D U K E PE R F O R M A N C E S S P R I N G 2 0 1 8 | M U S I C , T H E AT E R , D A N C E & M O R E .
I N D U R H A M , A T D U K E , E S S E N T I A L & E X T R A O R D I N A R Y.
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 "FELLOWSHIP IS A PROFOUNDLY IMPORTANT BAND, AND BLADE IS WIDELY ACKNOWLEDGED AS ONE OF THE TOP DRUMMERS IN JAZZ." — DOWNBEAT 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 commitment 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.
SPRING 2018
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.
DUKE PERFORMANCES
T H E AT E R
DON DELILLO’S THE BODY ARTIST
ADAPTED & DIRECTED BY JODY MCAULIFFE THURSDAY, JANUARY 25 • 8PM F R ID AY, JA NUA RY 26 • 8 P M SATURDAY, JANUARY 27 • 8 PM REYNOLDS INDUSTRIES THEATER
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 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 — 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. Tavish Miller plays the changling and 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. Presented by the Department of Theater Studies at Duke University.
VOCAL ENSEMBLE SERIES
THE KING’S SINGERS F RIDA Y , JA N UA R Y 2 6 • 8 PM BA L DWIN A U DI TO R I U M 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. 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 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.
SPRING 2018
DANCE
ANTONY HAMILTON & ALISDAIR MACINDOE MEETING THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 1 • 8 PM FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 2 • 8 PM SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 3 • 8 PM VON DER HEYDEN STUDIO THEATER, 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
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 and recently awarded two Bessies for Outstanding Production and Outstanding Musical Composition/Sound Design. 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.
2017 | 2018
H I P -H O P I N I T I AT I V E
MURS & 9TH WONDER “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
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. Murs & 9th Wonder are presented as part of Duke Performances’ HipHop Initiative, made possible, in part, with support from the National Endowment for the Arts.
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 SPRING 2018
DUKE PERFORMANCES
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 ON D ER HEYDEN STU DIO T HE A T E R, R UBENST EIN A RTS CE N T E 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.
SPRING 2018
DUKE PERFORMANCES 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
P I A N O R EC I TA L S E R I E S
BEDLAM SHAI WOSNER HAMLET + SAINT JOAN PIANO SCHUBERT'S LAST SONATAS
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
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 21 • 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.
Brooklyn theater company Bedlam seeks to recreate canonical classics with postmodern zeal. Bedlam’s debut — a marathon performance of George Bernard Shaw’s 1923 tragedy Saint Joan, based on the trial of 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, you’ll feel as though you were part of the action.” Bedlam doubled down by producing Shakespeare’s Hamlet — a tale of murder, madness, and revenge — with the same four actors, played in repertory with Saint Joan, earning them raves from The New York Times. Don’t miss these kinetic productions of Hamlet and Saint Joan at Duke’s intimate von der Heyden Studio Theater. SPRING 2018
PART 1: SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 24 • 8 PM PART 2: SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 25 • 3 PM NE L S O N M U S I C R O O M 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 “ALSARAH AND THE NUBATONES BLEND CLASSIC AFROPOP AND SUBTLE ELECTRONIC SOUNDS TO WRITE A BOLD, BEAUTIFUL NEW PAGE IN CONTEMPORARY AFRICAN MUSIC.” — POPMATTERS
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 mid-1990s, 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 the National Endowment for the Arts. Co-sponsored by the Duke Islamic Studies Center and the Duke University Middle East Studies Center.
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 “PORTER'S VOICE CAN OVERPOWER, MANHANDLE, ENVELOP AND SOOTHE, ALL AT ONCE.” — NPR
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.
S U ND AY, MA RCH 4 • 8 P M CAR OL INA THE A TRE O F DURHA M Tickets: $55 • $45 • $35 • $10 Duke Students
SPRING 2018
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.
Photo: Christopher Duggan
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.”
DANCE HEGINBOTHAM & MAIRA KALMAN
THE PRINCIPLES OF UNCERTAINTY
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 six of Heginbotham’s dancers; they will be accompanied by a new score from Brooklyn Rider’s Colin Jacobsen, performed live by a four-piece ensemble drawn from Jacobsen’s Knights chamber orchestra.
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
Made possible, in part, by a grant from South Arts in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts, & support from the Dance Program at Duke University. The Principles of Uncertainty was co-commissioned by Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival and the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and was created during residencies at BAM Fisher, The Banff Centre, Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign, and the NYU Center for Ballet and the Arts. This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts and by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.
SPRING 2018
CHAMBER ARTS SERIES
JERUSALEM QUARTET “PASSION, PRECISION, WARMTH, A GOLD BLEND: THESE ARE THE TRADEMARKS OF THIS EXCELLENT ISRAELI STRING QUARTET.” — THE LONDON TIMES SAT URD AY, MA RCH 24 • 8 P M BAL D WIN A UDI TORIUM
tets 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. 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.
Tickets: $42 • $36 • $20 Ages 30 & Under • $10 Duke Students
PROGRAM
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 quar-
SPRING 2018
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
DUKE PERFORMANCES SPRING '18
J A N UA R Y ’1 8 SU
THE KING’S SINGERS Friday, January 26 Baldwin Auditorium
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MURS & 9TH WONDER Thursday, February 8 Motorco Music Hall
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DON DELILLO’S THE BODY ARTIST ADAPTED & DIRECTED BY JODY MCAULIFFE Thursday thru Saturday, January 25-27 Reynolds Industries Theater
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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 Wednesday thru Sunday February 21 & 22, 24 & 25 Rubenstein Arts Center
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SHAI WOSNER, PIANO SCHUBERT’S LAST SONATAS Saturday & Sunday, February 24 & 25 Nelson Music Room
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ALSARAH & THE NUBATONES Thursday, March 1 Motorco Music Hall
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GREGORY PORTER Sunday, March 4 Carolina Theatre of Durham JOHN SUPKO, BILL SEAMAN & JIM FINDLAY THE_OPER& Thursday thru Saturday, March 8-10 Rubenstein Arts Center
JEREMY DENK & STEFAN JACKIW IVES VIOLIN SONATAS Friday, January 19 Baldwin Auditorium
DANCE HEGINBOTHAM & MAIRA KALMAN THE PRINCIPLES OF UNCERTAINTY Friday & Saturday, March 23 & 24 Reynolds Industries Theater
BRIAN BLADE & THE FELLOWSHIP BAND Saturday, January 20 Baldwin Auditorium
JERUSALEM QUARTET Saturday, March 24 Baldwin Auditorium
TAKE ME TO THE RIVER WITH WILLIAM BELL, BOBBY RUSH & DON BRYANT Thursday, January 25 Carolina Theatre of Durham
BLACK ATLANTIC BLACK ATLANTIC: JOAN SORIANO Monday, March 26 Motorco Music Hall
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 QUATUOR DANEL Saturday, April 14 Baldwin Auditorium TOUMANI & SIDIKI DIABATÉ Monday, April 16 Baldwin Auditorium JACK QUARTET AMERICAN MUSIC NO. 2 Thursday, April 26 Rubenstein Arts Center CIOMPI CONCERT NO. 2 FEAT. MAX RAIMI, VIOLA Saturday, April 28 Baldwin Auditorium JORDI SAVALL & HESPÈRION XXI CELTIC UNIVERSE Sunday, April 29 Baldwin Auditorium
M AY ’18 PAUL LEWIS, PIANO Friday, May 4 Baldwin Auditorium EMERSON STRING QUARTET Saturday, May 5 Baldwin Auditorium
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
JOAN SORIANO DOMINICAN REPUBLIC “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.”
B L AC K AT L A N T I C
EMELINE MICHEL HAITI “MICHEL’S RICH, SUPPLE VOCALS EFFORTLESSLY POUR OVER HER TUNES, WHICH DOCUMENT THE JOY, HOPE, AND STRUGGLE OF HAITIAN CULTURE.” — ALLMUSIC
T U ESD AY, MA RCH 27 • 8 P M M OT O R C O MUSI C HA L 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.
BETSAYDA MACHADO TRIO DA KALI Y LA PARRANDA EL CLAVO MALI 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.” SPRING 2018
“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 TO R C O M U S I C H AL 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.
AURELIO GARIFUNA/HONDURAS “AURELIO RAISES THE STANDARD FOR GARIFUNA POP TO A NEW PLATEAU.” — AFROPOP F R ID AY, MA RCH 30 • 8 P M M O T O R C O MUSI C HA L 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.
B L AC K AT L A N T I C
DIEGO EL CIGALA SPAIN/DOMINICAN REPUBLIC "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 OL INA THE A TRE O F DURHA M 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
RAFAŁ BLECHACZ
PIANO
VOCAL ENSEMBLE SERIES
MARIA SCHNEIDER THE TALLIS SCHOLARS ORCHESTRA WEDNESDAY, APRIL 11 • 8 PM DUKE CHAPEL
FR ID AY, AP RIL 6 • 8 P M B A L D W IN A UDITORIUM 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
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 Tickets: $38 • $32 • $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 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.
Beethoven: Sonata No. 28 in A Major, op. 101 Schumann: Sonata No. 2 in G Minor, op. 22, no.2
Chopin: Mazurkas, op. 24 & Polonaise No. 6 in A-flat Major, op. 53
SPRING 2018
Tickets: Reserved Seating: VIP $52 • Preferred $42 General Admission: $28 • $20 Ages 30 & Under • $10 Duke Students
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 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.
DUKE PERFORMANCES ESSENTIAL CLASSICS SPECIAL PROGRAM
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
TOUMANI JACK QUARTET & SIDIKI DIABATÉ AMERICAN MUSIC NO. 2 “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 hip-hop 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.
SPRING 2018
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
PAUL LEWIS, PIANO JORDI SAVALL & 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 Brahms: Klavierstücke, op. 119
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. 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. SPRING 2018
THE CIOMPI QUARTET AT DUKE UNIVERSITY CIOMPI CONCERT NO. 2 F E AT U R I N G
MAX RAIMI, VIOLA SATURDAY, APRIL 28 • 8 PM BALDWIN AUDITORIUM
Tickets: $25 General Admission • $15 Ages 30 & Under $10 All Students
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, violist Max Raimi, who joins the group for the Brahms G Major Viola Quintet, op. 111, a late work with echoes of Palestrina, Mendelssohn, and Hungarian folk music. PROGRAM Haydn: String Quartet in C Major, Op. 20, No. 2 Mozart: String Quartet in A Major, K. 464 Brahms: String Quintet No. 2 in G Major, op. 111 SPRING 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
Take Me to The River featuring William Bell, Bobby Rush & Don Bryant Thursday, January 25 Carolina Theatre of Durham
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Gregory Porter Sunday, March 4 Carolina Theatre of Durham Diego El Cigala Saturday, March 31 Carolina Theatre of Durham 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. Duke students may purchase $10 student tickets to Carolina Theatre shows through the Duke University Box Office in the Bryan Center. 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. 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.
Visit dukeperformances.duke.edu/support 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
Maggie Brandt / Development Coordinator 919-660-3314 / margaret.brandt@duke.edu Suzanne Despres / Production Manager 919-660-3379 / suzanne.despres@duke.edu Ariel Fielding / Marketing Director 919-660-3348 / ariel.fielding@duke.edu Aaron Greenwald / Executive Director 919-660-3357 / aaron.greenwald@duke.edu Gloria Hunt / Business Manager 919-660-3356 / gloria.hunt@duke.edu Joel Peter Johnson / Art Director 919-660-3371 / joel.johnson@duke.edu Eric Oberstein / Associate Director 919-660-3359 / eric.oberstein@duke.edu Brian Valentyn / Manager of Campus & Community Initiatives 919-660-3175 / brian.valentyn@duke.edu Cover image: Gregory Porter, appearing Sunday, March 4, 2018. Photo by Andrew Rinkhy.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT
D U K E P E R F O R M A N C E S .O R G
any event for just $ 10.
undergra duate and gra duate — ti ckets to
D uke Per formances offers Duke students — both
$10 D U K E S T U D E N T T I C K E T S
O O O
Duke Performances' Spr ing 2018 season.
ti ckets to four or more shows at one time from
Take 25% off your total pri ce when you purc ha se
25 % P I C K- F O U R O R M O R E
DP TICKET DISCOUNTS
F/ C 152-2 120
DUKE UNIVERSITY B O X 90757, D U R H A M , N C 2 7708
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