Over the years, the Dickens Project has hosted a number of performances in its Thursday evening lecture slot. Participants have been treated to Dickens’s great-great-grandson Gerald’s one-man interpretations of Dickens’s novels, a version of Miriam Margolyes’ “Dickens’s Women,” and a Magic Lantern show, among other presentations. These enjoyments have been interspersed with the Project’s long-running Farce, originally envisioned by Georgetown’s John Glavin and more recently written and produced by Adam Abraham of Iowa’s Cornell College.
This year, however, the Project moves in a different direction in its Thursday evening entertainment by hosting pianist Lura Johnson. The Resident Pianist of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and Principal Pianist of the Delaware Symphony, Johnson is both a soloist and an orchestral pianist, in addition to having a special fondness for chamber music—Brahms is a specialty. She will be accompanied by Jason Rudy.
Johnson also writes her own program notes, teaches, and excels at speaking to her audience. This is the added value she brings to the Dickens Project—she and Rudy, of the University of Maryland, who is affiliated with the Project and also a musician, will discuss the music of the Victorian era and will perform pieces that would have been familiar to that audience. While the duo has not yet finalized their program, Johnson promises that the pieces they perform and discuss will “explore connections and similarities between music and literature.” Read more about Lura at lurajohnson.com.
