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The Duke University Department of Music, Office of the Vice Provost for the Arts and Sarah P. Duke Gardens are pleased to announce the Ciompi Quartet Presents 2013 Summer Chamber Music Series in Duke Gardens, curated and presented by members of the Ciompi Quartet.

Each concert will feature a member of the Ciompi Quartet joined by guest artists.  Ciompi Quartet Presents is an opportunity for members of the Ciompi to create a musical dialogue with the audience where they express their creative drive through performance and in conversation.  Both new and celebrated chamber masterworks are explored musically to establish a deeper relationship between the composers, guest artists, and the audience.

Ciompi Quartet Presents 2013 Summer Chamber Music Series will take place on three Tuesday evenings at 7:30 pm in Kirby Horton Hall at Sarah P. Duke Gardens.  The dates are May 28, July 2, and August 13. Series subscription packages for all three concerts go are available for $50.  Single tickets $20; Duke employees & Students $15. Duke students & Youth $10; Group Discounts are also available. Purchase tickets at:  duke university box office, 919-684-4444 or www.tickets.duke.edu

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On April 30 the series Encounters: with the music of our time presents the Wet Ink Ensemble and guests in concert. The event will feature film and music collaborations between Duke graduate student composers—Vladimir Smirnoff, David K. Garner, D. Edward Davis, Tim Hambourger, and Jamie Keesecker—and film/media artists Marika Borgeson, Lisa McCarty, Peter Lisignoli, Jolene Mock, and Annabelle Manning.  There will also be new works by Duke graduate student composers Bryan Christian and Jamie Keesecker.  The event is part of the 2011-13 Wet Ink residency sponsored by the Department of Music and a Visiting Artists grant from the Office of the Vice Provost for the Arts.

Founded in 1998, Wet Ink has presented over 80 concerts featuring a wide range of artists, both established and emerging. Their repertoire ranges from scores of rigorous notational complexity to indeterminate and improvisational music, from the American experimental tradition to the contemporary European avant-garde, and from acoustic to amplified to electronic works and works for homemade instruments.

For more information contact Elizabeth Thompson in the Music Department.

Sponsored by Office of the Vice Provost for the Arts, Master of Fine Arts in Experimental & Documentary Arts (MFAEDA) and Art, Art History & Visual Studies.

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Prof. Ward with Duke graduate student Amy Scurria, March 2012.

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The Office of the Vice Provost for the Arts joins with the Duke Music Department and the arts community in expressing our sadness at the passing of Professor Emeritus, Robert Ward.  A prolific composer, Robert Ward is perhaps best known for his operatic setting of The Crucible, which won a Pulitzer Prize in 1962.  Over a long and distinguished life, his support of Duke, and especially the arts, will not be forgotten.

Duke Music Department and the News and Observer have more about his life and contributions to the music world and the arts community.

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Nobel Laureate Jean Marie Gustave Le Clézio and Mauritian cultural scholar and activist Dr. Issa Asgarally will discuss “Interculturality and the Arts” April 17-19 at a series of events at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University. Le Clézio and Asgarally jointly established the Foundation for Interculturality and Peace as a way to promote dialogue across cultural and geographical barriers through the arts and humanities, community engagement and educational curricula.

Both men will be at UNC’s Sonja Haynes Stone Center on April 17 for readings and book-signing (10-11:30 am), roundtable discussions (2-4:30 pm) and the keynote address (6:30-7:30 pm). On April 18 (2-4pm) they will be at Duke's Franklin Humanities Institute for roundtable discussions and readings. On April 19, Duke and UNC music faculty will co-host a 7pm concert in their honor at the Mary Duke Biddle Music Building on Duke's East Campus. Le Clézio and Asgarally will also visit faculty and students at East Chapel Hill High School.

See the event web page for a detailed schedule and further information, or download the flyer.

Le Clézio is the author of more than 50 books of cultural history and fiction. His ancestors are of French and Mauritian origin, and he has lived in Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and the United States. He won his first literary prize, Le Prix Renaudot, when he was 23 years old for Le Procès Verbal (The Interrogation). During the 1960s and 1970s, he lived in Mexico while studying and translating ancient Aztec texts.  He spent four years in Panama living with the Embera-Wounaan tribes of the Darièn forests. Upon his return to France, he devoted his research to the pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican world. In 1980, he was awarded the Paul Morand prize from L’Académie Française for his novel, Desert. A Nobel Prize in Literature followed in 2008.

Issa Asgarally is a native of Mauritius, an island with great ethnic and cultural diversity. He is a professor of linguistics at the Mauritius Institute of Education. He also edits the island’s literary magazine, Italiques, contributes regularly to the daily newspaper, L’Express, and hosts the monthly literary television program, Passerelles. He has published 11 books and essays on literature, culture, history and media.

Information Contacts for News Media: Martha van der Drift, Ph.D. Candidate at UNC Romance Languages, 919.599.3796. interculturalityandarts@gmail.com, or Dee Reid, Director of Communications at UNC’s College of Arts and Sciences, 919.843.6339; deereid@unc.edu

Sponsored by Duke University and The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

In the Iranian Calendar, which has roots stretching back to ancient Babylon, the year begins not in the dark of winter but in the budding of spring. Nowruz—the Persian New Year—is thus a celebration of rebirth and renewal.

At Duke, Nowruz 1392 will be marked by an evening of Iranian music and dance, Sunday, March 24 in Page Auditorium starting at 7PM, featuring the jazz- and blues-tinged singing of Rana Farhan and the ecstatic Sufi dancing of Banafsheh Sayyad.

Nowruz 1392, featuring Rana Farhan and Banafsheh Sayyad
Sunday, March 24, 2013 at 7 pm
Page Auditorium, Duke University, Durham, NC
Tickets are $10 for the general public, $5 for students
tickets.duke.edu or (919) 684-4444

Here is a sample of the work of both artists.

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Barbeque Man, Jr makes his grand entrance. Photo by Gray Swartzel

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Doctoral student Paul Swartzel in Duke's music department came to classical music early in life, but not because his parents were musicians.  Swartzel says, "My connection to classical music is not based on the measured voices on classical radio stations. Music, for me, was a wild, exaggerated home for escapism."

Read more in Duke Today.

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We are excited to announce that Duke University Office of the Vice Provost and the Duke Music Department are collaborating with KidZNotes, the successful Durham-based music education program based on El Sistema, to host “Take A Stand” in the Nelson Music Room on Friday, February 15 and at the Holton Community Center on Saturday, February 16.

“Take A Stand” is the national El Sistema initiative of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Longy School of Music at Bard College that cultivates leadership and education in the El Sistema movement in the United States.  The conference will bring together representatives from the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Longy School of Music to meet with Duke faculty and students, Triangle music educators and local entrepreneurs who have worked with KidZNotes over the three years of its existence.

As one of the most successful expressions of the ideals of El Sistema in the United States, KidZNotes is a perfect example of the effectiveness of social entrepreneurship through the arts.  KidZNotes has established partnerships with the Durham Public Schools, Duke University, and the East Durham Children’s Initiative to provide free music lessons, instruments, and orchestral training to over 100 elementary school students, most of whom could not afford music lessons without KidZNotes.

If you are interested in social entrepreneurship through the arts, arts advocacy, and innovation through arts education, you should attend “Take A Stand.”   Duke is committed to deepening its collaboration with KidZNotes, which means developing exciting ways to engage students in its programs. 

Register now for Take A Stand at:  http://www.kidznotes.org/take-a-stand/

Read more about Take A Stand on Duke Today.

Read more in The Chronicle Recess.

A new composition for string quartet and spoken word will be presented in Duke Chapel at 8pm Tuesday, January 29. The event, which is free and open to the public, initiates the Seven Words series dedicated to the work of French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy. It will be followed by a lecture via teleconference from Nancy on Thursday and a symposium on Friday, both at the Franklin Humanities Institute (see our earlier post for details). The composition is a new take on Joseph Haydn's Seven Last Words of Christ that intertwines ancient and contemporary music. It is based on a new poetic text by Nancy that, in keeping with the model from Haydn, announces each "word" (actually a phrase from the Gospels) and then elaborates and reflects on it.

From that text, composer Olivier Dejours has fashioned a melodrama, a form that he is drawn to through his longstanding interest in the relationship between music and language. Active as a conductor as well as a composer, Dejours opposes any idea of confinement by genre or historical era. As artistic director of the ensemble Le Banquet, he organized for the Scène Nationale d’Orléans a series of "confrontations" between the music of Mozart and that of contemporary composers. He and Jean-Christophe Marq, the cellist who will be appearing with him at Duke, are co-founders, along with Sylvie Pascal, of Les Folies du Temps. The three act as a core ensemble, gathering around themselves vocalists and other instrumentalists for performances that bridge historical instruments and sensibilities to modern ones.

All four members of the string quartet from Ensemble Galuppi in France are dedicated, like Dejours, to a rapprochement between the old and the new. All play both modern and period instruments. The two violinists, Gabriel Richard and Elsa Benabdallah, are also permanent members of the Paris Orchestra (and Richard is a return visitor to Duke—he gave a master class here in April 2011 and will return this spring, on March 8, for a trio recital with faculty musicians Jane Hawkins and Fred Raimi). Gilles Deliège, who plays both viola and viola d'amore, is on the faculty of the Tours Conservatory. The cellist, Jean-Christophe Marq, has performed with premier Baroque ensembles such as Il Seminario Musical, Cappricio Stravagante, and La Grande Ecurie and la Chambre du Roy. He doubles on baryton.

Olivier Dejours offers the following program note (translated and edited by Anne-Gaëlle Saliot and Robert Zimmerman).

The intersection of music and philosophy is the focus of a series of events at the end of this month. The 7 Words series begins on Tuesday, January 29 in Duke Memorial Chapel with a performance of original music inspired by Joseph Haydn's composition The Seven Last Words of Christ. A videoconference with the French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy follows on Thursday, and the series ends on Friday with a symposium on contemporary philosophy and music.

All events are free and open to the public.

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Duke Symphony Orchestra

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Three violin students have been tapped as soloists for Mozart's Concerto in D Major in the October 3 concert.  Read more about DSO director Harry Davidson's experiment-in-progress.

Other works on the program include Haydn’s Symphony No. 103 in E-Flat Major, “Drum Roll” and Schumann’s Symphony No. 3 in E-Flat Major, Op. 97, “Rhenish.” The concert will be held at 8 pm, in Page Auditorium on Duke University West Campus. Admission is free.  More information at 919-660-3333 or music.duke.edu