A Gala Concert for the Biddle Music Building

The event celebrated 50 years of ‘glorious human activity — the learning, the expression, the joy, the community’

Vice Provost John Brown, music chair Verena Mösenbichler-Bryant and Provost Alec D. Gallimore lead cheers as artist Natalie Robinson’s mural is unveiled in the Biddle Music Building.
Vice Provost John Brown, music chair Verena Mösenbichler-Bryant and Provost Alec D. Gallimore lead cheers as artist Natalie Robinson’s mural is unveiled in the Biddle Music Building.

Alec Damian Gallimore, the esteemed aerospace engineer and Duke University provost, recently confided that he plays a little music.

“We encourage students to see the value of music in their lives, no matter what career path they pursue. I know this from experience.”

Explaining further, Gallimore shared: “I spent a fair amount of time in my teenage years trying to replicate [Jimi] Hendrix’s howling guitar licks, with varying degrees of success. And I’ve enjoyed the guitar ever since.”

The provost told this story during a welcome to an overflowing audience for a musical concert celebrating the 50th anniversary of Duke University’s Mary Duke Biddle Music Building.

The Department of Music hosted the three-hour gala concert and Duke centennial celebration, “50 Years of Biddle,” on Sept. 21 in Baldwin Auditorium.

Gallimore described the event as a celebration of “the glorious human activity — the learning, the expression, the joy, the community — that the building has made possible.”

Gallimore also paid tribute to the building’s namesake, Mary Duke Biddle, who was an ardent supporter of the arts and founder of the Mary Duke Biddle Foundation, and her daughter, Mary Duke Biddle Trent Semans, whom her mother “raised to continue that commitment to the arts,” the provost added.

“Mary Semans went on to serve as chair of the Biddle Foundation, which gave more than $650,000 towards the construction of a music building on East Campus to be named for her mother,” Gallimore said.

We encourage students to see the value of music in their lives, no matter what career path they pursue.

Alec Gallimore

Gallimore also honored the music building’s architect, Edward Durrell Stone, who had previously designed the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.

“And like the Kennedy Center, the Biddle Music Building opened to acclaim, instantly becoming an iconic part of the landscape and a powerful statement about the importance of the arts to this institution,” Gallimore said.

The audience at the reception sings the Duke alma mater, “Dear Old Duke.”
The audience at the reception sings the Duke alma mater, “Dear Old Duke.”

The grand celebration featured performances by current students, faculty and alumni, including excerpts of Duke alumnus Laurence Sherr’s “Blue Ridge Frescos,” with new faculty member Colin Fullerton on guitar, and selections of Leonard Bernstein’s “West Side Story” performed by the Duke Symphony Orchestra.

Other selections included an interpretation of Duke graduate Chiayu Hsu’s (Ph.D. ‘09) “Taiwain Miniatures for String Octet” featuring the Ciompi and Larkspur Quartets, and Penka Kouneva’s (Ph.D. ‘97) composition “Earth” with the Symphony Orchestra and Duke Opera Theater.

A night of music was accompanied by a documentary commemorating the anniversary of the music building by filmmaker Rodrigo Dorfman.

The celebration culminated with a reveal of a mural created in the Biddle Music building to commemorate its golden anniversary, by visual artist Natalie Robinson.

Robinson, resplendent in a Duke-blue gown, was commissioned by the Department of Music to create the work in the atrium of the building’s foyer. The mural honors Mary Duke Biddle and jazz icon, Mary Lou Williams, the university’s first artist-in-residence.

“Like creativity, this mural has no end,” Robinson told the attendees following their appreciative applause when the work was unveiled.

Vice Provost of the Arts John Brown speaks at the reception. With him is music department chair Verena Mösenbichler-Bryant, Provost Alec D. Gallimore, and mural painter Natalie Robinson.