Duke University’s music department presents many free concerts, lectures and master classes throughout the year, open to the public. Here’s a list of some of the upcoming free events. Follow the links for information on location. Visit Duke University Music Department’s website for the full list.
Follow the link for each event for more information, including the specific location within the building.
Randall Love, piano, with Gabriel Richard, violin & Caroline Stinson, cello
Friday, January 11, 2019 – 8:00pm
Baldwin Auditorium
Event Price: Free
Trios by Tchaikovsky and Smetana. Randall Love is a member of the Duke music faculty where he teaches piano and fortepiano. He has performed at the Piccolo Spoleto Festival in Charleston, SC; the Boston Early Music Festival, and the Schubert Club in St. Paul, MN. He has recorded solo works of Vorísek for the Titanic label and has also collaborated with Capitol Chamber Artists of Albany, NY, in concerts and a recording of Haydn’s London Symphonies in a chamber version by Johann Salomon. French violinist Gabriel Richard is first violin at the Paris Orchestra, as well as founder and member of the Thymos String Quartet. As a musician of the Paris Orchestra, he plays under the direction of conductors such as Daniel Barenboim, Christoph Eschenbach, Pierre Boulez, Bernard Haitink, and Marin Aslop. With Thymos Quartet he regularly performs on international scenes: theKennedy Center in Washington, La cité de la Musique (Paris), Pleyel Auditorium, Orsay Museum, among others. Cellist Caroline Stinson performs widely as a chamber musician, soloist, and recitalist, committed to giving equal expression to music old and new. This season, she begins her appointment as Cellist of the Ciompi String Quartet and Associate Professor of the Practice at Duke. She has appeared at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall, the Gardner Museum & the Smithsonian.
Fred Raimi, cello, with Susan Fancher, saxophone, Jimmy Gilmore, clarinet & Blake Ray, piano
Saturday, January 12, 2019 – 7:30pm
East Duke 201: Nelson Music Room
Event Price: Free
Works by Bach, Brahms, Dorothy Chang, & Mark Engebretson. Fred Raimi, cellist, is a faculty member in the Duke University Department of Music and served as member of the Ciompi Quartet from 1974-2018. He has performed in most major cities in the US, and in Europe, China, South America and Australia. A graduate of the Juilliard School, Mr. Raimi received his M.M. degree from SUNY-Binghamton, where he also performed as a member of the Amici Quartet. He has been artist-in-residence at both Hamilton and Colgate Universities, and won the International Cello Competition in Portugal in 1971. Susan Fancher teaches saxophone at Duke. Her career has featured hundreds of concerts internationally as a soloist and as the member of chamber music ensembles such as the Red Clay Saxophone Quartet, with performances in many of the world’s leading concert venues and contemporary music festivals. Jimmy Gilmore is Principal Clarinetist (ret.) of the North Carolina Symphony and presently serves as Senior Advisor for the Orchestra. He holds degrees from the Eastman School of Music and the Juilliard School of Music. Mr. Gilmore was formerly a member of the Rochester Philharmonic and the U.S. Military Academy Band at West Point. A faculty member of Duke University and Meredith College, he has made numerous appearances as a soloist and recitalist throughout the Southeast. Pianist Blake Ray is a staff accompanist at Duke. He studied music at the University of Michigan.
Saxophone & Guitar Masterclass with Duo Montagnard
Thursday, January 17, 2019 – 5:00pm
East Duke 201: Nelson Music Room
Event Price: Free
Duo Montagnard (Joseph Murphy, saxophone & Matthew Slotkin, guitar) was formed in 2002 and has performed over 300 concerts in 49 states, eight Canadian provinces, and twenty countries on six continents. Festival performances include the Chautauqua Institution, Scandinavian Saxophone Festival, Hartwick College Summer Music Festival, North-West University New Music Week (South Africa), UNC-Wilmington New Music for Guitar and Saxophone Festival, Radford University International Guitar Festival, and the Alexandria Guitar Festival. The duo has commissioned, premiered and recorded more than twenty works for guitar and saxophone by composers including James Crowley, Jonathan Elliott, Laura Kramer, John Anthony Lennon, John Orfe and Russell Peterson. This master class is free and open to the public.
Alexander Technique Masterclass for Instrumentalists and Singers with William Conable
Friday, January 18, 2019 – 7:30pm
East Duke 201 – Nelson Music Room
Event Price: Free
The public is invited to attend this free class. William Conable enjoys worldwide renown as a teacher of the Alexander Technique, a method for improving freedom and ease of movement and physical coordination which is of special interest to musicians and other performing artists. He is Emeritus Professor of Music at the Ohio State University, and has appeared as cello soloist with the Columbus, Youngstown, Springfield, Knox County, and Welsh Hills Symphonies. For eleven years he was Principal Cellist of the Columbus Symphony, and has served in the same position for the Youngstown and Springfield Symphonies and the Dayton Opera.
Rare Music Lecture/Recital: Rebecca Cypess (Rutgers University), harpsichord and fortepiano
Wednesday, January 23, 2019 – 7:00pm
Biddle 104
Event Price: Free
“Musical Salons of the Enlightenment: Women and the Circulation of Taste” presents the sounds of salons of late eighteenth-century Europe, bringing together rare examples of musical works composed by salon hostesses and other pieces composed by the professional musicians in their circles. Featuring Duke Music alumna Sophie Caplin, soprano. Musicologist & historical keyboardist Rebecca Cypess is an associate professor of music at the Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University. A specialist in the history, performance practices, and meanings of music in the 17th and 18th centuries, she is the author of “Curious and Modern Inventions: Instrumental Music as Discovery in Galileo’s Italy” (University of Chicago Press, 2016) and co-editor of “Sara Levy’s World: Gender, Judaism, and the Bach Tradition in Enlightenment Berlin” (University of Rochester Press, 2018), as well as many articles and chapters on the history and practices of music in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. She is the founder of the Raritan Players, whose first recording, “In Sara Levy’s Salon” (Acis Productions, 2017), has garnered praise as “simply mesmerising” (Early Music America) and “a fascinating concept, brilliantly realised” (Classical Music, 5 stars). She received the 2018 Noah Greenberg Award from the American Musicological Society for her next recorded project, with fortepianist Yi-heng Yang, “Sisters, Face-to-Face: The Bach Legacy in Women’s Hands (Acis Productions, forthcoming 2019).
Organ Recital Series – Jens Korndörfer
Sunday, January 27, 2019 – 5:15pm
Duke University Chapel
Event Price: Free
Dr. Jens Korndörfer has been described as “a thoroughly convincing performer . . . sensitive and brilliant” (Mannheimer Morgen). Born in Germany, he has spent the last sixteen years in France, Japan, Canada, and the United States. Appointed the first German organist in residence at the Concert Hall Kitara in Sapporo (Japan) in 2005, he later became a triple-prize winner in the Canadian International Organ Competition in Montreal on two different occasions. Dr. Korndörfer’s recital on the Flentrop organ will include works by Bach, Mendelssohn, Rheinberger, and others.