The Jacobs School of Music-affiliated Artists of the Month, announced in WFIU’s Directions in Sound program guide are now featured in Fanfare with a convenient link so you may listen online. This month, Professor Emeritus Thomas Dunn is celebrated.
WFIU wishes Jacobs School of Music Professor Emeritus Thomas Dunn a very happy 80th birthday on December 21 and is pleased to feature several recordings by him and the IU Chamber Orchestra this month.
 Thomas Dunn studied music at the Peabody Conservatory and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, and later at Harvard University and the Amsterdam Conservatory. His teachers included such luminary musicians as E. Power Biggs (organ), Robert Shaw (choral conducting), Gustav Leonhardt (harpsichord), and Anthon van der Horst (orchestral conducting). In 1957, Dunn became music director at the Church of the Incarnation in New York. In 1959, he was appointed music director of the Cantata Singers. He founded the Festival Orchestra of New York and became known to a wider public through a series of Bach concerts in Carnegie Hall, championing a return to small forces for larger baroque works (Handel's Messiah, Bach's Mass in B-Minor, etc.) and historical performance practices. He was an influential pioneer during the early music revival in the mid-20th century. One collaboration in particular led to the rare opportunity to perform the American premiere of a Haydn's Cello Concerto in C, which was lost to the world until its re-discovery in Prague in 1961. It was performed by cello virtuoso Janos Starker (now one of IU's distinguished professors of music) with the New York Festival Orchestra founded and directed by Thomas Dunn.
From 1967 to 1986, Dunn was music director of the Handel and Haydn Society in Boston. The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians calls his performances "clean, transparent, rhythmic . . . " We think you'll agree.
Professor Dunn taught at the IU School of Music from 1990. He officially retired from IU in May 1999, but continues to serve as choral mentor for the doctoral choral conducting students.
This month, we'll hear Dunn and the IU Chamber Orchestra perform the music of J.C. Bach, Handel, and Martin.
- Tuesday, December 6, 10 am: J.C. Bach's Six Symphonies, Op. 6: No. 6 in g
- Monday, December 12, during the 7:06 pm Evening Classical Music: Handel's Concerto Grosso in a, op. 6, No. 4, HWV 322
- Tuesday, December 13, 10 am: Handel's Concerto Grosso in a, op. 6, No. 4, HWV 322
- Monday, December 26, 7:06 pm: J.C. Bach's Six Symphonies, Op. 6: No. 6 in g
- Tuesday, December 27, 10 am: Martin's Petite Sinfonie Concertante featuring Kirsten Agresta, harp, Donald Livingston, harpsichord, and Jeremy Denk, piano.
All performances can be heard through wfiu.indiana.edu.
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