Announcing the 2019-20 PMC Lecture Series

The Price Music Center (PMC) Lecture Series – open to students and the public – brings music scholars and musicians from different cultures to campus to share their music in performance, and speak on how this music came into being and how it fits and functions within a given society.

The PMC Series has presented lectures on music’s hope-giving power following Haiti’s earthquake, its multiple roles during the Arab Spring, African-Americans’ struggles for civil rights, in addition to storytelling in Korea, throat-singing from Mongolia, and wedding songs of rural Morocco. Since its inception in 2006, this free lecture series has contributed to NC State’s globalization initiatives and significantly enriched and broadened the horizons of our students and community.

The 2019-2020 PMC Series will examine musicians and their instruments from around the world.

2019-2020 PMC Lecture Series

THE INSTRUMENTAL TRADITIONS OF NORTH INDIA: AN ANCIENT WORLD TRANSFORMS ITSELF INTO A MODERN CONCERT EXPERIENCE

Thursday, September 5 – CANCELLED

George Ruckert, senior lecturer emeritus at MIT

With an extensive background in both Western and North Indian classical music, Dr. Ruckert studied the Hindustani sarod (lute) and vocal music with sarod master Ali Akbar Khan for over 30 years and served as teacher and director of the Ali Akbar College of Music in California during that time. He has published five books on the music of India, including Music in North India (Oxford University Press, 2004), and has released two solo CDs of North Indian classical ragas. As a solo artist on the sarod, he has performed, recorded, and taught in India, Europe, and the United States.

RELATIONSHIPS AMONG MUSICIANS, THEIR INSTRUMENTS AND COMMUNITIES: INSIGHTS FROM THE BUSOGA TRUMPETS MUSIC REVITALIZATION PROJECT IN UGANDA

Thursday, October 24

James Isabirye, lecturer of music and drama, Kyambogo University, Kampala, Uganda

Dr. Isabirye’s research interests include indigenous models of music education, and the revival of indigenous musical practices. He recently earned a Ph.D. in Music Education from Oakland University, Michigan, and has given academic presentations in Europe (Hungary, Denmark, the U.K.), East Africa, the U.S., and China. He is Secretary of the National Council of Folklorists of Uganda, a local NGO that coordinates village music and dance troupes and individual folklorists across the country. He has worked with communities in the Busoga Kingdom of Uganda to revive Bigwala (gourd trumpet ensemble) music and dance, as well as the Entenga royal drums of the Buganda Kingdom.

NEW INSTRUMENTS FOR THE CHINESE ‘FOLK’ ORCHESTRA

Thursday, November 21

Stewart Carter, professor of music, Wake Forest University

Dr. Carter will discuss new instruments for the Chinese folk orchestra. He is past president of the Society for Seventeenth-Century Music and the American Musical Instrument Society. He is the author of The Trombone in the Renaissance: A History in Pictures and Documents (Pendragon), editor of the Historic Brass Society Journal, and also, with Jeffery Kite-Powell, of A Performer’s Guide to Seventeenth-Century Music (Indiana University Press). Carter’s research interests include instruments of China, both ancient and modern. At Wake Forest, he teaches music history and theory, and directs the Collegium Musicum Vocal Ensemble.

THA CEÒL ANNS NA MAIDEAN – BRINGING THE STICKS TO LIFE

Thursday, January 23

Tiber F.M. Falzett, inaugural holder of the Scottish Heritage USA visiting lectureship in Scottish Gaelic Studies at UNC-Chapel Hill.

A Scottish Gaelic speaker as well as a singer and bagpiper, Dr. Falzett has presented and performed from hearthsides and village halls to national broadcast media in both Scotland and Canada. As an active folklorist and musician, he especially values opportunities to share the Scottish Gaelic language and its music with others, along with the power that both language and music hold in breaking down barriers and bringing people together.