{"id":117634,"date":"2023-04-17T23:32:09","date_gmt":"2023-04-18T03:32:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/?p=117634"},"modified":"2023-04-17T23:50:02","modified_gmt":"2023-04-18T03:50:02","slug":"pioneering-musician-joshua-rifkin-accepts-lafayette-college-residency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/?p=117634","title":{"rendered":"Pioneering musician Joshua Rifkin accepts Lafayette College residency"},"content":{"rendered":"

His yearlong residency, including coursework, lectures, performances, and collaborations, will help celebrate 40th anniversary of Williams Center for the Arts\u00a0<\/b><\/i>
\n<\/b><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n
Joshua Rifkin, whose musical explorations revived interest in ragtime composer Scott Joplin and reimagined the accepted performance practice of J.S. Bach\u2019s choral works, will be in residence at Lafayette College for the 2023-24 academic year to help mark the 40th anniversary of Williams Center for the Arts.<\/p>\n

A Juilliard- \u00a0and Princeton-trained musicologist, conductor, performer, scholar, and professor of musicology and ethnomusicology at Boston University, Rifkin has been named the Wendy and Alan Pesky \u201956 Visiting Artist-in-Residence.<\/p>\n

\u201cGiven that it\u2019s the 40th anniversary of the Williams Center and that Hollis Ashby and Ellis Finger (current and former artistic and executive directors of the Williams Center) have done such eclectic programming there, I thought, \u2018What one individual could we bring to celebrate this important part of Lafayette\u2019s culture?\u2019\u201d says Anthony Cummings, Eugene H. Clapp II \u201936 and Maud Millicent Clapp Professor of Music.<\/p>\n

\u201cWho could symbolize all of that? I can\u2019t think of anyone better than Joshua Rifkin,\u201d adds Cummings, who enjoys a longstanding professional and personal relationship with Rifkin. \u201cHe\u2019s incredibly versatile\u2014some may remember the albums he arranged for Judy Collins. He has so many different arrows in his quiver.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rifkin is eager to begin his residency at Lafayette.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Lafayette community, with its lively students and distinguished faculty, offers a singular chance to explore new ideas and transcend boundaries,\u201d he says. \u201cI expect us all to surprise and stimulate one another\u2014and have immense fun doing so.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beginning in September and extending into the spring 2024 semester, those explorations will include coursework on Franco-Flemish composer Josquin Desprez, considered one of the most influential masters of the high Renaissance style of polyphonic vocal music; Heinrich Sch\u00fctz, who brought Italian polyphony into Germany and laid the foundation for the Baroque era in central Europe; and J.S. Bach, whose music was greatly influenced by Sch\u00fctz.<\/p>\n

Rifkin\u2019s list of scholarly publications has particular emphasis on Josquin, Sch\u00fctz, and J.S. Bach.<\/p>\n

In one of the boldest and most memorable shake-ups in modern classical music history, Rifkin in the 1980s posited that Bach\u2019s choral music, particularly his monumental Mass in B Minor, was meant to be performed by one singer per part because of its vocal complexity and orchestration.<\/p>\n

His interpretation offered crystalline textures and clarity. Up until that point, Bach\u2019s choral works in the 19th and 20th centuries were traditionally performed with large-scale choruses, following the Romantic tradition established by Beethoven in his Ninth Symphony.<\/p>\n

Flipping through Bach\u2019s Mass in B Minor score, his favorite composition, Cummings, an early music specialist, says he\u2019s still awed by Rifkin\u2019s sparse recordings of Bach\u2019s music.<\/p>\n

\u201cI always say it\u2019s like looking through a trellis to see this transparent kind of texture,\u201d he says. \u201cIt hasn\u2019t persuaded everyone. But I\u2019ve noticed that, as each year goes by, more and more people are convinced by this kind of interesting interpretation.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Bach Ensemble, which Rifkin founded in 1978, won Britain\u2019s Gramophone Award for its groundbreaking recording of the Mass in B Minor, and also recorded many of Bach\u2019s cantatas following the one-voice-per-part thesis.<\/p>\n

Rifkin\u2019s residency also will include public performances and lectures, interactions with Lehigh Valley performing arts organizations, and workshops with student vocalists and ensembles.<\/p>\n

His coursework will extend beyond the Department of Music, including discussions around Joplin. Discussions are underway with the Department of Languages and Literary Studies to join with Rifkin to examine the use of German poetry by German composers of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries.<\/p>\n

A planned performance of Schubert\u2019s \u201cDie sch\u00f6ne M\u00fcllerin\u201d by Rifkin and American tenor Frank Kelley might occasion a literary discussion around Wilhelm M\u00fcller, the Prussian author who created the poetic cycle.<\/p>\n

Rifkin will spend considerable time exploring the music of Joplin, the Texas-born African American composer whose music Rifkin has demonstrated as being comparable in importance to masterpieces in the European classical tradition. He introduced Joplin to receptive American and global audiences with his 1970 release of three volumes of \u201cPiano Rags by Scott Joplin\u201d on Nonesuch Records. The collection is part of the Grammy Hall of Fame.<\/p>\n

When Rifkin is on campus, he will be associated with the Max Kade Centre, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, and the Max Kade Haus, which is celebrating its fifth anniversary this year, adding another celebratory dimension to his residency.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Information provided to TVL by:
\nBryan Hay D\u201976
\nContent Manager
\nCommunications Division
\nLafayette College<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

His yearlong residency, including coursework, lectures, performances, and collaborations, will help celebrate 40th anniversary of Williams Center for the Arts\u00a0 Joshua Rifkin, whose musical explorations revived interest in ragtime composer … Continue reading Pioneering musician Joshua Rifkin accepts Lafayette College residency<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":117635,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5718,69,482],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-117634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-easton","category-in-the-valley","category-press-release-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/Joshua-Rifkin.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117634"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=117634"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117634\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/117635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=117634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=117634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=117634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}