Department of Performing Arts

The Music Program’s Friday Music Series features acclaimed artists in FREE concerts on select Fridays at 1:15 p.m. in McNeir Hall (*unless otherwise noted), on Georgetown’s main campus.

Spring 2012 Events

Friday, January 27 at 1:15 p.m.

Washington National Opera Domingo-Cafritz Young Artist Program

Singers from the distinguished Washington National Opera’s Domingo-Cafritz Young Artist Program perform a program of arias and duets from popular operas. The program, founded in 2002 by Plácido Domingo, is designed for young singers, coach/accompanists, conductors, and stage directors on the verge of international careers, and its participants have been seen onstage at the Metropolitan Opera, New York City Opera, Santa Fe Opera, Washington National Opera, the National Symphony Orchestra, Weill Recital Hall, and the Los Angeles Opera.
McNEIR HALL (NEW NORTH BUILDING)
 

Friday, February 3 at 1:15 p.m.

Georgetown University Chamber Singers with Modern Musick
Jesuit Heritage Week: Music from the Bolivian Baroque

Music has been an element of the Jesuit identity since the founding of the Society of Jesus. Jesuit missionaries brought their contemporary music with them into the Bolivian missions of the 17th and 18th centuries. This repertory was believed lost for centuries, until it was rediscovered and restored by the musicologist Fr. Piotr Nawrot (Society of the Divine Word). Experience Jesuit and Bolivian musical traditions as the Friday Music Series presents an afternoon of the Bolivian Baroque, featuring selections from this sacred repertoire performed by the Georgetown University Chamber Singers and DC-based period instrument ensemble Modern Musick.
*DAHLGREN CHAPEL
 

Friday, February 10 at 1:15 p.m.

Netanel Draiblate, violin
Lura Johnson, piano

Concertmaster of the Annapolis Symphony Orchestra, violinist Netanel Draiblate has performed as soloist with many distinguished orchestras including a Carnegie Hall solo debut with the American Symphony Orchestra in 2008. He has collaborated with artists including Yo Yo Ma, Itzhak Perlman, Jaime Laredo, Lin Cho Liang, and Pinchas Zukerman. The Baltimore Sun said “it was certainly easy to appreciate Draiblate's talent for passionate musical communication. There was an intensity in his phrasing from the start, a sense of digging into the most soulful elements…” This program includes works by Paganini, Ysaye, Grieg, and Brahms.
McNEIR HALL (NEW NORTH BUILDING)

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Friday, February 17 at 1:15 p.m.

Duo Appassionata
Gwendolyn Toth & Dongsok Shin, fortepiano

Husband and wife Dongsok Shin and Gwendolyn Toth, specialists in a variety of early keyboard instruments, collaborate on a program of four-hand music for Viennese fortepiano. Dongsok Shin has toured worldwide as the keyboard player of the baroque ensemble REBEL, including a Carnegie Hall performance with Renée Fleming. Gwendolyn Toth is director of the baroque ensemble ARTEK (The Art of the Early Keyboard), which has also toured worldwide, and she has performed and recorded organ music of Scheidemann and others on historic organs all over Europe. This program will include music of Mozart and Clementi.
*DAHLGREN CHAPEL

Friday, February 24 at 1:15 p.m.

Aaron Broadus Group

Led by trumpeter and Georgetown music professor Aaron Broadus, who recorded his new single “Keepin' It Real” with Grammy Award-winning saxophonist Kirk Whalum, this jazz/R&B group has performed at DC area venues including Blues Alley and the Capital Jazz Festival.
McNEIR HALL (NEW NORTH BUILDING)
 

 
Friday, March 16 at 1:15 p.m.

Sahel

Performing a wide variety of Afro-diaspora music including Zouk, Reggae, Senegalese Mbalax, and Samba/Bossa, Sahel has been heard around D.C. at venues including the Smithsonian's National Museum of African Art, the Black Cat, the Rock & Roll Hotel, and Bossa. Inspired by tradition and dedicated to the progress of music that moves the world, Sahel is named for a stretch of land between African desert and rainforest, an ancient symbol of trade and travel where people from various continents have throughout time exchanged goods, ideas, and cultures.
McNEIR HALL (NEW NORTH BUILDING)
 

Friday, March 23 at 1:15 p.m.

Thomas Pandolfi, piano

With dazzling virtuosity, Juilliard graduate Thomas Pandolfi performs an all Liszt program, including some of the master's most brilliant and beloved works: “Apres Une Lecture du Dante, Consolation No. 3,” Grande Etude No. 2 in E-Flat d'apres Paganini, Liebesträum No. 3, “Funérailles,” Two German Lieder Song Transcriptions (Schubert's "The Miller and The Brook" / Schumann's "Widmung") and Hungarian Rhapsody No. 12. The Washington Post has described Pandolfi as “an artist who is the master of both the grand gesture and the sensual line.”
McNEIR HALL (NEW NORTH BUILDING)
 

Friday, March 30 at 1:15 p.m.

Vasily Popov, cello
Ralitza Patcheva, piano

Husband-wife duo pianist Ralitza Patcheva and cellist Vasily Popov perform a program of music by Franz Schubert including the poetic Arpeggione Sonata in A minor, D.821 and Six Musical Moments (Six Moments Musicaux), D. 780. This concert complements the “Schubert Uncorked” performance by PostClassical Ensemble happening at Georgetown University on March 31, which will feature the world premiere of a trombone / chamber orchestra version of Schubert’s Arpeggione Sonata.
McNEIR HALL (NEW NORTH BUILDING)

Friday, April 13 at 1:15 p.m. 

Suely Mesquita
Co-presented by Georgetown University Music Program and Center for Latin American Studies

Based in Rio de Janeiro, acclaimed singer/songwriter Suely Mesquita has produced more than 500 songs, writing and recording for such internationally known artists as Pedro Luís, Zeca Baleiro, Chico Cesar, and Zélia Duncan. Known for her “disarming, warm voice" (Música Brasileira) and poetically off-beat lyrics, Mesquita performs a program including songs from her latest album "Microswing."
McNEIR HALL (NEW NORTH BUILDING)

Friday, April 27 at 1:15 p.m.

Jacqueline Horner-Kwiatek, mezzo-soprano
Leading Ladies

Praised for her “pure, lilting voice” (New York Times) that is “a wonder of unadorned beauty” (Boston Globe), Jacqueline Horner-Kwiatek is a member of the world renowned vocal quartet Anonymous 4, as well as being a versatile and accomplished soloist, specializing in early and new music. She will be singing LEADING LADIES, an entertaining recital program with piano that pairs an eclectic mix of women writers with male composers. The
women featured range from Emily Dickinson and Dorothy Parker to the advice columnist Miss Manners and a Russian male order bride, all set to music by American composers ranging from established greats such as Aaron Copland to up and coming composers including Gregory Spears, Daniel Thomas Davis, and David Arbury. The songs are interspersed with readings from the featured ladies.
*DAVIS PERFORMING ARTS CENTER, GONDA THEATRE

*Please note that this event will be held in the Davis Performing Arts Center, instead of  McNeir Hall as originally scheduled.