Duke Arts Presents: Awadagin Pratt, America 250

Praised by The Washington Post as "one of this country's most interesting and profound pianists" Awadagin Pratt is one of the most distinctive artists in American classical music. Winner of the Naumburg International Piano Competition and recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant, Pratt has built a dynamic career with appearances ranging from solo recitals at Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center to collaborations with leading orchestras across the country.

His program, America 250, reflects on the breadth of American musical voices. Works by Florence Price, George Walker, and Nathaniel Dett appear alongside music by contemporary composers including Judd Greenstein and Fred Hersch. Pratt also performs his own arrangement of the spiritual Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child, before closing with Brahms' monumental Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Handel.