MUSIC
March 22 - 23, 2019
Manual Cinema - No Blue Memories: The Life of Gwendolyn Brooks
8pm
Admission: $25+
In less than a decade, the bold and talented Chicago collective Manual Cinema has become a theatrical powerhouse with mesmerizing shadow-puppet spectacles. Blending techniques from animation and film and performing with original music, Manual Cinema reimagines puppetry, inventing what The New York Times calls “a spectral parade of fantastical images.” The company deploys handmade props and puppets animated by an army of actors working in shadow. Manual Cinema’s work has been called “a brilliant mix of hi-fi and lo-fi” (The Times UK), and “something like a vintage silent film” (The Washington Post). Visually stunning and technically inspired, the company has won an Emmy Award and a growing international reputation as a sensational theatrical innovator. Manual Cinema concludes its Duke Performances residency with its latest work, No Blue Memories: The Life of Gwendolyn Brooks, its most audacious yet. No Blue Memories celebrates the political awakening and poetic legacy of Gwendolyn Brooks, the pioneering American literary titan and community organizer who, in 1950, became the first African-American to win the Pulitzer Prize. In songs written by sisters Jamila and Ayanna Woods, No Blue Memories turns some of Brooks’ most provocative verses into new jazz compositions. As a quintet plays this score, Manual Cinema’s intricate shadow puppetry re-creates Brooks’ Chicago in miniature. No Blue Memories is a show the likes of which you’ve never seen before.
Duke Performances
Reynolds Industries Theater
Bryan University Center
125 Science Drive, Durham
(919) 684-4444
www.dukeperformances.duke.edu
March 26, 2019
Black Atlantic: Fatoumata Diawara
8pm
Admission: $25+
Fatoumata Diawara is poised to become one of Africa’s most significant international stars in decades. Born to Malian parents in Côte d’Ivoire, Diawara became a well-known child actor back in Mali. At the age of nineteen, she decamped to France, pursuing a career with a street-theater company that, in turn, led her to pick up a guitar and explore the sounds of her homeland. Before long, she was collaborating with Malian diva Oumou Sangaré, jazz legend Herbie Hancock, and Blur cofounder Damon Albarn, and she had signed with World Circuit. Diawara’s 2012 debut, Fatou, was a simmering folksong beauty, updating Mali’s Wassoulou tradition with a sheen of R&B in which her conversational alto wrapped like smoke around serpentine guitars and driving polyrhythms. Her 2018 follow-up, Nterini, strides toward African pop music, with bold beats and sophisticated arrangements.
Duke Performances
Motorco Music Hall
723 Rigsbee Ave., Durham
(919) 684-4444
www.dukeperformances.duke.edu
March 27, 2019
Black Atlantic: Noura Mint Seymali
8pm
Admission: $25+
In the seaside Saharan country of Mauritania, Noura Mint Seymali was born into a Moorish griot dynasty, surrounded by the ecstatic sounds of this Arabic-influenced modal music. Her stepmother, Dimi Mint Abba, was one of Mauritania’s most powerful singers, and when Seymali started writing songs and singing backup for her at age thirteen, her father, a composer, encouraged Seymali to experiment with tradition. On two hypnotic albums, Seymali, her guitarist husband Jeich Ould Chighaly, bassist Ousmane Touré, and drummer Matthew Tinari popularize Mauritania’s traditional sounds into something rich and modern. They exchange electric guitar for tidinit (a four-stringed lute), and put drums and bass alongside the ardine, a calabash harp. Seymali’s songs, pairing modern rhythms with traditional poetry and melodies, are a roadmap forward for Mauritanian music, little known on these shores.
Duke Performances
Motorco Music Hall
723 Rigsbee Ave., Durham
(919) 684-4444
www.dukeperformances.duke.edu
March 28, 2019
Black Atlantic: Dayme Arocena
8pm
Admission: $25+
The incandescent young singer, composer, and choral director Daymé Arocena is the future of Cuban music. Raised in Havana in a small home crowded with twenty-one people and enlivened by an endless stream of music, Arocena enrolled in one of the country’s chief conservatories as a child. A prodigy, she learned the customs of Western choral music while exploring the intricacy and variety of Cuba’s own synthesis of sounds — indigenous, African, and European. On 2017’s triumphant Cubafonía, her songs combine Cuban sounds — including the sounds of Santería — with gospel’s exultancy and jazz’s flexible spine. Arocena has worked with BBC DJ and impresario Gilles Peterson, leading his acclaimed Havana Club Rumba Sessions. Drawing deeply from her country’s rich musical traditions and buoyed up by an irrepressible enthusiasm, Arocena is a mighty new missionary for modern Cuban culture, rooted in the pride of its past.
Duke Performances
Motorco Music Hall
723 Rigsbee Ave., Durham
(919) 684-4444
www.dukeperformances.duke.edu
March 29, 2019
Black Atlantic: Tal National
8pm
Admission: $25+
Tal National is the world’s most energetic rock ’n’ roll band right now. A collective of thirteen singers and instrumentalists based in Niger’s bustling capital of Niamey, its members represent the country’s separate ethnic and cultural strains — the Hausa, Tuareg, and Songhai among them. The group bridges those languages and sounds in hyperkinetic songs written and played by rotating teams of seven people, each tune delivering an electrifying mix of inspirations and ideas. With ecstatic rhythms and communal vocals, Tal National funnels more sounds into a five-minute span than many bands manage in an entire album, especially on their intoxicating 2018 record, Tantabara. These songs dare the audience to dance and sing, to exalt in a sense of pure communion. In Niamey, Tal National runs a rock club where they are known to play all-night concerts, members moving in and out as needed; expect nothing less than that sense of unbridled delight when they step onto the Motorco stage.
Duke Performances
Motorco Music Hall
723 Rigsbee Ave., Durham
(919) 684-4444
www.dukeperformances.duke.edu
April 2, 2019
Gary Clark Jr.
8pm
Admission:$44
Gary Clark Jr. began playing guitar at the age of twelve. Born and raised in Austin, TX, Clark played small gigs throughout his teens, until he met promoter Clifford Antone, proprietor of the Austin music club Antone's. Antone's was the launch pad from which Jimmie and Stevie Ray Vaughan redefined blues at the time. Soon after meeting Clifford, Clark began to play with other musical icons. Jimmie Vaughan and others in the Austin music community helped Clark along his musical path. Rolling Stone declared Clark "Best Young Gun" in its April 2011, "Best of Rock" issue.Clark sang on the bonus track cover of "I Want You Back" by the Jackson 5 on Sheryl Crow's album. More recently, Clark recorded with Alicia Keys on two different songs in New York City. He co-wrote the song Fire We Make with Alicia Keys, Pop Wansel and Oak Feider for the album Girl on Fire.
Durham Performing Arts Center
123 Vivian Street, Durham
(919) 680-2787
www.dpacnc.com
April 8, 2019
Angelique Kidjo: Ramain in Light
8pm
Admission: $35+
In 1983, just as her star was on the rise, the luminous multilingual singer Angélique Kidjo fled her home country of Benin for Paris to escape political turmoil. In the years since, she has not only brought African traditional music into a contemporary context and given it a pop music glow; Kidjo has also brought attention to women’s rights, cultural preservation, and sustainable development with her radiant and commanding voice. Her work has never been more compelling as it is on Remain in Light, her full-length repatriation of the 1980 landmark album by U.S. art-rock band the Talking Heads. In the late 1970s, Talking Heads co-founder David Byrne and the band’s producer, Brian Eno, took inspiration from Afrobeat, the energetic and fiercely political music associated with Nigeria’s Fela Kuti. That sound served as Remain in Light’srhythmic framework to which the Talking Heads added elliptical lyrics and angular guitars. Not long after leaving Benin, Kidjo fell in love with Remain in Light; now she takes these songs back home, reconnecting the album’s African elements with their source material. Kidjo adds horns that embolden the original melodies and choirs that give Byrne’s fragmented words deeper meaning. Unveiled at Carnegie Hall in 2017 and released in 2018, Kidjo’s Remain in Light is a spectacular reassertion of Africa’s rich and vast musical legacy.
Duke Performances
Carolina Theatre
309 West Morgan Street, Durham
(919) 684-4444
www.dukeperformances.duke.edu
April 13, 2019
Toshi Reagon and BIGLovely
8pm
Admission: $27+
Unimpeachably original, singer/songwriter Toshi Reagon embodies American music from folk to funk, and blues to rock, with performances that feel intimate no matter the venue. In BIGLovely, she has assembled an all-star band to back her up as she returns following her incredible US premiere of Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower in CPA’s 2017/18 season.
Memorial Hall
114 E. Cameron Ave, Chapel Hill
(919) 843-3333
www.carolinaperformingarts.org
April 23, 2019
North Carolina Jazz Repertory Orchestra with special guest Branford Marsalis
7:30pm
Admission: $37+
The North Carolina Jazz Repertory Orchestra celebrates its 25th anniversary with friend and fellow North Carolina resident Branford Marsalis in a program highlighting the music of Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn.
Memorial Hall
114 E. Cameron Ave, Chapel Hill
(919) 843-3333
www.carolinaperformingarts.org
April 23, 2019
Afro-Cuban All Stars
8pm
Admission: $35+
Without the Afro-Cuban All Stars, the world would know a lot less about the musical riches of Cuba. In 1996, popular tres player and bandleader Juan de Marcos González recruited an unparalleled assortment of his country’s best musicians for a series of sessions in Havana. They made three albums, including Buena Vista Social Club and Introducing … Rubén González, that became springboards for Cuban music’s modern renaissance. The third album was the Afro-Cuban All Stars’ astounding A Toda Cuba Le Gusta, a magnetic survey of Cuba’s past, reinvigorated by the energy of the present.
Duke Performances
Carolina Theatre
309 West Morgan Street, Durham
(919) 684-4444
www.dukeperformances.duke.edu
August 23, 2019
The Temptations and The Four Tops
7:30pm
Admission: $45+
For more than fifty years, The Temptations have prospered, propelling popular music with a series of smash hits, and sold-out performances throughout the world. “The crowds are bigger, the sales are sizzling,” says one industry report. “The outpouring of affection for this super-group has never been greater”. The history of The Temptations is the history of contemporary American pop. An essential component of the original Motown machine, that amazing engine invented by Berry Gordy, The Temps began their musical life in Detroit in the early sixties. It wasn’t until 1964 however, that the Smokey Robinson written-and-produced “The Way You Do the Things You Do” turned the guys into stars. One of Motown's most consistent hit-makers, The Four Tops are among the most stable and consistent vocal groups. In 1990, with 24 Top 40 pop hits to their credit, The Four Tops were inducted into The Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame. Though they would no longer have hits on record, the group continued to be a hit in concert, touring incessantly, a towering testament to the enduring legacy of the Motown Sound they helped shape and define.
Durham Performing Arts Center
123 Vivian Street, Durham
(919) 680-2787
www.dpacnc.com
March 22 - 23, 2019
Manual Cinema - No Blue Memories: The Life of Gwendolyn Brooks
8pm
Admission: $25+
In less than a decade, the bold and talented Chicago collective Manual Cinema has become a theatrical powerhouse with mesmerizing shadow-puppet spectacles. Blending techniques from animation and film and performing with original music, Manual Cinema reimagines puppetry, inventing what The New York Times calls “a spectral parade of fantastical images.” The company deploys handmade props and puppets animated by an army of actors working in shadow. Manual Cinema’s work has been called “a brilliant mix of hi-fi and lo-fi” (The Times UK), and “something like a vintage silent film” (The Washington Post). Visually stunning and technically inspired, the company has won an Emmy Award and a growing international reputation as a sensational theatrical innovator. Manual Cinema concludes its Duke Performances residency with its latest work, No Blue Memories: The Life of Gwendolyn Brooks, its most audacious yet. No Blue Memories celebrates the political awakening and poetic legacy of Gwendolyn Brooks, the pioneering American literary titan and community organizer who, in 1950, became the first African-American to win the Pulitzer Prize. In songs written by sisters Jamila and Ayanna Woods, No Blue Memories turns some of Brooks’ most provocative verses into new jazz compositions. As a quintet plays this score, Manual Cinema’s intricate shadow puppetry re-creates Brooks’ Chicago in miniature. No Blue Memories is a show the likes of which you’ve never seen before.
Duke Performances
Reynolds Industries Theater
Bryan University Center
125 Science Drive, Durham
(919) 684-4444
www.dukeperformances.duke.edu
March 26, 2019
Black Atlantic: Fatoumata Diawara
8pm
Admission: $25+
Fatoumata Diawara is poised to become one of Africa’s most significant international stars in decades. Born to Malian parents in Côte d’Ivoire, Diawara became a well-known child actor back in Mali. At the age of nineteen, she decamped to France, pursuing a career with a street-theater company that, in turn, led her to pick up a guitar and explore the sounds of her homeland. Before long, she was collaborating with Malian diva Oumou Sangaré, jazz legend Herbie Hancock, and Blur cofounder Damon Albarn, and she had signed with World Circuit. Diawara’s 2012 debut, Fatou, was a simmering folksong beauty, updating Mali’s Wassoulou tradition with a sheen of R&B in which her conversational alto wrapped like smoke around serpentine guitars and driving polyrhythms. Her 2018 follow-up, Nterini, strides toward African pop music, with bold beats and sophisticated arrangements.
Duke Performances
Motorco Music Hall
723 Rigsbee Ave., Durham
(919) 684-4444
www.dukeperformances.duke.edu
March 27, 2019
Black Atlantic: Noura Mint Seymali
8pm
Admission: $25+
In the seaside Saharan country of Mauritania, Noura Mint Seymali was born into a Moorish griot dynasty, surrounded by the ecstatic sounds of this Arabic-influenced modal music. Her stepmother, Dimi Mint Abba, was one of Mauritania’s most powerful singers, and when Seymali started writing songs and singing backup for her at age thirteen, her father, a composer, encouraged Seymali to experiment with tradition. On two hypnotic albums, Seymali, her guitarist husband Jeich Ould Chighaly, bassist Ousmane Touré, and drummer Matthew Tinari popularize Mauritania’s traditional sounds into something rich and modern. They exchange electric guitar for tidinit (a four-stringed lute), and put drums and bass alongside the ardine, a calabash harp. Seymali’s songs, pairing modern rhythms with traditional poetry and melodies, are a roadmap forward for Mauritanian music, little known on these shores.
Duke Performances
Motorco Music Hall
723 Rigsbee Ave., Durham
(919) 684-4444
www.dukeperformances.duke.edu
March 28, 2019
Black Atlantic: Dayme Arocena
8pm
Admission: $25+
The incandescent young singer, composer, and choral director Daymé Arocena is the future of Cuban music. Raised in Havana in a small home crowded with twenty-one people and enlivened by an endless stream of music, Arocena enrolled in one of the country’s chief conservatories as a child. A prodigy, she learned the customs of Western choral music while exploring the intricacy and variety of Cuba’s own synthesis of sounds — indigenous, African, and European. On 2017’s triumphant Cubafonía, her songs combine Cuban sounds — including the sounds of Santería — with gospel’s exultancy and jazz’s flexible spine. Arocena has worked with BBC DJ and impresario Gilles Peterson, leading his acclaimed Havana Club Rumba Sessions. Drawing deeply from her country’s rich musical traditions and buoyed up by an irrepressible enthusiasm, Arocena is a mighty new missionary for modern Cuban culture, rooted in the pride of its past.
Duke Performances
Motorco Music Hall
723 Rigsbee Ave., Durham
(919) 684-4444
www.dukeperformances.duke.edu
March 29, 2019
Black Atlantic: Tal National
8pm
Admission: $25+
Tal National is the world’s most energetic rock ’n’ roll band right now. A collective of thirteen singers and instrumentalists based in Niger’s bustling capital of Niamey, its members represent the country’s separate ethnic and cultural strains — the Hausa, Tuareg, and Songhai among them. The group bridges those languages and sounds in hyperkinetic songs written and played by rotating teams of seven people, each tune delivering an electrifying mix of inspirations and ideas. With ecstatic rhythms and communal vocals, Tal National funnels more sounds into a five-minute span than many bands manage in an entire album, especially on their intoxicating 2018 record, Tantabara. These songs dare the audience to dance and sing, to exalt in a sense of pure communion. In Niamey, Tal National runs a rock club where they are known to play all-night concerts, members moving in and out as needed; expect nothing less than that sense of unbridled delight when they step onto the Motorco stage.
Duke Performances
Motorco Music Hall
723 Rigsbee Ave., Durham
(919) 684-4444
www.dukeperformances.duke.edu
April 2, 2019
Gary Clark Jr.
8pm
Admission:$44
Gary Clark Jr. began playing guitar at the age of twelve. Born and raised in Austin, TX, Clark played small gigs throughout his teens, until he met promoter Clifford Antone, proprietor of the Austin music club Antone's. Antone's was the launch pad from which Jimmie and Stevie Ray Vaughan redefined blues at the time. Soon after meeting Clifford, Clark began to play with other musical icons. Jimmie Vaughan and others in the Austin music community helped Clark along his musical path. Rolling Stone declared Clark "Best Young Gun" in its April 2011, "Best of Rock" issue.Clark sang on the bonus track cover of "I Want You Back" by the Jackson 5 on Sheryl Crow's album. More recently, Clark recorded with Alicia Keys on two different songs in New York City. He co-wrote the song Fire We Make with Alicia Keys, Pop Wansel and Oak Feider for the album Girl on Fire.
Durham Performing Arts Center
123 Vivian Street, Durham
(919) 680-2787
www.dpacnc.com
April 8, 2019
Angelique Kidjo: Ramain in Light
8pm
Admission: $35+
In 1983, just as her star was on the rise, the luminous multilingual singer Angélique Kidjo fled her home country of Benin for Paris to escape political turmoil. In the years since, she has not only brought African traditional music into a contemporary context and given it a pop music glow; Kidjo has also brought attention to women’s rights, cultural preservation, and sustainable development with her radiant and commanding voice. Her work has never been more compelling as it is on Remain in Light, her full-length repatriation of the 1980 landmark album by U.S. art-rock band the Talking Heads. In the late 1970s, Talking Heads co-founder David Byrne and the band’s producer, Brian Eno, took inspiration from Afrobeat, the energetic and fiercely political music associated with Nigeria’s Fela Kuti. That sound served as Remain in Light’srhythmic framework to which the Talking Heads added elliptical lyrics and angular guitars. Not long after leaving Benin, Kidjo fell in love with Remain in Light; now she takes these songs back home, reconnecting the album’s African elements with their source material. Kidjo adds horns that embolden the original melodies and choirs that give Byrne’s fragmented words deeper meaning. Unveiled at Carnegie Hall in 2017 and released in 2018, Kidjo’s Remain in Light is a spectacular reassertion of Africa’s rich and vast musical legacy.
Duke Performances
Carolina Theatre
309 West Morgan Street, Durham
(919) 684-4444
www.dukeperformances.duke.edu
April 13, 2019
Toshi Reagon and BIGLovely
8pm
Admission: $27+
Unimpeachably original, singer/songwriter Toshi Reagon embodies American music from folk to funk, and blues to rock, with performances that feel intimate no matter the venue. In BIGLovely, she has assembled an all-star band to back her up as she returns following her incredible US premiere of Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower in CPA’s 2017/18 season.
Memorial Hall
114 E. Cameron Ave, Chapel Hill
(919) 843-3333
www.carolinaperformingarts.org
April 23, 2019
North Carolina Jazz Repertory Orchestra with special guest Branford Marsalis
7:30pm
Admission: $37+
The North Carolina Jazz Repertory Orchestra celebrates its 25th anniversary with friend and fellow North Carolina resident Branford Marsalis in a program highlighting the music of Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn.
Memorial Hall
114 E. Cameron Ave, Chapel Hill
(919) 843-3333
www.carolinaperformingarts.org
April 23, 2019
Afro-Cuban All Stars
8pm
Admission: $35+
Without the Afro-Cuban All Stars, the world would know a lot less about the musical riches of Cuba. In 1996, popular tres player and bandleader Juan de Marcos González recruited an unparalleled assortment of his country’s best musicians for a series of sessions in Havana. They made three albums, including Buena Vista Social Club and Introducing … Rubén González, that became springboards for Cuban music’s modern renaissance. The third album was the Afro-Cuban All Stars’ astounding A Toda Cuba Le Gusta, a magnetic survey of Cuba’s past, reinvigorated by the energy of the present.
Duke Performances
Carolina Theatre
309 West Morgan Street, Durham
(919) 684-4444
www.dukeperformances.duke.edu
August 23, 2019
The Temptations and The Four Tops
7:30pm
Admission: $45+
For more than fifty years, The Temptations have prospered, propelling popular music with a series of smash hits, and sold-out performances throughout the world. “The crowds are bigger, the sales are sizzling,” says one industry report. “The outpouring of affection for this super-group has never been greater”. The history of The Temptations is the history of contemporary American pop. An essential component of the original Motown machine, that amazing engine invented by Berry Gordy, The Temps began their musical life in Detroit in the early sixties. It wasn’t until 1964 however, that the Smokey Robinson written-and-produced “The Way You Do the Things You Do” turned the guys into stars. One of Motown's most consistent hit-makers, The Four Tops are among the most stable and consistent vocal groups. In 1990, with 24 Top 40 pop hits to their credit, The Four Tops were inducted into The Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame. Though they would no longer have hits on record, the group continued to be a hit in concert, touring incessantly, a towering testament to the enduring legacy of the Motown Sound they helped shape and define.
Durham Performing Arts Center
123 Vivian Street, Durham
(919) 680-2787
www.dpacnc.com