Saturday, May 3, 2025 – 2pm
Portland Location TBD
Recital Followed by a Talk
Online Video Premiere – Saturday, May 17, 2025 – 2pm on the WEKA YouTube Channel
Joyce Lindorff of Temple University, visits to share about her work at George Washington’s Mount Vernon with the harpsichord music books of Martha’s granddaughter, Nelly Custis, and the new reproduction of Nelly’s harpsichord. Joyce will offer a recital including international pieces that were enjoyed at Mount Vernon, as well as Bach’s “French Overture.” Following the recital, you’ll hear a talk illuminating her fascinating research. Read an interview about her work.
A NOTE ABOUT THE PROGRAM – My 2019 Research Fellowship at George Washington’s Mount Vernon afforded me the opportunity to arrive on the very day the much-anticipated reproduction of Washington’s Longman & Broderip harpsichord was delivered by its maker, John Watson. It enabled exploration of that instrument’s rich possibilities, in tandem with the archives at the Fred W. Smith Library for the Study of George Washington. In particular, among the beautifully preserved personal music books owned by the Washington family are four volumes containing music that would have been played on the original harpsichord, a gift from Washington to his granddaughter Nelly Custis in 1793.
Despite Washington’s advocacy of American manufacturing, much of Nelly’s sheet music, like her harpsichord, was imported from abroad. The list of composers represented is international, including Clementi, Corri, Edelman, Felton, Giordani, Just, Kozeluch, Martini, Nicolai, Pleyel, Pugnani, Rush, Smith, Sterkel, and Vanhal. Also represented is Alexander Reinagle, who after immigrating from England became prominent as a composer, performer and concert organizer in Philadelphia and New York, where he was Nelly’s first keyboard teacher from 1789–92. The chronology of the Washington family’s keyboards is a bit surprising: first spinet, followed by pianoforte, with the elaborate harpsichord acquired in 1793 remaining dominant quite a bit later than is generally assumed.
Johann Sebastian Bach’s Ouvertüre nach französischer Art epitomizes his masterful assimilation of the French style. Summoning images of a theatrical and orchestral entertainment, the spirit of each French baroque dance movement is captured exquisitely. The final jubilant Echo movement is notable for being one of Bach’s few solo keyboard works to indicate dynamics, the others being the Italian Concerto (to imitate the orchestral tutti and soli) and the G# minor Prelude of the Well-Tempered Clavier, Book II (one piano marking to suggest a terrace effect). – Joyce Lindorff
Admission
Free to WEKA members
Free to 18 and under, and college students with ID
Children must be accompanied by an adult
General Admission $25 payable at the door
ABOUT THE PERFORMER – Joyce Lindorff has earned rave reviews for her performances throughout the US, Europe, Russia, Japan and China, receiving solo recitalist awards from the Pro Musicis Foundation (France) and the National Endowment for the Arts (US). Based in New York for many years, she served as Teaching-Artist with the Lincoln Center Institute for the Arts in Education and performed as keyboardist with the New York Philharmonic, Orchestra of St. Luke’s and New York Chamber Symphony. Her chamber performances include Hesperus, Tempesta di Mare, Newberry Consort, Charbonnier Viol Ensemble, and Waverly Consort. The New York Times wrote of a solo recital, “brilliant music, brilliantly played . . . one of the most appealing recitals of the season,” and Continuo Magazine called her playing “absolutely breathtaking.”
Joyce’s recent seasons have included performances at the International Beijing Piano Festival; Geelvinck Fortepiano Festival, Amsterdam; Kraków Academy of Music, Poland; RTHK Radio 4, Hong Kong; Hong Kong Arts Festival and University of the Philippines. She can be heard on the Titanic, Centaur, CRI, Serenus, Digitech, BCM&D, Affetto and Paladino labels, including the first complete recordings of Poglietti’s Rossignolo, Harpsichord Miscellany Book Two, and the twelve sonatas of Teodorico Pedrini with baroque violinist Nancy Wilson. She also serves as Artistic Director of Music at Fishs Eddy, an early music festival in the Catskills.
Joyce earned a doctorate at Juilliard as a pupil of Albert Fuller, master’s degree at the University of Southern California, and BA at Sarah Lawrence College. She began her teaching career at Cornell University and is currently Professor of Keyboard Studies at the Boyer College of Music at Temple University, where she just completed her 27th year on the faculty. For several years she was based in Hong Kong and China, where she taught full-time at the Shanghai Conservatory and later Hong Kong Baptist University, and as an adjunct at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, Hong Kong University, and Chinese University of Hong Kong. She held Fulbright professorships at the Xi’an Conservatory of Music and National Sun Yat-sen University in Taiwan and was named an Honorary Professor at the Shanghai Conservatory and China Conservatory, where she is now on the doctoral faculty. Her Chinese language Anthology of Baroque Keyboard Performance Practice with co-author Zhu Di of the China Conservatory, originally published in 2021 in Beijing, is now in its second printing. Living in China inspired her research on European musicians in the late Ming and early Qing court. She has written and presented widely on the subject, with articles published in Early Music, Rivista italiana di musicologia, Revue de musicologie and others.Her research has received generous support from the Vincentian Studies Institute of the United States.
Joyce Lindorff has long been a champion of new music for harpsichord. Composers who have written works for her are Charles Abramovic, Richard Brodhead, Ronald Caltabiano, Michael Carnes, Daniel Cate, Chen Yi, Sabrina Clarke, Fred Cohen, Donald Crockett, Paul Epstein, Eric Ewazen, Cynthia Folio, Matthew Greenbaum, Kristin Hevner, Chuck Holdeman, Christopher Keyes, Allen Krantz, Jan Krzywicki, Heidi Jacob, Harold Meltzer, Albert Olson, Alba Potes, Mark Rimple, Benjamin Safran, André Singer, Elizabeth Tsang, Michael White, and Maurice Wright.
Most recently Joyce has been performing and researching music at George Washington’s Mount Vernon, utilizing the reproduction harpsichord and archives that are the heritage of Washington’s granddaughter and harpsichordist Nelly Custis. Her focus on English harpsichords in early American life took her to Edinburgh, London and Oxford to study original leather plectra and led to two Research Fellowships at Mount Vernon. She has also been an Invited Scholar at Colonial Williamsburg, where her Harpsichord Miscellany CD was produced by historical keyboard builder, conservator and curator John Watson.
During her current sabbatical Joyce is based in the UK as a Visiting Scholar in the Faculty of Music and Visiting Fellow at Clare Hall College, University of Cambridge.