Thursday Talks at the Archie K. Davis Center

As part of our mission to celebrate and share Moravian music and its history we are relaunching our lecture series under the name “Thursday Talks at the Archie K. Davis Center.” This program aims to serve as an introduction to who we are, while also highlighting the work and scholarship being done at the Moravian Music Foundation. The biweekly series will run from January to May (the second and fourth Thursday) and include both traditional lectures, as well as lecture-recitals, involving both performances and talks. Topics to be covered include: an introduction to Moravian music, the life and works of specific Moravian composers, and the connection of Moravian music to contemporary trends of the time. As in the past, the series will be offered in collaboration with the Moravian Archives, Southern Province to highlight all the work that is happening at the Archie K. Davis Center. Following a summer hiatus, the series will return in the Fall running from August to December with the possibility of expanding the speakers to include students and researchers doing work connected to the Foundation.

One goal of this relaunch is to inspire people to return to the building. To facilitate this, and to encourage a sense of fellowship, we will be offering refreshments for those who are able to attend in person. Our mission with the series, however, is to reach as broad of an audience as possible. For this reason, we will livestream and record the talks for those unable to physically come to the building. Videos of the recordings will be posted on various social media channels and housed on both our website and YouTube page, creating a repository of talks that can be accessed at any time. In addition, the audio will become part of a new podcast on Moravian music and its history that is in development.

For the final talk of the spring season in May, we will be inviting a special guest speaker to present a keynote address. This occasion will feature an opportunity to meet the speaker and have a lunch. We also see this as a point of collaboration with Old Salem Museums and Gardens and an opportunity to grow our reach and meet a new audience. In choosing our speaker for this event, we are seeking to highlight the work of a scholar from an underrepresented group and/or a topic that has received little attention in the past.