Events at Reed

The Western Early Keyboard Association (WEKA) sponsors an afternoon of lush 18th-century French harpsichord sound! Owen Daly will showcase the music of Jean-Philippe Rameau and François Couperin le Grand played on an instrument that is ideally suited to the sensuous character of their music. Owen will discuss and demonstrate the instrument based on Goujon c. 1749. Then the program will include:

• Rameau’s Suite in A Minor from his Nouvelles Suites de Pièces de Clavecin of 1726/1727
• Couperin’s Ordre 25ème de Clavecin in E-flat major/C minor

Owen Daly has been building harpsichords and clavichords in Salem, Oregon, since the late 1970s. His first encounters with early keyboard instruments took place when he sought refuge from life as a graduate student in another discipline by taking harpsichord lessons from Lynn Hanson and John Hamilton at the University of Oregon. He has remained a serious student of the harpsichord ever since, but because so much of his work as a builder has focused on the 17^th century, there were few opportunities to explore the lush and colorful repertoire of 18th-century France.Recently, he was able to repurchase his only 18^th-century-style French instrument, harpsichord #3, built in 1984, after the c.1749 Goujon in what is now the Cité de la Musique near Paris. Owen had the interior redecorated by San Francisco artist Adrian Card, installed beautiful new jacks made by Norman Purdy of Springfield, Oregon, voiced it in real bird quill, and restrung it in the very first modern iron harpsichord wire truly to replicate the composition and physical traits of surviving historical wire, developed by Stephen Birkett of Waterloo, Ontario. He then began a luxuriant journey into the works of such composers as Rameau and Couperin.

Register at WEKA.

• WEKA Member, or Student/Faculty/Staff of Reed College - Free
• Regular Admission - $10
• Student Admission - $5