On April 6, 2025, University Organist Robert Parkins presented his farewell recital in Duke Chapel, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, before an audience exceeding 900 persons with hundreds more watching online. He performed on all three of the chapel’s main organs, selecting pieces he had previously played at dedicatory recitals for each of those instruments during his 47 years at Duke. The program started on the two-manual Brombaugh organ in the Memorial Chapel, moving to the four-manual D. A. Flentrop organ in the rear gallery of the nave, and finishing on the four-manual Aeolian organ at the front of the nave. The event included works by de Arauxo, Scheidt, Buxtehude, Pierné, Franck Gigout, and others.
At the reception following the recital. Chapel Dean Reverend Luke Powery announced that the 1997 John Brombaugh & Associates Opus 34 had been named the “Robert Collings Parkins Organ” in honor of Parkins’s service to the chapel and the university. The honor comes as Parkins retires this summer. He first came to the university in 1975 to serve as chapel organist at and joined the faculty of the department of music, where he has been professor of the practice of music. He left Duke in 1982 to take a faculty position at Ithaca College, Ithaca, New York, but returned to Duke three years later. In 1990 he was appointed university organist. In his years as university organist, Parkins has played for chapel services and university events and has directed the organ recital series. In the department of music, he has taught organ, harpsichord, and music theory and has also served as director of undergraduate studies and director of performance.
As a performer, Parkins has presented recitals throughout the United States and Western Europe as well as in Central America, and he has recorded albums for labels such as Calcante, Gothic, Loft, Musical Heritage Society, and Naxos. He has published articles in The Organ Yearbook, Early Music, The American Organist, and The Diapason, as well as a chapter on Spain and Portugal in Keyboard Music Before 1700.
For information: chapel.duke.edu.
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