FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 9, 2018
Robert D. Levin
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- The Indiana University Jacobs School of Music Historical Performance Institute is pleased to announce that online registration is now open for its third annual international conference. “Historical Performance: Theory, Practice and Interdisciplinarity” will take place from May 18 through May 20 at the Jacobs School. Since its inception, the conference has attracted an international field of attendants from a dozen countries.
The gathering will offer 33 presentations on a variety of subjects in the field of historically informed performance, from the Middle Ages to the early twentieth century. This year, “historical improvisation” will figure prominently among the key themes.
Keynote speaker and performer Robert D. Levin, visiting professor at The Juilliard School and professor emeritus at Harvard University, is a world-renowned pianist and scholar widely recognized for his consummate skills as an improvisateur, particularly in the style of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. He will focus on the keyboard sonatas of C.P.E. Bach in a lecture-concert at 8 p.m. on Friday, May 18, in Auer Hall.
Additional plenary speakers include Adam Knight Gilbert (University of Southern California), Angela Mariani (Texas Tech University), William Porter (Eastman School of Music), Peter Schubert (McGill University) and Nick Wilson (King’s College London). Plenary speakers will deal variously with the practices of improvisation during the Middle Ages as well as the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. View the conference program.
Levin’s keynote performance will open the 2018 Bloomington Early Music Festival, a milestone collaboration between the Jacobs Historical Performance Institute, the Bloomington Early Music Festival and the national organization for historical performance, Early Music America.
“This year’s collaboration marks the beginning of a new era for BLEMF and the HPI,” said Dana Marsh, director of the Historical Performance Institute and chair of Jacobs’ early music department. “Early Music America’s presence in Bloomington will focus national attention on our 25th-anniversary festivities. There will be live broadcasts and live-streamed events. Audiences will be advised to arrive early.”
Running from May 18 to May 27, the festival will offer more than 25 concerts and events, including Early Music America’s Young Performers Festival and Emerging Artists Showcase. Featured collegiate ensembles will represent the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music, Peabody Conservatory of Music, Case Western Reserve University, University of Southern California and Jacobs School of Music Historical Performance Institute.
MEDIA CONTACT
Linda Cajigas
Assistant Director of Communications
IU Jacobs School of Music
812-856-3882 | lcajigas@indiana.edu