The season’s third concert echoes its second with a modern masterpiece bookended by Beethoven and Brahms. The program begins with Beethoven’s Quartet in A Major, Op. 18, No. 2 and ...
Composer and pianist Richard Smallwood is gospel’s singular visionary. A Gospel Music Hall of Famer whose songs are as likely to be recorded by Aretha Franklin as Yolanda Adams, Smallwood ...
Just fifty years ago, five courageous African-American students integrated Duke University. As part of Duke’s yearlong commemoration of the anniversary, Duke Performances commissioned three-time Grammy Award winner Billy Childs to ...
The Ciompi’s second concert of the season mixes two classical works of genius with a shimmering modern example. The season-long exploration of Brahms’ complete string quartets kicks off with his ...
In 2011, Brooklyn-based classical pianist Simone Dinnerstein and North Carolina’s patron saint of Americana, Tift Merritt, premiered Night at Reynolds Theater. Now they return to Durham to re-envision their groundbreaking ...
We regret to report that Guy Clark has cancelled his appearance at Duke Performances. Mr. Clark is ill and unable to perform; unfortunately, we will not be rescheduling his performance. ...
The concert is sold out for advance purchase. The Box Office at Baldwin Auditorium will start a waiting list at 7 pm on the night of the performance to fill ...
A world-class ensemble of Hungarian origin, the Takács Quartet performs the complete string quartets of Hungary’s greatest composer in this two-night concert event. Now based at the University of Colorado, ...
The first Jubilee Singers set out from Nashville’s Fisk University in 1871 to share choral arrangements of the songs of perseverance their parents and grandparents sang to endure the hardships ...
Boston’s Debo Band starts with Ethio-jazz, that early-70s mix of traditional Amharic melodies and bass grooves from American funk, now familiar to audiences across the world from the popular Ethiopiques ...
Mandolinist Chris Thile (Nickel Creek, Punch Brothers) and pianist Brad Mehldau, “a graceful powerhouse” (NY Times), are both virtuosos who record for Nonesuch Records. Both boldly mix their respective areas ...
Between performances with leading orchestras from Berlin to Boston and acclaimed solo recitals, violinist Christian Tetzlaff is in constant demand. But for a short time each year, he puts his ...
The Los Angeles Times hails eighth blackbird as “a new breed of super musicians.” The Chicago-based sextet combines striking virtuosity with disarming irreverence, as they devote themselves to inspiring and ...
With her crystalline voice and “deep, almost magical connection to the music” — says Herbie Hancock — the young jazz singer Gretchen Parlato is the cream of the crop. “Naturally ...
Note: Ms. Wang will substitute Bartók’s Sonata BB 88 for Stravinsky’s Three Movements from Petrushka as the closing piece on her recital. Yuja Wang is “quite simply, the most dazzlingly, uncannily gifted pianist in ...
PLEASE NOTE: We have recently learned that Yoko Nozaki will be unable to perform on Saturday, Feburary 1 due to illness. Emanuel Ax has graciously agreed to play a full-length solo concert in ...
In its final concert of the season, the Ciompi is joined by not one but two exceptional guest musicians. After the opening selection of Mozart’s first Prussian quartet, the stellar ...
Chanticleer began singing Medieval and Renaissance music more than thirty-five years ago, and their soaring performances helped revive this vital repertoire in America. Now the twelve-member vocal ensemble the Washington Post calls ...
Kenny Barron, “the most lyrical piano player of our time” (Jazz Weekly), honed his faultless touch with Dizzy Gillespie in the ’60s and Stan Getz in the ’80s. Dave Holland, ...
Portastatic began as a solo project for Mac McCaughan, lead singer and guitarist of Superchunk and co-founder of Merge Records. Since then, it has evolved into a full-fledged band, which sometimes includes ...
The first American ensemble to win the London International String Competition, San Francisco’s Alexander String Quartet is “one of those estimable groups who treat both composers and audiences with uncommon ...
The Rosebuds come home to North Carolina for the launch of their new album, due out this summer. On their forthcoming album, their familiar blend of nuanced pop with folk elements has come ...
“The Five Fifths’ debut release Pastoral colors Kutchma’s sparse folk in breathtaking hues of big-sky Americana.” —Shuffle Magazine
The Ébène Quartet blends classical artistry with French cool. The New York Times calls them “one of the standout quartets of the new generation.” They bring flawless technique to their ...
“A lively and rustic cross-border mix: lonesome Appalachian harmonies over mariachi horn lines and rhythms you might hear at a rural dance in Veracruz or San Luis Potosí.” —NY Times
The Ariel Quartet formed in a Jerusalem high school and traveled together to study in America. Here they met and bonded with Alisa Weilerstein, an up-and-coming cellist. Today, the Ariel ...
with Special Guests: James Phillips (Bombadil) Kym Register (Midtown Dickens/Loamlands) “When The Tender Fruit’s Christy Smith writes music, the result is something that will melt your heart.” —WKNC 88.1
“In an age of ready-made virtuosos,” writes the Times of London, Benjamin Grosvenor’s “gifts are already distinctive: poetic, romantic, almost old-school.” Those gifts were evident when he first emerged at ...
“With four Tar Heel natives behind him, Diali Cissokho creates a universally appealing sound full of bright tones and driving polyrhythm.” —Paste Magazine
Founded at the Alabama Institute for the Negro Blind in 1939, The Blind Boys of Alabama performed for over 40 years on the gospel circuit before they broke through to ...
“American Aquarium frontman BJ Barham is another of the modern maestros.” —Daytrotter Sessions
The Ghost Train Orchestra, led by trumpeter Brian Carpenter, unearths the little-known and rarely-heard jazz that was a fixture in the dance halls and nightclubs of prohibition-era Harlem and Chicago. ...
“After turns as a bandleader both raucous and refined (and both, simultaneously), Kenny Roby lands some of his best turns to date on the just-released Memories & Birds, which positions ...
The legendary Chick Corea’s career “is among the most kaleidoscopic in jazz,” says the New York Times. That drive to explore has propelled collaborations with masters such as Miles Davis, ...
“Matthew E. White’s gift is taking real southern sounds and turning them into figments of his musical imagination, which he bends and shapes into bottomless columns of ethereal soul.” —Pitchfork.com
The Ciompi Quartet closes its audacious 2013/14 season with a world premiere and two rediscovered classics. After a stirring account of legendary 19th century violin virtuoso Ernst’s string quartet, they ...
“Deliciously strange” (LA Times), “spectacularly original” (New York Magazine), “a comedic stream of conscious operatic beat-boxing marvel” (Eugene Mirman): Brooklyn’s Reggie Watts leaves audiences in convulsions of awed laughter with ...
Pianist Fred Hersch was the first artist in 75 years deemed worthy to play extended solo engagements at New York’s legendary jazz club the Village Vanguard. His inestimable depth as ...
Through three exquisite works, the Ciompi’s second concert of the season chronicles the fascinating progression from romanticism to modernism in chamber music. In the first half, the English romantic composer ...
In its third concert, the Ciompi is pleased to help bring to life a major commission, organized by Duke Divinity professor Jeremy Begbie, of a new piano quintet by Christopher ...
“Well before just about every choreographer on the planet declared their allegiance to multidisciplinary work,” proclaims The New York Times, “Meredith Monk was creating pieces that defied characterization in their ...
Master storyteller Mike Daisey, whose “tragic comedy and patriotic outrage . . . identify him as a direct descendant of Mark Twain” (The Stranger), offers his latest monologue American Utopias ...
For “precision of tone and flawless intonation,” says The Times (UK), “Nigel Short’s Tenebrae is pretty much unbeatable.” With keen sensitivity to acoustic space, these distinguished peers of the Tallis ...
Born into a family with ancestral claims to the invention of the instrument, Amjad Ali Khan is the master of the sarod, a deep-voiced cousin to the sitar with a ...
Béla Fleck is an incendiary banjo picker who roves through global idioms and collaborators — Zakir Hussain, Edgar Meyer, Toumani Diabaté — with effortless aplomb. Pianist Marcus Roberts, dubbed a ...
Stanford’s St. Lawrence String Quartet, favored by leading composers such as John Adams and Osvaldo Golijov, forges lasting connections with audiences by virtue of its innate musicality and heartfelt presentation. ...
“Seizing the music’s energy, shocking us out of our seats with every fortissimo” (The Guardian), the Belcea’s passionate interpretations make it one of the most thrilling string quartets of the ...
At a time when large-scale classical music is unprecedentedly popular in China, Duke Performances proudly presents the China National Symphony Orchestra, an ascendant 90-piece ensemble internationally hailed as “a mature ...
Praised by The New York Times for “the individual power of each member,” the irreplaceable gospel quartet The Mighty Clouds of Joy is the most lasting, significant, and consistently transporting ...
“To say Diavolo is exciting is redundant,” raves the LA Times of this gravity-defying dance company heading to Duke Performances for two different yet equally spectacular shows on consecutive nights. ...
Please note that Anderszewski’s program for this concert has changed; updated program below. “The touch and tone of Piotr Anderszewski’s playing are so seductive,” says The Guardian, “that it is ...
The fine old art of cabaret is a unique mélange of acting, singing, storytelling, and comedy. Its lineage spans classic nightclub Le Chat Noir and the modern La Clique, classic ...
The Duke University Chorale will perform David Lang’s brief piece, again (after ecclesiastes), as a prelude to Anonymous 4’s performance of love fail. Since 1986, the four singers of the ...
The JACK Quartet redefines chamber music for the 21st-century. Fêted for its “viscerally exciting performances” (NY Times), the Quartet offers a Duke Performances concert of potent contrasts. The uncanny compression ...
Born in Canada, now based in London, Angela Hewitt is “the preeminent Bach pianist of our time” (The Guardian). As a best-selling recording artist for Hyperion, she set a new ...
Since 1986, the four singers of the all-female vocal quartet Anonymous 4 have honed their unchallenged mastery of medieval sacred music. Yet they are also bold advocates for Colonial American ...
“This piece must be performed in complete darkness. No music stand lamps and no emergency lighting. The instrumentalists are positioned in the four corners of the room.” With this command, ...
An important note: We regret to announce that the Buckwheat Zydeco + C.J. Chenier concert scheduled for Thursday, February 21 at Page Auditorium has been canceled due to illness. Buckwheat ...
At age 26, Poland’s Rafal Blechacz already offers “deep, contemplative interpretations with underlying solid technique that no other young musician can emulate” (NY Times). After unprecedentedly sweeping every First Prize ...
A Berklee graduate who premiered his first opus with the NC Symphony while also helming the sweeping chamber-pop band Lost in the Trees, Ari Picker fuses bracing modernist strings with ...
Wilco drummer and art-music percussionist Glenn Kotche, phenomenal Alaskan composer John Luther Adams, and Durham-based Americana inventors Megafaun collide in this program of intelligent, visceral music. Kotche is a drummer ...
At age 30, trumpet firebrand Ambrose Akinmusire — the inheritor of Miles Davis and Wynton Marsalis — is the leader of the new school of jazz players, thanks to winning ...
A drummer and bandleader known for his extravagant talent and chimerical compositions, John Hollenbeck inhabits his own world of “gleaming modernity” (NY Times) between jazz and new music. With his ...
The best qualities of Old Europe and new America unite in this concert of Czech chamber music, a noble tradition personified in the Talich Quartet. With a roster established in ...
The singer, songwriter, and bassist Meshell Ndegeocello is one of the most beloved and elusive musicians of our times. A pioneer of the sophisticated welter of urban pop styles called ...
Bonnie Raitt once compared him to a cross between soul legend Otis Redding and reggae icon Toots Hibbert. Devotees refer to his huge catalog of R&B-inflected Zimbabwean music, simply and ...
An important note: We regret to announce that the New Music Raleigh concert featuring pieces by John Supko & Louis Andriessen, scheduled for Sunday, February 24 at Hayti Heritage Center, ...
The Emerson’s fearless individualism and muscular finesse make it the definitive American string quartet. A highlight of Duke Performances stages since 1983, the Emerson returns for its final local date ...
At age 19, Korean pianist Joyce Yang won a silver medal at the 2005 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. She then took the United States by storm in a season ...
“A fine and provocative post-bop unit,” says The New York Times, “TARBABY does what it wants.” The jazz combo earns its prerogative with an impeccable pedigree. Pianist Orrin Evans is ...
The singer, songwriter, and bassist Meshell Ndegeocello is one of the most beloved and elusive musicians of our times. A pioneer of the sophisticated welter of urban pop styles called ...
Almost singlehandedly, Savion Glover revived the art of tap-dancing with his unorthodox Broadway smash Bring in ‛da Noise, Bring in ‛da Funk. Before that defining success, he was the star ...
A favored accomplice of major composers such as John Adams, Oliver Knussen, Thomas Adès, and Esa-Pekka Salonen, the incandescent violinist Leila Josefowicz is a “fiery presence” with a “muscular but ...
A highlight of Meredith Monk’s two-week residency at Duke Performances — which includes performances, master classes, lectures, film screenings, and more — is Archaeology of an Artist at the Nasher ...
“A committed and distinctive performer,” (NY Times), Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg has been a top classical violin soloist since winning the Naumburg International Violin Competition in 1981. Upon becoming the Music Director ...
Cuban dance music’s greatest champion is Sierra Maestra founder Juan de Marcos González, the “Quincy Jones of Cuba.” The singer and tres-player’s big band, the Afro-Cuban All-Stars, “represents the cream ...
Due to illness, Trio Jean Paul has canceled their January 27 & 28 performances. Six works, five composers, two concerts, and an engaging blend of old and modern repertoire add ...
“It’s hard to imagine any deity resisting a plea sung as gorgeously as the Tallis Scholars’ rendition of the Kyrie, their voices swelling with soulful precision in the church’s resonant ...
A piano trio of “uncommon ferocity” (NY Times) returns to the Nelson Music Room to illuminate a Duke scholar’s astonishing discovery about the Mendelssohn family canon. Last season at Duke ...
Hailed as “deft, exhilarating, and imaginative” by Strings Magazine, the Claremont Trio couples a powerful, energetic style with an uncommon assurance. First recipients of the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson International Trio Award, the Claremonts — sisters Emily ...
Fela Kuti, lately the subject of a high-profile Broadway musical, pioneered Afrobeat in the 1970s. Incredibly, this blazing Nigerian funk music — so confrontationally political it verged on contraband — ...
A splendid shouter forged in the country-and-urban crucible of Durham County, Charlotte-based pastor John P. Kee ushered gospel music into the mainstream during the 1990s, earning lifetime honors from both ...
Founded in 2007, this six-person company is already renowned for its dynamic, actor-focused style and lapidary productions of Shakespeare, whose elaborately plotted romance Cymbeline sings out with utter clarity in ...
For more than 40 years, the Ciompi Quartet has been Duke’s steadfast resident chamber ensemble, interpreting both ageless repertory and bracing new music with colloquial warmth and musicality. They return ...
“If the stars align,” the Village Voice says of jazz renegades The Bad Plus, “they will mow you down.” The alignment was fortuitous indeed at the 2011 Duke Performances premiere ...
Thirty years deep in an inestimably influential career, the singer, songwriter, and guitarist Thurston Moore has pulled off a rare trick: turning punk, art-rock, and experimental music into a work ...
In this special lunchtime series of performances, the Ciompi explores the connections between Haydn and Shostakovich. Each event lasts approximately 50 minutes and features quartets by both composers. All concerts begin ...
CONCERT CHANGE NOTICE: Violist Michael Tree has informed us that with great regret, he is unable to perform with the Schumann Trio in their concert on Saturday, September 22 at ...
With a dual vocation for exhilarating performance and community outreach, Flamenco Vivo is the nation’s most accomplished flamenco and Spanish dance company. Founded in New York, it established a Durham ...
To begin her exclusive recording contract with Deutsche Grammophon, the superlative sitarist Anoushka Shankar enlisted top players from India and Spain to record Traveller, promptly breaking new ground between South ...
Fanfare Ciocarlia, the world’s hottest Gypsy brass band, vamps on traditional Romanian dance tunes with “raucous good humor” (NY Times). A wedding combo from an isolated Romanian town turned world-touring ...
In this special lunchtime series of performances, the Ciompi explores the connections between Haydn and Shostakovich. Each event lasts approximately 50 minutes and features quartets by both composers. All concerts ...
An authoritative musician with a superhuman capacity for insight, Richard Goode may be the definitive American pianist of the last half-century. The Grammy and Avery Fisher Prize winner set a ...
As the final pupil of Segovia and one of the few classical guitarists who can crack the Billboard charts, Eliot Fisk is truly “the king of the American classical guitar” ...
Founded in 2007, this six-person company is already renowned for its dynamic, actor-focused style and lapidary productions of Shakespeare, whose elaborately plotted romance Cymbeline sings out with utter clarity in ...
The Artemis Quartet spent a decade training with the Emerson and Juilliard Quartets before officially launching its career at the Berlin Philharmonie in 1999. Its patient, sharply honed playing “finds ...
The Ciompi Quartet opens the 2012/13 season with a blockbuster program of masterpieces spanning the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. The evening begins with one of Haydn’s late, great Op. ...
The Ciompi has been Duke’s resident string quartet for over four decades, while New York’s Borromeo — with first violinist Nicholas Kitchen, who was raised in Durham — has been ...
Even the grand and spacious Durham Performing Arts Center will be hard-pressed to contain this extraordinary night of song with living legend Mohammad-Reza Shajarian. A winner of the United Nations’ ...
A legend of Indian classical dance brings his “utterly charming presence” (NY Times) and talented disciples to Reynolds Theater, offering an exquisite primer on an ancient and virtuosic art form. ...
“Mr. McGregor…is doing some of the most exciting work in ballet on the planet.” (NY Times) “If any artist has defined the decade,” raves the London Times, “it’s Wayne McGregor.” ...
Duke Performances & Cat’s Cradle present M. Ward with special guest Lee Ranaldo Renowned singer-songwriter and producer extraordinaire, M. Ward has been a fixture in the Portland folk scene where he’s ...
Whether playing classical music with icons like Yo-Yo Ma and Zakir Hussain or Americana with bright lights like Chris Thile and Béla Fleck, the inimitable Edgar Meyer is the undisputed ...
“The Beast is a razor-sharp fusion of hip-hop versifying and cool jazz atmosphere.” —News & Observer
In her 2011 Duke Performances collaboration with Tift Merritt, the Brooklyn-based pianist Simone Dinnerstein caught Americana partisans off guard with her marvelous solo rendition of a suite by Bach — ...
” … slinking and rich musical pieces that are full of the simple life getting tainted by modern aspirations … ” —Daytrotter
Representing the new generation of superb classical musicians from Israel, the up-and-coming Jerusalem String Quartet earned an ECHO Classic award for its 2008 recording of Schubert’s Death and the Maiden ...
“Romweber’s more than capable of capturing the smoky essence of his noir-tinged Americana all by his lonesome. Flanked by thick swells of organ and the saxophone’s brassy bleat, though, these ...
After André Watts plays an all-Liszt program in December, the equally refined pianist Garrick Ohlsson offers his own interpretation of the composer through an almost entirely different set of pieces. ...
” … combines a love of international folk with homegrown mountain-blues, played with a good-time rollicking feel perfect for road trips and lazy summer days.” —Paste Magazine
We are pleased to welcome back the esteemed Takács Quartet, one of the world’s premier string quartets. Since forming in Budapest 36 years ago, the Takács has perfected its trademark ...
“Love it … it has the plainspoken, mournful power of bluegrass and the elegance and intricacy of American classical, like Copland or Barber.” —Rosanne Cash
Quite simply, three-time Grammy winner Branford Marsalis is among the most important jazz artists working today. A resident of Durham, the saxophonist cut his teeth with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers ...
Perhaps best-known as the guitarist for the experimental rock band Battles, Tyondai Braxton orchestrates electronic loops in real time to create a hallucinatory terrain of melody and texture, splitting the ...
” … what the group does best: it resurrects old folk and bluegrass sounds and injects them with verve, quirkiness and modern ideas.” —National Public Radio Special guests include: Brad ...
Of all the great works written for the instrument, perhaps Bach’s sonatas and partitas for solo violin (BWV 1001-1006) are the most wondrous. These works are an essential part of ...
Robert Glasper has long kept one foot firmly planted in jazz and the other in hip-hop. His latest project, the Robert Glasper Experiment, is no exception. Glasper comes to Durham ...
“ … all manners of harmony-kissed American beauty that never quite land where you thought they might.” —Pitchfork
“[Shirlette Ammons’] ability to move between disciplines and venues is rare, her hunger to try new things, intense. She’s a limit-free writer, addressing things both topical and personal.” —Independent Weekly ...
The natural countertenor voice is so rare that a wealth of great music for it goes underperformed. Enter France’s Philippe Jaroussky, the world’s leading countertenor, who performs this neglected repertory ...
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