Duke Performances: a combination of puppetry, broadway and 16th-century motes

The 2014 spring season of Duke Performances, a combination of puppetry, Broadway gems and 16th-century motets—to name just a few opportunities—aims for interdisciplinarity and interaction with a wide-ranging lineup of artists, many of whom will collaborate with the students attending their shows.

For the first Duke Performances event of the spring season on January 18, the New York-based wind quintet Imani Winds will play classical pieces and new compositions. They will transform Igor Stravinsky’s "The Rite of Spring," the massive orchestral piece known as one of the few classical compositions to ever incite a riot (the audience at its 1913 Paris premiere was outraged by its dissonance and unpredictability), streamlining it for performance by five wind instruments. "The Rite of Spring," partially inspired by Russian folk music, will follow a 2008 composition, "Cane," with similar roots in rural culture. This time, its creator, the jazz composer Jason Moran, draws on his family’s Louisiana roots, creating a Creole jazz epic that feels as decisively modern as "The Rite of Spring" must have in 1913.

A few days later, on January 21, the Hilliard Ensemble, a vocal quintet that shares Imani Winds' interest in playing with the borders between classical and contemporary music, will perform at the Duke Chapel. After 40 years of interpreting ancient and contemporary music, the Hilliard Ensemble will retire in late 2014, making this performance one of their last. Though the Hilliard Ensemble’s music exemplifies the haunting sublimity of early Renaissance classics—music that perfectly fits the Duke Chapel’s cavernous ceilings and stained glass windows—much of it is new material, either from modern composers who write in the Renaissance style or lesser-known composers not often heard after the 1600s.

While Duke Performances aims to bring quirky and challenging artists to the Duke community, its spring 2014 season also involves creating art, inviting students and well-known artists to collaborate and, as the trope goes, create beautiful music together. Both the Hilliard Ensemble and Imani Winds will work with Duke undergraduates and graduate students. Leading up to their concert, Imani Winds will rehearse with the Duke Wind Symphony and work with PhD candidate composers Justin Tierney and Ben Daniels to record and rehearse new compositions.

Likewise, the Hilliard Ensemble will record new compositions by PhD candidate composers Eddie Davis and Bryan Christian. All of these opportunities are part of Duke Performances' goal to not only bring a variety of performances to the Duke and Durham community, but also to give Duke students and visiting artists the opportunity for meaningful artistic collaboration. Duke Performances Director Aaron Greenwald stresses the second part of this mission, hoping to "create a season that provides different varieties of engagement" that benefit both students and visiting artists.

The Duke community will see the ultimate result of this effort later in the semester March 25 when New York-based ensemble yMusic brings its bright, jangly classical music to Casbah. That combination may sound like a bit of a contradiction in theory but is cohesive in practice: classical compositions that have the emotional pop power of an Arcade Fire album combined with the intellectual rigor of a symphony orchestra. After working with indie rock luminaries such as Sufjan Stevens, St. Vincent and the Dirty Projectors, yMusic entered a four-month-long residency with Duke’s PhD program in music composition.

"The yMusic residency has been an excellent opportunity for Duke composers to work closely with up-and-coming professional instrumentalists as part of their creative process," wrote Ariel Fielding, marketing director of Duke Performances, in an email.

yMusic will premiere the products of this collaboration, giving Duke PhD music students wide exposure for their compositions and rocking the Casbah with its clean, energetic and potentially danceable classical music.