Duke Performances 2018/2019 Season Brochure

I N D U R H A M , AT 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.

2018/2019 SEASON

$25 TICKETS FOR THE VAST MAJORITY OF PERFORMANCES MAKE ESSENTIAL ART ACCESSIBLE AND AFFORDABLE. 80+ SHOWS AT A DOZEN VENUES – INTIMATE TO GRAND – STRETCH ACROSS THE LENGTH AND BREADTH OF DURHAM. 100+ ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE ACTIVITIES GIVE CONTEXT THROUGH DYNAMIC PUBLIC CONVERSATIONS, LECTURES, AND WORKSHOPS.

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FROM BALTIC CHORAL MUSIC TO AFRICAN-AMERICAN SOCIAL DANCE, LATVIA TO MAURITANIA, CLASSICAL BALLET TO SHADOW PUPPETS, LOS ANGELES TO LAKE CHARLES...

ONE OF THE SHOWS IN THIS BOOK WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE. WHICH ONE IS IT? Cover image: Camille A. Brown. Photo by Matt Karas

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JASON MORAN JASON MORAN & FATS WALLER THE BANDWAGON DANCE PARTY THURSD A Y , S E PT E M B ER 13 TWO S E T S : 7 PM & 9 P M VON DER HEYDEN STUDIO THEATER RUBENSTEIN ARTS CENTER Tickets: $25 • $10 Duke Students General Admission Seating

Duke Performances’ 2018/2019 season begins with a jazz superstar and his exceptional trio in one of the most intimate and elegant spaces they will play all year.

Pianist Jason Moran has become one of jazz’s great visionaries, known for his imaginative collaborations and conceptual bravado. In two separately ticketed sets with his long-running trio The Bandwagon, featuring bassist Tarus Mateen and drummer Nasheet Waits, the onstage interaction is seamless and wideranging. The Bandwagon plays the Rubenstein Arts Center’s von der Heyden Studio Theater, an intimate and acoustically crisp room whose character ought to render the music more thrilling. This upclose-and-personal setting is a testimonial to Duke Performances’ longtime partnership with Moran, one of its most treasured collaborators.

F RI D AY, SEPT EM B ER 14 • 8 PM D URH AM F RUI T & PROD UCE Tickets: $15 • $10 Duke Students Standing Room, Extremely Limited Seating

Jason Moran is one of modern music’s most vital forces. Through a series of ambitious projects meant to bring jazz to a wider audience — such as the 2007 Duke Performances commission In My Mind, which reimagined Thelonious Monk’s 1959 Town Hall performance — Moran has become one of the most sought-after pianists and bandleaders in jazz today.

With frequent daring nods to funk, hip-hop, and contemporary composition, Moran has expanded jazz’s stylistic reach and given it new vitality. Now the head of a label and the artistic director for jazz at the Kennedy Center, Moran is the form’s “greatest young conceptualist,” as JazzTimes exclaimed.

In 2011, Moran accepted an audacious commission: update the music and mood of Fats Waller, the consummate Harlem pianist and entertainer.

Moran took Waller’s hits and recast them for the twenty-first century, turning “Ain’t Misbehavin’” into a sumptuous funk jam and “Ain’t Nobody’s Business” into a seductive soul rumble. Supported by multitalented singer Lisa E. Harris, trumpet standout Leron Thomas, and the kinetic rhythm section of bassist Tarus Mateen and drummer Charles Haynes, Moran — crowned in an oversized and grinning papiermâché Fats Waller mask made by Haitian artist Didier Civil — joins dance, song, and humor. For one night only, Durham Fruit & Produce becomes the liveliest dance club in the city.

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NRITYAGRAM DANCE ENSEMBLE + CHITRASENA DANCE COMPANY SAMHARA SA TURD A Y , S E PT E M B ER 22 • 8 P M SUNDAY , S E PT E MB ER 23 • 3 P M REY NO LD S I N D U ST R I ES T HEAT ER Tickets: $25 • $10 Duke Students Reserved Seating

The acclaimed Nrityagram Dance Ensemble of southern India is one of the world’s great dance companies. Living communally in a women’s village devoted to dance — the better to meld art with everyday life — the artists of Nrityagram elegantly recount the stories of the Hindu epics through the sinuously curving classical movements of Odissi dance. Nrityagram, the first company to earn consecutive “Best Dance of the Year” honors from The New York Times, joins revered Sri Lankan dance ensemble Chitrasena Dance Company, which has led the way in opening the nation’s dynamic, folk-inflected Kandyan dance 6

tradition to women, preserving and revitalizing it by bringing it from the village to the modern stage.

Performed by five dancers, their collaboration, Samhara, offers a fascinating dialogue between the spectacular dance traditions and distinctive movement vocabularies of India and Sri Lanka.

Nrityagram’s Odissi dance, accompanied by an ensemble of five musicians playing ragas, is fluid and precise, punctuated by percussive foot stomping; Chitrasena’s Kandyan form is more muscular, vertical, and athletic, and accompanied solely by two percussionists. Both have roots in ancient religious ritual. Together, they create what The New York Times called “an interplay of styles that is exciting and illuminating.”

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WILL OLDHAM AKA BONNIE "PRINCE" RESIDENCY WILL OLDHAM AKA BONNIE "PRINCE"BILLY RESIDENCY Few American singer-songwriters have inspired as much awe or intrigue as Will Oldham, a.k.a. Bonnie “Prince” Billy. In the mid-nineties, Oldham emerged from Kentucky’s thriving indie rock subculture with a voice and sensibility that seemed as old and as distinctive as the state’s knobby mountains. On songs that documented and questioned the story of human existence, Oldham’s country tenor wavered through an admixture of hurt and hope, cracking beneath the strain of experience. Oldham has happily crept along the border between the accessible and abstruse, like a traditional balladeer with a philosophy degree and a love of dark humor. He has covered Merle Haggard, been covered by Johnny Cash, and collaborated with Eighth Blackbird on a song cycle that mesmerized a Duke audience in 2017. Oldham is one of the most engaged, engaging singers and songwriters of his generation.

In Durham, the enigmatic Oldham steps into the spotlight as he never has. During a three-day residency, he takes apart his approach to songwriting, explores the ideas and techniques behind his recordings, and concludes with a full-length concert at Baldwin Auditorium.

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 26 • 7 PM LECTURE ONE: MAKING SONGS SOUND PURE Tickets: $25 • $10 Duke Students General Admission Seating

Will Oldham is not only a writer of great songs; he is a student of them. “Writing songs is an attempt to build a bridge from my consciousness to the consciousness of another,” he explains. For an intimate audience at Sound Pure in downtown Durham, Oldham analyzes what makes a song resonate and offers insight into how he gets there, sampling from his career as he goes.

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 27 • 7 PM LECTURE TWO: RECORDING & PERFORMING SONGS SOUND PURE

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 28 • 8 PM CONCERT: WILL OLDHAM, AKA BONNIE "PRINCE" BILLY BALDWIN AUDITORIUM

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

Tickets: $25 • $10 Duke Students Reserved Seating

Will Oldham has written rangy rock tunes, hushed folk confessionals, charming country waltzes, and stormy piano ballads, making use of specific guises to suit each tune. He’s an expert at making tough choices while recording, building up layers and paring them down. At Sound Pure, Oldham walks listeners through his recording process, playing selections from his catalog.

Will Oldham is one of modern music’s most focused and astute singers. The crevices and knots, peaks and valleys of his voice convey an astonishing amount of emotional information, giving listeners clues that the words themselves sometimes omit. A masterful bandleader and eager collaborator, Oldham — who has long avoided the typical cycle of club tours, despite high demand — plays a rare full-band set, tapping into the riches of his deep and varied repertoire.

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BUILDING BRIDGES: MUSLIMS IN AMERICA

AMIR ELSAFFAR + HAMID AL-SAADI THU R S D A Y , O CT O B ER 4 • 8 P M VON DER HEYDEN STUDIO THEATER RU BEN S T E I N A R T S C EN T ER Tickets: $25 • $10 Duke Students General Admission Seating

Amir ElSaffar is one of the United States’ most inventive musicians. With his Two Rivers Ensemble, he plays trumpet, layering Middle Eastern melodies with jazz improvisation in search of tarab, or musical ecstasy. The son of an Iraqi immigrant father and an American mother, ElSaffar is also an ardent advocate for Iraqi maqam, a centuries-old musical repertoire built on yearning melismatic melodies, shimmering microtonal modes, and entrancing cyclical rhythms. In his Iraqi maqam ensemble,

Safaafir, the only such group in the United States, he plays santur, a hypnotic hammered dulcimer central to maqam’s enveloping sound.

As part of Duke Performances’ Building Bridges project, ElSaffar’s teacher Hamid Al-Saadi, one of the last living masters of Baghdadi maqam, makes a rare stateside appearance with Safaafir. The lively instrumental trio — santur, the hourglass-shaped doumbek drum, and the bowed rebab — supports Al-Saadi’s powerful and plangent baritone voice. Living links to one of the world’s most sophisticated and mesmerizing classical forms, Al-Saadi and Safaafir create a vital connection to Iraq’s glorious musical heritage.

BRANFORD MARSALIS QUARTET F RIDA Y , O CT O BE R 5 • 8 P M SA TUR D A Y , O CT O B ER 6 • 8 P M BA L DW I N A U D I T OR I U M Tickets: $62 • $50 • $10 Duke Students Reserved Seating

Branford Marsalis is jazz royalty. Raised in the rich culture of New Orleans by a family of professional musicians, Marsalis got his start touring with Art Blakey’s legendary Jazz Messengers. He has gone on to win three GRAMMYs, write scores for Broadway, appear with leading symphony orchestras, and collaborate with the likes of the Grateful Dead and Sting. Marsalis and bandmate (and fellow Durhamite) Joey Calderazzo also serve as artistsin-residence at the award-winning Department of Music at NCCU. But Marsalis shines brightest as the leader of the long-running Branford Marsalis 8

Quartet, hailed by the BBC as “a prime example of modern American jazz.”

In Durham, the Quartet delivers two separate, powerful sets at Baldwin Auditorium. For Marsalis, the two-night engagement continues an ongoing partnership with Duke Performances begun in 2013. Pianist Calderazzo, bassist Eric Revis, and drummer Justin Faulkner are some of jazz’s preeminent players; together, they create an electrifying testament to jazz’s past and present.

The group’s top-level technique and telepathic communication allow it to roam freely inside the form, from original compositions to spirited standards, making it, as The Guardian declared, “one of the most formidable lineups on the international circuit.”

BUIKA THURSDAY, OCTOBER 11 • 8 PM CAROLINA THEATRE OF DURHAM Tickets: $55 • $45 • $35 • $10 Duke Students Reserved Seating

Concha Buika sees soulful Spanish flamenco through a cultural kaleidoscope. Born to African political exiles in hiding on the Spanish island of Mallorca, Buika was raised in a hardscrabble Roma neighborhood where she learned cante jondo flamenco from her friends, listened to her parents’ jazz records, and sang Guinean folk songs with her mother. Turned down for gigs as a drummer and bassist because she was a woman, Buika became a singer, recording a string of acclaimed flamenco albums inflected with R&B, jazz, soul, son, and ranchera. Buika’s layered harmonies and rhythms are intoxicating, her singing “so musical and overpowering that it can override your built-in genre switch,” raves The New York Times.

Buika’s live performances are rare and wholly immersive experiences. She commands the stage with her formidable voice, gliding between powerful belting and sultry crooning with ease. A musical collaborator of the great Chucho Valdés and filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar, an interpreter of the songs of the legendary Chavela Vargas, and a producer and composer in her own right, Buika was nominated for a GRAMMY for her 2017 recording, Para mí. Ranking Buika in a list of the world’s fifty best singers, NPR once called her “the voice of freedom,” a remarkable epithet that recognizes her rich heritage, her electrifying presence, and her ability to draw new and unexpected ideas from her enormous musical vocabulary.

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ANTHONY ROTH COSTANZO +LES VIOLONS DU ROY F RIDA Y , O CT O BE R 12 • 8 P M BA L DW I N A U D I T O R I U M

interpretations of Handel and Philip Glass, two composers for whom he has a thrilling affinity.

Tickets: $25 • $10 Duke Students Reserved Seating

In Durham, on a very limited tour to support his debut, Costanzo and acclaimed chamber orchestra Les Violons du Roy deliver a daring and revelatory concert of Handel and Glass masterpieces. Thirty musicians will play alongside Costanzo on the Baldwin Auditorium stage, including strings, horns, harpsichord, and lute. The program opens with four Handel opera arias that allow Costanzo broad emotional latitude, as well as the Concerto Grosso in D Minor, then turns to Akhnaten’s “Hymn,” an ode to religious wonder. Les Violons du Roy transform Glass’ synthesizers into strings for a pulsing passage from 1,000 Airplanes on the Roof, and Costanzo channels three voices into one in the sublime “Liquid Days (Part I).”

Costanzo’s thoughtful programming and interpretive skill make this a deeply compelling evening, illuminating the aesthetic companionship of baroque and contemporary music.

The New York Times recently made the astonishing assertion that countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo “exists to transform opera.” In a few short years, Costanzo — born in Durham to two Duke professors — has become one of the world’s most fascinating singers, set apart by his agile yet powerful voice, his musical and dramatic mastery, and his unusual dual interest in baroque and new music. Costanzo launched his career with a 2012 Operalia Competition win, singing Handel, and he drew rave reviews for his 2016 Los Angeles Opera performance of the title role in Philip Glass’ Akhnaten. On his widely anticipated debut album, due from Decca Gold in late 2018, Costanzo sings incandescent 10

ACADEMY OF ST MARTIN IN THE FIELDS CHAMBER ENSEMBLE SA TUR D A Y , O CT O B ER 13 • 8 P M BA L DW I N A U D I T O R I U M Tickets: $25 • $10 Duke Students Reserved Seating

Praised for its precise and energetic interpretations of larger-scale chamber works, the sound from the Academy of St Martin in the Fields Chamber Ensemble is so brilliant it nearly glows. “Their sound is sweet and pure, their work airtight” (The Washington Post). Formed in 1967 by the venerable orchestra of the same name, the Chamber Ensemble has earned international distinction through an extensive and award-winning discography, world tours, and the virtuosity to play a wide range of classic and contemporary compositions.

a Schubert masterwork. Carl Nielsen’s compact Serenata in vano transforms a melodic intertwining of clarinet and horn into a taut march underlined by double bass. Jean Françaix’s jovial Octet, written by the prolific French composer in Schubert's honor, pairs naturally with the magnificent Octet in F Major, D. 803, the largest-scale chamber work Schubert ever wrote, scored for string quartet with double bass, bassoon, clarinet, and horn.

PROGRAM Carl Nielsen: Serenata in vano, CNW 69 Jean Françaix: Octet Schubert: Octet in F Major, D. 803

In Durham, the group offers a horn-centric program consisting of spirited takes on two twentieth-century gems and 11

PRAGUE PHILHARMONIC CHILDREN'S CHOIR TUESD A Y , O CT O B ER 16 • 8 P M DU KE CH A PE L

Tickets: $45 Reserved Seating • $25 General Admission Seating $10 Duke Students

Founded in 1932, the Prague Philharmonic Children’s Choir is the oldest and largest children’s concert choir in the Czech Republic. This award-winning ensemble has been a staple of Czech radio broadcasts, orchestral performances, and opera and theater productions for close to a century.

Like the Latvian Radio Choir (coming to Duke Chapel on November 15), the Prague Philharmonic Children’s Choir is a beloved choral institution in the Central and Eastern European tradition and one of its country’s most prized cultural exports.

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In the soaring and contemplative space of Duke Chapel, the forty-five member ensemble — selected from the 900 children in the choir’s training program — sings a program of sacred music from the renaissance to the present. The concert includes Victoria’s intricate polyphonic rendering of a plainchant Ave Maria, and continues in a Marian vein with Czech composer Jan Novák’s Ave Maria; Schubert’s Salve Regina; Carl Maria von Weber’s Maria Wiegenlied; and Ivan Kurz’s Maria, Mater Nostra. Among the living Czech composers on the program is Slavomír Hořínka, whose Laudate Dominum is beautifully evocative of ancient liturgical chant.

PROGRAM For the complete program, please visit dukeperformances.org

BUILDING BRIDGES: MUSLIMS IN AMERICA

ODDISEE

THU R S D A Y , O CT O B ER 18 • 8 P M MO TO R CO M U S I C H AL L Tickets: $25 • $10 Duke Students Standing Room, Extremely Limited Seating

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

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

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EMANUEL AX, PIANO SATU R DAY, O CTOBER 20 • 8 P M BA L DW I N A U DI TOR I UM Tickets: $62 • $50 • $10 Duke Students Reserved Seating

Seven GRAMMY Awards, the Avery Fisher Prize, top honors at the inaugural Arthur Rubinstein Competition, the Echo Klassik Award, Yale’s Sanford Medal for distinguished musicianship: Emanuel Ax has amassed a lifetime of accolades. A regular soloist with the New York Philharmonic and the Berlin Philharmonic, Ax also serves on the faculty of Juilliard and is the main duo partner of cellist Yo-Yo Ma, all while playing nearly a hundred of his own concerts every year — performances that are “never less than spellbinding,” according to The New York Times.

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Returning to Durham for the first time since 2014, Ax’s grace and peerless technique shine in Bach’s Partita No. 1 in B-flat Major, an elaborate rhythmic suite that culminates in a burst of melodic acrobatics. He moves through Schoenberg’s compact Six Little Piano Pieces and Schumann’s brief but buoyant Fantasiestücke before playing Ravel's fiery Valses nobles et sentimentales.

Ax completes the program with Chopin: the Andante spianato et grande polonaise brillante and three lively mazurkas.

PROGRAM Bach: Partita No. 1 in B-flat Major, BWV 825 Schoenberg: Six Little Piano Pieces, op. 19 Schumann: Fantasiestücke, op. 12 Ravel: Valses nobles et sentimentales Chopin: Andante spianato et grande polonaise brillante, op. 22 Chopin: Three Mazurkas, op. 59

BRIAN HARNETTY SHAWNEE, OHIO F RIDA Y , O CT O BE R 26 • 8 P M SA TUR D A Y , O CT O B ER 27 • 8 P M VON DER HEYDEN STUDIO THEATER RU BEN S T E I N A R T S C EN T ER Tickets: $25 • $10 Duke Students General Admission Seating

Brian Harnetty mines Appalachia’s past with a singular aim: to salvage stories from one of the country’s most neglected regions and make them resonate. Raised by descendants of Welsh immigrants lured to the Midwest by mining prospects, Harnetty attended London’s Royal Academy of Music, where he pondered how new music might reflect the heritage of its composer. Back in Appalachia, that quest has become his muse, as he shapes archival recordings of miners, farmers, musicians, and townspeople into pieces that give old tales of hardscrabble existence new poignancy.

Co-commissioned by Duke Performances, Shawnee, Ohio is the pinnacle of Harnetty’s process and his most affecting, personal work yet. His ancestors arrived in the booming Shawnee in 1873; as with many of Appalachia’s fabled “Little Cities of Black Diamonds,” the collapse of coal-mining left only a skeletal town and environmental ruin. Harnetty immersed himself in the place’s lore, interviewing residents and descendants, excavating community archives, and recording the surrounding forest. In eleven exquisite vignettes, Shawnee, Ohio turns videos, voices, and photographs into one town’s living portrait. Rendered by a top-tier ensemble of the region’s folk and classical musicians, Shawnee, Ohio reckons with our history while looking to the future.

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LIZZ WRIGHT

SA TUR D A Y , O CT O B ER 27 • 8 P M C A ROLI N A T H E A T R E OF DU R HAM Tickets: $55 • $45 • $35 • $10 Duke Students Reserved Seating

The daughter of a minister and music director in rural Georgia, Lizz Wright grew up playing piano and singing in her father’s church. Her music calls up the lively passion of Southern sacred tradition, connecting the texture of church music with the groove of jazz, endowing both with new depth and radiance. Her extraordinary voice “simmer[s] with midnight heat and the cadences of gospel music,” according to The Guardian. Across six critically acclaimed records, she has cemented her place as one of the most captivating, versatile vocalists of her generation.

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Wright, who lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, hits a new high with her 2017 recording, Grace, a compelling combination of Appalachian earthiness and big-city cool created with GRAMMY Award-winning producer Joe Henry. On it, Wright transforms “Stars Fell on Alabama,” into a folk dream, while a church choir forms the backdrop for her tender rendition of “Seems Like I’m Never Tired Lovin’ You.” Grace landed on the year-end list of The New York Times, which called it “a generous bestowal from one of today’s great voices.”

STEVE COLEMAN & NATAL ECLIPSE F RIDA Y , N O V E M B ER 2 • 8 P M BA L DW I N A U D I T OR I U M Tickets: $25 • $10 Duke Students Reserved Seating

While struggling as an eager young alto saxophonist in New York during the mid-1980s, Steve Coleman stumbled upon an idea that seemed obvious but has proven revolutionary: music should reflect the experiences of those who make it.

Coleman’s nascent philosophy, M-Base, has since become gospel for some of the world’s foremost jazz players. For the ever-inquisitive Coleman, it has prompted daring albums that turn conceptual obsessions (mathematics, the African Diaspora, the body’s joints) into some of our era’s most sophisticated compositions and improvisations. The recent winner of MacArthur and Guggenheim fellowships,

Coleman is, as The New York Times has noted, “one of the most rigorously conceptual thinkers in improvised music.”

In Durham, Coleman leads his newest and most immersive band yet, the drummerless octet Natal Eclipse. Years ago, when he was preparing the boxing-inspired album Morphogenesis, the drummer he had in mind didn’t have the time. So Coleman rebuilt the pieces, shifting their surging sense of rhythm to the other instruments. With meticulous counterpoint and infinite elasticity, this music dashes and darts, bobs and weaves, lunges forward and pulls back, creating an athletic sense of drama in which every move feels like a surprise. These performances are rigorous and complex but strikingly accessible, a distinctive and welcoming musical world.

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AIDA CUEVAS + MARIACHI JUVENIL TECALITLÁN

TOTALMENTE JUAN GABRIEL W EDNE S D A Y , N OV EM B ER 7 • 8 P M C A ROLI N A T H E A T R E OF DU R HAM

what Aretha Franklin is to the United States: a powerful voice that encapsulates the essence of her nation’s spirit.”

Tickets: $75 • $45 • $35 • $10 Duke Students Reserved Seating

In 2018, Cuevas became the first female ranchera singer to win a GRAMMY for Best Regional Mexican Music Album. She has now become the only artist authorized by Gabriel’s estate to record and tour his music. In Durham, Cuevas joins Mariachi Juvenil Tecalitlán, an accomplished band that includes a fivepiece violin section, three trumpets, a vihuela, and a guitarrón.

In this dazzling production, they celebrate Gabriel’s bold sound and spectacular style. This essential celebration of traditional Mexican music celebrates the remarkable careers of two wildly popular and unforgettable artists.

How do you express the bond between lifelong friends, musical partners, and mutual icons of mariachi when only one of them remains? That challenge is at the center of Totalmente Juan Gabriel, Aida Cuevas’ arresting 2018 ode to the late singer, songwriter, and Mexican pop icon Juan Gabriel. Cuevas, known as the Queen of Ranchera, is uniquely suited to the task: she has long challenged a historically male-dominated genre with her operatic range, a voice strong enough to overcome a dozen amplified instruments, and performances that overflow with passion.

The Kansas City Star proclaims, “[Aida] Cuevas is to Mexico 18

CAMILLE A.BROWN & DANCERS INK F RIDA Y , N O V E MB ER 9 • 8 P M SA TUR D A Y , N O V EM B ER 10 • 8 P M REY NO LD S I N D U S T R I ES T HEAT ER Tickets: $25 • $10 Duke Students Reserved Seating

The final work in Duke Performances’ artist-in-residence Camille A. Brown’s visionary trilogy about being black in America, ink celebrates the expressive spirit and style of black men while mourning the way that style has been misunderstood and maligned. ink explores the beauty and power of everyday gesture and the spiritual nature of the ordinary, searching out the stories that live within the bodies of her dancers. The dancing is vivid, impressionistic, and evocative, an engrossing mix of contemporary cultural references and ancestral African imagery. Pulling, stirring, shaking, sewing: Brown and her company, Camille A. Brown

& Dancers, distill each action into its essence, then build it into evocative choreography. ink explores the evolution of African-American gestural language and, in doing so, reveals dramatic relationships between old and new.

“Dramatically brilliant, physically exhilarating,” raves The New York Times, Brown “is clearly a force of nature.” This pathbreaking choregrapher has created an essential trilogy of works that redefine black identity within the evolving cultural landscape of this country: Mr. TOL E. RAncE, BLACK GIRL: Linguistic Play, and ink. Her series of three one-week residencies at Duke Performances marks the first time a single presenter has staged this trilogy in its entirety. Separately, the shows function as breathtaking stand-alone pieces; together, they form a striking commentary on perceptions of black identity. A courageous, unified epic expressed through visceral movement and unforgettable storytelling, her trilogy — presented here in reverse order — is at the vanguard of American dance.

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DANISH STRING QUARTET

SA TU R D A Y , N O V EM B ER 10 • 8 P M BA LDWI N A U D I T OR I U M Tickets: $48 • $42 • $10 Duke Students Reserved Seating

Fast friends since childhood, three of the four members of the Danish String Quartet have been playing together from the age of fifteen. They continue to bring a youthful exuberance to everything they do. Drawing on the classical canon, contemporary composition, and a wealth of folk music, these three Danes and one Norwegian have earned impressive accolades, launching their career with five major prizes in 2009. The New Yorker praised the “infectious joy and rampaging energy” of their performances, imbued with a warm, radiant sound that seems lit from within.

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At Duke Performances, the Danish explores Haydn’s String Quartet in C Major, which broke new ground when it freed the cello from the confines of the bass line to sing alongside a leaping violin. The seldom heard 1905 string quartet of Webern, written before the composer turned to atonality, is thoroughly grounded in late romanticism. The program closes with Mendelssohn’s passionately lyrical Op. 13 in A Minor, written in homage to his hero, Beethoven. At a time when few understood Beethoven’s music, Mendelssohn paved the way for recognition of his genius.

PROGRAM Haydn: String Quartet in C Major, Hob.III:32 Webern: String Quartet (1905) Mendelssohn: String Quartet No. 2 in A Minor, op. 13

JACK QUARTET

TUESD A Y , N O V E M B ER 13 • 8 P M DU RH A M FR U I T & P R ODU C E Tickets: $15 • $10 Duke Students General Admission Seating

In little more than a decade, New York’s JACK Quartet has become one of the world’s most important catalysts for and purveyors of new music. Dubbed “master musicians” by The Globe & Mail and “superheroes of the new music world” by The Boston Globe, the JACK has collaborated with the likes of Steve Reich, Caroline Shaw, John Zorn, and John Luther Adams. Fearlessly dedicated to pushing the repertoire’s boundaries, they have performed on a raft in the middle of Central Park Lake, and even in complete darkness, with the Quartet surrounding the audience, as when they performed the Third String Quartet of Austrian composer Georg Friedrich Haas at Duke in 2012.

The JACK Quartet begins the second year of its two-year Duke Performances residency with a new Haas work, the Ninth Quartet, also written to be performed in the dark. When Haas first heard the JACK play his work, he recognized the ensemble’s extraordinary ability to play music written for just intonation, a system of tuning in which intervals are more “pure” than the more tempered tuning of Western music. Each pitch is expressed as a fraction, related by a constant ratio to a constant fundamental, and vibrating at a set number of cycles per second. Haas composed his ecstatic new quartet for the JACK; the group premiered it in Lisbon in 2017. Combining extended passages of radiant drone with microtonal melodies, it is a perfect showcase for Haas’ compositional rigor and the JACK’s technical clarity. In Durham, as specified by the composer, the JACK Quartet once again turns out the lights — this time at the Durham Fruit & Produce Company.

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LATVIAN RADIO CHOIR THU R S D A Y , N O V EM B ER 15 • 8 P M DU KE CH A PE L

Tickets: $45 Reserved Seating • $25 General Admission Seating $10 Duke Students

Founded in the dark days of 1940, at the beginning of the country’s occupation by the Soviet Union, the Latvian Radio Choir takes an unconventional approach to choral music, foregrounding the unique timbre of each of its twenty-four virtuoso singers. Rather than asking these talented musicians to sacrifice their individuality for the sake of a smoothly blended and unified sound, conductors Sigvards Klava , and Kaspars Putninš , trust them to sing out, creating what they call a “timbral bouquet.” To augment its already broad repertoire, the choir commissions ten new works by Latvian composers each year.

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At Duke Chapel, the Latvijas Radio Koris, as it is known at home, sings a largely sacred program of music from the sixteenth century to the present day. Their program is bookended by two Venetian renaissance motets from Giovanni Gabrieli’s Sacrae Symphoniae, and includes early sacred works by Gesualdo and Purcell; modern sacred works

by Stravinsky, Messiaen, and Pärt; and arrangements of haunting Mahler lieder — Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen and Die zwei blauen Augen — that work beautifully in a sacred context. The concert would not be complete without a Latvian composition: Peteris Vasks’ Our Mothers’ Names, which mixes ancient sonorities with stunning modern counterpoint.

PROGRAM For the complete program, please visit dukeperformances.org

MARC-ANDRÉ HAMELIN, PIANO SATU R DAY, NOV E M BER 17 • 8 P M BA L DW I N A U DI TOR I UM Tickets: $25 • $10 Duke Students Reserved Seating

Nearly three decades have passed since Marc-André Hamelin emerged as a new titan of solo piano. Although a lauded composer in his own right, he has staked his performance career on definitive interpretations of landmark works, cultivating a reputation for technical sophistication and musical bravado. In the twenty years since The New York Times proclaimed that Hamelin had “made a career of playing the seemingly unplayable,” he has only gotten better, exploring lesser-known composers and modern masters alike, all the while expanding the emotional breadth of his playing.

Hamelin presents a characteristically bold program fit for a pianist whose hands The New Yorker called “among the

wonders of the musical world.” He begins with Busoni’s arrangement of Bach’s Chaconne in D Minor, conjuring a church organ’s power. Schumann’s rhapsodic Fantasie in C Major leads into six popular songs by French singersongwriter Charles Trenet. Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s Cipressi is a spellbinding meditation on Italy’s stately cypress trees. Hamelin concludes with Chopin’s grand PolonaiseFantaisie in A-flat Major, and his playful Scherzo No. 4 in E Major, with its rapid cascades of notes and moments of sublime delicacy.

PROGRAM Bach: Chaconne in D Minor, BWV 1004 (arr. Busoni) Schumann: Fantasie in C Major, op. 17 Alexis Weissenberg: Six Arrangements of Charles Trenet Songs Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco: Cipressi, op. 17 Chopin: Polonaise-Fantasie No. 7 in A-flat Major, op. 61 Chopin: Scherzo No. 4 in E Major, op. 54 23

CALIDORE STRING QUARTET SA TUR D A Y , D E CEM B ER 1 • 8 P M BA L DW I N A U D I T OR I U M Tickets: $25 • $10 Duke Students Reserved Seating

The Calidore String Quartet is one of the premier chamber ensembles in a generation of exciting new talent in the genre.

Since forming in Los Angeles, the spirited Calidore — the name being a portmanteau made up of the group’s native state and the French word for “golden” — has gathered an impressive list of honors, including a SUNY Stony Brook residency and the University of Michigan’s inaugural M-Prize. This vivacious quartet, known for its attunement to subtle dynamic shifts, was hailed by Gramophone as the “epitome of confidence and finesse, engaged in a series of engrossing, sympathetic, and intense conversations.”

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For its Durham debut, the Calidore links two long-revered works with a commission from one of this country’s brightest young composers. Prokofiev wrote his String Quartet No. 2 while in exile during World War II in the North Caucasus, where he embraced the region’s ancient folk melodies. It leads elegantly into First Essay: Nimrod, a Calidore commission from Pulitzer-winning North Carolinian Caroline Shaw, an ode to the writing of Marilynne Robinson that reveals the intricate possibilities within a simple tune. The Calidore closes with Schumann’s sensuous and magnetic Quartet in A Major, op.41.

PROGRAM Prokofiev: String Quartet No. 2 in F Major, op. 92 Caroline Shaw: First Essay: Nimrod Schumann: String Quartet in A Major, op. 41, no. 3

IN THE JAZZ TRADITION

After the resounding success of last year’s ten-day celebration of the centenary of Thelonious Monk, MONK@100, Duke Performances returns to downtown arts venue Durham Fruit & Produce for In the Jazz Tradition. This weeklong festival features some of the most important women vocalists in jazz today. In recent years, a legion of jazz singers has drawn inspiration from flashpoints in race relations and the struggle for gender equality, commanding a renewed sense of urgency with their music and reaffirming the relevance and popular appeal of jazz itself.

Durham visual artist Stacy Lynn Waddell — who, much like the series’ singers, explores how traditional forms can express contemporary themes — will transform the space, setting the scene for a timely update on familiar jazz traditions.

NNENNA FREELON

MONDAY, DECEMBER 3 TWO SETS: 7 PM & 9 PM DURHAM FRUIT & PRODUCE Tickets: $25 • $10 Duke Students General Admission Seating

Nnenna Freelon does not simply interpret the standards of the great American songbook.

She reinvents them entirely, stretching their melodies and pushing and pulling at their meters until they are reborn. Whether singing the songs of Billie Holiday on her GRAMMYnominated Blueprint of a Lady or paying tribute to Lena Horne in her show Lena: A Lovesome Thing, her warm voice glides from stately sophistication to kinetic joy, delighting in the possibility of the tune at hand. Concurrently raised on a stack of jazz records and in the grand gospel tradition of her childhood Massachusetts church, Freelon took time to listen, learn, and develop her own approach before recording her debut in her late thirties. In the quarter century since, she has been nominated for six GRAMMYS, entertained at the White House, become an accomplished actor, and earned a reputation, according to NPR, as “one of the greatest vocalists to come along in decades.”

Freelon is a creative and philanthropic force in Durham, where she has lived since 1978, and she provides a fitting invocation for In the Jazz Tradition, with hometown artistry as rich as that of any jazz singer in the world.

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IN THE JAZZ TRADITION

CÉCILE C M LORIN NELLIE C SALVANT M KAY

CATHERINE RUSSELL

TUESDA Y , D E CE MB E R 4 TWO SETS : 7 PM & 9 P M DURHAM FRUIT & PRODUCE

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 5 T W O S ET S : 7 P M & 9 PM DURHAM FRUIT & PRODUCE

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 6 T W O SET S: 7 PM & 9 PM DURHAM FRUIT & PRODUCE

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

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

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

Cécile McLorin Salvant is a stunning singer with a peerless style and a knack for finding obscure jazz and blues songs and giving them new life. In just five years, Salvant has gone from an unknown upstart to the brightest new star in the jazz firmament, winning Best Jazz Vocal GRAMMYs for consecutive albums and resurrecting popular interest in the form. With an extraordinary range bolstered by rock-solid classical technique, she sings with her whole body, using physical movement to create new possibilities of timbre and tone. Wynton Marsalis did not mince words when he told The New Yorker just how important Salvant is to the future of jazz: “You get a singer like this once in a generation or two.” And though she sings with total command, Salvant’s concerts tend to be playful and disarming, a quality that has helped make her previous two sold-out appearances at Baldwin Auditorium feel intimate: she has the great singer’s gift of making you feel she is singing for you alone. At Durham Fruit & Produce, in one of the smallest rooms she will play all year, Salvant is joined by Sullivan Fortner, one of jazz’s most dynamic young pianists.

Nellie McKay arrived on the music scene like an exclamation mark. Get Away from Me — her astounding 2004 debut, believed to be the first double-disc introduction to any jazz singer — upended the norms of piano-backed jazz with tempestuous bits of reggae and rock, bursts of hip-hop and pop, and a seamless merger of musical erudition and thematic irreverence. It was, as The New York Times observed, “a tour de force from a sly, articulate musician.”

With a voice that can be boisterous and bold or soft and breathy, McKay harnesses the agility of a superstar athlete from the piano bench. She has maintained that adventurousness — starring on Broadway in The Threepenny Opera, recording a dazzling tribute to Doris Day, and producing a series of musical biographies of female iconoclasts. Her splendid 2018 album, Sister Orchid, turns standards into muted, moody late-night escapades: “Willow Weep for Me” becomes a boogiewoogie sprint, “The Nearness of You” a showcase for romantic melancholy. One of her generation’s most original performers, McKay remains delightfully unpredictable.

Catherine Russell was born into jazz royalty. The daughter of Luis Russell, Louis Armstrong’s longtime music director, and Carline Ray, who collaborated with the great Mary Lou Williams and played guitar for the legendary International Sweethearts of Rhythm, the New York native was raised on the best jazz the world had to offer. But Russell took a long detour to a career as a jazz singer, spending decades supporting others with her warm and flexible voice, whether touring and recording with David Bowie or singing background vocals for hundreds of albums. In 2006, Russell finally stepped into the spotlight with the first of a string of six sterling records, eventually returning to the jazz of her youth on 2016’s immaculate Harlem on My Mind. Russell has become one of jazz’s most versatile and dynamic performers, whether her voice is drifting over lonesome piano or belting over a barrelhouse band. She can be flirtatious, even lascivious, harkening back to the heyday of Bessie Smith; or slinky and seductive, channeling the ardor of the great torch singers who populate her regal jazz lineage.

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IN THE JAZZ TRADITION

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JAZZMEIA RENÉ HORN MARIE

KATE C M GARRY

F RIDA Y, D E CE MB E R 7 TW O SETS : 7 PM & 9 P M DURHAM FRUIT & PRODUCE

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 8 T W O S ET S : 7 P M & 9 PM DURHAM FRUIT & PRODUCE

SUND AY, D ECEM B ER 9 T W O SET S: 6 PM & 8 PM DURHAM FRUIT & PRODUCE

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

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

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

In 2015, Jazzmeia Horn strode onto the stage of the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition and left a panel of esteemed judges slack-jawed in astonishment. For her performance, she selected “Evidence” — a devilishly difficult Monk number that demands total dynamic control from the performer — and jubilantly scatted her way through its vaulting melody and twisting meter.

Horn’s victory launched her career as one of the world’s most daring young singers in any style. On her GRAMMY-nominated 2017 debut, A Social Call, Horn recalls the likes of Nina Simone and Betty Carter as she serenades and scats through an unapologetically urgent, political take on jazz. She lambasts social structures that have kept people poor, attaches gospel standards to Coltrane themes, and renders ballads with frank poignancy. A student of past masters, Horn is a brave new voice for jazz’s vocal resurgence and a mighty clarion for its future.

The rise of René Marie embodies the triumphant spirit of song. A talented teenage bandleader in her small Virginia hometown, Marie shelved her musical aspirations for decades, returning to the stage only after her oldest son urged her to sing again at the age of forty-one. When her husband delivered an edict — leave music or leave me — she chose music, a move that gave jazz a commanding new voice. Also a composer, arranger, and theatrical performer, Marie quickly made up for lost time, recording eleven albums and drawing on a wide swath of genres to create a distinctive and captivating hybrid style. She summons the sultry allure of Eartha Kitt (to whom she paid tribute on 2013’s dazzling I Wanna Be Evil) and the sophisticated verve of Sarah Vaughan, whether shouting old-time blues, singing one of her own confessional compositions, or lending her powerful voice to the world premiere of Gerald Clayton’s Piedmont Blues at Duke in 2016. Unpredictable and bold, Marie sings with the delight of someone whose life was saved by music.

For the GRAMMY-nominated Kate McGarry, jazz has never been an endpoint, safely sealed off from the rest of the musical world. Instead, it is an entryway, a place into which she can pull the songs and sounds she loves from a wide musical world. McGarry applies consummate jazz technique to a songbook that seems inspired by folk music’s sense of openness; on her acclaimed new album, The Subject Tonight Is Love, she handles standards, Irish traditional songs, Beatles hits, and settings of poetry by the fourteenthcentury Persian Hafiz with a singular sense of clarity and grace. Whether singing with Fred Hersch (as she’ll do at Duke this season in his Leaves of Grass) or collaborating with John Hollenbeck or Maria Schneider, McGarry makes every song her own, offering up each as if she were an old friend in deep conversation.

A decade ago, McGarry and her husband and collaborator, guitarist Keith Ganz, left New York for Durham; joined

by Ganz, pianist Gary Versace, and drummer Obed Calvaire in her adopted hometown, McGarry offers the perfect finish to In the Jazz Tradition.

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LUCINDA WILLIAMS+ CHARLES LLOYD & THE MARVELS FEATURING BILL FRISELL, GREG LEISZ S AT UR DA Y, MA RCH 24 • 8 P M B AL D WIN A UDITORIU M

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

ERIC HARLAND & REUBEN ROGERS For two decades, the Jerusalem Quartet garnered consistent 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 and most prolific string quartets by revisiting Beethoven. The Jerusalem issued an album of his string quartets, extolled by The New York Times for its “gracious charm,” and launched a tour that included aweeklong marathon at Lincoln Center.

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MONDAY, DECEMBER 10 • 8 PM C A ROLI N A T H E A T R E OF DU R HAM Tickets: $75 • $65 • $55 • $10 Duke Students Reserved Seating

Steeped in the sounds of the Deep South, Lucinda Williams and Charles Lloyd are pillars of American music. Raised in Memphis, Lloyd has long expressed his hometown’s musical heritage through the soul and might of jazz. A masterful saxophonist and flutist with a riverine sense of melody, Lloyd has added rock and soul to jazz landmarks and lent his improvisational gusto to rock legends. Likewise, Williams, a Louisiana native, mixed country, rock, and folk long before it was fashionable. As a songwriter, she is as poetically incisive as she is ruthlessly honest. As a singer, she is the

ultimate emotional conduit, capable of mixing romance and rage in a single song.

Respectively in their eighties and sixties, Lloyd and Williams — longtime mutual collaborators with modern guitar master Bill Frisell — are now doing some of their most powerful work. In 2017, they joined up for a powerhouse cover of Bob Dylan’s “Masters of War,” turning the American standard into marching orders. On the wonderful new Vanished Gardens, released in 2018 by Blue Note Records, Williams and Lloyd front Lloyd’s band The Marvels — Frisell, pedal steel master Greg Leisz, and the wondrous rhythm section of Reuben Rogers and Eric Harland. They bring this lineup to Duke Performances for a concert that draws on jazz, rock, and soul, reinvigorating the American Songbook.

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NEW YORK POLYPHONY SING THEE NOWELL F RIDA Y , D E CE MB ER 7 • 8 P M BA L DW I N A U D I T O R I U M Tickets: $25 • $10 Duke Students Reserved Seating

Praised by NPR for “a rich, natural sound that’s larger and more complex than the sum of its parts,” and by The Independent for “beautifully blended voices of individual distinction,” New York Polyphony has made a name for itself by exploring the similarities between ancient and modern music. Known for their “resplendent and elegant” recordings of renaissance masterpieces (San Francisco Chronicle), these four singers have also commissioned many new works from living composers. Twice nominated for a GRAMMY Award, New York Polyphony is one of the world’s most sought-after male vocal quartets.

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At Duke Performances, the quartet offers Sing Thee Nowell, an evening of exquisite sacred Christmas music. Spanning nine centuries, New York Polyphony sings early polyphonic works by Pérotin and Byttering; lush new compositions inspired by ancient music from living composers Andrew Smith and Michael McGlynn; arrangements of Basque carols both rousing and tender by Alexander Craig and Sir David Willcocks; the haunting Huron Carol (1643), the first Christmas music written in North America; Thomas Tallis’ Audivi Vocem de Caelo; and folklorist John Jacob Niles’ poignant I Wonder as I Wander, based on an Appalachian song fragment collected in Murphy, North Carolina in 1933.

PROGRAM For the complete program, please visit dukeperformances.org

JEREMY DENK, PIANO FRIDAY, J A N UA RY 25 • 8 P M BA LDWI N A U DI TOR I UM Tickets: $25 • $10 Duke Students Reserved Seating

In the two decades since he claimed Juilliard’s venerable Piano Recital Debut Award, Durham native Jeremy Denk has become one of his generation’s most in-demand instrumentalists and, at The New Yorker, one of its most astute critics. He has performed with the world’s greatest orchestras, served as the music director of the Ojai Music Festival, and developed ingenious concert programs. Such efforts have earned Denk both the Avery Fisher Prize and a MacArthur Fellowship, dual testaments to his eminence as a musician and thinker. Denk is “a model of how performers can both inform and entertain an audience” (The New York Times).

In Durham, Denk explores the music of Beethoven and his acolytes. He begins with Beethoven’s variations on the patriotic “Rule, Britannia” before jumping two centuries to John Adams’ Pocket Variations, a tribute to Nonesuch Records impresario Bob Hurwitz. Saint-Saëns’ sweeping and gorgeous Variations on a Theme of Beethoven follows in an arrangement for two hands. Denk concludes with three more odes to Beethoven: Mendelssohn’s Variations Sérieuses; Liszt’s arrangement of the master’s solemn song cycle, An die ferne Geliebte; and Schumann’s Fantasie in C, which quotes An die ferne Geliebte.

PROGRAM Beethoven: Five Variations on “Rule, Britannia” in D Major John Adams: Pocket Variations Saint-Saëns: Variations chromatiques Mendelssohn: Variations sérieuses Beethoven: An die ferne Geliebte (transc. Liszt) Schumann: Fantasie in C Major, op. 17 33

AMERICAN BALLET THEATRE RESIDENCY SUNDAY, JANUARY 27 • 3 PM DA NCE CU BE RU BEN S T E I N A R T S C EN T ER

in Spring 2020, ABT’s Main Company returns to North Carolina for the first time since 1969 for a weeklong run of Giselle at the Durham Performing Arts Center.

Tickets: $15 • $10 Duke Students General Admission Seating

In January 2019, at the close of her two-week residency, awardwinning choreographer Stefanie Batten Bland presents her work-in-progress with the American Ballet Theatre’s dozen-member Studio Company, the organization’s preprofessional training program. A public conversation about making the work follows the showing. The performance takes place in the airy cantilevered dance cube at the Rubenstein Arts Center, Duke’s stunning new state-of-the-art performance venue that has helped make such programming possible.

This robust partnership promises not only to enrich the cultural landscape of both campus and city, but also to extend the repertoire and reach of classical ballet by developing, producing, and performing world-class dance here in Durham.

In February 2018, Duke Performances unveiled an audacious three-year collaboration with American Ballet Theatre (ABT), one of the world’s leading classical ballet companies. Through its expansive programming, international engagements, and distinctly American style, ABT has served a crucial ambassadorial role since 1939. At Duke, itself a longtime champion of contemporary dance, ABT’s wide-ranging partnership includes public performances, community engagement, monthly visits by master teachers from ABT’s Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School, and the development of one world premiere each year. To cap it all, 34

CAMILLE A. BROWN & DANCERS BLACK GIRL: LINGUISTIC PLAY F RIDA Y , FE B R U A R Y 1 • 8 P M SA TUR D A Y , FE BRU AR Y 2 • 8 P M REY NO LD S I N D U S T R I ES T HEAT ER Tickets: $25 • $10 Duke Students Reserved Seating

In BLACK GIRL: Linguistic Play, Camille A. Brown draws upon the rhythmic pulsation of double Dutch, the complexity of step and tap, and the full-body percussion of juba to elevate the cultural contributions of black girls to triumphant artistic expression. Inspired by Kyra D. Gaunt’s book The Games Black Girls Play, three duets recall childhood relationships that are both playful and bittersweet. Brown explores how black girls and women “perform” in order to meet social expectations, while still maintaining their own cultural language, and translates the spontaneous movement of youth into sophisticated, sneakerstomping footwork. The dancers smile as they move and lock eyes as they tussle, reveling in the complicated patterns that grow

out of schoolyard play. The result is a joyous celebration of youthful movement that manages to raise essential questions about what it means to become and be seen as a black woman in America.

“Dramatically brilliant, physically exhilarating,” exclaims The New York Times. Duke Performances Artist-in-Residence Camille A. Brown “is clearly a force of nature.” This visionary choregrapher has created an essential trilogy of works that redefine black identity within the evolving cultural landscape of this country: Mr. TOL E. RAncE, BLACK GIRL: Linguistic Play, and ink. Her series of three one-week residencies at Duke Performances with her company, Camille A. Brown & Dancers, marks the first time a single presenter has staged this trilogy in its entirety. Separately, the shows function as breathtaking stand-alone pieces; together, they form a striking commentary on perceptions of black identity. A courageous, unified epic, her trilogy — presented here in reverse order — is at the vanguard of American dance.

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RON MILES IFEATURING AM A MAN JASON MORAN BILL FRISELL BRIAN BLADE & SCOTT COLLEY

F RIDA Y , FE B R U A R Y 1 • 8 P M BA L DW I N A U D I T O R I U M Tickets: $25 • $10 Duke Students Reserved Seating

During the last decade, there has been no jazz quintet more impressive than the one that trumpet and cornet master Ron Miles assembled to make 2017’s poignant I Am a Man. Miles — a versatile and especially expressive player — had already helmed two wonderful trio records with guitarist Bill Frisell and drummer Brian Blade, two of the most sophisticated voices in jazz. But given the country’s current state of affairs, Miles felt these songs deserved the heft and the magnified sense of urgency of a larger band — and, as he said, “it’s impossible to separate spirituality and politics, and art and politics.” He invited two musicians who understand this dimension of the project, pianist Jason Moran and bassist Thomas Morgan (at 36

Duke, replaced by Scott Colley), to record this new composition.

In 2017, NPR raved that “no album struck a better balance of beauty and urgency.”

Taking its name from the slogan that protesters took up during the landmark 1968 sanitation strike in Memphis, I Am a Man continues the vital African American musical tradition of using music as a means of protest and an assertion of humanity. These tunes wrestle with family turmoil and religious perseverance, with images of inadequacy and pride. The quintet patiently works through these seven compositions, whose elegantly arching melodies sometimes break out into moments of exhilarating dissonance. Understated, elegant, and assured, these players arrive time and again at a place of profound hope.

As All About Jazz declared, “I Am a Man occupies a rare space, existing as a musical mark of pride and dignity, a statement driven by social activism, a history-propelled piece of art, and an album that challenges and unites.”

SCHUMANN QUARTET SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 2 • 8 PM BALDWIN AUDITORIUM Tickets: $25 • $10 Duke Students Reserved Seating

The Schumann Quartet exudes effortless grace. Born into a family of musicians, the three Schumann brothers have played together since childhood, ultimately recruiting one of Europe’s brightest young violists to complete the ensemble.

The Schumann’s luminous performances have earned it BBC Music Magazine’s Newcomer Award and a three-year residency at Lincoln Center. Whether scaling the heights of the repertoire’s greatest classics or venturing into vital new works, the Schumann performs with crispness and brio, and was declared by the Süddeutsche Zeitung to be “among the best quartets in the world.”

At Duke Performances, the Schumann Quartet opens with Schubert’s Quartet No. 6, one of the composer’s rarely played pieces, notable for its sparklingly lyrical final movement. The program culminates in Schubert’s titanic String Quartet No. 14, “Death and the Maiden,” written as the young composer was dying. Enveloped between the two Schubert works is twentieth century American composer Charles Ives’ thoroughly original String Quartet No. 2, a lively depiction of four men embroiled in an impassioned debate. The juxtaposition of Schubert’s lush Viennese romanticism and Ives’ bold and vigorous modernism creates an intriguing new context for both of these revered composers.

PROGRAM Schubert: String Quartet No. 6 in D Major, D. 74 Ives: String Quartet No. 2 Schubert: String Quartet No. 14 in D Minor, D. 810 (“Death and the Maiden”) 37

DANIIL TRIFONOV, PIANO TUESD A Y , FE BRU AR Y 5 • 8 P M BA L DW I N A U D I T O R I U M Tickets: $62 • $50 • $10 Duke Students Reserved Seating

Called “without question the most astounding pianist of our age” by The Times of London, the twenty-seven-year-old Daniil Trifonov has become the instrument’s new standard-bearer.

After he won first prize at the Arthur Rubinstein Competition in Tel Aviv, his album Transcendental won the GRAMMY for the Best Classical Instrumental Solo. This new superstar has captivated audiences from Berlin to Budapest, and his work is currently the focus of the seven-concert Perspectives series at Carnegie Hall. Trifonov pairs razor-sharp precision with tenderness; “he makes the piano sing, whisper, and melt” (The Guardian).

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Making his Durham debut, Trifonov begins with two sprightly pieces from Beethoven, the “Andante favori” and Sonata No. 18, both from the master’s middle period. Schumann’s Bunte Blätter assembles material from earlier unpublished pieces, while his Presto Passionato is the original finale to his G Minor Sonata; together, these works give Trifonov ample opportunity to dazzle. He ends the night with Prokofiev’s Sonata No. 8, an intoxicating dance with moments of extended melancholy and wild exuberance, culminating in a brilliant finale that showcases Trifonov’s stylistic range and trademark exultancy.

PROGRAM Beethoven: Andante in F Major, WoO 57 (“Andante favori”) Beethoven: Piano Sonata No. 18 in E-flat Major, op. 31, no. 3 Schumann: Bunte Blätter, op. 99 Schumann: Presto passionato, op. 22 Prokofiev: Piano Sonata No. 8 in B-flat Major

MANUAL CINEMA ADA/AVA

F RIDA Y , FE B R U A R Y 8 • 8 P M SA TUR D A Y , FE BRU AR Y 9 • 8 P M REY NO LD S I N D U S T R I ES T HEAT ER Tickets: $25 • $10 Duke Students Reserved Seating

In less than a decade, the bold and talented Chicago collective Manual Cinema has become a theatrical powerhouse with its mesmerizing shadow-puppet spectacles. Blending techniques from animation and film and performing with original music, Manual Cinema reimagines puppetry, inventing what The New York Times calls “a spectral parade of fantastical images.” The company deploys handmade props and puppets animated by an army of actors working in shadow, making intricate and daring performances. Manual Cinema’s work has been called “a brilliant mix of hi-fi and lo-fi” (The Times of London), and “something like a vintage silent film” (The The Washington Post).

Visually stunning and technically inspired, the company

has won an Emmy Award and a growing reputation as a sensational theatrical innovator.

Manual Cinema launches its Duke Performances residency with Ada/Ava, which took top honors at 2013’s National Puppet Festival. While Manual Cinema was still mostly just an idea, its founders staged this show in a first-floor Chicago apartment on Halloween weekend, with the audience standing on the sidewalk. The timing was deliberate, as the bewitching Ada/Ava is an homage to the films of Alfred Hitchcock, a ghost story and a lovelorn tale. Two septuagenarian sisters share a quiet life in a seaside cottage beneath the lighthouse they tend. When Ava dies during afternoon tea, Ada is left to search for her missing half. She senses despair in unused objects, wonders whom she actually sees in the mirror, and embarks on a surreal quest to find her sister and herself. Set to a rich mix of stringswept dirges and jazz standards played live onstage, Ada/Ava is “almost unbearably startling and sweet” (WBUR).

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THE CROSSING THE LITTLE MATCH GIRL PASSION SA TUR D A Y , FE BRU AR Y 9 • 8 P M BA L DW I N A U D I T O R I U M Tickets: $25 • $10 Duke Students Reserved Seating

Hailed as “ardently angelic” (Los Angeles Times), “superb” (The New Yorker), and “something of a miracle” (The Philadelphia Inquirer), The Crossing is a GRAMMY-winning Philadelphia chamber choir dedicated to vivid new music.

Devoted to completely reimagining the experience of choral music for composers, singers, and listeners alike, the ensemble has commissioned an astounding sixty pieces in just over a decade, one of them a 2018 Pulitzer Prize finalist. The Crossing makes work that is boldly relevant and insistently beautiful.

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At Duke Performances, twelve singers from The Crossing, led by conductor Donald Nally, offer Durham audiences the opportunity to hear composer David Lang’s extraordinary Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece, The Little Match Girl Passion. Recasting Hans Christian Andersen’s tale of the suffering and death of a homeless child in the form of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, Lang compares the Little Match Girl’s experience to that of Jesus, elevating her sorrow to a higher plane. Like Bach, Lang interpolates the reactions of the crowd and statements of shock and remorse, placing the audience inside the action. Setting the stage are a series of short commissioned pieces, including Lang’s spare and shimmering make peace, a setting of the Jewish prayer of mourning.

PROGRAM For the complete program, please visit dukeperformances.org

STEW & THE NEGRO PROBLEM NOTES OF A NATIVE SONG THU R S D A Y , FE BRU AR Y 14 • 8 P M F RIDA Y , FE B R U A R Y 15 • 8 P M SA TUR D A Y , FE BRU AR Y 16 • 8 P M SUND A Y , FE B R U AR Y 17 • 7 P M VO N D E R H E Y D E N S T U D I O T H EAT ER RU BEN S T E I N A R T S C EN T ER Tickets: $25 • $10 Duke Students General Admission Seating

Nearly forty years passed before the Tony Award-winning playwright and singer Stew realized that James Baldwin had changed his life. As a Los Angeles teenager, Stew loved Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain: he empathized with Baldwin’s desire to live in a country where people were not persecuted for the color of their skin. Stew eventually followed in Baldwin’s footsteps by moving to Europe, an

experience that afforded him an invaluable perspective on his homeland and became the inspiration for his Broadway play with collaborator Heidi Rodewald, Passing Strange.

Decades later, when he reread Go Tell It on the Mountain, Stew recognized the profound gift Baldwin had given him.

In the new musical Notes of a Native Song — written for Harlem Stage’s Baldwin centenary celebration and named for Baldwin’s 1955 collection of essays on being black in America, Notes of a Native Son — Stew and his mighty band the Negro Problem use Baldwin’s work to examine our lingering civil rights woes through a rapturous mix of rock, jazz, and soul. The show turns Baldwin into a sort of rock star, which is how Stew has long seen him — a flawed, essential visionary who transforms how we see ourselves. Notes of a Native Song reaffirms Baldwin’s inspirational stature while humanizing him, giving a hero new life.

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SUSANA BACA

FRIDAY , FE B R U A R Y 15 • 8 P M CA ROLI N A T H E A T R E OF D U R H AM

made history in 2011 when she was appointed Peru’s first black female minister of culture.

Tickets: $55 • $45 • $35 • $10 Duke Students Reserved Seating

When Baca was a student in Chorrillos, in Lima, she began a lifelong journey as an ethnomusicologist, collecting and performing a vast repertoire of songs at the cultural crossroads of Africa, the Andes, and Spain. She takes “unique musical forms like the halting lando and lively festejo into the twenty-first century without diluting their essence,” declares the BBC. As she approaches the fifth decade of her career, Baca is renowned as much for her songs as for her graceful and commanding stage presence: surrounded by a band playing traditional Peruvian instruments, Baca dances barefoot as she sings.

Long before Susana Baca became one of international music’s essential stars, she ranked as one of the most important figures in the Afro-Peruvian revival. Overcoming the cultural stigma surrounding women performers, not to mention the lowly status of black music in Peru, Baca forged an extraordinary career. In 1995, David Byrne included her heartrending rendition of “María Lando” on his compilation Soul of Black Peru, bringing her music to a global audience; she has since released six albums on Byrne’s Luaka Bop label. The founder of a museum and cultural center celebrating Afro-Peruvian traditions, Baca 42

FARRUQUITO TUESD A Y , FE BRU AR Y 19 • 8 P M PA GE A U D I T O RI UM Tickets: $55 • $45 • $35 • $10 Duke Students Reserved Seating

Hailed as “one of the great flamenco dancers of this new century” by The New York Times, Farruquito has expanded the reach and reputation of the genre through dazzling performances that fuse intoxicating rhythms and whip-fast movements. Raised by dancers in the flamenco stronghold of Seville, Farruquito made his first Broadway appearance alongside his grandfather, the renowned El Farruco, at age four. While still a teenager, his first show, Raíces flamencas, positioned him as one of the world’s elite interpreters of flamenco puro. A tragic car accident interrupted his

ascendance, but after a decade-long hiatus, Farruquito returns to the stage in appropriately dramatic fashion.

At Duke, Farruquito brings his fiery theatrical flair to the explosive combination of singing, percussion, and guitar.

Joined by nine musicians and numerous dancers, Farruquito’s sense of invention offers thrill after thrill, emphasizing just how interconnected flamenco dance and song should be.

A master of dynamic contrast, Farruquito shifts between graceful flourishes and thundering footwork, his upper body stretching and snapping like a rubber band. Though informed by the tradition of his homeland, Farruquito’s rhythmic propulsion and impulsive spontaneity feel entirely fresh — a testament to his rightful place as one of the world’s most exciting dancers.

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BEATRICE RANA, PIANO F RIDA Y , FE BRU A R Y 22 • 8 P M BA L DW I N A U D I T OR I U M Tickets: $25 • $10 Duke Students Reserved Seating

Beatrice Rana played her first scales when she was only six months old, seated on her mother’s lap at the piano in a tiny Italian town. The daughter of two esteemed pianists, Rana recalls hearing her parents play Prokofiev and Rachmaninov while she was still in the womb. By nine, she had made her orchestral debut. By twenty, she had claimed the silver medal and the Audience Award in the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, leading to a chart-topping rendition of Bach’s “Goldberg” Variations and a 2017 win as the BBC Music Magazine’s Newcomer of the Year. “Her tone is commanding,” The Los Angeles Times declared. “Her only showiness is in showing how the music works.”

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Playing for the first time in North Carolina, Rana begins with Chopin’s charming and often-playful second set of Études, op. 25, a perfect showcase for Rana’s range. Likewise, Ravel’s Miroirs — written early in his career, as an enthusiastic appreciation of his fellow avant-garde artists — incorporates sweeping arpeggios, exquisite harmonies, and ecstatic Spanish dances. Rana ends the night with Guido Agosti’s electrifying arrangement of Stravinsky’s Firebird, a celebrated work that never loses its thrilling power.

PROGRAM Chopin: Études, op. 25 Ravel: Miroirs Stravinsky: The Firebird (arr. Agosti)

STEVEN ISSERLIS & ROBERT LEVIN SA TUR D A Y , FE BRU AR Y 23 • 8 P M BA L DW I N A U D I T O R I U M Tickets: $48 • $42 • $10 Duke Students Reserved Seating

Steven Isserlis’ rich and muscular sound, combined with interpretive passion and sensitivity, has made him one of the world’s preeminent cellists. Pianist and conductor Robert Levin has held a post at Harvard for more than twenty-five years, where a prize for outstanding musicianship bears his name. As a performer, he is particularly known for his imaginative cadenzas. The two musicians first played Beethoven’s Cello Sonatas together in 2004, the beginning of an inspiring collaboration. “Isserlis’ playing always has spirit to spare. But the fortepiano ensures an even fresher sense of discovery to his cello odyssey,” The Guardian raves.

In Durham, Isserlis and Levin perform three of the five Beethoven sonatas and a set of variations. They begin with the first of the five, Sonata No. 1 in F Major, in which the fortepiano is equal partners with the cello, which itself from time to time flies into the high registers. They continue with the last of the five, No. 5 in D Major — concise, concentrated, and rich. They then interject a much lighter moment, the delightful set of variations Beethoven wrote on the birdcatcher Papageno’s aria from Mozart’s The Magic Flute. The program concludes with the grand Third Sonata, op. 69 in A Major, a fitting conclusion for this duo of perfectly matched musicians.

P ROGR AM Beethoven: Cello Sonata No. 1 in F Major, op. 5, no. 1 Beethoven: Cello Sonata No. 5 in D Major, op. 102, no. 2 Beethoven: 12 Variations on “Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen” from The Magic Flute, op. 66 Beethoven: Cello Sonata No. 3 in A Major, op. 69 45

CAMILLE A. BROWN & DANCERS MR. TOL E. RANCE F RIDA Y , MA RCH 1 • 8 P M SA TUR D A Y , M A RC H 2 • 8 P M REY NO LD S I N D U S T R I ES T H EAT ER

examination of the endless hurdles black artists have long encountered, a poignant mix of the pain of oppression and the joy of inventiveness.

Tickets: $25 • $10 Duke Students Reserved Seating

“Dramatically brilliant, physically exhilarating,” raves The New York Times. Duke Performances Artist-in-Residence Camille A. Brown “is clearly a force of nature.” This visionary choregrapher has created an essential trilogy of works that redefine black identity within the evolving cultural landscape of this country: Mr. TOL E. RAncE, BLACK GIRL: Linguistic Play, and ink. Her series of three one-week residencies at Duke Performances, with her company, Camille A. Brown & Dancers, marks the first time a single presenter has staged this trilogy in its entirety. Separately, the shows function as breathtaking stand-alone pieces; together, they form a striking commentary on perceptions of black identity.

A courageous, unified epic expressed through visceral movement and unforgettable storytelling, her trilogy — presented here in reverse order — is at the vanguard of American dance.

It took Camille A. Brown two years of research to create Mr. Tol E. RAncE, a dynamic work that looks critically and candidly at the enduring legacy of white supremacy in American pop culture. Brown uses dance, theater, comedy, video, and animation to explore black entertainers’ tenacity in the face of reductive stereotypes, and the larger theme of humor as a survival tactic in a white supremacist world. Intertwining the exaggerated movements of minstrelsy along with African dance, Lindy hop, ballet, tap, and hip-hop, Brown and six other dancers create lucid portraits that express both hardship and showmanship. Pianist Scott Patterson plays a stirring score in real time. The result, which won a Bessie Award in 2014, is a fearless, unflinching

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BUILDING BRIDGES: MUSLIMS IN AMERICA

BROTHER ALI THU R S D A Y , M A RC H 7 • 8 P M MO TO R CO M U S I C HAL L Tickets: $25 • $10 Duke Students Standing Room, Extremely Limited Seating

From his complicated backstory to his compelling rhymes, Brother Ali is a rapper without a rival. Albino and legally blind, he struggled to find peers in the midwestern states where he spent his youth. But in a pivotal moment at age eight, he found rap, which gave him an outlet and, through the references his favorite rappers made, led him to Islam.

For twenty years, he has funneled these elements of his distinctive identity into increasingly profound verses, pairing feverish calls for social justice with candid admissions about his own mental fragility.

Brother Ali has never walked this tightrope better than on 2017’s gripping All the Beauty in This Whole Life. Written during a period of extreme political upheaval, Beauty not only acknowledges the world’s problems but aims to overcome them — to celebrate love in the face of hate, to cherish wisdom in the midst of madness. Ali turns bad encounters with TSA agents into lessons on humor and empathy, a poem for his son into a sermon on staring down intolerance. His perspective — delivered from Motorco’s stage as part of Duke Performances’ Building Bridges project — feels more necessary than ever, providing hardwon light in the face of darkness.

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ANOUSHKA SHANKAR THU R S D A Y , M A RC H 21 • 8 P M C A ROLI N A T H E A T R E OF DU R HAM Tickets: $60 • $45 • $35 • $10 Duke Students Reserved Seating

Under the tutelage of her father, the sitar paragon Ravi Shankar, Anoushka Shankar established herself as one of the world’s best classical sitarists when she was barely a teenager. At twenty, she became the first Indian woman and the youngest person ever to be nominated for a World Music GRAMMY. On a series of exceptional albums and tours, Shankar’s dynamic and visionary music has made it clear she lives under the shadow of no name, mentor, genre, or strict tradition. “Shankar is a good deal more than just a great man’s daughter,” affirms The Guardian. “She is one of the best sitar players in the world, if not, now that her father has passed away, the best.”

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Though Shankar has continuously thought outside of convention and beyond her pedigree, her mastery of the Carnatic tradition and its intricacies is absolute, giving her the tools and flexibility to move within and beyond heritage.

At Duke Performances, surrounded by traditional Indian percussion and the drone of a tanpura, Shankar uses the melodic versatility of her sitar to build patterns that slowly open and unfold, while piano, cello, and electronics weave a radiant tapestry to support her acoustic virtuosity. Shankar’s performances are an ongoing celebration of the spirit of classical Indian ragas, expressed through a captivating crosscultural vision. Instead of settling for a single region, category, or style, Shankar has — like her father, a half-century earlier — forged her own creative path.

MANUAL CINEMA NO BLUE MEMORIES: THE LIFE OF GWENDOLYN BROOKS F RIDA Y , MA RCH 2 2 • 8 P M SA TUR D A Y , M A RC H 23 • 8 P M REY NO LD S I N D U S T R I ES T HEAT ER

technically inspired, the company has won an Emmy Award and a growing international reputation as a sensational theatrical innovator.

Tickets: $25 • $10 Duke Students Reserved Seating

Manual Cinema concludes its Duke Performances residency with its latest work, No Blue Memories: The Life of Gwendolyn Brooks, its most audacious yet. No Blue Memories celebrates the political awakening and poetic legacy of Gwendolyn Brooks, the pioneering American literary titan and community organizer who, in 1950, became the first African-American to win the Pulitzer Prize.

In songs written by sisters Jamila and Ayanna Woods, No Blue Memories turns some of Brooks’ most provocative verses into new jazz compositions. As a quintet plays this score, Manual Cinema’s intricate shadow puppetry recreates Brooks’ Chicago in miniature. No Blue Memories is a show the likes of which you’ve never seen before.

In less than a decade, the bold and talented Chicago collective Manual Cinema has become a theatrical powerhouse with its mesmerizing shadow-puppet spectacles. Blending techniques from animation and film and performing with original music, Manual Cinema reimagines puppetry, inventing what The New York Times calls “a spectral parade of fantastical images.” The company deploys handmade props and puppets animated by an army of actors working in shadow. Manual Cinema’s work has been called “a brilliant mix of hi-fi and lo-fi” (The Times of London), and “something like a vintage silent film” (The Washington Post). Visually stunning and

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ELIAS STRING QUARTET SA TUR D A Y , M A RC H 23 • 8 P M BA L DW I N A U D I T O R I U M Tickets: $25 • $10 Duke Students Reserved Seating

The Elias String Quartet seems to live inside the pieces it plays. The ensemble conveys both emotional and structural sophistication with astounding clarity. Formed at Manchester’s Royal Northern College of Music a quarter century ago, the Elias is both a definitive interpreter of standard repertoire, having recorded Beethoven’s entire output for quartet, and a passionate champion of the world’s best living composers. Heralded by The New York Times for “bold, rich tone and deeply felt interpretation” it ranks among the most venerated quartets of its generation.

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For its second Duke appearance, the Elias pairs two classics with a new work written just for them. The concert begins with Mozart’s sumptuous Quartet No. 15 in D Minor. A work of immersive contrasts, reportedly written during the birth of his first child, it is the second of Mozart’s quartets dedicated to Haydn. The concert concludes with Schumann’s emotionally charged Quartet in A Minor. The last of a triptych of quartets he wrote in 1842, it is elegantly doleful — almost a lament.

Between the Mozart and the Schumann, the Elias play a new work commissioned from the engaging British composer Sally Beamish as a companion piece for the Schumann.

P ROGR AM Mozart: String Quartet No. 15 in D Minor, K. 421 Sally Beamish: New commission, title to be announced Schumann: String Quartet in A Minor, op. 41, no. 1

LACK ATLANTI

In March 2018, Duke Performances brought some of the most musically fabled regions of the world to downtown Durham with Black Atlantic, a weeklong festival celebrating the music of Africa and the African diaspora. Musicians from the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Venezuela, Mali, the Garifuna nation in Honduras, and Spain took the stage at Motorco and the Carolina Theatre.

“These six concerts,” wrote Duke professor Laurent Dubois, “remind

us of common routes, of the ways Black Atlantic music has helped turn exile and exclusion into grounding and connection.” This season, Black Atlantic returns to Motorco — and adds one concert at Baldwin Auditorium — in search of more cultural connections and imaginative hybrids, with artists from South Africa, Congo, Uganda, Mali/Côte d’Ivoire/France, Mauritania, Cuba, Niger, New York, and Brazil.

DEREK GRIPPER & AFRICA STRINGS SOUTH AFRICA/CONGO/UGANDA

MONDAY, MARCH 25 • 8 PM MOTORCO MUSIC HALL

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

South African classical guitarist Derek Gripper gave himself what seemed to be an impossible task: transcribe the intricate twenty-onestring-kora compositions of Malian master Toumani Diabaté for six-string guitar. When Diabaté himself heard the results, the awestruck musician demanded confirmation that he was indeed only hearing one guitar; he later invited Gripper to collaborate.

For decades, Gripper has worked to create a new international repertoire for classical guitar. In that quest, he has turned to the music of South Africa and Brazil, but consecutive albums of his sublime kora interpretations — his breakthrough One Night on Earth (2012) and his award-winning Libraries on Fire (2016) — have made him one of the world’s foremost guitarists and contextualized the kora’s mesmerizing counterpoint in the classical tradition.

Joined by Congolese guitarist Jaja Bashengezi and Ugandan multiinstrumentalist Kinobe as part of his African Strings Project, Gripper is an essential musical emissary.

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LACK ATLANTI

FATOUMATA NOURA MINT DAYMÉ DIAWARA SEYMALI AROCENA MALI

MAURITANIA

CUBA

TUESDAY, MARCH 26 • 8 PM MOTORCO MUSIC HALL

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 27 • 8 PM M OT OR C O M USI C H AL L

THURSDAY, MARCH 28 • 8 PM M OT ORCO M USI C H AL L

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

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

Tickets: $20 • $10 Duke Students Standing Room, Extremely Limited Seating

Fatoumata Diawara is poised to become one of Africa’s most significant international stars in decades. Born to Malian parents in Côte d’Ivoire, Diawara became a well-known child actor back in Mali. At the age of nineteen, she decamped to France, pursuing a career with a street-theater company that, in turn, led her to pick up a guitar and explore the sounds of her homeland. Before long, she was collaborating with Malian diva Oumou Sangaré, jazz legend Herbie Hancock, and Blur cofounder Damon Albarn, and she had signed with World Circuit. Diawara’s 2012 debut, Fatou, was a simmering folksong beauty, updating Mali’s Wassoulou tradition with a sheen of R&B in which her conversational alto wrapped like smoke around serpentine guitars and driving polyrhythms. Her 2018 follow-up, Nterini, strides toward African pop music, with bold beats and sophisticated arrangements.

In the seaside Saharan country of Mauritania, Noura Mint Seymali was born into a Moorish griot dynasty, surrounded by the ecstatic sounds of this Arabic-influenced modal music. Her stepmother, Dimi Mint Abba, was one of Mauritania’s most powerful singers, and when Seymali started writing songs and singing backup for her at age thirteen, her father, a composer, encouraged Seymali to experiment with tradition.

On two hypnotic albums, Seymali, her guitarist-husband, Jeich Ould Chighaly, bassist Ousmane Touré, and drummer Matthew Tinari popularize Mauritania’s traditional sounds into something rich and modern. They exchange electric guitar for tidinit (a four-stringed lute), and put drums and bass alongside the ardine, a calabash harp. Seymali’s songs, pairing modern rhythms with traditional poetry and melodies, are a roadmap forward for Mauritanian music, little known on these shores.

The incandescent young singer, composer, and choral director Daymé Arocena is the future of Cuban music.

Raised in Havana in a small home crowded with twenty-one people and enlivened by an endless stream of music, Arocena enrolled in one of the country’s chief conservatories as a child.

A prodigy, she learned the customs of Western choral music while exploring the intricacy and variety of Cuba’s own synthesis of sounds — indigenous, African, and European. On 2017’s triumphant Cubafonía, her songs combine Cuban sounds — including the sounds of Santería — with gospel’s exultancy and jazz’s flexible spine. Arocena has worked with BBC DJ and impresario Gilles Peterson, leading his acclaimed Havana Club Rumba Sessions. Drawing deeply from her country’s rich musical traditions and buoyed up by an irrepressible enthusiasm, Arocena is a mighty new missionary for modern Cuban culture, rooted in the pride of its past.

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LACK ATLANTI

DAFNIS TAL PRIETO DANILO NATIONAL BIG BAND BRITO NIGER

CUBA/USA

BRAZIL

FRIDAY, MARCH 29 • 8 PM MOTO RC O M U S I C H ALL

FRIDAY, MARCH 29 • 8 PM B AL DW I N AU D I T ORI UM

SATURDAY, MARCH 30 • 8 PM M OT ORCO M USI C H ALL

Tickets: $20 • $10 Duke Students Standing Room, Extremely Limited Seating

Tickets: $25 • $10 Duke Students Reserved Seating

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

Tal National is the world’s most energetic rock ’n’ roll band right now. A collective of thirteen singers and instrumentalists based in Niger’s bustling capital of Niamey, its members represent the country’s separate ethnic and cultural strains — the Hausa, Tuareg, and Songhai among them. The group bridges those languages and sounds in hyperkinetic songs written and played by rotating teams of seven people, each tune delivering an electrifying mix of inspirations and ideas. With ecstatic rhythms and communal vocals, Tal National funnels more sounds into a five-minute span than many bands manage in an entire album, especially on their intoxicating 2018 record, Tantabara.

These songs dare the audience to dance and sing, to exalt in a sense of pure communion. In Niamey, Tal National runs a rock club where they are known to play all-night concerts, members moving in and out as needed; expect nothing less than that sense of unbridled delight when they step onto the Motorco stage.

When Dafnis Prieto immigrated to New York City from Cuba in 1999, the young jazz drummer earned an almost instantaneous reputation as one of the city’s best new instrumentalists.

He played with Eddie Palmieri, Steve Coleman, and Andrew Hill, credentials that led The New York Times to crown him “a major force” in 2002. Subsequent albums under his own name cemented that reputation by pairing his energy and an intricate sense of rhythm with exploratory harmonies and sophisticated structures; in 2011, his artistry was rewarded with a MacArthur Fellowship.

No project has made Prieto’s boundless ambition or vision as clear as 2018’s Back to the Sunset, his debut with his seventeen-member, star-studded Dafnis Prieto Big Band. Produced by Duke Performances’ Eric Oberstein, it includes ebullient Afro-Cuban compositions and mesmerizing ballads, reimagining what a big band can be.

Since Danilo Brito first picked up his father’s bandolim — the Brazilian version of the mandolin, named for its pioneer, Jacob do Bandolim — as a toddler in São Paulo, it was clear he was a prodigy.

His musical parents encouraged him to nurture his skill, sending him to lessons with regional masters. Brito learned to play choro, the first Brazilian popular music style, with its roots in Portuguese fado, its polka and waltz rhythms overlaid with Afro-Brazilian syncopation, and its dazzling displays of instrumental dexterity.

Brito has since become the future of choro, his daring and precise mandolin runs earning him a reputation as the new Jacob do Bandolim. On his self-titled 2014 album, along with a sizzling quintet of guitars and percussion, Brito plays the role of wordless storyteller, conveying a sense of wistful romanticism, inquisitive playfulness, and youthful verve.

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BUILDING BRIDGES: MUSLIMS IN AMERICA

HABIBI

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

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

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

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

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

PIOTR ANDERSZEWSKI, PIANO S AT U R DAY, A PR IL 6 • 8 PM BA L DW I N A U D I T O R I U M Tickets: $25 • $10 Duke Students Reserved Seating

In 1990, during the semi-finals of the Leeds International Piano Competition, pianist Piotr Anderszewski abruptly walked off the stage. Though he had been a favorite to win, he was dissatisfied with his sound that day and decided to disqualify himself. This uncompromising choice catapulted his career, staking his spot as one of the world’s most intriguing new pianists. He has since won the rare Gilmore Artist Award and a Royal Philharmonic Music Award. He has pursued a deliberately limited repertoire, working and reworking pieces until they approach perfection.

Bach and Beethoven are Anderszewski’s touchstones. In Durham, he begins with selections from The Well-Tempered Clavier, Bach’s consummate set of keyboard preludes and fugues. Anderszewski ends the night with what may be his greatest obsession, Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations, an endlessly dynamic exploration of an 1819 waltz by Anton Diabelli.

Anderszewski played the Diabelli on that fateful day in Leeds and kept with it, endlessly honing his interpretation. His vivid reading of Diabelli is spellbinding, delivered with technical dexterity and deep emotional understanding.

PROGRAM Bach: Selected Preludes and Fugues from The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book II Beethoven: Thirty-Three Variations on a Waltz by Diabelli, op. 120 (“Diabelli” Variations)

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ANGÉLIQUE KIDJO REMAIN IN LIGHT MO ND A Y , A PR I L 8 • 8 P M CAROLINA THEATRE OF DURHAM Tickets: $55 • $45 • $35 • $10 Duke Students Reserved Seating

In 1983, just as her star was on the rise, the luminous multilingual singer Angélique Kidjo fled her home country of Benin for Paris to escape political turmoil.

In the years since, she has not only brought African traditional music into a contemporary context and given it a pop music glow; Kidjo has also brought attention to women’s rights, cultural preservation, and sustainable development with her radiant and commanding voice. Her work has never been more compelling as it is on Remain in Light, her fulllength repatriation of the 1980 landmark album by U.S. art-rock band the Talking Heads.

In the late 1970s, Talking Heads co-founder David Byrne and the band’s producer, Brian Eno, took inspiration from Afrobeat, the energetic and fiercely political music associated with Nigeria’s Fela Kuti. That sound served as Remain in Light’s rhythmic framework to which the Talking Heads added elliptical lyrics and angular guitars. Not long after leaving Benin, Kidjo fell in love with Remain in Light; now she takes these songs back home, reconnecting the album’s African elements with their source material. Kidjo adds horns that embolden the original melodies and choirs that give Byrne’s fragmented words deeper meaning.

Unveiled at Carnegie Hall in 2017 and released in 2018, Kidjo’s Remain in Light is a spectacular reassertion of Africa’s rich and vast musical legacy.

THE GLOAMING W EDNE S D A Y , A PR I L 10 • 8 P M CAROLINA THEATRE OF DURHAM

Guardian, “is a staggering display of both emotion and virtuosity.”

Tickets: $45 • $35 • $25 • $10 Duke Students Reserved Seating

To rethink the idioms of Irish reels and jigs, Hayes recruited a slate of international folk and classical luminaries: hardanger fiddler Caoimhín O Raghallaigh, Chicago blues guitarist Dennis Cahill, and powerful singer Iarla Ó Lionáird, who delivers Gaelic lyrics in the impassioned sean-nós style and has been praised as “one of the most dramatic voices in contemporary music.” New York pianist and producer Thomas Bartlett — best known for his essential contributions to the music of Sufjan Stevens, The National, and St. Vincent — is The Gloaming’s Svengali, the one who helps reimagine Ireland’s past for the present.

The Gloaming, last seen at Duke Performances in 2016, works elements of jazz and experimental music into a distinctly Irish foundation, creating a transcendent experience that recalls the climactic highs of post-rock.

The night that The Gloaming made their onstage debut at Dublin’s National Concert Hall in 2011 stands now as a landmark moment in Irish music’s fabled history: here was a group, after all, firmly rooted in Irish traditions, actively pulling that past into the twenty-first century, with the pedigree to do it. The concert sold out before any music had been written, let alone heard. During the subsequent seven years, The Gloaming has probed every aspect of Irish folk music, pushing against its historical confines. Founded by three-time Irish fiddle champion Martin Hayes, this ever-imaginative group reconsiders each traditional element in search of fresh interpretations, from medieval Gaelic lyrics to the structure of the songs. The result, raves The

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ARTEMIS QUARTET

SAT URD AY, APRI L 13 • 8 PM B AL D W I N AUD I T ORI UM Tickets: $48 • $42 • $10 Duke Students Reserved Seating During the last three decades, the Artemis Quartet has set new standards of flexibility for the modern string quartet. The ensemble’s catalog includes Beethoven, Ligeti, Schoenberg, and Brahms. Capable of commanding power and breathtaking delicacy, the Artemis “is not only on par with the most virtuosic of their competitors, but it offers a greater musical intensity than all the others!” (Süddeutsche Zeitung). After the tragic death of its longtime violist in 2015, the Artemis has reemerged with renewed vigor; it remains “a testament to adaptability and consummate musicianship,” noted the Chicago Classical Review.

For its fourth visit to Durham, the Artemis presents a condensed history of the string quartet in only three pieces. The ensemble begins with Haydn’s beloved Quartet in G Minor, known as the “Rider” for its galloping, triumphant rhythms. Bartók rewrote the rules for string quartets in the twentieth century with his daring pizzicato fantasies, his magnetic metric tension, and his dissonant call-and-response sections with their pastoral denouements. The Artemis gives us the fourth of Bartók’s modern classics. The concert ends with Brahms’ Quartet No. 2. Impassioned and yearning, it embeds deep pangs of loneliness inside a prevailing sense of redemption.

PROGRAM Haydn: String Quartet in G Minor, op. 74, no. 3 (“Rider”) Bartók: String Quartet No. 4, Sz. 91 Brahms: String Quartet No. 2 in A Minor, op. 51, no. 2 59

AFRO-CUBAN ALL STARS TUESD A Y , A PR I L 2 3 • 8 P M C A ROLI N A T H E A T R E OF DU R HAM Tickets: $55 • $45 • $35 • $10 Duke Students Reserved Seating

Without the Afro-Cuban All Stars, the world would know a lot less about the musical riches of Cuba. In 1996, popular tres player and bandleader Juan de Marcos González recruited an unparalleled assortment of his country’s best musicians for a series of sessions in Havana. They made three albums, including Buena Vista Social Club and Introducing … Rubén González, that became springboards for Cuban music’s modern renaissance. The third album was the Afro-Cuban All Stars’ astounding A Toda Cuba Le Gusta, a magnetic survey of Cuba’s past, reinvigorated by the energy of the present.

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Skipping between bolero and rumba, salsa and timba, the big, bold band offered an unbridled homage to the country’s magnificent prerevolutionary orchestras. Two decades later, González remains Cuba’s essential talent scout, and his Afro-Cuban All Stars are a powerhouse of sound, emissaries for their country’s culture. By recruiting young Cuban musicians, González has tirelessly refreshed the band, taking abroad emerging trends from home. A series of international treks and live albums (most recently, the ebullient Absolutely Live II – Viva México!) prompted Billboard to dub them “the consummate Cuban touring band.” Afro-Cuban All Stars concerts are communal parties, testifying to Cuba’s kinetic musical spirit.

JACK QUARTET + YMUSIC THU RSD A Y , A PRI L 25 • 8 P M BA L DW I N A U D I T O R I U M

the forefront of a rapidly changing performance culture,” as The New York Times declared.

Tickets: $25 • $10 Duke Students Reserved Seating

The JACK begin the concert with a trio of recent pieces from living composers who are emerging, legendary, or somewhere in between. The Quartet opens with a new work from Tyshawn Sorey, the prolific jazz improviser and hybrid-minded composer.

John Zorn’s Nachträglichkeit, based on the abstract mystical work of Swedish artist Hilma Af Klint, follows, with yMusic flutist Alex Sopp. The JACK concludes with Zosha Di Castri’s First String Quartet, repeatedly surging between between silence and storms. After the intermission, yMusic plays the southeastern premiere of a substantial new Duke Performances/Carnegie Hall commission from one of the hottest American composers working today, Andrew Norman. Lauded by The Boston Globe for his “staggering imagination,” and the Los Angeles Times for his “daring juxtapositions and dazzling colors,” Norman is one of classical music’s most striking new stars.

In Durham, two of the world’s most enterprising and important new-music ensembles convene for a rare doublebill. The JACK Quartet, now at the end of a two-year Duke Performances residency, has set new international standards for audacity, imagination, and excellence. (For more on JACK, see page 21.) Likewise, over the course of a decade, New York sextet yMusic have restlessly explored the nexus between contemporary classical music and indie rock, collaborating with the likes of Bon Iver and Ben Folds while premiering works from Caroline Shaw and St. Vincent’s Annie Clark. Duke Performances’ ensemble-in-residence two years before JACK Quartet came to Durham, yMusic is “at

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FRED HERSCH LEAVES OF GRASS FEATURING KURT ELLING & KATE M GARRY C

SA TUR D A Y , A PR I L 27 • 8 P M BA L DW I N A U D I T O R I U M Tickets: $25 • $10 Duke Students Reserved Seating

Acclaimed pianist Fred Hersch was touring France in the mid-1990s when he experienced an undeniable urge: he needed to read Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman’s visionary expression of open-hearted love for all beings. Hersch rushed to a Parisian bookstore, devoured the collection, and began creating his own Leaves of Grass — an exquisite twenty-song cycle that sets Whitman’s beloved poems to a score of gliding horns, sophisticated rhythms, and elegant piano — premiering it at Carnegie Hall in 2005. While Leaves of Grass was already highly musical, Hersch skillfully amplified its cadences, sonorities, and lyrical beauty.

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Since composing Leaves of Grass, Hersch has released a string of GRAMMY-nominated albums, and he was the first pianist to perform a weeklong solo residency at the Village Vanguard. He occasionally revisited his song cycle, but with recent events calling into question everything Whitman held most dear, Hersch knew it was time to take Leaves of Grass on tour. At a time when Whitman’s words sound once again like a rallying cry for freedom, Hersch — one of jazz’s few openly gay stars — has reconvened the original Leaves of Grass lineup from the 2005 recording, including the great jazz singers Kurt Elling and Durham’s own Kate McGarry.

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QUATUOR ÉBÈNE SA TUR D A Y , M A Y 4 • 8 P M BA L DW I N A U D I T O R I U M Tickets: $48 • $42 • $10 Duke Students Reserved Seating

Quatuor Ébène delights audiences with its joy and verve.

Elegant, playful, and enthusiastic, the ensemble renders the weightiest of masterpieces with an inviting lightness and a sense of discovery. Founded two decades ago in conservatory rehearsal rooms as a distraction from academic studies, Quatuor Ébène has maintained this crucial excitability, leading to major accolades and an unusual crossover success.

Called “freshly compelling” by The Guardian, they have altered the very essence of what it means to be a modern string quartet.

In Durham, Quatuor Ébène begins with Beethoven’s Quartet in F Major, a gliding work of sophisticated sensitivity. This Beethoven quartet tips its hat to Haydn and takes off in its own direction, in marked contrast to the last piece on this program, Beethoven’s late Quartet in C Minor. This piece is for many chamber-music devotees the greatest work ever written for string quartet. Between these two contrasting works of Beethoven is the sole quartet of Gabriel Fauré, one of his last pieces. It is unorthodox, playing with structural expectations to create a dynamic, fluid arc. Quatuor Ébène is widely considered its definitive interpreter.

P ROGR AM Beethoven: String Quartet No. 1 in F Major, op. 18, no. 1 Fauré: String Quartet in E Minor, op. 121 Beethoven: String Quartet No. 14 in C-sharp Minor, op. 131 63

BUILDING BRIDGES: MUSLIMS IN AMERICA AMIR ELSAFFAR + HAMID AL-SAADI

ODDISEE

BROTHER ALI

Duke Performances has launched Building Bridges: Muslims in America, a new project showcasing the richness and diversity of Muslim culture in this country. Working in partnership with the Duke Islamic Studies Center (DISC) and the Duke University Middle East Studies Center (DUMESC), Duke Performances will host residencies by U.S.-based Muslim artists, including engagement with the Duke and Durham community, visits to nearby high schools, and public concerts. The initiative was launched

HABIBI

in the spring of 2018 with Nubian retro-pop band Alsarah & the Nubatones, and continues this season with Baghdadi maqam masters Amir ElSaffar + Hamid Al-Saadi (Thursday, October 4); Sudanese-American MC Oddisee (Thursday, October 18); Muslim convert and MC Brother Ali (Thursday, March 7); and Persianinflected Brooklyn rock band Habibi (Thursday, April 4). Durham-based filmmaker KidEthnic will provide a behind-the-scenes look at each residency through short films documenting the series.

DUKE PERFORMANCES AT THE CAROLINA THEATRE OF DURHAM BUIKA

T H U R SDAY, O C TOBE R 11

LIZZ WRIGHT

SAT U R DAY, O C TOBE R 27

AIDA CUEVAS

WE D NE SDAY, N OVE MBE R 7

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LUCINDA WILLIAMS + CHARLES LLOYD

ANGÉLIQUE KIDJO

SUSANA BACA

WEDNESDAY, A P RIL 10

MONDAY, D E CE MBER 10

FRI DAY, FE BRUARY 15

ANOUSHKA SHANKAR TH URSDAY, MARCH 21

M ONDAY, AP RIL 8

THE GLOAMING

AFRO-CUBAN ALL STARS T UESDAY, AP RIL 23

THE CIOMPI QUARTET AT DUKE UNIVERSITY After more than forty years with the Ciompi Quartet, Duke University’s esteemed string quartet-in-residence, cellist Fred Raimi retired in April 2018. Just days before Raimi’s final performance, the Ciompi announced that the search to fill the seat of its longest-standing member was finally complete with the addition of cellist Caroline Stinson. After extended stints in two of New York’s most celebrated quartets, the Lark and the Cassatt, Stinson brings new energy to the Ciompi as it CIOMPI CONCE RT NO. 1 SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 29 • 8 PM BALDWIN AUDITORIUM Tickets: $25 • $10 All Students General Admission Seating

For its first outing with new cellist Caroline Stinson, the Ciompi Quartet maintains its annual tradition of beginning each new season with a string quartet from Haydn, the architect of the form. The Ciompi plays the first quartet of his final set (Quartet in G Major, op. 76, no. 1) before turning to Legacy, composed in 1999 by new Durham resident Andrew Waggoner. An explosive piece inspired by Jimi Hendrix’s guitar bravado, Legacy pays homage to early American feminist icons through evocative, surging interplay. The Ciompi then turns to one of the final quartets of Beethoven.

Written two years before his death, his intense String Quartet in E-Flat Major, op. 127 echoes passages from his mighty Ninth Symphony.

PROGRAM Haydn: Quartet in G Major, op. 76, no. 1 Andrew Waggoner: Legacy Beethoven: Quartet in E-flat Major, op. 127

begins to stake out an identity without Raimi for the first time since 1974. The new quartet’s first season honors tradition — as always, they begin with a Haydn quartet — while pursuing an ambitious set of commissions, collaborations, and works by living composers.

CIOM PI CONCERT NO. 2 F E AT U R I NG SUSAN FANCH ER, SA XOPHONE SATURDAY, MARCH 30 • 8 PM BALDWIN AUDITORIUM Tickets: $25 • $10 All Students General Admission Seating

The Ciompi Quartet opens this concert with Arvo Pärt’s landmark Fratres, an engrossing 1977 piece that seesaws between hyperactive flurries and halcyon stretches. They continue with Elliott Carter’s Two Fragments for String Quartet, two short sections that test divides between silence and volume, stillness and motion. The world premiere of a new piece by Duke Vice Provost for the Arts, Scott Lindroth, follows; written for the Ciompi and acclaimed concert saxophonist Susan Fancher, Lindroth’s single-movement work allows “the quartet to follow Fancher’s lyrical, spirited, fragile, and sometimes withdrawn utterances with effortless grace.” The Quartet closes with Dvořák’s String Quartet in C Major, op. 61, a delightful end to the Ciompi’s new beginning.

PROGRAM Arvo Pärt: Fratres Elliott Carter: Two Fragments for String Quartet Scott Lindroth: New Work for Saxophone and String Quartet — World Premiere Dvorák: Quartet No. 11 in C Major, op. 61 65

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FO R TI CK E TS , F UL L P R OG RA M D ETA ILS & OTH E R I MPO RTA NT I NF O RMATI O N V ISI T DUK E PE RF O RM A N C ES .OR G ORD ER IN G T I C K ETS

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.

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.

TICKETING DETAILS FOR DUKE PERFORMANCES SHOWS AT THE CAROLINA THEATRE OF DURHAM

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

Buika Thursday, October 11

GIVE TO DUKE PERFORMANCES

Lizz Wright Saturday, October 27 Aida Cuevas Wednesday, Novermber 7 Lucinda Williams + Charles Lloyd Monday, December 10 Sussana Baca Friday, February 15 Anoushka Shankar Thursday, March 21 Angélique Kidjo Monday, April 8 The Gloaming Wednesday, April 10 Afro-Cuban All Stars Tuesday, April 23 Carolina Theatre: carolinatheatre.org, 919-560-3030, 309 W. Morgan Street. Ticketmaster service charges will be applied to 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.

IM P ORTAN T I N F O RM 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.

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 80 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.

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 maggie.brandt@duke.edu or 919-660-3314.

DU K E PE RFO RMANCE S STAFF Maggie Brandt / Development Coordinator 919-660-3314 / maggie.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

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.

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