Duke Performances enters the '07-'08 season with a new approach to the professional performances it presents on campus. For the first time, the season will be organized around six themes, including an ambitious retrospective of the jazz of North Carolina native Thelonious Monk, the history of soul music and "Statements of Fact: Documentary in Performance," which will coincide with the Full Frame Film Festival.
"I felt like if we could tell a story — the story of how gospel moves to soul moves to DJ culture, or how Thelonious Monk's really deep North Carolina roots impacted his music and in turn impacted the way that music is made in our world — that would be really interesting," says Duke Performances' interim director Aaron Greenwald.
N.C.'s Jazz Roots
When jazz fans think of the hot spots for the music, they generally start with jazz's foundations in the Midwest -- New Orleans, Kansas City and Chicago -- and throw in New York for good measure. But North Carolina has made some spectacular contributions to the music as well, even if the artists generally made their mark after leaving the state.
One of the founders of bebop, pianist and composer Thelonious Monk was born in 1917 in Rocky Mount. The family moved to New York when he was 4. Duke Performances will sponsor visits this season to the Monk family homes in Rocky Mount and nearby Newton Grove.
Saxophonist John Coltrane was born in Hamlet, N.C. and grew up in High Point. He remained in the state until he was 17, when he moved to Philadelphia.
When Coltrane arrived in Philadelphia, he meet pianist McCoy Tyner, who was born in that city but whose parents both came from Murfreesboro in Hertford County.
Others jazz greats who once called North Carolina home include composer Billy Strayhorn, drummer and band leader Max Roach, and Percy Heath. Trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie grew up across the South Carolina state line, but went to school in Laurinburg.
This thematic approach is common at festivals but rarely seen in university performance series, Greenwald says.
"It's important because it puts the programming in context," he says. "I wanted to figure out how Duke as a cultural presence in this community can contribute to the conversation in a way that's more in-depth."
The season will feature more than 60 events, organized around the six themes. In addition to Monk, soul music and documentary performance, Duke Performances will showcase its longtime classical series, including concerts by the Ciompi Quartet; a Shakespeare series; and performances by Brazilian chanteuses.
The Kronos Quartet kicks off the season with a four-day residency at Duke in September. The quartet's events will include a concert with the Durham Children's Choir on Sept. 14 to commemorate the sixth anniversary of 9/11, a talk by Kronos first violinist David Harrington and a premiere of three new arrangements of Monk's "'Round Midnight," commissioned by Duke.
The "Following Monk" series, centered around what would have been Monk's 90th birthday Oct. 10, will feature performances by Jason Moran, the Kenny Baron Trio, Omar Sosa and Jerry Gonzalez & the Fort Apache Band, a talk by jazz critic Stanley Crouch, and tours of the Monk family homesteads in Rocky Mount and Newton Grove.
The Monk tribute is intended as a homecoming, says Greenwald.
"I felt like Monk has been claimed as a New York artist, but the ingredients of his music are the gospel and blues and the country music that he grew up with in North Carolina," he says. "I wanted to say, yes, great art comes from New York, but great art also comes from here. That should be really important to Duke. And to be able to do that 65 miles from where [Monk] was reared is pretty amazing."