Deviant Septet, the new music ensemble which Time Out New York called “exceedingly fun,” are now in their second year of residency at Duke. Last season, they brought down the house with their performance of Stravinsky’s L’Histoire du Soldat, which Indy Week praised as “limber and rich, showing the wit and humor that so often hide behind Stravinsky’s cool exterior.” That was the piece that originally drew the group together, and it has remained their calling card ever since.

This season, Deviant Septet present another early-twentieth-century masterwork that calls for an unusual instrumentation: Arnold Schoenberg’s astounding 1912 cycle Pierrot Lunaire (specially transcribed for the group’s instrumentation). They are joined by soprano Mellissa Hughes, “a dazzling diva adept at old and new music” (TimeOut New York), who half-sings, half-speaks her way through the twenty-one irreverent poems that Schoenberg set in captivating atonality. Hughes and Deviant Septet perform in the intimate confines of the Nelson Music Room, offering audiences an up-close seat to Schoenberg’s masterpiece.