Joyce Lindorff Harpsichord Recital

Johann Sebastian Bach
Overture in the French Style, BWV 831
Overture
Courante
Gavotte I and II
Passepied I and II
Sarabande
Bourrée I and II
Gigue
Echo

Intermission

Wilhelm Friedemann Bach
Fantasia in D minor

Ellen Taaffe Zwilich
Fantasy for Harpsichord (1983)

François Couperin
Le Rossignol-en-amour
Le Tic Toc Choc
Les Barricades Mistérieuses

Jeremy Thurlow
Les Tardigrades Miraculeuses
2025, premiere — written for Joyce Lindorff

Francis Thomé
Rigodon, Op. 96

About the Performer

Joyce Lindorff has earned rave reviews for her performances throughout the U.S., Europe, Russia, Japan, and China, receiving solo recitalist awards from the Pro Musicis Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. The New York Times wrote of a solo recital, “brilliant music, brilliantly played . . . one of the most appealing recitals of the season,” and Continuo Magazine called her playing “absolutely breathtaking.”

Joyce’s recent seasons have included performances in Beijing, Amsterdam, Poland, Hong Kong, China, and the Philippines. She earned her doctorate at The Juilliard School, her master’s degree at the University of Southern California, and her BA at Sarah Lawrence College.

For several years, she was based in Hong Kong and China, where she taught harpsichord at the Shanghai Conservatory and the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts. She held Fulbright professorships at the Xi’an Conservatory of Music and at Sun Yat-sen University in Taiwan, and was named an Honorary Professor at the Shanghai Conservatory and China Conservatory.

Joyce Lindorff has long been a champion of new music for harpsichord, with many works dedicated to her. She currently divides her time between Philadelphia, where she is Professor of Keyboard Studies at Temple University, and Cambridge, England, where she has been a Visiting Scholar in the Faculty of Music and is a Life Member of Clare Hall.

About the Premiered Work

Tardigrades, also known as water-bears or moss-piglets, are tiny eight-legged creatures found in habitats ranging from rainforests and deep seas to mountaintops and Antarctic ice shelves. They are known for their extraordinary ability to survive extreme conditions, including ultra-low temperatures, vacuum, radiation, high pressure, and powerful impacts.

Jeremy Thurlow’s Les Tardigrades Miraculeuses invites listeners to imagine these remarkable creatures through sound. The work also reflects on the hypnotic “weaving” texture of Couperin’s Les Barricades Mistérieuses, another piece whose intriguing title leaves room for the listener’s imagination.

Les Tardigrades Miraculeuses is dedicated to Joyce Lindorff.

About the Composer

Jeremy Thurlow is a unique voice in today’s musical scene: restless, lyrical, and powerful, with deep roots in the ancient while remaining very much of today. His music draws inspiration from the rhythms of the sea, biological processes, and writers ranging from Keats to Woolf, Hildegard, John Burnside, and Yves Bonnefoy.

He is currently completing a full-length opera based on Dina Nayeri’s award-winning The Ungrateful Refugee for the Byre Theatre, St Andrews. He is a Fellow of Robinson College, University of Cambridge, and has held Fellowships at the Bogliasco Foundation, Millay Arts, and the Dora Maar Foundation.