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Upcoming Concerts & Performances

Tufts University Department of Music

Distler Performance Hall, Perry and Marty Granoff Music Center, 20 Talbot Ave · Medford · as.tufts.edu/music

20 upcoming concerts and performances from Tufts University Department of Music, with dates, venues and ticket links taken from the organization’s own pages and refreshed weekly. All classical in Greater Boston →

Lessons From Electric Lady: Architecture and Acoustics of Recording Studios Analysis to Prediction to Realization

Thu Oct 15 · 7pm

Lessons From Electric Lady: Architecture and Acoustics of Recording Studios Analysis to Prediction to Realization

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John Storyk, the architect and acoustician who designed Jimi Hendrix's Electric Lady Studios in New York in 1969, talks about his career in studio design and where the field is headed. Storyk, who founded the firm WSDG with his wife, Beth Walters, has been responsible for more than 3,000 audio and video facilities, among them studios for Stevie Wonder, Bruce Springsteen and Alicia Keys. He teaches acoustics at Berklee.

A Journey Home with the Khmer Urban Ballet

Wed Oct 21 · 1:30pm

A Journey Home with the Khmer Urban Ballet

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The Khmer Urban Ballet's original work follows a Cambodian-American family of refugees and their descendants through intergenerational trauma and a separation forced by deportation. Across seven scenes that set traditional music beside contemporary, the dancers draw on their own experiences and memories of forced displacement, migration and healing. The performance runs 45 minutes and is followed by a question-and-answer session with the artists.

Sunday Concert Series: Around the World on 88 Keys with Thomas Stumpf

Sun Oct 25 · 3pm

Sunday Concert Series: Around the World on 88 Keys with Thomas Stumpf

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Thomas Stumpf, the music department's staff pianist and co-director of its opera ensemble, plays a solo recital marking the 20th anniversary of the Granoff Music Center. The programme ranges across composers from six continents and sets them beside pieces by Tufts composers past and present. It is part of the department's Sunday Concert Series. Admission is free.

Production art for Granoff Music Center Colloquium: The “Making Of” the Perry and Marty Granoff Music Center

New

Mon Oct 26 · 12pm

Granoff Music Center Colloquium: The “Making Of” the Perry and Marty Granoff Music Center

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A behind-the-scenes colloquium on how Tufts's Perry and Marty Granoff Music Center was designed and built. Professors Jane Bernstein, David Locke, Janet Schmalfeldt and Jeffrey Summit join Michael Rogan, former director of the Lilly Music Library, and Larry Bacow, former president of both Tufts and Harvard. A Music Library exhibit on the building's design and construction, in the library and online, accompanies it.

Tufts Composers: New at Noon #1

Fri Oct 30 · 12pm

Tufts Composers: New at Noon #1

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Hammers and Reeds, the duo of saxophonist Philipp Stäudlin, who teaches classical saxophone at Tufts, and pianist Yoko Hagino, plays new works by Tufts composers in the first of this season's New at Noon concerts, the department's midday series of music by its composers. Admission is free, with no tickets required.

Tufts University Wind Ensemble

Fri Oct 30 · 7:30pm

Tufts University Wind Ensemble

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The Tufts University Wind Ensemble, the university's student band of wind, brass and percussion players, gives a concert under its director Ray Daniels celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Perry and Marty Granoff Music Center, which opened in 2006 as the home of the music department. Admission is free, with no tickets required.

One Down Left Once, Two Up Right Twice: John McDonald’s Music Shows Up and Goes

Sun Nov 8 · 3pm

One Down Left Once, Two Up Right Twice: John McDonald’s Music Shows Up and Goes

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A concert marking the retirement of composer and pianist John McDonald, now professor emeritus, after 36 years at Tufts, 20 of them in the Granoff Music Center. Colleagues, friends and former students join him in compositions, improvisations and what the department calls “comprovisations” and “imprositions,” for, by and with McDonald. Admission is free, with no tickets required.

Tufts Composers: New at Noon #2

Fri Nov 13 · 12pm

Tufts Composers: New at Noon #2

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The second New at Noon programme, subtitled “Organ-ized Chaos,” presents new works by Tufts composers played by two composer-performers, John McDonald, professor emeritus of composition, at the piano and Will Cooper at the organ. It is held in Goddard Chapel rather than the Granoff Music Center. Admission is free, with no tickets required.

Tufts/NEC Dual Degree Concert

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Sat Nov 14 · 8pm

Tufts/NEC Dual Degree Concert

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Students in the five-year Tufts/NEC dual-degree program, who study at Tufts and at New England Conservatory at the same time, give an evening that mixes classical repertoire, jazz and their own compositions. The concert is free and needs no ticket.

Sunday Concert Series: Tufts Choruses

Sun Nov 15 · 3pm

Sunday Concert Series: Tufts Choruses

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The Tufts Concert Choir and Chamber Singers perform together under Jamie Kirsch, who directs both choirs, in the music department's Sunday Concert Series. The afternoon comes in the Granoff Music Center's 20th-anniversary season, which the department is marking this fall with anniversary concerts by its wind ensemble, jazz orchestra, opera ensemble and flute ensemble. Admission is free, with no tickets required.

Tufts Chamber Music

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Wed Nov 18 · 8pm

Tufts Chamber Music

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Student chamber ensembles from the Tufts Department of Music play works for strings, winds, brass and piano. Admission is free and no tickets are required.

Sunday Concert Series: Tufts Chamber Orchestra

Sun Nov 22 · 3pm

Sunday Concert Series: Tufts Chamber Orchestra

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The Tufts Chamber Orchestra gives its fall concert under John Page, who also conducts the Tufts Symphony Orchestra, in the music department's Sunday Concert Series. The afternoon falls in the Granoff Music Center's 20th-anniversary season, which the department is marking this fall with a run of anniversary concerts and colloquia. Admission is free, with no tickets required.

Production art for Granoff Music Center Colloquium: Terri Lyne Carrington

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Mon Nov 23 · 12pm

Granoff Music Center Colloquium: Terri Lyne Carrington

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Terri Lyne Carrington, the jazz drummer, composer and producer, gives the Tufts Music Department's second colloquium of the semester. An NEA Jazz Master and multiple Grammy winner, Carrington founded and directs the Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice; her 2022 album New Standards Vol. 1 recorded tunes by women composers, drawn from her lead-sheet collection New Standards: 101 Lead Sheets by Women Composers. Admission is free, with no tickets.

Early Music Ensemble: 'Nova angeletta' An Unxpected Angel

Tue Dec 1 · 8pm

Early Music Ensemble: 'Nova angeletta' An Unxpected Angel

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The Tufts Early Music Ensemble, directed by Jane Hershey, plays music by Jacques Arcadelt, Philippe Verdelot, Orlande de Lassus and Luca Marenzio, all sixteenth-century madrigal composers, for Renaissance consort. The title comes from Petrarch's madrigal Nova angeletta, and the department describes the programme as “musical reflections on fate, fortune, morality, and the power of nature and love.”

Opera Ensemble

Thu Dec 3 · 8pm

Opera Ensemble

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Wolfi to Weill pairs opera, operetta and musical-theatre scenes by Mozart and Kurt Weill, sung by current Tufts students and invited alumni. Twenty years ago the Tufts Opera Ensemble staged a Kurt Weill revue, and this programme returns to Weill to mark the 20th anniversary of the Granoff Music Center. Carol Mastrodomenico and Thomas Stumpf direct the ensemble.

Tufts Composers: New at Noon #3

Fri Dec 4 · 12pm

Tufts Composers: New at Noon #3

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“Opening New Doors,” the third of this fall's New at Noon lunchtime concerts, brings the Hinge Ensemble, a Boston new-music group, to Tufts to workshop new works by Tufts composers. The series opened with saxophonist Philipp Stäudlin and pianist Yoko Hagino in “Hammers and Reeds,” and continued with John McDonald on piano and Will Cooper on organ in Goddard Chapel. Admission is free.

Family and Children's Concert: Wind Ensemble

Sat Dec 12 · 1pm

Family and Children's Concert: Wind Ensemble

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The Tufts University Wind Ensemble, directed by Ray Daniels, gives a concert programmed for children and families, one of two family concerts on the music department's fall calendar alongside the Not-So-Small Jazz Ensemble's in November. The same band plays the Granoff Music Center's 20th-anniversary concert in October. Admission is free, with no tickets required.

Tufts Symphony Orchestra

Sat Dec 12 · 7pm

Tufts Symphony Orchestra

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The Tufts Symphony Orchestra gives its fall concert under John Page, who also conducts the Tufts Chamber Orchestra, whose own fall concert comes three weeks earlier in the Sunday Concert Series. The evening falls in the Granoff Music Center's 20th-anniversary season, which the music department is marking with a run of anniversary concerts. Admission is free, with no tickets required.

Sunday Concert Series: Tufts Flute Ensemble

Sun Dec 13 · 3pm

Sunday Concert Series: Tufts Flute Ensemble

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The Tufts Flute Ensemble, directed by Nina Barwell, marks the Granoff Music Center's 20th anniversary with a programme of music from the 17th to the 21st century, scored across the flute family: bass flute, alto flute, C flute and piccolo. It closes the fall run of the music department's Sunday Concert Series, and admission is free, with no tickets required.

Production art for Granoff Music Center Colloquium: Katherine Bergeron

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Mon Dec 14 · 12pm

Granoff Music Center Colloquium: Katherine Bergeron

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Katherine Bergeron, a musicologist and president emerita of Connecticut College, gives the Tufts music department’s final colloquium of the fall semester. Bergeron led Connecticut College from 2014 to 2024 after serving as dean of the college at Brown, and is the author of Decadent Enchantments: The Revival of Gregorian Chant at Solesmes and Voice Lessons: French Mélodie in the Belle Epoque.