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Master Classes, Spring 2014

All master classes are free and open to the public. Thursday, January 16 @ 5 pm Nelson Music Room, East Duke BuildingAlexander Technique Master Class with William Conable 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… read more »

Musicology Lecture Series: Spring 2014

Thursday, January 23 @ 5:30 pm Smith Warehouse, Bay 4, 1st floor*Reception precedes lecture at 5 pm*Lydia Goehr (Columbia University) “Music and Painting: Reviewing the Mediums of Voice, Ear, & Instrument” Lydia Goehr is Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University. She is a recipient of Mellon, Getty, and Guggenheim Fellowships, and in 1997 was the Visiting Ernest Bloch Professor in the Music Department at U. California, Berkeley, where she gave a series of lectures on… read more »

VIDEO: Duke Chorale Christmas Concert

Every December the Duke Chorale, directed by Rodney Wynkoop, presents a Christmas concert in Duke Chapel to benefit the hungry in Durham, NC. Each audience member is asked to bring one non-perishable food item as an admission fee. The Duke Chorale collects over a ton of food at the concert, which features seasonal selections by the Duke Chorale as well as traditional carols for the entire audience to sing.   This year's concert is Tuesday, December 3 at 7:00 pm in Duke Chapel. … read more »

Graduate Student News: November 2013

Bryan Christian's composition, Chain Shift, written for the Wet Ink Ensemble's residency at Duke in 2012, was selected as the co-winner of the League of Composers/ISCM 2013 Composers Competition.  Bryan will present a pre-concert lecture at ensemble mini's December 7, 2013 performance of Claude Vivier's Bouchara and Prologue pour un Marco Polo in Berlin, Germany.  Musicology graduate student Harrison Russin's op-ed, "A… read more »

Faculty News: November 2013

Bryan Gilliam, Frances Hill Fox Professor in Humanities, will deliver the paper, "Rounding Wagner's Mountain: Richard Strauss and Modern German Opera" on November 24 at the Wagner Society of New York's 34th Annual Seminar: Wagner and Strauss. ************* Composer John Supko, Hunt Family Assistant Professor of Music, will have his new work, ALL SOULS, premiered by New Music Raleigh and Canadian vocalist Ashleigh Semkiw… read more »

Encounters partners with Duke Performances for 2013-14 yMusic Residency

Encounters: with the music of our time is joining with Duke Performances and the Office of the Vice Provost for the Arts, Duke University, to present a yearlong residency with New York sextet yMusic. yMusic will work with graduate composition students in the Department of Music, presenting their new works at a concert on March 25, 2014. On Nov. 5, yMusic will perform a concert of pieces from their upcoming second album.   … read more »

Spring 2014 Class Videos

Making Music Today (Stephen Jaffe) "Making Music Today with Duke Performances" (Music 089.2S) is a seminar for first-year students only. Taught by Stephen Jaffe, Mary and James H. Semans Professor of Music Composition, the course emphasizes becoming an informed listener. Students will learn about musical styles from around the world, then attend concerts featuring stellar artists brought to campus by Duke Performances, including Indian tabla master Zakir Hussain, the Ariel String Quartet, and Brazilian… read more »

Fall 2013

Music 561 Analysis of Early Music Professor Thomas Brothers   This course explores five different areas of analysis for polyphonic music ca. 1450-1525: 1) paraphrase of plainchant; 2) word-music relations; 3) modality; 4) texture; 5) pace, variety and design. Our focus throughout the semester will be Josquin’s legendary Missa Pange Lingua. Each student will be assigned two other composers to work with. (For example Compere, Ockeghem, Busnois… read more »

Faculty News: October 2013

John Brown, Associate Professor of the Practice of Music and Director of the Duke Jazz Program, produced and performed on a CD that has made the initial cut, and is among those in preliminary consideration for, the 56th GRAMMY Awards.  Christmas, by Nnenna Freelon and the John Brown Big Band, is one of 89 recordings that will be narrowed down to a list of 5 official nominees on October 30. The November/December issue of Fanfare Magazine includes… read more »

Revealing Respighi

Duke University faculty members Sandra Cotton and David Heid discuss their upcoming concert of works by Ottorino Respighi. Respighi's music was popular during his life (1879-1936), but is less well-known today. He wrote operas, ballets, and orchestral pieces, as well as songs and chamber works. This concert will focus on these pieces for smaller ensemble, including the song "Il Tramonto" (The Sunset) on a text by the poet Shelley. For the recital, Cotton and Heid will be joined by Gregorio Midero,… read more »

Baldwin Auditorium: Gala Opening Concert

On September 14, 2013, Baldwin Auditorium reopened after a two-year, $15 million renovation with a gala concert featuring a chamber orchestra of faculty and students from the Duke University Department of Music, including the Ciompi Quartet, John Brown, Randall Love, Rebecca Troxler, and others. The all-American program featured Aaron Copland's "Appalachian Spring" and Samuel Barber's "Knoxville, Summer of 1915" with Duke alumnus Jason McStoots, tenor.  Photographs by Megan Morr, Duke University Photography.… read more »

Faculty News: September 2013

John Brown's Big Band took the stage with legendary trumpeter Terence Blanchard on September 21 at the Carolina Theater in Durham as part of a weekend celebration of the 50th anniversary of the integration of Duke University.  John Brown is Associate Professor of the Practice of Music and Director of the Jazz Program at Duke.  [Read more] Stephen Jaffe, Mary and James H. Semans Professor of Music Composition at Duke, was interviewed by Robert Zimmerman about… read more »

Graduate Student News: September 2013

Composer D. Edward Davis is participating in SoundWalk 2013, an international sound-art event in Long Beach, California on October 5th. His piece, valdez to long beach, was selected from an open call for works. Sarah Denes delivered the paper, "Night Between Notes: The Intervallic Continuum in Sofia Gubaidulina's Early Music," at the American Musicological Society's Southeast Chapter meeting on Sept. 21 at East Carolina University. David… read more »

Alumni News: September 2013

Jason McStoots (Trinity '97) returned to Duke to perform as tenor soloist in Samuel Barber's "Knoxville, Summer of 1915" at the Baldwin Auditorium Opening Celebration Concert on Sept. 14.  McStoots, who is now a voice teacher and stage director at Brandeis University, studied voice at Duke with Wayne Lail and also participated in Duke Opera Workshop and the Duke Chorale. [Read more.] Page Stephens (Trinity '09… read more »

Jason McStoots: Tenor returns home to Baldwin stage

Tenor Jason McStoots (Trinity '97) returns to Duke to perform as soloist in Samuel Barber's "Knoxville, Summer of 1915" at the Baldwin Auditorium Opening Celebration Concert on Sept. 14, 2013.  Baldwin, where McStoots performed as a member of Duke Opera Workshop and the Duke Chorale as an undergraduate, has undergone a 2-year, $15 million renovation project. The stunning new hall boasts world-class acoustics and a stage twice the size of the one McStoots sang on as a student in the… read more »

Faculty News: August 2013

Professor Emeritus Paul Bryan was interviewed on Czech National Radio in early August as part of a remembrance of the 200th anniversary of the death of composer Johann Baptist Vanhal (1739-1813). Bryan Gilliam delivered a talk at the Mostly Mozart Festival in New York on Aug. 24. Philip Rupprecht is on a year-long fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities, hard at work on his monograph Avant-Garde Nation: British Musical Modernism in the 1960s… read more »

Graduate Student News: August 2013

The Department of Music welcomes new graduate students:Scott Lee - CompositionMegan McCarty - MusicologyImani Mosley - MusicologySidney Richardson - CompositionHarrison Russin - Musicology D. Edward Davis used a Summer Research Fellowship from the Duke University Graduate School to participate in the EcoSono Institute in Alaska this summer. He spent three weeks traveling around the state making field… read more »

Alumni News: August 2013

Penka Kouneva (Ph.D. composition, 1997) is lead orchestrator & score producer for Elysium, the TriStar science fiction blockbuster released in August.  Kouneva has the distinction of being the first woman to work as a lead orchestrator & score producer on a $100M Hollywood studio film. She will be visiting Duke this fall during DEMAN weekend to conduct a workshop with aspiring film/video/game composers on Nov. 2. George Lam (Ph.D. composition, 2011… read more »

Hsiao-mei Ku: Life's Symphony

From high to low, east to west, my musical journey has been a remarkable roller-coaster ride. Concert performances have taken me to many countries across the world: from Beijing Concert Hall to Carnegie Hall in the U.S, from the Turpan Basin in China, 154 meters below sea level, to the highest capital in the world, La Paz, Bolivia, at 3,567 meters above sea level.  As a young artist, I performed many times for China’s leaders and at age eleven, I first appeared on television.  In addition to serving as… read more »

Jason Maher, Class of 2014: Final thoughts from Qingyan

This is a follow-up to my original post about my summer project working with students in Qingyan, China. During the final week of my project, Prof. Hsiao-mei Ku was able to join me (as her Duke Engage Zhuhai program has come to a close) to assist with a weeklong foreign language and arts camp in Qingyuan, Guangdong, China. In the photos, each of us is conducting a group of mostly primary but some middle school students from Qingyuan and Guangzhou in ensembles performing both Western classical and some… read more »

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 »