News

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Master Classes, Fall 2013

All master classes are free and open to the public. Sunday, October 27Cello and Chamber Music Master Class with Pamela Smits7 pm. Nelson Music Room, East Duke Building Monday, October 28Piano Master Class with Sabine Simon4:30 pm. Bone Hall, Biddle Music Building Friday, November 8Piano Master Class with Kirill Gerstein* THIS MASTER CLASS HAS BEEN CANCELED Thursday, November 21Violin Master Class with Jennifer Curtis5 pm. Bone… read more »

Recent Exhibits: Tabla

This past year, we had two small exhibits of musical instruments from DUMIC's collection. One featured free reed aerophones, an accordion and concertina, and the other, our Tabla. If you did not get the opportunity to see them while they were on diplsay, you can visit them below. Enjoy! Tabla are pairs of asymmetrical, tunable, hand-played drums that have been popular in South Asia and India since the eighteenth century. Pairs of tabla consist of the treble tabla, or daya drum, played by the right hand, and the… read more »

Duke Music Reaches Qingyan: Guest Post from Jason Maher (Class of 2014)

(The following is a guest post from Jason Maher, a premedical student and Music Major in Duke University’s Trinity College Class of 2014.) Greetings from southern China! Here in Guangdong Province the weather averages in the 90s Fahrenheit and the term “light showers” is laughable, seeing as a 100 degree day can change to a couple of inches of rain in a mere two minutes, with heavy winds and dark clouds that fly over the mountains as though they’re late for one of Professor Rupprecht’s music theory… read more »

Faculty News, June 2013

The Renaissance Singers will present a concert of music by William Byrd (c. 1540-1623) in celebration of Kerry McCarthy's new biography, Byrd (Oxford Univ. Press, 2013).  The concert will take place on June 29 in London, with a pre-concert talk given by Prof. McCarthy. Robert Parkins' harpsichord recording of Early Spanish Keyboard Music, an LP originally issued by the Musical Heritage Society in 1983, is now available as a free MP3 download on… read more »

Graduate Student News, June 2013

Kirsten Rutschman presented the paper "Swedish Opera in Translation: Gustaf Adolf and Ebba Brahe" at the Lyrica Dialogues at Harvard University on May 3. A DVD of the 2012 workshop of Amy Scurria's opera Pearl will be screened at the Feminist Theory and Music Conference at Hamilton College in NY, July 31-August 4.  [ “FTM 20-21: New Voices in the New Millennium” ].  Scurria will introduce her work before the screening and hold a Q&A session… read more »

Alumni News, June 2013

Karen Cook (Ph.D. 2012, musicology) has accepted the position of Associate in Music/Assistant Professor of Music History at the Hartt School of the University of Hartford, CT. Dan Ruccia (Ph.D. 2013, composition) had his piece "Movement I: I Might Fit" performed by the Wavensemble on May 29, 2013, as part of the fourth annual "La Forma del Suono" Festival at the Conservatorio di Musica Ottorino Respighi in Latina, Italy. read more »

Duke University Musical Instrument Collections (DUMIC) Update

It has been well over a decade since the G. Norman and Ruth G. Eddy Collection of Musical Instruments took up residence in the lobby of the Mary Duke Biddle Music Building and became the Duke University Musical Instrument Collections (DUMIC). The pioneering group was soon joined by the Frans and Willemina de Hen-Bijl Collection of Musical Instruments, the Robert Miller Collection of replicas and other material, and numerous individual gifts. The collection… read more »

Recent Exhibits: Free Reed Instruments

This past year, we had two small exhibits of musical instruments from DUMIC's collection. One featured free reed aerophones, an accordion and concertina, and the other, our Tabla. If you did not get the opportunity to see them while they were on display, you can visit them below. Enjoy! The accordion is a hand-held, free reed instrument. Free reeds feature a pliant metal tongue fastened at one end to a fixed plate. Free reeds have existed since prehistoric times in Asian instruments such as the Japanese shō.… read more »

Our Steinmeyer Portative Organ

One of the many instruments in DUMIC's collection is a small portative organ, made by Georg Steinmeyer in the early 1950s. John Santoianni, the Ethel Sieck Carrabina Curator of Organs and Harpsichords here at Duke, wrote the following post after examining the instrument as he prepared it for the Duke Collegium Musicum concert this past April. This modern instrument reflects a style of small pipe organ which was used from medieval times to the 16th century. Typically, such examples had only one rank, or set, of… read more »

Faculty News, May 2013

In Lithuania to take part as a judge in the Juventus 2013 International Choral Competition, Stephen Jaffe spoke on "Reflections On New Media, The Orchestra, and the Documentary Impulse" in lectures at Kaunas University of Technology, and meetings with the Lithuanian Composers' Union in Vilnius.  The talks focused on recent directions among Duke faculty and students, and on facets of Jaffe's orchestral exploration, including his Concerto for Cello and Orchestra, and Cíthara mea (… read more »

Graduation and Awards 2013

Undergraduate Degrees Conferred First Major Nicholas James Gubbins Jordan James Kvale Long Cameron Allan Alvarez ThompkinsThe Anne Marie Parsons Memorial Prize For excellence in the field of jazz studies Jenny Louise WaltersPaul Bryan Award To recognize outstanding musicianship and exemplary service to the Duke University Wind Symphony Second Major Niloy Ghosh Matthew Robert… read more »

Graduate Fellowships and Awards, 2013-2014

Graduate students in the Department of Music have been awarded the following fellowships and awards for the 2013-14 year: Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Fellowship: Stephen Pysnik, David Kirkland Garner Evan Frankel Fellowship: Yana Lowry Ottis Green Fellowship: Darren Mueller International Travel Research Fellowship: Jung-Min Lee Pre-Dissertation and Dissertation Research Travel Award: Bryan Christian, Jung-Min Lee, Katharina Uhde… read more »

Graduate Student News, May 2013

Bryan Christian will present his dissertation research "Combination-tone Class Sets and Redefining the Role of les couleurs in Claude Vivier's Bouchara" as a paper at the 2013 Annual Society for Music Theory Conference to be held in Charlotte, NC, Oct. 31 - Nov. 3, 2013. Christian's composition Combination was selected as one of four winners in the nief-norf Summer Festival’s International Call for Scores. Nief-norf will host Bryan for two days, where he will receive a… read more »

Alumni News, May 2013

Giuseppe Gerbino (Ph.D. musicology, 2001) received a Lenfest Distinguished Faculty Award last February. Established on a donation from trustee Gerry Lenfest (Law '58), the $75,000 Lenfest award recognizes Columbia University faculty who demonstrate unusual merit in scholarship, university citizenship, and professional involvement. Gerbino is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Music at Columbia University, New York. Talya Lieberman (Trinity, 2007) has won the Seybold-… read more »

Interactive Computer Music: A Duke Student Project

This is Duke Senior Clara Starkweather demonstrating one of her final projects for MUS 274S (Interactive Computer Music), taught by Scott Lindroth. In the class, students developed interactive motion-to-music systems using web cameras as well as the Kinect camera. They all wrote their own computer code using a software synthesis programming language called SuperCollider. They designed their own instruments and wrote algorithms that determined what those instruments played in response to… read more »

Duke Magazine Featuring DUMIC

In the middle of October last year, I also had an inquiry from a student who wanted to write about instruments in the collection for Duke Magazine, the university’s alumni magazine. The student, Tim Lerow, ended up choosing write about crumhorns, the collection, and Duke’s Collegium Musicum, which performs Renaissance and Baroque music using some of the collection’s instruments, including the crumhorns. In addition to the article, we had a photo shoot with a great photographer that featured Duke graduate… read more »

Did you see this article?

​Stradivarius wanted violins ‘to sing human vowels’ According to a short article on this Arts Journal blog, a study conducted by Joseph Nagyvary, a retired professor of biochemistry and biophysics with an interest in how stringed instruments are made, found that violins made by famous historic makers produce tones similar to those produced by the female singing voice. The instruments that he used in his research included one made by Guarneri del Gesù and currently played by Itzhak Perlman. Nagyvary argues that… read more »

Duke Wind Symphony honors Paul Bryan

On April 18, 2013 the Duke University Wind Symphony, directed by Verena Mösenbichler-Bryant, presented a concert dedicated to Professor Emeritus Paul Bryan, featuring works he conducted, arranged, and commissioned during his legendary tenure at Duke. Special guests included more than 60 Duke University Wind Symphony alumni who took the stage with the current student musicians. Paul Bryan was Professor of Music and Conductor of the Wind Symphony at Duke University from 1951-1988. He received his Ph.D. in musicology from… read more »

Duke Opera Workshop: Comedy Tonight!

On April 19 and 21, 2013, Duke Opera Workshop presented Comedy Tonight!, scenes of mirth & merriment from operas by Donizetti, Menotti, Mozart, Smetana, and Verdi.  Members of The Juggling Club at Duke also participated in this production, which was directed by Susan Dunn.  David Heid was the pianist for this gala show. The Bartered Bride, Laurel Toyofuku as Esmerelda, Jianghai Ho as Vasek, and Vasco Botelho as The Director.Click image for… read more »

Duke Jazz Ensemble with Jon Faddis

On April 12, 2013, legendary trumpeter Jon Faddis joined the Duke Jazz Ensemble, directed by John Brown, onstage in Page Auditorium for a concert of works by Dizzy Gillespie and others. [READ MORE ABOUT IT in The Chronicle.] Faddis is praised by Time Out New York as "the world's greatest trumpeter ... brash soloistic logic and breathtaking technical acuity," and The Wall Street Journal characterizes him as "a trumpet player of prodigious lyrical force."… read more »

Chamber music master class with Edward Dusinberre of the Takacs Quartet

On April 4, 2013, Edward Dusinberre of the renowned Takacs Quartet conducted a master class for undergraduate students enrolled in Music 211-2 (Chamber Music). Wenjia Xu (violin), Diana Christensen (violin), Timothy Shih (viola), and Catherine Hueston (cello) performed the first movement of Ravel's String Quartet in F for Mr. Dusinberre.  Jonah Yousif (violin), Suqi Huang (violin), Olivia Chen (viola), and Clayton Avent (cello) presented the first movement of Beethoven's String… read more »