David Porter—scholar, pianist, president emeritus, to share wisdom
David Porter, president emeritus of Skidmore, will present "The Well-Tampered Clavier: Play, Musical and Otherwise," at 7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 1, in Arthur Zankel Music Center, Ladd Hall. Admission is free and open to the public.
Porter will perform excerpts from First and Second Piano Sonatas by Charles Ives; The Tides of Manaunau,The Aeolian Harp, and The Banshee (1912) by Henry Cowell; and selections from Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano (1946-48) by John Cage.
Porter retired in 2013 after 51 years of teaching classics, English, and music at Carleton, Princeton, Williams, Indiana, and Skidmore, often in named chairs. He has been doing strange things with and to pianos for decades, and while he was president of Skidmore (1987-99) he presented variations of this program on each new first-year class. He has given piano recitals throughout the U.S. and in the U.K. and is the author of books on Horace, Greek tragedy, pianist Edward Steuermann, Virginia Woolf, Willa Cather, and, with Helen Porter, on Lucy Scribner, Skidmore’s founder (2011). His edition of Lucy Gayheart for the Cather Scholarly Edition was published this past August.
