jazz musician of the last forty years. Between the song list and the players, this is a foolproof set of gigs to celebrate the living repertoire of Thelonious Sphere Monk.

— Ethan Iverson Pianist, writer & co-curator of MONK@100

JD ALLEN TRIO & GUESTS For a decade now, tenor saxophonist JD Allen has anchored his eponymous trio, supported by drummer Rudy Royston and bassist Gregg August. Allen’s ragged, searching tone is redolent of jazz’s blues heritage, and his playing reflects his pedigree as a grandson of the Delta, a son of Detroit, and a leader of modern jazz. The New York Times praised Allen’s “fearless approach to a formidable tradition.” At Duke Performances, Allen, Royston, August, and their guests will test and stretch Monk’s music in two sets each night, fearlessly facing one of the most formidable catalogues in jazz.

JD ALLEN TRIO & BILL FRISELL

JD ALLEN TRIO & DAVE DOUGLAS

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 17 TWO SETS: 7 PM & 9 PM DURHAM FRUIT & PRODUCE

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 18 TWO SETS: 7 PM & 9 PM DURHAM FRUIT & PRODUCE

Tickets: $25 General Admission $10 Duke Students

Tickets: $25 General Admission $10 Duke Students

The guitarist Bill Frisell has earned great acclaim, especially during the last decade, for highly conceptual projects, many of which he has presented at Duke Performances. Frisell has been grappling with the legacy and lessons of Thelonious Monk for his entire career, pursuing Monk’s unwavering mix of devotion to melody and his obsession with bending it. From Frisell’s stunning collaborations with Monk associates Paul Motian and Ron Carter (including 1989’s devotional Monk in Motian) to his playful take on “Blue Monk” with pianist Fred Hersch, he is one of music’s very best Monk interpreters.

The trumpeter Dave Douglas didn’t always “get” Thelonious Monk. The melodies seemed too simple, less flashy than the licks one could learn from Coltrane.

But eventually Douglas — a label owner, popular jazz podcast host, and John Zorn collaborator — learned just how much lived beneath the surface of Monk’s music. He took on several Monk tunes as part of the SFJAZZ Collective’s tribute to the composer and wrote a delightful number based on an eight-year-old’s effort to play “Blue Monk.” Monk’s catalogue is as wide-open as the music Douglas makes. “Everything is represented in there,” he says. “The more I play them, the more I learn.”

JD ALLEN TRIO & GERI ALLEN THURSDAY, OCTOBER 19 • TWO SETS: 7 PM & 9 PM DURHAM FRUIT & PRODUCE Tickets: $25 General Admission • $10 Duke Students

The pianist Geri Allen is one of the most celebrated jazz musicians of her generation. A Guggenheim Fellow and University of Pittsburgh Director of Jazz Studies, she has worked with a Who’s Who of players and arrangers, from Ornette Coleman and Charlie Haden to Laurie Anderson and Betty Carter. She has wrestled with Monk’s music throughout her career, examining his impossible sense of time in her splendid interpretations of “’Round Midnight,” for instance, and directing the Mary Lou Williams Collective, an ensemble devoted to the music of the late undersung composer, Monk confidant, and Duke professor. Allen is particularly well suited to take on the Monk canon.

M O N K @100

MONK SONGBOOK WITH CHRIS

TYSHAWN SOREY & JASON MORAN FRIDAY, OCTOBER 20 TWO SETS: 7 PM & 9 PM DURHAM FRUIT & PRODUCE Tickets: $25 General Admission • $10 Duke Students

In this dream collaboration, two of American music’s brightest and most adventurous modern minds, Tyshawn Sorey and Jason Moran, pay tribute to their musical and intellectual predecessor, Thelonious Monk. A MacArthur Fellow lauded by the Los Angeles Times for his “relentless thirst for experimentation,” Moran is best known in these parts for a reimagining of Monk’s 1959 Town Hall concert commissioned by Duke Performances. Sorey is a powerhouse drummer, digging into jazz and funk grooves with great authority. Few pairs of musicians are as capable of pulling Monk’s legacy into this century, in spirit and in sound.

PATTISHALL, FRANK KIMBROUGH JEB PATTON, ETHAN IVERSON & ORRIN EVANS

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 21 • 1 PM SUNDAY, OCTOBER 22 • 1 PM DURHAM FRUIT & PRODUCE No tickets required. Free and open to the public.

Thelonious Monk contributed countless standards to the jazz canon. In a remarkable exposition of Monk's enduring genius, five top pianists will take turns playing sixty-one of Monk’s compositions during free afternoon marathons. The players include jazz authority and MONK@100 co-curator Ethan Iverson; Duke alum Jeb Patton, who worked with Monk collaborator Paul Jeffrey in the Duke Jazz Ensemble; Durham-raised pianist Chris Pattishall, named one of the top five jazz musicians under thirty

by Wynton Marsalis; adventurous dynamo Orrin Evans, a Pew fellow and student of the great Kenny Barron; and Roxboro native Frank Kimbrough, a composer, Juilliard professor, and member of the Maria Schneider Orchestra.

BEN WENDEL & GERALD CLAYTON

THE COMO MAMAS

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 21 TWO SETS: 7 PM & 9 PM DURHAM FRUIT & PRODUCE

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 22 • 7 PM DURHAM FRUIT & PRODUCE

Tickets: $25 General Admission • $10 Duke Students

Pianist Gerald Clayton and saxophonist Ben Wendel are bandmates and compelling musical collaborators. The two share a sumptuous approach to jazz, where sophisticated chords and shifting rhythms are delivered with charm and enthusiasm. Clayton began playing with his family band, the Clayton Brothers, as a child, studied with Kenny Barron, and is a multiple GRAMMY nominee. He was last seen at Duke Performances in Piedmont Blues. Wendel plays with the fusion outfit Kneebody and has performed with Snoop Dogg and Prince. His playing has a radiant lyricism that finds delight in every melodic contour, making him the perfect partner for this project.

Tickets: $25 General Admission • $10 Duke Students

Remarkably little is known about the years Thelonious Monk spent on the road as a teenager, playing organ behind an evangelist and faith healer possibly called the Texas Warhorse. The influence of gospel on Monk’s music — big, strong chords above and a warm, assured spirit coursing below — is evident in everything he wrote. Few contemporary groups tap the same vein as the Como Mamas, a trio of singers from the tiny Mississippi town of Como. On their breakthrough, Get an Understanding, Della Daniels, Ester Mae Smith, and Angela Taylor belted out unaccompanied spirituals with a grit and power that would astonish even the staunchest agnostic. In Durham, too, the trio sings without accompaniment, on a program that considers the thrilling source material of Monk’s distinctive music.

M O N K @100

ETHAN IVERSON TRIO Though Ethan Iverson is best known for his groundbreaking crossover work with the Bad Plus, that trio’s remarkable catalogue only marks the second phase of a sterling quarter-century career. Iverson emerged as a major new player in the early 1990s, when he became an essential piece of a rising underground New York jazz scene. Around the same time he became the music director of the Mark Morris Dance Group, foreshadowing the ambitious routine he has maintained to this day. Iverson is a tireless bandleader, composer, arranger, and collaborator, and one of the best-respected jazz critics in the world. When asked in interviews who his greatest influence was, Iverson always says, “Thelonious Monk.”

In Durham, Iverson leads what he calls “a classic swinging New York rhythm section” custom-made for MONK@100 and the sequence of esteemed saxophonists the group will welcome over four days. Drummer Victor Lewis was a key element of the top-shelf Woody Shaw group for many years, and bassist David Williams was the lynchpin for an awe-inspiring trio with Cedar Walton and Billy Higgins for three decades. (Shaw and Walton programmed Monk frequently in their sets, and Walton once subbed for Monk at the Five Spot.) This trio is perfectly suited for the tremendous task of revivifying Monk’s music. Between the two of them, Lewis and Williams have worked with almost every significant modern jazz player, from Dexter Gordon and Freddie Hubbard to Elvin Jones and Kenny Barron, not to mention such brilliant musicians as Carla Bley, Anthony Braxton, and Roberta Flack.

ETHAN IVERSON TRIO ETHAN IVERSON TRIO ETHAN IVERSON TRIO ETHAN IVERSON TRIO & MELISSA ALDANA WITH CHRIS POTTER & JOSHUA REDMAN & RAVI COLTRANE & HOUSTON PERSON MONDAY, OCTOBER 23 TWO SETS: 7 PM & 9 PM DURHAM FRUIT & PRODUCE Tickets: $25 General Admission $10 Duke Students

Though she’s not yet reached her thirtieth birthday, Melissa Aldana has already broken several jazz boundaries.

In 2013, Aldana became the first female instrumentalist and first South American to win the prestigious Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition. Born in Chile but based in New York after a stint at the Berklee College of Music, Aldana has become one of the most promising new voices in jazz, with her deliberate tone and laid-back approach earning her acclaim as the leader of Crash Trio. Praised by The New York Times for her “limpid sound, expressive command, and persuasive self-possession” and by Lucid Culture for her “fearsome chops,” Aldana is jazz’s most intriguing rising star.

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 24 TWO SETS: 7 PM & 9 PM DURHAM FRUIT & PRODUCE Tickets: $25 General Admission $10 Duke Students

Nearly four decades separate the exuberant Chris Potter and the sage Houston Person, but in Durham they share the same supporting trio. This double bill of saxophonists from South Carolina stretches across generations and styles. Potter, who moved to New York at the age of eighteen, has been praised by The New Yorker for “employing his considerable technique in the service of the music rather than spectacle.” Person left South Carolina as a young saxophonist in the 1940s, joined the Air Force, and was shipped out to Germany, where he joined a jazz band. A soulful giant with a round, gentle tone, he has released some seventy-five albums. None other than critic Nat Hentoff declared his recordings a desert-island necessity.

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 25 TWO SETS: 7 PM & 9 PM DURHAM FRUIT & PRODUCE

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 26 TWO SETS: 7 PM & 9 PM DURHAM FRUIT & PRODUCE

Tickets: $25 General Admission $10 Duke Students

Tickets: $25 General Admission $10 Duke Students

“Is Joshua Redman a new archetype?” The New York Times asked more than two decades ago, when the saxophonist, who had just moved to the city, was just twenty-five. The Times was right: since he abandoned Yale Law School to become a musician, Redman — the son of saxophone titan Dewey Redman and dancer Renee Shedroff — has become the new standard-bearer for jazz. His bright, bold tone and innate sense of momentum have made his music instantly accessible, an open invitation for audiences who thought jazz had left them behind.

Redman has worked to foster a new breed of jazz giants, doing riveting work with Brad Mehldau and collaborating with the Bad Plus.

Saxophonist Ravi Coltrane was born into jazz royalty, the son of musicians John (who died before Ravi was two) and Alice. But his surname has served less as a free pass and more as an impetus to sharpen and stretch his athletic approach to the same instrument his father revolutionized. He has also, much like his mother, explored outsider styles and influences. Since initially shying away from a career in music, Coltrane has become an emissary for jazz, not only through his own writing and recording but also through high-profile collaborations, including one that commemorated the seventieth anniversary of the label he and his father shared, Blue Note Records.

CHAMBER ARTS SERIES

QUATUOR MOSAÏQUES “IDEALLY BALANCED, THE GROUP COMMANDS ATTENTION BY SPIKING POISE WITH BURSTS OF PASSION." — THE NEW YORK TIMES

In Durham, Quatuor Mosaïques presents a centuries-old conversation between two string quartet pioneers. The ensemble begins with two quartets from Mozart, the vivacious and continuously popular “Hunt,” K. 458, and the swooping String Quartet No. 15 in D Minor, K. 421. Both quartets come from a set of four works Mozart dedicated to Haydn, whose own impeccable series of six string quartets, op. 20, a decade earlier established bold new ideas and conventions for the form. The Mosaïques plays the second of those compositions, expertly navigating its many twists and turns.

Please note that this concert begins at 3 PM. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 21 • 3 PM BALDWIN AUDITORIUM

PROGRAM Mozart: String Quartet No. 17 in B-flat Major, K. 458 (“Hunt”)

Tickets: $48 • $42 • $20 Ages 30 & Under • $10 Duke Students

In many ways, it seems unfair to call Quatuor Mosaïques a period instrument quartet, though it is perhaps the preeminent period-instrument quartet in the world. Yes, the ensemble uses gut strings on instruments contemporaneous with the works it plays; it has even performed on the Stradivarius collection acquired in the eighteenth century by King Philip V of Spain. But while conserving the authenticity of the past, the Quartet is at the leading edge of new and invigorating interpretation.

2017 | 2018

Mozart: String Quartet No. 15 in D Minor, K. 421/417b Haydn: String Quartet in C Major, op. 20, no. 2

H I P -H O P I N I T I AT I V E

PHAROAHE MONCH & PITCHBLAK BRASS BAND TH U R S D AY, NO V E M B E R 2 • 8 PM R E YNO L D S I ND U S TR I E S TH E ATE R Tickets: $38 • $32 • $20 Ages 30 & Under • $10 Duke Students

In February 2016, a quarter century after his debut with the pivotal hip-hop duo Organized Konfusion, Queens emcee Pharoahe Monch took a chance and stepped onstage at New York’s Ecstatic Music Festival with Brooklyn’s uproarious PitchBlak Brass Band. They astounded the audience with a full set of full-band rap. Sousaphones and strings, trombones and trumpets, drums and saxes, background singers and bass all blasted the beats for the best of Monch’s catalogue, including cuts from his 2014 album, PTSD: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. From the ’90s party anthem “Simon Says” to the verbally acrobatic exploration of addiction “Broken Again,” the experiment worked.

One of the most inventive emcees in hip-hop’s history, Monch has never been one to sit still, perpetually pushing his rhymes into new musical settings. But the crowd in New York was so jubilant and the performance so strong that he agreed to revisit the PitchBlak project in Durham, reanimating his songs with a big, bold band that spoke his language, even delighted in it. “Too many groups from the classical world that engage with hip-hop do so in a superficial way,” said Ecstatic curator Judd Greenstein. “I wanted to make sure that Pharoahe could work with people who knew hip-hop and enriched the material.” PitchBlak joins rap to one of America's most exciting new brass bands.

DUKE PERFORMANCES

CHAMBER ARTS SERIES

YASMIN LEVY “THERE ARE NO CLOUDS OF SCHOLARLY DUST AT LEVY’S CONCERTS. THE ISRAELI SINGER HAS FOUND A WAY OF UNITING PAST AND PRESENT, EAST AND WEST.” — THE TIMES, LONDON

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 9 • 8 PM REYNOLDS INDUSTRIES THEATER Tickets: $38 • $32 • $20 Ages 30 & Under $10 Duke Students

The Jerusalem-born Yasmin Levy has spent her career bringing youth and vitality to Ladino, the language Sephardic Jews took with them when they were banished from Spain more than five centuries ago. In the diaspora, the language took on elements of Hebrew, Arabic, Turkish, Greek, French, Portuguese, and Italian. Levy’s father, scholar and composer Yitzhak Isaac Levy, documented Ladino liturgical and romantic songs, a call that Levy herself has answered by becoming an Israeli pop star.

Mixing flamenco and fado, Hebrew and Spanish, Persian music and the songs of her father’s native Turkey, Levy is a master of what The Guardian calls “smoldering melodrama.” A dynamic and captivating performer, she commands the stage as she leads a band that speaks as many musical languages as she does.

Fresh from starring in Salomé at London’s National Theater, Levy leads every show as she does every song — with the urgency of someone attempting to salvage several centuries of disappearing history.

Yasmin Levy is presented in collaboration with the Duke Center for Jewish Studies.

MODIGLIANI QUARTET SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 11 • 8 PM BALDWIN AUDITORIUM Tickets: $38 • $32 • $20 Ages 30 & Under $10 Duke Students

Named for Amedeo Modigliani, the Italian portraitist and sculptor who came into his own following a midlife move to France, the rapturous Modigliani Quartet embraces a wide range of repertoire.

Ever since these four close friends formed the quartet in 2003 after studying at the famed Paris Conservatoire, they have recorded widely in the standard repertoire and brought to light works by many lesser-known composers. Such versatility has earned high praise, too: according to The Sydney Morning Herald, the Modigliani is “stylish but not faddish, infused with fine shades and ineffable sophistication.”

In Durham, the Modigliani concentrates on the romantic strain, beginning with the Schubert “Quartettsatz” — the spirited first movement of an unfinished quartet — and Brahms’ halting and haunting Quartet in C Minor.

Though best known for his operas, Puccini often wrote for string quartet; the Modigliani delivers his elegiac masterpiece, the heartrending Crisantemi. The program closes with Mendelssohn’s Sixth String Quartet, an emotionally turbulent work written shortly after the death of his sister, the composer and pianist Fanny Mendelssohn.

PROGRAM Schubert: String Quartet No. 12 in C Minor, D. 703 (“Quartettsatz”) Brahms: String Quartet No. 1 in C Minor, op. 51, no. 1 Puccini: Crisantemi Mendelssohn: String Quartet No. 6 in F Minor, op. 80

2017 | 2018

JOHN MCLAUGHLIN & JIMMY HERRING THE MEETING OF THE SPIRITS SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 12 • 7 PM DURHAM PERFORMING ARTS CENTER (DPAC) Tickets: $85 • $65 • $55 • $45 $10 Duke Students

At the dawn of the 1970s, British guitarist John McLaughlin, fresh from recording Miles Davis’ seminal Bitches Brew, reinvented the possibilities of his electrified instrument. With his Mahavishnu Orchestra, he unveiled an ecstatic, spiritual hybrid of rock and jazz, epitomized by the band’s visionary debut, The Inner Mounting Flame. On a series of vital records, McLaughlin declared that the most fertile territory for future improvisation was bold, high-volume fusion, a perfect extension of his work with Davis.

Though he disbanded the Mahavishnu Orchestra in the late ’70s and often reinvented himself in subsequent decades, his exploratory approach remained.

For the Meeting of the Spirits tour, McLaughlin’s first comprehensive U.S. trek in nearly a decade, he revisits slices of Mahavishnu’s catalogue for the first time in forty years. He does so in esteemed company. Widespread Panic guitarist and jam-band icon Jimmy Herring, an avowed McLaughlin acolyte, opens with his five-piece band, the Invisible Whip.

They turn over the stage to McLaughlin’s astounding the 4th Dimension for a second set. The 4th Dimension and the Invisible Whip then rendezvous for a third and final set to dig through the classic archives of the Mahavishnu Orchestra.

VOCAL ENSEMBLE SERIES

ST. THOMAS CHOIR, LEIPZIG TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 14 • 8 PM DUKE CHAPEL

Tickets: Reserved Seating: VIP $52 • Preferred $42 General Admission: $28 • $20 Ages 30 & Under • $10 Duke Students

The Thomanerchor — otherwise known as the St. Thomas Choir of Leipzig, whose most famous cantor was Johann Sebastian Bach — is one of the world’s most enduring musical institutions. Founded in 1212 to provide music for church services, The Thomanerchor hired Bach in 1723; he held the position until his death and is buried at St. Thomas. Bach’s music remains a mainstay of the choir’s repertoire, and its fifty exceptionally talented boy singers, all between the ages of nine and eighteen still perform his works every Sunday. In recent decades the enormous choir has made international touring a central part of its activities, taking the entire ensemble beyond the church walls of Leipzig and out into the world. The New York Times calls the choir’s sound “magnificent, soaring, poignant, ethereal.”

Inside the appropriately gothic setting of Duke Chapel, the Thomanerchor sings sacred works by Germany’s most revered composers. Led by cantor Gotthold Schwarz and organist Stefan Altner, the Choir sings a Psalm setting and a selection of motets by early baroque composer Heinrich Schütz. The choristers turn next to a hymn setting and a sacred madrigal by Schütz’s contemporary and Bach’s predecessor at St. Thomas by a hundred years, Johann Schein. At the center of the concert are three Bach motets: Fürchte dich nicht, Komm, Jesu, komm, and Der Geist hilft unsrer Schwachheit auf, all for double choir. The Thomanerchor also includes several works from the nineteenth century: Felix Mendelssohn’s setting of the Forty-Third Psalm, and two movements from his Deutsche Liturgie: “Kyrie eleison” and “Ehre sei Gott in der Höhe.”

PROGRAM The program for this concert revolves around three Bach motets and sacred works by Schütz, Johann Schein, and Mendelssohn.

Please visit dukeperformances.org for the complete program.

2017/ 1 8 E S S E N T I A L C L A S S I C S S E R I E S AT D U K E P E R F O R M A N C E S CHAMBER ARTS SERIES

American Brass Quintet • Quatuor Mosaïques • Modigliani Quartet • Escher String Quartet Ft. Jason Vieaux, Guitar Smetana Trio • Jerusalem Quartet • Quatuor Danel • Emerson String Quartet CAS package provides best available reserved seats in Baldwin Auditorium.

Regular price: $336. Series discount price: $215.

P I A N O R E C I TA L S E R I E S

Benjamin Grosvenor • Stephen Hough• Shai Wosner (both concerts) • Rafał Blechacz • Paul Lewis PRS package provides best available reserved seats in Baldwin Auditorium and VIP seating in Nelson Music Room.

Regular price: $216. Series discount price: $140.

2 0 1 7/ 1 8 V O C A L E N S E M B L E S E R I E S

St. Thomas Choir Leipzig • The King’s Singers • The Tallis Scholars VES package provides best available reserved seats in Baldwin Auditorium and VIP seating in Duke Chapel.

Regular price: $160. Series discount price: $105.

P I A N O R EC I TA L S E R I E S

BENJAMIN GROSVENOR

PIANO

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 17 • 8 PM BALDWIN AUDITORIUM

Tickets: $42 • $36 • $20 Ages 30 & Under $10 Duke Students

Benjamin Grosvenor became a classical music star before he was a teenager. In 2004, at the age of eleven, he won the BBC’s Young Musician Competition, a victory that catapulted him to the most prestigious halls in the world and won him substantial critical acclaim.

In the thirteen years since, Grosvenor has proven his staying power, appearing with major orchestras and recording an award-winning series of solo albums. At twenty-four, he is frequently praised for his musical maturity; The New York Times raved that Grosvenor “commands the stage with aristocratic ease” and “makes you sigh with joy.”

For his return to Duke Performances, Grosvenor offers spirited, sensitive interpretations of Bach’s diaphanous French Suite No. 5, Mozart’s vivacious and winding “Linz” Sonata, and a solo piano arrangement of Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune. He floats through Berg’s dreamlike Piano Sonata before the concert’s grand finale, Ravel’s tempestuous Gaspard de la nuit. Don’t miss the remarkable young musician International Piano calls “a master of grandeur and of the subtlest range of color and nuance, devout and dazzling.”

PROGRAM Bach: French Suite No. 5 in G Major, BWV 816 Mozart: Sonata in B-flat Major, K. 333 (“Linz”) Debussy: Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune (arr. Borwick/Copeland) Berg: Piano Sonata, op. 1 Ravel: Gaspard de la nuit

ESSENTIAL CLASSICS SPECIAL PROGRAM

A FAR CRY WITH LUCIANA SOUZA, VOCALIST THE BLUE HOUR

Négron, Caroline Shaw, Sarah Kirkland Snider, and Shara Nova — to work, like the ensemble, as a collective, creating a collaborative work for string orchestra and voice. The composers set excerpts from Carolyn Forché’s poem On Earth, an abecedarium — in which the poet starts each new section, and in this case each line in that section, with a new letter of the alphabet. The poem offers a recitation of memories from a life nearing its end: a barnloft of horse dreams, with basin and bedclothes a bit of polished quiet from a locked church a black coat in smoke a black map of clouds on a lake

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 18 • 8 PM BALDWIN AUDITORIUM Tickets: $38 • $32 • $20 Ages 30 & Under • $10 Duke Students

Since its launch in 2007, Boston’s A Far Cry has taken an unusual approach to the making of orchestral music. Seventeen musicians opted to start a communal, self-conducted string symphony in which leadership was shared and feedback was offered ground-up, not top-down. The approach has worked beautifully, generating a record label, a GRAMMY nomination, commissions, and critical accolades, including a spot on the year-end lists of New Yorker critic Alex Ross.

For The Blue Hour, a new evening-length commission, A Far Cry engaged a group of five composers — Rachel Grimes, Angélica

a blackened book-leaf, straw and implements a blue daybook hidden in my bed with his name a branch weighted with pears The resulting song cycle is performed by A Far Cry and the acclaimed Brazilian vocalist Luciana Souza. Composer Shara Nova says of the sprawling new composition, “In a time when people are dehumanized by war and displacement, this poem abounds with the beauty and detail of a single human life. The whole is seen through the lens of one individual. The project will have its greatest impact if we can, through our musical undertaking, engender a sense of empathy with this person’s experience of being alive.”

2017 | 2018

JOE HENRY RESIDENCY “THE SECOND BEST SONGWRITER IN THE WORLD IS A GUY WITH THE UNASSUMING NAME OF JOE HENRY. HE'S RIGHT BEHIND THAT OLD CURMUDGEON FROM HIBBING, MINNESOTA” — PASTE MAGAZINE “THE SOUND OF A JOE HENRY RECORD IS UNMISTAKABLE, WHETHER IT'S ONE OF HIS OWN OR ONE HE'S PRODUCED. THERE'S RICHNESS TO THE INSTRUMENTS, AS WELL AS DEPTH AND WARMTH THAT HELP SET HIS WORK APART.” — NPR For three decades, the singer, songwriter, producer, and author Joe Henry has been shaping and reshaping a working definition of American music that is as rich and rewarding as that of his any of his peers.

From his early years as a budding raconteur in Michigan and New York to his major-label run in the late ’90s, the Charlotte native and Los Angeles resident has seen the song as a sacred vehicle for emotional articulation and cultural exploration, a way to scratch at some truth while scrambling quaint perceptions of genre. He is an American folk singer in the bravest sense of the word: his work assimilates a century of this country’s musical ideas and expressions into unforgettable songs. In a unique three-day residency with Duke Performances, Henry will examine his artistry from several distinct angles.

ON INFLUENCES:

TAKE ME TO THE RIVER

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 30 • 7 PM NASHER MUSEUM AUDITORIUM Free and open to the public.

Joe Henry begins his residency with a free Thursday evening talk at the Nasher Museum of Art, called Take Me to the River, about the ephemeral, mystical nature of artistic predecessors. Henry says of the talk, “Past influences are not static imprints, but rather like minerals in the blood, as old as time, and reconfiguring our very personal chemistry, even as you read this.”

ON SONGWRITING & RECORDING:

“IS IT ROLLING, BOB?” FRIDAY, DECEMBER 1 • 7 PM SOUND PURE

Tickets: $35 General Admission • $20 Ages 30 & Under • $10 Duke Students

On Friday evening, Henry gives a talk about the alchemical process of making records, “Is It Rolling, Bob?,” at Durham’s Sound Pure Studios. An acclaimed producer who has worked with the likes of Elvis Costello, the Carolina Chocolate Drops, and Bonnie Raitt, Henry says that making records has “little to do with so-called self-expression, and everything to do with discovery.”

He ponders the process of songwriting and recording in real time in one of the region’s best listening rooms.

DEBUT OF A NEW ALBUM IN PERFORMANCE:

THRUM

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 2 • 8 PM BALDWIN AUDITORIUM Tickets: $38 • $32 • $20 Ages 30 & Under • $10 Duke Students

On Saturday night, Henry steps onto the stage of Baldwin Auditorium for a fifty-seventh-birthday concert, playing every song from his new album, Thrum, as well as other tunes from his expansive songbook. He joins the same sterling crew of musicians that shaped Thrum and have supported him for, as he puts it, “the bulk of my working life” — drummer Jay Bellerose, reed player Levon Henry, bassist David Piltch, and pianist Patrick Warren.

Henry is an American musical treasure, and this residency is a rare invitation to witness his fascinating artistic process.

DUKE PERFORMANCES ESSENTIAL CLASSICS SPECIAL PROGRAM

P I A N O R EC I TA L S E R I E S

CHAMBER ARTS SERIES

JACK QUARTET

STEPHEN HOUGH

AMERICAN MUSIC NO. 1

PIANO

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 7 • 8 PM NELSON MUSIC ROOM

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 8 • 8 PM BALDWIN AUDITORIUM

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 9 • 8 PM B AL D W I N AU D I TO R I U M

Tickets: $28 General Admission $20 Ages 30 & Under • $10 Duke Students

Tickets: $38 • $32 • $20 Ages 30 & Under $10 Duke Students

Tickets: $42 • $36 • $20 Ages 30 & Under $10 Duke Students

In just a decade, the JACK Quartet has become one of the most enterprising and energized new music powerhouses in the world. The quartet was formed at the Eastman School of Music in order to pursue an expanded classical repertoire, both by performing works from pivotal twentieth-century composers in sharply designed programs and by collaborating with essential living composers. Having won Lincoln Center’s Martin E. Segal Award in 2014 and worked with a veritable Who’s Who of modern composers, the ensemble is, as The New York Times has proclaimed, “a vital force in the new music world.”

Stephen Hough is a renaissance man.

A composer, writer, poet, painter, and MacArthur Fellow, the British-born Hough’s reputation long ago moved beyond classical circles, making him an unlikely crossover star. Still, during the last forty years, he has established himself as one of the world’s great pianists, with definitive takes on many masterpieces in the repertoire. Vanity Fair praises his “beautifully articulated inner voices, the crystalline quality of lyrical passages, the precision of the pedal.”

During the last decade, New York’s Escher String Quartet has risen through the ranks of a crowded field to become one of music’s most engaging string ensembles. The quartet has broadened its reputation by becoming an eager collaborator, working with classical, jazz, and Latin legends alike. One of its more regular and rewarding partnerships has been with GRAMMY-winning guitarist Jason Vieaux, a new classical guitar luminary who, like the Escher, prefers to remain free of the restrictions imposed by the traditional repertoire.

The JACK begins its two-year residency at Duke with the first of two 2017/18 concerts that highlight American music for string quartet. The concert opens with Gloria Coates’ vertiginous String Quartet No. 8, Ruth Crawford Seeger’s ecstatic antiphonal String Quartet, and Marcos Balter’s gripping, suspenseful Chambers. Natacha Diels’ wildly ricocheting Nightmare for JACK (a ballet) begins the second half, leading to the night’s climax, John Zorn’s arresting Necronomicon.

In Durham, Hough heads immediately for the emotional center of his program, playing Debussy’s exquisite and fluttering Clair de lune and both books of the composer’s ruminative and engrossing Images, including the preludes to Book II. While those works alone would make for a substantial program, Hough also offers Schumann’s pensive Fantasie and Beethoven’s grand “Appassionata.” One of Beethoven’s best-known sonatas, it is a dramatic yet highly concentrated piece that culminates in a sweeping climax.

PROGRAM

ESCHER QUARTET FT. JASON VIEAUX

The Quartet begins by contrasting the elegant Haydn op. 76, no. 1 with two energetic pieces by György Kurtág, the entrancing Hommage à Jacob Obrecht and the dizzying Hommage à Mihály András. Vieaux, as soloist, explores an intricate Bach lute suite and the seductive “Rumores de la caleta” from Spain’s Isaac Albéniz. Then he contributes two twentieth-century masterpieces: Tom Jobim’s “A Felicidade” and Duke Ellington’s “In a Sentimental Mood.” The five musicians then gather for a kinetic finale, Boccherini’s aptly named guitar quintet, “Fandango.”

PROGRAM

Debussy: “Clair de lune” from Suite Bergamasque

PROGRAM

Gloria Coates: String Quartet No. 8

Debussy: Images, Book II

Ruth Crawford Seeger: String Quartet

Schumann: Fantasie, op. 17

Haydn: String Quartet in G Major, op. 76, no. 1

Marcos Balter: Chambers Natacha Diels: Nightmare for JACK (a ballet)

Debussy: “La Terrasse des audiences du clair de lune” from Préludes, Book II

John Zorn: Necronomicon

Debussy: Images, Book I Beethoven: Piano Sonata No. 23 in F Minor, op. 57 (“Appassionata”)

György Kurtág: Hommage à Jacob Obrecht György Kurtág: Hommage à Mihály András: 12 Microludes for String Quartet, op. 13 Bach: Lute Suite No. 1, BWV 996 (selections) Albéniz: “Rumores de la caleta” from Recuerdos de Viaje, op. 76 Tom Jobim: A Felicidade Ellington: In a Sentimental Mood Boccherini: Guitar Quintet in D Major, G. 448 (“Fandango”)

2017 | 2018

DUKE PERFORMANCES 2 0 1 7/18 S E A S O N

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S E P T E M B E R ’ 17 LOST BAYOU RAMBLERS Thursday, September 7 Pinhook BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD WITH WORDLESS MUSIC, NC SYMPHONY & LOST BAYOU RAMBLERS Friday & Saturday, September 8 & 9 Reynolds Industries Theater CIOMPI CONCERT NO. 1 FEAT. RACHEL KUIPERS YONAN, VIOLA & BRENT WISSICK, CELLO Saturday, September 23 Baldwin Auditorium VICENTE AMIGO Sunday, September 24 Page Auditorium AMERICAN BRASS QUINTET Saturday, September 30 Baldwin Auditorium

O C T O B E R ’1 7 CIVILIANS + ETHAN LIPTON NEW PLAY READING SCHOOL PROJECT Wednesday, October 4 Motorco Music Hall NEW WORK FOR GOLDBERG VARIATIONS PAM TANOWITZ DANCE & SIMONE DINNERSTEIN, PIANO Friday & Saturday, October 6 & 7 Reynolds Industries Theater BILL CALLAHAN Saturday, October 14 Baldwin Auditorium MONK@100: JD ALLEN TRIO & BILL FRISELL Tuesday, October 17 Durham Fruit & Produce MONK@100: JD ALLEN TRIO & DAVE DOUGLAS Wednesday, October 18 Durham Fruit & Produce MONK@100: JD ALLEN TRIO & GERI ALLEN Thursday, October 19 Durham Fruit & Produce MONK@100: TYSHAWN SOREY & JASON MORAN Friday, October 20 Durham Fruit & Produce MONK@100: MONK SONGBOOK WITH CHRIS PATTISHALL, FRANK KIMBROUGH, JEB PATTON, ETHAN IVERSON & ORRIN EVANS Saturday & Sunday, October 21 & 22 Durham Fruit & Produce QUATUOR MOSAÏQUES Saturday, October 21 Baldwin Auditorium MONK@100: BEN WENDEL & GERALD CLAYTON Saturday, October 21 Durham Fruit & Produce MONK@100: COMO MAMAS Sunday, October 22 Durham Fruit & Produce MONK@100: ETHAN IVERSON TRIO & MELISSA ALDANA Monday, October 23 Durham Fruit & Produce MONK@100: ETHAN IVERSON TRIO WITH CHRIS POTTER & HOUSTON PERSON Tuesday, October 24 Durham Fruit & Produce

MONK@100: ETHAN IVERSON TRIO & JOSHUA REDMAN Wednesday, October 25 Durham Fruit & Produce MONK@100: ETHAN IVERSON TRIO & RAVI COLTRANE Thursday, October 26 Durham Fruit & Produce

N O V E M B E R ’17 PHAROAHE MONCH & PITCHBLAK BRASS BAND Thursday, November 2 Reynolds Industries Theater YASMIN LEVY Thursday, November 9 Reynolds Industries Theater MODIGLIANI QUARTET Saturday, November 11 Baldwin Auditorium JOHN MCLAUGHLIN & JIMMY HERRING THE MEETING OF THE SPIRITS Sunday, November 12 DPAC ST. THOMAS CHOIR LEIPZIG Tuesday, November 14 Duke Chapel BENJAMIN GROSVENOR, PIANO Friday, November 17 Baldwin Auditorium A FAR CRY WITH LUCIANA SOUZA THE BLUE HOUR Saturday, November 18 Baldwin Auditorium

D E C E M B E R ’17 JOE HENRY THRUM Saturday, December 2 Baldwin Auditorium JACK QUARTET AMERICAN MUSIC NO. 1 Thursday, December 7 Nelson Music Room STEPHEN HOUGH, PIANO Friday, December 8 Baldwin Auditorium ESCHER STRING QUARTET & JASON VIEAUX Saturday, December 9 Baldwin Auditorium

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J A N UA R Y ’18 JEREMY DENK & STEFAN JACKIW IVES VIOLIN SONATAS Friday, January 19 Baldwin Auditorium BRIAN BLADE & THE FELLOWSHIP BAND Saturday, January 20 Baldwin Auditorium TAKE ME TO THE RIVER WITH WILLIAM BELL, BOBBY RUSH & DON BRYANT Thursday, January 25 Carolina Theatre of Durham DON DELILLO’S THE BODY ARTIST ADAPATED & DIRECTED BY JODY MCAULIFFE Thursday thru Saturday, January 25-27 Reynolds Industries Theater

THE KING’S SINGERS Friday, January 26 Baldwin Auditorium

F E B R UA R Y ’18 ANTONY HAMILTON & ALISDAIR MACINDOE MEETING Thursday thru Saturday, February 1-3 Rubenstein Arts Center MURS & 9TH WONDER Thursday, February 8 Motorco Music Hall JENNIFER KOH, VIOLIN SHARED MADNESS Saturday & Sunday, February 10 & 11 Rubenstein Arts Center SMETANA TRIO Saturday, February 17 Baldwin Auditorium BEDLAM SHAKESPEARE’S HAMLET SHAW’S SAINT JOAN Thursday thru Sunday February 22-25 Rubenstein Arts Center SHAI WOSNER, PIANO SCHUBERT’S LAST SONATAS Saturday & Sunday, February 24 & 25 Nelson Music Room

BLACK ATLANTIC: EMELINE MICHEL Tuesday, March 27 Motorco Music Hall BLACK ATLANTIC: BETSAYDA MACHADO Wednesday, March 28 Motorco Music Hall BLACK ATLANTIC: TRIO DA KALI Thursday, March 29 Motorco Music Hall BLACK ATLANTIC: AURELIO Friday, March 30 Motorco Music Hall BLACK ATLANTIC: DIEGO EL CIGALA Saturday, March 31 Carolina Theatre of Durham

A P R I L ’18 RAFAŁ BLECHACZ, PIANO Friday, April 6 Baldwin Auditorium MARIA SCHNEIDER ORCHESTRA Saturday, April 7 Baldwin Auditorium TALLIS SCHOLARS Wednesday, April 11 Duke Chapel

M A R C H ’1 8

QUATUOR DANEL Saturday, April 14 Baldwin Auditorium

ALSARAH & THE NUBATONES Thursday, March 1 Motorco Music Hall

TOUMANI & SIDIKI DIABATÉ Monday, April 16 Baldwin Auditorium

GREGORY PORTER Sunday, March 4 Carolina Theatre of Durham

JACK QUARTET AMERICAN MUSIC NO. 2 Thursday, April 26 Rubenstein Arts Center

JOHN SUPKO, BILL SEAMAN & JIM FINDLAY THE_OPER& Thursday thru Saturday, March 8-10 Rubenstein Arts Center DANCE HEGINBOTHAM & MAIRA KALMAN THE PRINCIPLES OF UNCERTAINTY Friday & Saturday, March 23 & 24 Reynolds Industries Theater JERUSALEM QUARTET Saturday, March 24 Baldwin Auditorium BLACK ATLANTIC: JOAN SORIANO Monday, March 26 Motorco Music Hall

CIOMPI CONCERT NO. 2 FEAT. JANE HAWKINS, PIANO Saturday, April 28 Baldwin Auditorium JORDI SAVALL & HESPÈRION XXI CELTIC UNIVERSE Sunday, April 29 Baldwin Auditorium

M AY ’ 1 8 PAUL LEWIS, PIANO Friday, May 4 Baldwin Auditorium EMERSON STRING QUARTET Saturday, May 5 Baldwin Auditorium

ESSENTIAL CLASSICS SPECIAL PROGRAM

JEREMY DENK & STEFAN JACKIW IVES VIOLIN SONATAS

WITH NEW YORK POLYPHONY F R ID AY, JA NUA RY 19 • 8 P M BAL D WIN A UDI TORIUM Tickets: $42 • $36 • $20 Ages 30 & Under • $10 Duke Students

Merely programming the four violin sonatas of American original Charles Ives would not have been enough for Jeremy Denk, the inquisitive and exploratory pianist, writer, and musical collaborator.

That is just part of what he and beguiling, intuitive violinist Stefan Jackiw do in the simply titled program Ives Violin Sonatas. They work in reverse, starting with the boisterous Sonata No. 4, based on revival hymn tunes, and arriving, ultimately, at the joyous unpredictability of Sonata No. 1, which likewise incorporates borrowed melodies into Ives’ distinctive modernist sound.

Before each sonata, Denk directs an antediluvian mixtape of sorts. Heralded vocal quartet New York Polyphony sing the songs that appear as source materials in each of the sonatas.

Many of these numbers are Americana bedrock — the gospel standard Beulah Land, for instance, or the Civil War standard Tramp! Tramp! Tramp! The Boys Are Marching. In pulling out the strands of the composer’s source material, Denk humanizes Ives, whose sonatas remain as daring as they are rewarding a full century after they were written. This program offers personal context for one of America’s most original composers, thanks to one of its sharpest modern minds.

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

BRIAN BLADE & THE FELLOWSHIP BAND SATURDAY, JANUARY 20 • 8 PM BAL D WIN A UDI TORIUM

Tickets: $38 • $32 • $20 Ages 30 & Under • $10 Duke Students

Drummer Brian Blade has an astounding résumé. He played on Bob Dylan’s Time out of Mind, Norah Jones’ Come Away with Me, and Emmylou Harris’ Wrecking Ball. His gentle touch and commit-

T H E AT E R

DON DELILLO’S THE BODY ARTIST

ADAPTED & DIRECTED BY JODY MCAULIFFE THURSDAY, JANUARY 25 • F R ID AY, JA NUA RY 26 • 8 SAT URD AY, JA NUA RY 27 R E YN O L DS INDUSTRI E S

8PM PM • 8 PM T HE A T E R

Tickets: $20 • $10 Duke Students

Don DeLillo’s 2001 novella, The Body Artist, is at once a ghost story and a love story. Lauren Hartke — a performance artist whose work crosses the limits of the body — lives on a lonely coast in a rambling rented house. After a catastrophic event, she encounters a changeling with uncanny knowledge of her own life. Together they journey into a spare, seductive outpost

ment to playing in the pocket have made him one of the world’s foremost session drummers, able to intuitively galvanize most any mood. For the past seventeen years he’s also been the anchor of Wayne Shorter’s quartet. Although Blade has appeared frequently at Duke Performances, this season, for the first time, he comes to Durham with his long-running Fellowship Band.

With the Fellowship Band, Blade brings all of his inspirations and experiences to the fore simultaneously, from the gospel he grew up playing in his family’s Louisiana church to the New Orleans jazz of his college years. Perennially cool and nuanced, the ensemble moves seamlessly between hard bop and heavenly atmospherics, threaded together by sophisticated harmony and meticulous rhythm. The band — composer and keyboardist Jon Cowherd, horn players Myron Walden and Melvin Butler, and upright bassist Chris Thomas — is of the highest caliber, with a chemistry between the players that is amazing to behold.

of grief, time, and love. The Guardian proclaimed it “a distilled meditation on perception and loss, and a poised, individual ghost story for the twenty-first century.”

DeLillo himself gave director/writer Jody McAuliffe (who adapted and directed Mao II for Theater Previews at Duke and conducted an especially rare interview with DeLillo in 1999) permission to adapt The Body Artist for the stage. She worked with acclaimed set designer Jim Findlay — by now a Duke Performances regular through his work with David Lang and Hiss Golden Messenger — and riveting actor Jess Barbagallo, hailed

by Time Out New York as a visionary and “formative muse” for the decade, to stage a workshop performance at New York’s famed Abrons Arts Center in 2017. Duke Performances presents the world premiere of the production, with both audience and action on the same stage at Reynolds Industries Theater. Rachel Jett, the artistic director of the National Theater Institute and premier American practitioner of the movement system created

by Moscow master Andrei Droznin, plays the haunted, haunting body artist.

TAKE ME TO THE RIVER:

MEMPHIS SOUL & R&B REVUE FEATURING

WILLIAM BELL BOBBY RUSH & DON BRYANT THURSDAY, JANUARY 25 • 8 PM CAROLINA THEATRE OF DURHAM Tickets: $55 • $45 • $35 • $10 Duke Students

Memphis musicians William Bell, Bobby Rush, and Don Bryant are three of this country’s great elder statesmen of soul music. Recording for labels in Memphis and elsewhere in the South, they produced a bevy of acclaimed albums and helped turn out hits for the likes of Otis Redding, Tina Turner, and Al Green. With a sultrier, grittier sensibility than their Motown neighbors up north, the Memphis sound these artists created was recently featured in Take Me to the River, a musical documentary that took home the Audience Award at SXSW Film Festival and helped put this revue on the road.

Soul singer, architect of the Stax Records sound, and 2017 GRAMMY winner William Bell (“Born Under a Bad Sign,” “You Don’t Miss Your Water”) is joined by ribald blues showman and fellow 2017 GRAMMY winner Bobby Rush (“I Ain’t Studdin’ You”), and gospel and soul great Don Bryant of Hi Records (“I Can’t Stand The Rain”), all backed by Willie Mitchell’s legendary Hi Rhythm Section — the heartbeat behind Al Green’s biggest hits. Join us at the Carolina Theatre of Durham for a musical tour of the rich soul music legacy of Memphis, Tennessee led by some its most adept practitioners.

VOCAL ENSEMBLE SERIES

THE KING’S SINGERS F R ID AY, JA NUA RY 26 • 8 P M BAL D WIN A UDI TORIUM

For their fiftieth anniversary the King’s Singers dazzle with a typically wide-ranging program. They begin with an anniversary commission from former member Bob Chilcott before moving back in time to renaissance and romantic compositions. They surprise with a set of spirituals that includes arrangements of U2 and Paul Simon and end the night’s first half with a new commission by firebrand composer Nico Muhly. The concert closes with a panoply of audience favorites and new arrangements.

PROGRAM

Tickets: $56 • $44 • $20 Ages 30 & Under • $10 Duke Students

Half a century ago six choral scholars at King’s College Cambridge formed their own choir. They took a bold approach, rewriting the rules about what classically trained vocal ensembles could sing and how they could sing it, mixing the contemporary with the classical and the sacred with the secular. During the last fifty years, twenty-six King’s Singers have come and gone, but they have all had in common a democratic musical sensibility and consummate technique, as much at home with Byrd as with the Beatles. “The King’s Singers have the same microscopic perfection one sometimes hears from purely instrumental chamber musicians,” declares The Washington Post.

The program for this concert represents the wide range of the King’s Singers’ repertoire, incorporating several new fiftieth-anniversary commissions, along with renaissance works from Tallis and Byrd, romantic music from Vaughan Williams and Elgar, contemporary arrangements of spirituals, and classic audience favorites. Please visit dukeperformances.org for the complete program.

2017 | 2018

DUKE PERFORMANCES DANCE

H I P -H O P I N I T I AT I V E

ANTONY HAMILTON MURS & 9TH WONDER & ALISDAIR MACINDOE MEETING THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 1 • 8 PM FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 2 • 8 PM SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 3 • 8 PM V ON D ER HEYDEN ST UD IO THE A TE R, R UBENST EIN A RTS CE N T E R

Tickets: $28 General Admission

$20 Ages 30 & Under • $10 Duke Students

On a bare stage, sixty-four tiny robots — small rectangular machines holding sharpened pencils that they tap against the floor — encircle two dancers, clad simply in black and gray. Controlled at random by a computer algorithm, the robots tap rhythmically on wooden, metallic, plastic, or ceramic surfaces, creating a pointillist symphony of sound that suggests a gamelan ensemble playing fractured hip-hop beats. The dancers in the center of the circle — leading-edge Australian choreographer Antony Hamilton and sound artist and dancer Alisdair Macindoe, who made and programmed the robots — respond to the music with movement, translating the mechanically improvised score into a mesmerizing dance spectacle.

This is a rare American performance of MEETING, first unveiled at Australia’s Dance Massive festival in 2015. A spellbinding mixture of classic B-boy moves and contemporary dance, MEETING synthesizes disparate movement traditions with breathtaking control and precision. “There are moments when you query whether it is man or machine that you are witnessing in the spotlight,” marveled Australian Stage. Indeed, as Hamilton and Macindoe flow in and out of perfect unison, their dance set to robotically generated mechanical music explores the intersection of industry and art, artificial intelligence and the human body.

“MURS’ LIVE SHOW IS THE STUFF OF LEGEND — WITH THE UNRULY-HAIRED RAPPER AN ALWAYS KINETIC AND FOCUSED PRESENCE, READY TO DIG DEEP INTO HIS ABYSSAL CATALOG TO PLAY FAN FAVORITES.” — LOS ANGELES TIMES

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 8 • 8 PM MOTORCO MUSIC HALL Tickets: $28 General Admission $10 Duke Students

The rapper Murs and the producer 9th Wonder were raised on different coasts: Murs is a product of South Central Los Angeles, a background that’s informed every aspect of his lyrics, from streetwise storytelling to the bits of Spanish he’s long woven into his lines. 9th Wonder, of course, is a North Carolina native and Durham icon, thanks to his tenure in the groundbreaking trio Little Brother and his stints teaching hip-hop classes at N.C. Central and Duke. These two hip-hop veterans share an astounding versatility that has made them some of the genre’s most compelling artists for nearly two decades. 9th Wonder has worked with the likes of Jay-Z and Kendrick Lamar while building a defiantly independent hip-hop empire at home, while Murs has moved easily between major labels and underground bastions.

Since 2004, the bicoastal duo has delighted in one of hip-hop’s most productive and joyous rapper-producer collaborations ever, built in large part on that shared adaptability. On a series of six albums and mixtapes, Murs has shared tales of domestic bliss, youthful woe, and social criticism over the trademark soul samples of 9th Wonder. The relationship has pushed them both, adding more dissonance to 9th’s jubilant musical vocabulary and more fun to the hardline rhymes of Murs. In Durham, Murs closes a weeklong Duke residency with a duo set alongside 9th Wonder, built from the best of their dozen years of partnership.

2017 | 2018

ESSENTIAL CLASSICS SPECIAL PROGRAM

JENNIFER KOH SHARED MADNESS: NEW WORK FOR SOLO VIOLIN PART 1: SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 10 • 8 PM PART 2: SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 11 • 3 PM V O N D E R H E YD E N S TU D I O TH E ATE R , R U B E NS TE I N AR TS C E NTE R Tickets: $28 General Admission $20 Ages 30 & Under • $10 Duke Students

Shared Madness began with an immense debt. For eight years, the violinist Jennifer Koh — “a prodigious builder of musical bridges,” according to the Los Angeles Times — struggled to pay off the loan she had taken for her instrument.

At one point, she even considered declaring bankruptcy. While teetering on that brink, however, she met Justus and Elizabeth Schlichting, patrons who agreed to take on her debt in exchange for new commissions for Koh and her violin. They got an astounding thirty-two new works.

Debuted during the New York Philharmonic’s Second Biennial, the two concerts of Shared Madness includes thirty-two short pieces from composers whom Koh considers her friends. It is a marvelous study of violin virtuosity for the twenty-first century, inspired by Paganini’s Caprices. At the first concert at Duke’s 200-seat von der Heyden Studio Theater in the new Rubenstein Arts Center, there is Julia Wolfe’s breathless Spinning Jenny; Vijay Iyer’s quixotic Zany, Cute, Interesting; and Gabriel Kahane’s playfully metatextual The Single Art Form Is Dead. The second concert introduces Philip Glass’ stately take on the sarabande form; Michael Gordon’s electrifying kwerk; and the howling Palimpsest Capriccio, written by maverick French composer Jean-Baptiste Barrière. Each of these two concerts is ticketed separately.

CHAMBER ARTS SERIES

SMETANA TRIO “ENERGY, A GRIPPING EMOTIONAL RANGE, AND FLAWLESS TECHNIQUE.” — BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 17 • 8 PM BAL D WIN A UDI TORIUM Tickets: $38 • $32 • $20 Ages 30 & Under $10 Duke Students

It may be impossible to be any more ingrained in the proud Czech musical lineage than the Smetana Trio. Founded in 1934 by prominent Czech pianist Josef Pálenícˇek, the trio borrows its name from Bedrˇich Smetana, the nineteenth-century composer whose operas and short symphonic works characterized and inspired the country’s quest for independence. While the luminaries of the Czech classical tradition remain central to the ensemble’s repertoire, the Smetana now frequently ventures beyond the boundaries of state and nation.

Praised by The Guardian for its “exuberant grandeur and concentrated precision,” the ensemble remains vigorous well into its ninth decade. In Durham, the program juxtaposes the depth of the mercurial late nineteenth-century Piano Trio in D Minor

by Austrian composer Alexander von Zemlinsky and the drama of Shostakovich’s Piano Trio No. 1 in C Minor. The concert concludes triumphantly with Mendelssohn’s jubilant Piano Trio No. 1 in D Minor, a showcase for the Smetana’s trademark “musical skill, flawless ensemble, and exceptional communicative ability” (American Record Guide).

PROGRAM Zemlinsky: Piano Trio in D Minor, op. 3 Shostakovich: Piano Trio No. 1 in C Minor, op. 8 (“Poème”) Mendelssohn: Piano Trio No. 1 in D Minor, op. 49

T H E AT E R

BEDLAM HAMLET + SAINT JOAN

DIRECTED BY ERIC TUCKER

HAMLET BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 22 • 7 PM SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 24 • 7 PM SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 25 • 2 PM VON DER HEYDEN STUDIO THEATER, RUBENSTEIN ARTS CENTER Tickets: $28 General • $20 Ages 30 & Under • $10 Duke Students Run time for this show is approximately 3 hours with 2 intermissions.

IN REPERTORY WITH

SAINT JOAN BY GEORGE BERNARD SHAW FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 23 • 7 PM SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 24 • 2 PM VON DER HEYDEN STUDIO THEATER, RUBENSTEIN ARTS CENTER Tickets: $28 General • $20 Ages 30 & Under • $10 Duke Students Run time for this show is approximately 3 hours with 2 intermissions.

“BEDLAM’S SIGNATURE SKILL IS CAPTURING THE SOUL OF A CLASSIC, DISTILLING IT TO ITS ESSENCE, AND PRESENTING IT WITH VIGOR AND IMMEDIACY.” — STAGE MAGAZINE When New York actors Eric Tucker and Andrus Nichols chose the name “Bedlam” for their upstart theater company in 2012, they no doubt intended it to convey the energy and audacity of their mission. Using minimal staging and bare spaces, Bedlam sought to recreate canonical classics with postmodern zeal.

The idea worked: Bedlam’s debut — a marathon performance of George Bernard Shaw’s 1923 tragedy Saint Joan, based on the trial of fifteenth-century French heroine and martyr Joan of Arc — earned a deluge of acclaim. Four actors played two dozen characters; The Wall Street Journal called it “an experience so intense and concentrated that you’ll feel as though you were part of the action.” Bedlam doubled down by producing Shakespeare’s Hamlet — the Bard’s most popular play, a tale of murder, madness, and revenge in a highly dysfunctional royal family — with the same four actors, played in repertory with Saint Joan.

“Bedlam gives us Shakespeare and Shaw with the enthusiasm of youth. Two of the talkiest plays in the English language are, in this case, a whole lot of fun,” raved The New York Times. In a rare trip south of Brooklyn, Bedlam brings its kinetic, interactive productions of Hamlet and Saint Joan to Duke’s intimate von der Heyden Studio Theater. Not to be missed.

DUKE PERFORMANCES P I A N O R EC I TA L S E R I E S

SHAI WOSNER

PIANO

SCHUBERT'S LAST SONATAS

PART 1: SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 24 • 8 PM PART 2: SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 25 • 3 PM N EL SO N MUSI C ROOM Tickets: $28 General Admission $20 Ages 30 & Under • $10 Duke Students

Over the last decade, the brilliant Israeli-born, New York-based pianist Shai Wosner has earned spots as a soloist with the world’s top orchestras, a coveted Avery Fisher Career Grant, laurels from The New York Times and the BBC, and collaborations with some of the world’s brightest young composers. Wosner’s reputation stems in part from his deep devotion to Schubert. A 2011 recording established Wosner as “a Schubertian of unfaltering authority” (Gramophone), while a 2014 collaboration paired works by Schubert with new compositions inspired by his music, written by composer Missy Mazzoli.

Over the course of Wosner’s new two-concert program, Schubert’s Last Sonatas, presented in the round in the intimate Nelson Music Room, he plays Schubert’s final six piano sonatas. In the first concert, Wosner begins with the otherworldly D. 845, the extroverted D. 850, and the serene D. 894, the only three sonatas published during Schubert’s lifetime. In the second concert, he plays Schubert’s great sonata trilogy of 1828 — the dramatic Beethovenian D. 958, the lyrical D. 959, and the vertiginous D. 960 — written just before the composer’s death and published a decade later. Though initially overlooked, these works, which Wosner has called “six thick novels, rich with insight about the human condition,” now rank as landmarks of the solo piano repertoire. Each of these two concerts is ticketed separately.

ALSARAH & THE NUBATONES THURSDAY, MARCH 1 • 8 PM MOTORCO MUSIC HALL Tickets: $20 General Admission $10 Duke Students

Alsarah’s circuitous journey toward stardom began as a double refugee — first from conflict in her native Sudan, then from civil war in neighboring Yemen.

After arriving in New York in the mid1990s, Alsarah turned to music as a living link to her homeland, both as an ethnomusicologist and as a singer with a velvety voice and socially conscious lyrics.

Alongside percussionist Rami El-Aasser, bassist Mawuena Kodjovi, oud player Brandon Terzic, and background vocalist Nahid, Alsarah has given the traditional music of Sudan a contemporary pulse and finish. She is a new breed of pop star, countering the turmoil of troubled times with her effervescent music.

“I often get audience members who are avid music listeners but have never heard East African music before,” the singer-songwriter said in 2014. It’s a sound from a musical crossroads, drawing on sub-Saharan rhythms and the Arabic traditions of North Africa. As her star ascends, Alsarah’s intoxicating pop updates on the rich musical traditions of the Nubian region have found large, eager audiences. To finish up her weeklong DP residency, Alsarah & The Nubatones take the stage at Motorco. Dubbed “the new princess of Nubian pop and Sudanese retro” by The Guardian and praised

by NPR for “undoubtedly opening new worlds for more than a few,” Alsarah & The Nubatones have become global ambassadors for what NPR calls “deep rhythms and serious grooves.”

Alsarah & The Nubatones’ residency at Duke Performances is funded, in part, by the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Arts, and co-sponsored by the Duke Islamic Studies Center and the Duke University Middle East Studies Center.

2017 | 2018

GREGORY PORTER “WHERE SO MANY JAZZ MUSICIANS HAVE FORGOTTEN HOW TO WRITE A DECENT TUNE, PORTER’S SIMPLE, DIRECT SONGS HAVE AN EMOTIONAL HEFT.” — THE GUARDIAN

S U ND AY, M AR C H 4 • 8 PM C AR O L I NA TH E ATR E O F D U R H AM Tickets: $55 • $45 • $35 • $10 Duke Students

Gregory Porter has played to sold-out houses at Duke Performances twice in recent years, moving into ever-grander venues as his fame grows. The Blue Note recording artist won his first GRAMMY for 2013’s Liquid Spirit, just weeks before his Durham debut. 2017 brought him a second GRAMMY, for Take Me to the Alley. With his deep, clear voice and a songwriting sensibility that feels like a warm embrace from an old friend, Porter is one of the world’s consummate singers, a powerhouse whose sensitive, nuanced delivery and infectious songs are unforgettable.

“Possessed of massive vocal power offset by a rich tone and delicate control, his interpretations flit between jazz and soul, with the finesse of the former and the strength of the latter in equal measure,” raves Mojo. The Guardian declares Porter “a jazz singer of thrilling presence and a booming baritone with a gift for earthy refinement and soaring uplift.” Durham audiences can’t seem to get enough of this spectacular artist; don’t miss his third appearance with Duke Performances, this time at the historic Carolina Theatre of Durham.

WORLD PREMIERE

THE_OPER&

BY JOHN SUPKO & BILL SEAMAN DIRECTED BY JIM FINDLAY PERFORMED BY LORELEI ENSEMBLE THURSDAY, MARCH 8 • 8 PM FRIDAY, MARCH 9 • 8 PM SATURDAY, MARCH 10 • 3 PM & 8 PM VON DER HEYDEN STUDIO THEATER, RUBENSTEIN ARTS CENTER Tickets: $28 General Admission • $20 Ages 30 & Under • $10 Duke Students

Is technology making or breaking our world? That question is central to THE_OPER&, a bold new opera to be developed and premiered at Duke University that uses the high-drama framework of opera and advanced technology to explore ideas of apocalypse, renewal, and survival in the modern age. During each performance, a computer system preloaded with video, sound, and poetic text fragments generates an original world,

specific to the room and audience. That world eventually cedes to entropy, disintegrating from disaster and destruction until it falls into chaos, only to be rebuilt. The cycle repeats. A voice — the system’s — narrates the action, expressing the computer’s consciousness as a chorus of voices responds to the changing environment. The score moves from minimal and ambient to complex, industrial textures, a soundscape linked to the rise and fall and rise of the world within the room.

The team behind THE_OPER& (pronounced “the operand”) is an accomplished one. John Supko, a Duke music professor and acclaimed composer, partnered with Duke art professor and “recombinant poetics” pioneer Bill Seaman to build both text and music; Seaman also contributed high-definition video. Award-winning director and designer Jim Findlay, a frequent Duke Performances collaborator and a Duke alumnus, is the production designer and director. Narrated by Seaman and sung by Boston’s heralded eight-voice Lorelei Ensemble, THE_OPER& is a multidisciplinary collaboration that evokes the opera of Robert Ashley, the linguistic games of Raymond Roussel, and the experimental productions of Robert Wilson.

An allegory for our uncertain times and an examination of our interface with the technology we create, THE_OPER& asks essential questions about the kind of future we may pursue.

DANCE HEGINBOTHAM & MAIRA KALMAN

THE PRINCIPLES OF UNCERTAINTY

FRIDAY, MARCH 23 • 8 PM SATURDAY, MARCH 24 • 8 PM REYNOLDS INDUSTRIES THEATER Tickets: $38 • $32 • $20 Ages 30 & Under • $10 Duke Students

In the new dance piece, The Principles of Uncertainty, illustrator and painter Maira Kalman collaborates with choreographer Jonathan Heginbotham and his company to explore the strange wonder, humor, and sadness of life. In picture books, museum exhibitions, and acclaimed illustrations for The New Yorker and The New York Times, Kalman delights with a bold sense of color

and playful line. In her wonderful picture book The Principles of Uncertainty, she found the humor in the solemn and the sacred, a sense of mischief underlying even her most troubled thoughts.

Likewise, choreographer and Mark Morris alumnus John Heginbotham injects playfulness and whimsy into the rigorous dances he makes for his his acclaimed company, Dance Heginbotham.

“His works seem to have personalities of their own,” declared The New Yorker. “You want to know them.”

The evening-length adaptation of The Principles of Uncertainty arrives at Duke Performances following its premiere at the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in summer 2017. Kalman and Heginbotham describe the work as an “absurdist travelogue” that moves from intimate to global, from New York to Tel Aviv, from world famous to workaday. Kalman says of the piece: “We’re trying to make sense out of nonsense and make something beautiful out of sense.” She will perform in the piece when it comes to Duke Performances alongside seven of Heginbotham’s dancers; they will be accompanied by a new score from Brooklyn Rider’s Colin Jacobsen, performed live by Jacobsen and a five-piece chamber ensemble.

CHAMBER ARTS SERIES

JERUSALEM QUARTET SAT URD AY, MA RCH 24 • 8 P M BAL D WIN A UDI TORIUM Tickets: $42 • $36 • $20 Ages 30 & Under • $10 Duke Students

The Jerusalem returns to Beethoven during its third visit to Duke since 2012, delivering the composer’s dense, restless Quartet No. 11 in F Minor. They follow it with the only quartet written by Claude Debussy. The French composer’s whirlwind work in G Minor is a thrilling affair, full of scintillating motion. The program draws to an end with the Second Quartet of twentieth-century master Shostakovich. Written in 1944 as World War II neared its end, it is dark and powerful, with elements borrowed from the world of Jewish music perfectly capturing the composer’s personal turmoil.

Over the past two decades, the Jerusalem Quartet has consistently garnered accolades for its definitive interpretations of landmark quartets. In 2015 the Jerusalem chose to celebrate its twentieth anniversary as one of the world’s greatest string quartets by revisiting Beethoven. The Jerusalem issued an album of Beethoven’s string quartets, extolled by The New York Times for its “gracious charm,” and launched a tour that included a weeklong stint at Lincoln Center.

2017 | 2018

PROGRAM Beethoven: String Quartet No. 11 in F Minor, op. 95 (“Serioso”) Debussy: String Quartet in G Minor, op. 10 Shostakovich: String Quartet No. 2 in A Major, op. 68

B L A C K AT L A N T I C

BLACK ATLANTIC The music of the Black Atlantic is our global soundtrack. Over many centuries, enslaved people in the Americas gathered together when they could — on the edges of plantations, in town squares on market days, in the streets during religious festivals. The songs and sounds they created accompanied the dead as their spirits traveled home to Africa.

At times this music accompanied revolt. Songs spoke of freedom and a different future. In slavery and in the struggles for equality that followed, music provided solace and created solidarity. From these roots flourished some of today’s most popular music, from salsa to hip-hop, blues to reggae.

Over six nights in Durham, we’ll hear some of the legacies of this history. We’ll hear the sounds of a new generation of griot musicians from Mali, carriers of a tradition that seeded forms of song and story throughout the Americas. We’ll hear music from both sides of the island Columbus called Hispaniola, now encompassing Haiti and the Dominican Republic, music that reminds us of the deep connections between the two. We’ll understand how African musical traditions have been kept alive, but also transformed, from generation to generation, as we journey to El Clavo, in Venezuela, and to the coasts of Belize. There the Garifuna – descendants of the Black Caribs of St. Vincent – keep alive their intertwined indigenous and African heritage through ritual and music. And we’ll experience the new connections being made between Caribbean and Spanish musical traditions.

These six concerts offer a multiplicity of beats, sounds, calls, and rhythms. But they also remind us of common routes, of the ways Black Atlantic music has helped turn exile and exclusion into grounding and connection.

— Laurent Dubois Professor of Romance Studies and History, Duke University

B L A C K AT L A N T I C

JOAN SORIANO EMELINE MICHEL DOMINICAN REPUBLIC HAITI “SORIANO’S CLEAN, FEATHERY GUITAR SOUND, WHICH PUNCHES OUT RHYTHMIC LINES, IS A BACHATA SIGNATURE.” — NPR

M O N D AY, MA RCH 26 • 8 P M M O T O R C O MUSI C HA L L Tickets: $20 General Admission $10 Duke Students

During the last half century, the intoxicating sounds of bachata have emerged as one of Latin America’s most popular musical strains, a spellbinding distillation of disparate African and Latin influences.

Shaped around the snap and shuffle of steel-string acoustic guitar and bittersweet songs of romantic yearning, bachata has transcended its initial second-class status in the Dominican Republic, yielding both a dance style and a host of young stars. But Joan Soriano, the self-styled “Duke of Bachata,” is the most dazzling and daring of them all, delving into the traditional origins of the sound.

The seventh of fifteen children and the anchor of his family’s band, Soriano escaped the countryside outside of Santo Domingo as a teenager, moving to the city to learn from the country’s bachata greats. Over the next two decades, he shaped a music of his own, infusing the bittersweet lyrics with a keen spiritual longing. His bright guitar playing is as fluent and articulate as his voice is magnetic and interpretive, with a world of feelings wrapped inside every phrase. “When you hear Soriano’s raw interpretation of bachata,” rhapsodized NPR, “you can’t help but wonder how such a beautiful sound was kept quiet for so long.”

“MICHEL’S RICH, SUPPLE VOCALS EFFORTLESSLY POUR OVER HER TUNES, WHICH DOCUMENT THE JOY, HOPE, AND STRUGGLE OF HAITIAN CULTURE.” — ALLMUSIC

T UE S DA Y , MA RC H 2 7 • 8 PM MO T O RC O MU S I C H AL L Tickets: $20 General Admission $10 Duke Students

The music of Haiti, much like its people, has always been diverse. A unique synthesis of African, indigenous, French, Spanish, and English influences, Haitian music reflects the turbulent history of the tiny island nation as well as the promise of its fundamental diversity.

For twenty years, the singer, songwriter, bandleader, and humanitarian Emeline Michel has delivered a singular distillation of Haiti’s musical variety, with songs that draw upon hard funk and soft folk, crackling blues and distinctly Haitian rhythms. The Boston Globe called her “the elegant, jubilant voice of her island nation, finding the beauty in a country most often characterized by political upheaval and social unrest.”

Born in the city of Gonaïves, Michel began singing in her church choir, won a major talent contest as a teenager, and went on to study at the Detroit Jazz Center. Back in Haiti, she became a bona fide star, with her seamless fusion of styles and preternaturally smooth singing reflecting the cultural richness of her country. Hailed as “a Haitian music diplomat” by The New York Times, Michel has remained restless, becoming a globetrotting artist in pursuit of progressively nuanced expressions — of longing, belief, and hope for her homeland.

2017 | 2018

BETSAYDA MACHADO Y LA PARRANDA EL CLAVO VENEZUELA “IT’S ONLY NOW THAT THEY’VE BEGUN TOURING NORTH AMERICA — AND MAKING THEIR SINGULAR, PASSIONATE AND PURPOSEFUL VOICES REVERBERATE IN THE WIDER WORLD.” — NPR WEDNESDAY, MARCH 28 • 8 PM MOTORCO MUSIC HALL Tickets: $20 General Admission $10 Duke Students

Nearly one-tenth of Venezuela’s population is descended from African ancestors brought to the region to work its rich cocoa fields. These Afro-Venezuelans developed a deep if often overlooked cultural heritage, with distinct religious and folk traditions and music that sounds like nothing else in the Americas. At long last, those sounds have started to find their way to stages around the world thanks to the virtuoso singer Betsayda Machado and her backing band La Parranda El Clavo, a drum-and-voice ensemble with airtight, emphatic harmonies and undeniably ecstatic rhythms.

For three decades, La Parranda El Clavo performed primarily at village ceremonies and celebrations. Machado, dubbed “The Black Voice of Barlovento,” sang with them in the late 1980s. She then moved to Caracas and built a career that ultimately brought the entire group to the United States for the first time in 2017. Their long-delayed stateside debut was unanimously heralded: NPR called it “one of the most joyful shows in years,” while The New York Times noted, “This was the kind of group that world music fans have always been thrilled to discover: vital, accomplished, local, unplugged, deeply rooted.”

B L A C K AT L A N T I C

DUKE PERFORMANCES

TRIO DA KALI MALI “WHAT TRIO DA KALI PURVEYED WAS A LOVELY BLEND OF GRIOT MUSIC PLUS SOMETHING CLOSE TO JAZZ.” — THE INDEPENDENT

THURSDAY, MARCH 29 • 8 PM M O T O R C O MUSI C HA L L Tickets: $20 General Admission $10 Duke Students

Mali’s griot heritage is one of the world’s true musical marvels. For at least seven centuries, these families of musician-historians have gathered and shared the stories of their communities, amassing an unparalleled oral tradition. Modern descendants of the griot lineage have become international ambassadors for African music, playing major festivals and releasing acclaimed records. Trio da Kali — a beguiling partnership among some of Mali’s most revered musical families — is a contender on that growing list. Songlines exclaimed, “Steeped in tradition, these three brilliant musicians give a new voice to timeless sounds.”

The hammered balafon of Lassana Diabaté, a veteran of Toumani Diabaté’s bands, anchors the Trio with lyrical, agile melodies. Mamadou Kouyaté adds bass with the ngoni, a modern version of the ancient guitar-lute. Griotte Hawa Kassé Mady, daughter of legendary singer Kassé Mady Diabaté, sings with authority and charm, leading the group with a voice warm and resonant enough to warrant frequent comparisons to American gospel great Mahalia Jackson.

DIEGO EL CIGALA AURELIO GARIFUNA/HONDURAS SPAIN/DOMINICAN REPUBLIC

“AURELIO RAISES THE STANDARD FOR GARIFUNA POP TO A NEW PLATEAU.” — AFROPOP

F RIDA Y , MA RC H 3 0 • 8 PM MO T O RC O MUS I C H AL L Tickets: $20 General Admission $10 Duke Students

The Garifuna people, language, and culture transcend geographical borders. The Garifuna (or Garinagu) originated with a seventeenth-century shipwreck of plantation-bound Nigerians off the Caribbean island of St. Vincent. The survivors took shelter in Arawak communities, thus escaping slavery, but a series of forced migrations took them to the mainland, where they settled on a thin strip of coastline that stretches southward from Belize to Nicaragua. Garifuna music, epitomized by a shuffling rhythm dubbed the paranda and mingling the sounds of West Africa and the Caribbean, is upbeat and irrepressible, a lingering testament to survival. No one has represented that musical tradition with the same energy or appeal as singer, guitarist, and politician Aurelio Martínez.

Born into a musical family in the small Honduran coastal outpost of Plaplaya, Aurelio became his town’s percussion prodigy before going away to school, where he began to develop the vocabulary that would help him revitalize Garifuna traditions. His deep, commanding voice and the rich, full sound of his band led to international attention and a collaboration with Afropop legend Youssou N’Dour that cemented his star status.

Called “one of the greatest artists of Latin America” by the London Evening Standard and “a musical guardian of the Garifuna”

by NPR, Aurelio has become a powerhouse performer of the highest order.

2017 | 2018

“DIEGO EL CIGALA JOINS THE LIKES OF BILLIE HOLIDAY, FRANK SINATRA, AND GIUSEPPE DI STEFANO AS ONE OF THE GREAT SINGERS OF THE PAST HUNDRED YEARS.” — THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

SATURDAY, MARCH 31 • 8 PM C AR O L I NA TH E ATR E O F D U R H AM Tickets: $45 • $40 • $30 • $10 Duke Students

Diego El Cigala emerged as a modern flamenco icon in the late 1990s.

With his distinctive gravelly voice and his luxuriant black curls, he conjured the romance of the form, updating it with a swagger all his own. But El Cigala was never content to sing mere flamenco. Indeed, his 2004 collaboration with legendary Cuban pianist Bebo Valdés daringly tied his style to dashing Cuban rhythms, suggesting that his future extended far beyond Andalusian territory.

A decade later, he explored tango, even winning a Latin GRAMMY in the genre.

It became clear that El Cigala was interested in exploring raw, emotional music, no matter the country of origin.

That is the underlying concept of Indestructible, El Cigala’s masterful 2016 album of spirited salsa, delivered with authoritative flamenco power. El Cigala, who became a citizen of the Dominican Republic in 2014, traveled between Spain, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Colombia, New York, and Miami to record these songs. Recruiting musicians from each of those musical epicenters, El Cigala explored the salsa canon while working to stretch it with stylistic brio. He returns to Durham this time with a ten-piece band, investing this material with even more energy. El Cigala and his band pull together the sounds and sources of the world’s foremost centers of tropical music.

DUKE PERFORMANCES P I A N O R EC I TA L S E R I E S

RAFAL BLECHACZ

PIANO

F R ID AY, AP RIL 6 • 8 P M BAL D WIN A UDI TORIUM Tickets: $38 • $32 • $20 Ages 30 & Under $10 Duke Students

Since 2005, when Rafał Blechacz became the first Polish musician in three decades to win Warsaw’s International Chopin Piano Competition, he has become an established star, winning the prestigious Gilmore Artist Award, Echo Klassik Awards, and several gold records and appearing with the world’s major orchestras. He has been prolific, recording Chopin’s complete preludes, piano concertos, and polonaises alongside works by other masters. The New York Times observed that Blechacz finds “subtle ways to uncover freshness and spontaneity” in familiar repertoire, while Bachtrack called his playing “crystalline and elegant.”

In his third visit to Duke Performances since 2010, Blechacz begins by contrasting Mozart’s sprightly and uplifting Rondo in A Minor with his bleak Sonata in A Minor, the latter written during the final illness of Mozart’s mother. Blechacz turns to Beethoven’s brilliantly expressive late Sonata in A Major, op. 101, then delights with Schumann’s animated Carnival Scenes from Vienna. He ends the evening with two works by his compatriot Chopin: the tempestous Mazurkas, based on folk dance melodies, and the concert’s culmination, the Ballade No. 4, a work of extreme beauty.

PROGRAM Mozart: Rondo in A Minor, K. 511 & Sonata No. 8 in A Minor, K. 310

VOCAL ENSEMBLE SERIES

MARIA SCHNEIDER THE TALLIS ORCHESTRA SCHOLARS S A T U RDA Y , A P R I L 7 • 8 PM BA L DWIN A U DI TO R I U M

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 11 • 8 PM DUKE CHAPEL

Tickets: $38 • $32 • $20 Ages 30 & Under $10 Duke Students

Tickets: Reserved Seating: VIP $52 • Preferred $42 General Admission: $28 • $20 Ages 30 & Under • $10 Duke Students

As a composer and bandleader, fivetime GRAMMY winner Maria Schneider deploys her peerless seventeen-piece Maria Schneider Orchestra to test the boundaries between classical music and jazz. Hailed as a “major composer” by Time and a “national treasure”

by NPR, Schneider draws some of the world’s best musicians to her ensemble, reshaping the way a big band works, much as Duke Ellington did before her.

A protégé of jazz giant Gil Evans and a collaborator of David Bowie, Dawn Upshaw, and the Kronos Quartet, Schneider comes to Duke Performances having recently won a GRAMMY for The Thompson Fields, her sublime ode to her rural Minnesota upbringing.

Schneider’s dazzling orchestra includes the likes of North Carolina-born pianist Frank Kimbrough — seen earlier this season in MONK@100 — and GRAMMY-nominated saxophonist Donny McCaslin. “The orchestra, as a single breathing organism, is Ms. Schneider’s instrument,” proclaimed The New York Times. The Christian Science Monitor called the members of the Orchestra “musicians of tremendous technical sophistication and emotional energy [who] channel their talents through the direction of the most significant big band jazz composer of our time.” Don’t miss this rare local appearance of one of the world’s great large jazz ensembles.

Over the last four decades, London’s Tallis Scholars have become unquestioned authorities of renaissance polyphony — “ethereal and yet full-blooded, uplifting and yet grounded,” declares The Guardian. Their sterling reputation stems both from a steady stream of first-class singers and from the inventive programming of founder Peter Phillips, who approaches historic texts with reverence for their past and energy for ensuring their relevance in the future. Phillips brings that philosophy to bear with War and Peace, a poignant program of music dealing with suffering, death, and redemption, delivered in remembrance of the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I. In Durham, the Tallis Scholars sing the program, fashioned as a mass, inside the soaring space of Duke Chapel. The ten Scholars begin with “L’homme armé,” the renaissance root of many subsequent masses, then proceed to the glorious Kyrie of Josquin’s own Missa l’Homme armé. They turn next to Arvo Pärt’s ethereal and deeply moving tribute to Mary Magdalene, The Woman with the Alabaster Box, and Tavener’s Song for Athene, sung at Princess Diana’s funeral. The concert ends with Spanish composer Victoria’s Libera Me (1603), a timeless prayer for the release of the dead that has created solace in the midst of tumult for more than four centuries.

PROGRAM

Beethoven: Sonata No. 28 in A Major, op. 101

The program for this concert is designed as a Mass, albeit one that draws from the work of many composers. It includes both early music — Josquin, Guerrero, Jean Mouton, Alonso Lobo, Victoria, and Palestrina — and contemporary compositions from Tavener and Pärt. Please visit dukeperformances.org for the complete program.

Schumann: Carnival Scenes from Vienna, op. 26 Chopin: Mazurkas, op. 24 & Ballade No. 4, op. 52

2017 | 2018

CHAMBER ARTS SERIES

QUATUOR DANEL SAT URD AY, A PRIL 14 • 8 P M BAL D WIN A UDI TORIUM Tickets: $38 • $32 • $20 Ages 30 & Under $10 Duke Students

Hailed by Gramophone as “a model for any aspiring string quartet,” the Frenchbred, UK-based Quatuor Danel has emerged as a premier risk-taking ensemble during the last quarter century.

Quatuor Danel matches its instrumental acumen with enthusiasm and audacity. A decade ago, they became the first group to record and perform all seventeen string quartets by Soviet-Polish Jewish composer Mieczysław Weinberg, who, despite the brilliance of his compositions, had never been fully supported by the Soviet Union. The Danel tackled Weinberg’s work only after setting a new standard for Shostakovich’s complete string quartets.

At Duke Performances, the Danel plays a program of Russian masters. The ensemble begins with the Second, and final, String Quartet of Alexander Borodin.

At the heart of the evening, it presents to the Chamber Arts Series its first experience of Weinberg, the Quartet No. 3 in F Major, a dynamic and daring work that rides waves of extreme tension and release. The ensemble closes the concert with Shostakovich’s engrossing String Quartet No. 3 in F Major, a compelling and poignant examination of the world’s troubled state following World War II. PROGRAM Borodin: String Quartet No. 2 in D Major Mieczysław Weinberg: String Quartet No. 3 in D Minor, op. 14 Shostakovich: String Quartet No. 3 in F Major, op. 73

ESSENTIAL CLASSICS SPECIAL PROGRAM

TOUMANI & SIDIKI DIABATÉ “PENSIVE OR HYPERACTIVE, THE DUETS ARE ALWAYS GORGEOUS.” — THE NEW YORK TIMES MONDAY, APRIL 16 • 8 PM BALDWIN AUDITORIUM Tickets: $42 • $36 • $20 Ages 30 & Under $10 Duke Students

Malian virtuoso and two-time GRAMMY winner Toumani Diabaté marked the thirtieth year of his recording career in 2017, a benchmark for one of the world’s most remarkable musicians.

The master of the wonderfully hypnotic twenty-one-string kora, Diabaté represents the seventy-first generation in a line of West African griots that stretches back seven centuries. Known for his ability to beautifully render melody, rhythm, and bass simultaneously, he has collaborated with Björk, Herbie Hancock, and Béla Fleck; exposed international audiences to the kora’s mesmerizing melodies; and advocated for compassion for his country.

In fact, the current crisis and conflict in Mali, which has included a jihadist takeover and a military coup, prompted Toumani to recruit his son, the Malian hiphop star Sidiki, to record an album of kora duets in 2014. An approachable listen that digs back into the kora tradition with bold renditions of songs excavated from obscure field recordings, Toumani & Sidiki earned unanimously ecstatic praise. Described by The Guardian as the best collaboration of Toumani’s career since his groundbreaking work with Ali Farka Touré and by NPR as “magical,” it is a joyous document of one of music’s ancient traditions made new.

JACK QUARTET AMERICAN MUSIC NO. 2 TH U R S D AY, APR I L 2 6 • 8 PM V O N D E R H E YD E N S TU D I O TH E ATE R , RUBENSTEIN ARTS CENTER Tickets: $28 General Admission $20 Ages 30 & Under • $10 Duke Students

The members of the JACK Quartet have been called “superheroes of the new music world” (The Boston Globe) and the “next-generation counterpart” to the benchmark Arditti (The Guardian). The New York Times hailed the JACK as “among the best ensembles of its generation.” Recent personnel shifts brought the ensemble two electrifying new players, violinist Austin Wulliman and cellist Jay Campbell. A founder of the Spektral Quartet and a collaborator with indie rock bands and high-profile orchestras, Wulliman’s experience fits the JACK’s expansive mission. Likewise, Campbell — a recent Avery Fisher Career Grant winner and a New York Philharmonic soloist — has worked with some of the world’s most vital composers, among them John Zorn.

During the JACK’s second concert of the season as Duke Performances’ ensemble-in-residence, its members play another daring program of American music for string quartet. The evening opens with Erin Gee’s fanciful Mouthpiece XXII, commissioned for the Arditti; Mark Applebaum’s recent Kronos commission, Darmstadt Kindergarten; and Elliott Carter’s whirlwind String Quartet No. 3. The second half includes legendary experimentalist Anthony Braxton’s Compositions and Morton Feldman’s quietly intense Structures. A month after its Carnegie Hall premiere, the JACK closes the evening with a reprise of Philip Glass’ String Quartet No. 8.

PROGRAM Erin Gee: Mouthpiece XXII Mark Applebaum: Darmstadt Kindergarten Elliott Carter: String Quartet No. 3 Anthony Braxton: Selections from Compositions Morton Feldman: Structures Philip Glass: String Quartet No. 8

DUKE PERFORMANCES ESSENTIAL CLASSICS SPECIAL PROGRAM

P I A N O R EC I TA L S E R I E S

JORDI SAVALL & PAUL LEWIS, PIANO HESPÈRION XXI WITH CARLOS NÚÑEZ CELTIC UNIVERSE F RIDA Y , MA Y 4 • 8 PM BA L DWIN A U DI TO R I U M

Tickets: $42 • $36 • $20 Ages 30 & Under $10 Duke Students

SU ND AY, A PRIL 29 • 7 P M BAL D WIN A UDI TORIUM Tickets: $48 • $42 • $20 Ages 30 & Under $10 Duke Students

Jordi Savall is one of the most revered figures of the early music revival. For half a century Savall, the world’s foremost master of the majestic and haunting viola da gamba, has explored early music from around the globe, reintroducing forgotten works with his long-running group Hespèrion. Savall has made a vast repertoire of music accessible and borderless, a gift to be shared. Like Savall, Carlos Núñez has long championed an obscure instrument, the Galician bagpipes from the Celtic lands that are part of northern Spain. “If it’s possible to become a pop star playing traditional music on bagpipes and recorder, Núñez could be the man,” declared the Los Angeles Times.

In the monumental new collaboration Celtic Universe, Savall and Núñez combine their trios for an expansive exploration of Celtic music across centuries and geographical borders. The six musicians shift configurations for eight themed sets that survey the wildly varied sounds of the Celts — some familiar, such as Irish standards like Archibald MacDonald of Keppoch, and some surprising, such as the songs of Galicia. They sample seventeenth-century viol music, reels, and laments from Ireland and Scotland, then play a selection of Basque songs, before closing with a spirited medley of traditional Irish tunes.

Celtic Universe is a revelatory reappraisal of Celtic culture’s breadth and wealth, delivered by six instrumental masters.

The playing of British pianist Paul Lewis CBE, a protégé of Alfred Brendel, depends on a studied emotional reverence: he is the master of the sinking feeling, the ecstatic stir. Having recorded definitive and highly acclaimed interpretations of Beethoven, he appears regularly as a soloist with top-tier orchestras around the globe and is a frequent recitalist at the world’s greatest halls and festivals. The Guardian declares that what sets Lewis apart is his “clarity, muscle, and steely pride, but also intimacy, vulnerability and volatility: the combination is magnetic.”

Lewis begins with Beethoven’s Eleven Bagatelles, op. 119, a set of sparkling miniatures. He explores Haydn sonatas from two parts of the composer’s career: the impassioned Sonata in E-flat, written for a friend with whom he was likely in love, followed by an earlier work, the mercurial Sonata in B Minor. Lewis closes with the chiaroscuro of Brahms’ Klavierstücke, the master’s last composition for solo piano, of which no less an authority than Clara Schumann declared, “it is wonderful how he combines passion and tenderness in the smallest of spaces.”

PROGRAM Beethoven: Eleven Bagatelles, op. 119 Haydn: Sonata in E-flat Major, Hob XVI:49 & Sonata in B Minor, Hob XVI:32

CHAMBER ARTS SERIES

EMERSON STRING QUARTET S ATU R D AY, M AY 5 • 8 PM B AL D W I N AU D I TO R I U M Tickets: $48 • $42 • $20 Ages 30 & Under $10 Duke Students

The Emerson String Quartet is the most celebrated American string quartet in existence. With nine GRAMMY awards, a catalogue several dozen albums deep, an Avery Fisher Prize, and a fifty-two-disc Deutsche Grammophon box set to its name, the Emerson maintains what The Boston Globe once called “an extraordinary fusion of experience and authority with audacity and freshness.” In 2013 the Emerson added cellist Paul Watkins, its first change of line-up in more than three decades. The transition, as The New York Times noted, has been flawless.

In its third visit to Duke since that change, the Emerson links three essential twentieth-century quartets with the farewell of a master. They begin with Samuel Barber’s only complete quartet, op. 11, the devastatingly beautiful precursor to his immortal Adagio for Strings. The Emerson builds the program with Anton Webern’s Six Bagatelles for String Quartet, one of the earliest masterpieces of atonality, followed by Béla Bartók’s riveting Third Quartet, the latter as complex melodically as it is emotionally.

The Emerson closes this year’s Chamber Arts Series with Beethoven’s Quartet No. 13, op. 130, whose alternate finale replaces its predecessor, the Grosse Fuge, which had proved too challenging for many of Beethoven’s contemporaries. This replacement finale is the last music he wrote.

Brahms: Klavierstücke, op. 119 PROGRAM Barber: String Quartet in B Major, op. 11 Webern: Six Bagatelles for String Quartet, op. 9 Bartók: String Quartet No. 3, Sz. 85 Beethoven: String Quartet in B-flat Major, op. 130, with alternate finale

PROGRAM Please visit dukeperformances.org for the complete program.

2017 | 2018

T H E C I O M P I Q UA R T E T AT D U K E U N I V E R S I T Y CIOMPI CONCERT NO. 1

CIOMPI CONCERT NO. 2

F E AT U R I N G

F E AT U R I N G

RACHEL KUIPERS YONAN, VIOLA

JANE HAWKINS, PIANO

BRENT WISSICK, CELLO

O O O

SATURDAY, APRIL 28 • 8 PM BALDWIN AUDITORIUM

O O O

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 23 • 8 PM BALDWIN AUDITORIUM

Tickets: $25 General Admission • $15 Ages 30 & Under $10 All Students

Tickets: $25 General Admission • $15 Ages 30 & Under $10 All Students

For its fall concert the Ciompi recruits two acclaimed area musicians for a pair of string quintets. They begin with Mozart’s emotionally dynamic String Quintet No. 3, which ricochets from dashing to heartrending, Triangle resident and cofounder of the Pennsylvania-based Marinus Ensemble Rachel Kuipers Yonan adds the extra viola to this late quintet. Cellist and longtime UNC professor Brent Wissick steps in for Schubert’s String Quintet in C Major, the composer’s final chamber work and the widely accepted paragon of cello quintets. Known for his scholarship and historically attuned playing, Wissick is a fitting addition for this sweeping masterpiece.

Since 1974, Fred Raimi has worked as the cellist of the Ciompi Quartet, making him the longest-serving member of the venerable Duke institution. This concert marks Raimi’s final performance as cellist of the Ciompi Quartet. The Ciompi begins its spring concert in the way it has traditionally started its season — with a quartet from Haydn, the father of the form. This exquisite quartet, in C Major, is one of the landmark set of six that clinched Haydn’s reputation as the form’s early master. Mozart’s Quartet in A Major follows, which is from his set of six quartets dedicated to Haydn. The program concludes with an appearance by a very special guest, pianist Jane Hawkins, who will join the group for Shostakovich’s only piano quintet, a landmark work.

PROGRAM

PROGRAM

Mozart: String Quintet in C Major, K. 515

Haydn: String Quartet in C Major, Op. 20, No. 2

Schubert: String Quintet in C Major, D. 956 (“Great")

Mozart: String Quartet in A Major, K. 464 Shostakovich: Piano Quintet in G Minor, Op. 57 2017 | 2018

VENUES O O O

From formal halls and adaptable theaters to intimate nightclubs and black-box spaces, Duke Performances finds ideal stages for diverse artists and audiences in high-quality venues on campus and in town.

BALDWIN AUDITORIUM 1336 Campus Drive | Durham, NC 27708 dukeperformances.org

DURHAM FRUIT & PRODUCE 305 South Dillard Street | Durham, NC 27701 dukeperformances.org

MOTORCO MUSIC HALL 723 Rigsbee Avenue | Durham, NC 27701 motorcomusic.com

R E Y N O L D S I N D U S T R I E S T H E AT E R Bryan University Center | 125 Science Drive | Durham, NC 27708 dukeperformances.org

V O N D E R H E Y D E N S T U D I O T H E AT E R Rubenstein Arts Center | 2020 Campus Drive | Durham, NC 27705 dukeperformances.org

C A R O L I N A T H E AT R E O F D U R H A M 309 West Morgan Street | Durham, NC 27701 carolinatheatre.org

DUKE CHAPEL 401 Chapel Drive | Durham, NC 27708 chapel.duke.edu

NELSON MUSIC ROOM 1304 Campus Drive | Durham, NC 27708 dukeperformances.org

DURHAM PERFORMING ARTS CENTER 123 Vivian Street | Durham, NC 27701 dpacnc.com

NASHER MUSEUM OF ART 2001 Campus Drive | Durham, NC 27705 nasher.duke.edu

PA G E A U D I T O R I U M 402 Chapel Drive | Durham, NC 27708 dukeperformances.org

THE PINHOOK 117 West Main Street | Durham, NC 27701 thepinhook.com

SOUND PURE 732 Washington Street | Durham, NC 27701 soundpure.com

I N F O R M AT I O N

D U K E P E R F O R M A N C E S 2 0 1 7/ 1 8 T I C K E T I N F O R M AT I O N O O O

T I C K E T O N S A L E D AT E S

Duke Performances 2017/18 season ticket packages — including the Pick-Four or More, Chamber Arts Series, Piano Recital Series, and Vocal Ensemble Series — will go on sale to general public on TUESDAY, JUNE 20 at 11 AM. Single tickets to Duke Performances 2017/18 shows will go on sale TUESDAY, JULY 11 at 11 AM. $10 Duke student tickets and $20 tickets for patrons ages 30 & under will go on sale TUESDAY, AUGUST 29 at 11 AM.

D U K E P E R F O R M A N C E S 2 017/18 D I S C O U N T S 2 01 7/1 8 E S S E N T I A L C L A S S I C S S E R I E S AT D U K E P E R F O R M A N C E S

25% P I C K- F O U R O R M O R E D I S C O U N T

Take 25% off your total price when you buy tickets to four or more shows from Duke Performances 2017/18 season.

Note: Patrons who buy a Pick-Four package will be provided with a 25% discount code for shows at the Carolina Theatre and DPAC (John McLaughlin & Jimmy Herring, Take Me to The River, Gregory Porter, and Diego El Cigala).

$ 10 T I C K E T S F O R D U K E S T U D E N T S ; A MIRACULOUS STUDENT TICKET PRICE

Duke students — both undergraduate & graduate — may purchase tickets to any and all shows on Duke Performances’ 2017/18 season for just $10.

2 01 7/1 8 C H A M B E R A R T S S E R I E S

American Brass Quintet • Quatuor Mosaïques • Modigliani Quartet • Escher String Quartet Ft. Jason Vieaux, Guitar • Smetana Trio • Jerusalem Quartet • Quatuor Danel • Emerson String Quartet CAS package provides best available reserved seats in Baldwin Auditorium.

Regular price: $336. Series discount price: $215.

Note: Limit of two $10 tickets per student for each presentation.

Quantities of available $10 Duke student tickets may be restricted.

Duke student ID required at time of purchase.

$20 T I C K E T S F O R PAT R O N S A G E S 3 0 & U N D E R

Patrons ages 30 & under — high school students, college students matriculating at neighboring institutions & young professionals — may purchase tickets to most presentations on Duke Performances’ 2017/18 season for just $20.

Note: Limit of two $20 tickets per patron for each presentation. Quantities of $20 tickets may be restricted. ID required at time of purchase.

2 01 7/1 8 P I A N O R E C I TA L S E R I E S

Benjamin Grosvenor • Stephen Hough• Shai Wosner (both concerts) • Rafał Blechacz • Paul Lewis PRS package provides best available reserved seats in Baldwin Auditorium and VIP seating in Nelson Music Room.

Regular price: $216. Series discount price: $140.

15 % D U K E E M P L OY E E D I S C O U N T; E V E R Y S H O W, A L L S E A S O N

Duke University employs 36,000 fine folks; each and every one is entitled to 15% off tickets to nearly every presentation on Duke Performances’ 2017/18 season.

Note: Limit of two discounted employee tickets per presentation.

Duke employee ID required at time of purchase.

2 01 7/1 8 V O C A L E N S E M B L E S E R I E S

St. Thomas Choir Leipzig • The King’s Singers • The Tallis Scholars VES package provides best available reserved seats in Baldwin Auditorium and VIP seating in Duke Chapel.

Regular price: $160. Series discount price: $105.

2017 | 2018

I N F O R M AT I O N

F O R T I C K E T S , F U L L P R O G R A M D E TA I L S & O T H E R I M P O R TA N T I N F O R M AT I O N V I S I T D U K E P E R F O R M A N C E S .O R G ORDERING TICKETS

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’ website 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.

Note: All performances are reserved seating unless indicated otherwise.

T I C K E T I N G D E TA I L S F O R D U K E P E R F O R M A N C E S ’ C O N C E R T S AT C A R O L I N A T H E AT R E O F D U R H A M & D PA C

John McLaughlin & Jimmy Herring • The Meeting of the Spirits Sunday, November 12 Durham Performing Arts Center

Take Me to The River featuring William Bell, Bobby Rush & Don Bryant Thursday, January 25 Carolina Theatre of Durham

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 concert.

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

GIVE TO DUKE PERFORMANCES As Duke Performances moves into its second decade, we need your support to sustain the program, keeping the work fresh, accessible, and forward-thinking. We offer more than 70 performances and 100 residency events year-round at a dozen different venues at Duke and in Durham. We pride ourselves on providing context for the art we offer through public engagement events on campus and in town. Duke Performances has grown over the past decade, and we need your support to make our work deeper, richer, and more meaningful.

Gregory Porter Sunday, March 4 Carolina Theatre of Durham Diego El Cigala Saturday, March 31 Carolina Theatre of Durham DPAC: dpacnc.com, 919-680-2787, 123 Vivian Street Carolina Theatre: carolinatheatre.org, 919-560-3030, 309 W. Morgan Street Ticketmaster service charges will be applied to shows at these two venues.

Patrons who buy a Pick-Four package will be provided with a 25% discount code for shows at the Carolina Theatre and DPAC Duke students may purchase $10 student tickets to Carolina Theatre shows through the Duke University Box Office in the Bryan Center.

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 us at either performances@duke.edu or 919-660-3356.

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

Aaron Greenwald / Executive Director 919-660-3357 / aaron.greenwald@duke.edu Eric Oberstein / Associate Director 919-660-3359 / eric.oberstein@duke.edu

I M P O R TA N T I N F O R M AT I O N

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.

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

Ariel Fielding / Marketing Director 919-660-3348 / ariel.fielding@duke.edu Gray West / Graphic Designer 919-660-3371 / gray.west@duke.edu Suzanne Despres / Production Manager 919-660-3379 / suzanne.despres@duke.edu Brian Valentyn / Manager of Campus & Community Initiatives 919-660-3175 / brian.valentyn@duke.edu Gloria Hunt / Business Manager 919-660-3356 / gloria.hunt@duke.edu

THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT

DUKE PERFORMANCES

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