Friday won't be just another night of musical entertainment in Baldwin Auditorium. A concert will be held to raise funds for patients at the Duke HIV/AIDS Clinic through the newly established John Bartlett Care Fund Endowment.
The night's performers include Susan Dunn, an internationally acclaimed opera star and soprano who has graced the stage at New York's Metropolitan Opera, and David Heid, pianist and composer, who made his Lincoln Center debut at the Big Apple's Alice Tully Hall.
Both performers said that many HIV-infected people are not getting the necessary resources to buy life-saving medications. This is why, in 1991, the Care Fund was established in memory of a patient who managed to initiate significant fundraising efforts for food, medication, housing and educational materials in order to aid persons suffering from AIDS. Now, 14 years later, the number of patients the Fund helps has grown from 250 to 1,500; hence the need for increased fundraising efforts.
"My brother was a patient at the HIV/AIDS Clinic about ten years ago for six or seven years," said Heid, who is also a staff accompanist and piano teacher at Duke. "When they established this Care Fund Endowment, and I read about it, I thought it was a way to use our music for something other than just entertainment."
Dunn echoed what Heid said, emphasizing that she envisions the concert as the "kind of artistic endeavor that can get the word to a different group of people than what might normally hear about it." And, at the same time, it will publicize the cause of the Care Fund. Dunn said her support is inspired from the strength of the Fund's cause: "I know that the work they do is very important, and it's very good work."
One of the products of that work is the concert, which will boast a wide range of styles and pieces and a journey through several musical eras. Opening with an aria, often attributed to (but most likely not composed by) Handel, the concert will offer not-so-typical works by popular composers. For example, songs by Liszt (mostly known as a pianist) and Puccini (famous for his operas) will mark the first part of the concert, followed by German songs by Hugo Wolf and the art song cycle Saracen by H.T. Burleigh. The concert is bookended with songs and arias by George Gershwin.
If the night's plans seem ambitious in scale, it's because they are.
"It is much more exhausting to give a concert than it is to do a whole opera," Dunn said, because characters, themes, and emotions change with each new piece. Yet this concert is constructed with the idea that as a benefit, it should contain something that will "benefit" many different people.
As for the specific aims of the concert, Heid summed them up by saying, "mostly we hope to raise awareness that there is this need, there is this issue, and there is this way to address it for people."
One way you can help is to buy a ticket-the price range is $5/$10/$25. The event will be held on Friday, Sept. 23 at 8 p.m.
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