The Joseph and Dorothy Kitchen
concert series
Dr. Joseph Kitchen and Nicholas Kitchen, Co-Artistic Directors
Current Update:
The Concert Series is currently on hold.
The St. Stephen’s Concert Series, founded in 1982, is a program of St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Durham, NC.
Each year the Concert Series presents a series of five or six professional concerts in the church’s beautiful Nave, widely known for its fine acoustics. (According to the Classical Voice of North Carolina, the church is “one of the finest venues for chamber music in the region.”) The concerts are usually held on Sundays at 4:00p.m.
In 2021, the Concert Series was renamed The Joseph and Dorothy Kitchen Concert Series, in honor and recognition of their long-time service to St. Stephen’s.
Inspiring Performances
Although the Concert Series is a program of the church, it is financially independent of the church. It receives no funds from the church and its board consists of unpaid volunteers. The costs of concerts are met entirely through ticket sales and donations.
Musical education has long been a goal of the Concert Series. To that end the concerts are free for those 18 or under, and, in recent years, 3:00p.m. Pre-Concert Discussions with the artists have preceded the 4:00p.m. concerts. In some instances the pre-concert discussions have even taken place online! Such Online Encounters are made available a month before the concerts and links to them appear on this web site.
The aim of the St. Stephen’s Concert Series is to present inspiring performances of great music. It is hoped that these concerts “please and delight both the mind and soul,” to borrow a phrase from Bach’s cousin, Johann Walther.
Virtual Concert Series
The Friday letters that formed the Virtual Concert Series during the pandemic have been archived and are still available here.
