Duo Sureño

Collaborating as Duo Sureño since 1999, Nancy King and Robert Nathanson share a passion for commissioning and performing new music. As a duo, they have toured extensively throughout the United States, Germany and Austria, with world premieres most recently in Wilmington, NC and Honolulu, Hawaii. Waking The Sparrows, their newest release on Ravello Records represents an almost twenty-year journey, exploring the beauty of the human voice blended with the guitar, as expressed through the music of today’s most compelling composers.

Nancy King, soprano, is an associate professor and coordinator of vocal studies at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, artistic director of Opera Wilmington, and an active performer and guest lecturer. Recent concert appearances include Strauss’s Four Last Songs with the Wilmington Symphony, Brahms’s Requiem with the UNCW Choirs, and a Southeastern North Carolina tour of Bach concerts with Chamber Music Wilmington. King has appeared as soloist in Handel’s Messiah with Toronto Classical Singers; Vaughan Williams’s Serenade to Music with the Oregon Bach Festival Chorus in Eugene, Oregon; Orff’s Carmina Burana; Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915; Canteloube’s Chants D’Auvergne; and Poulenc’s Gloria with the Wilmington Symphony. Operatic roles include Fiordiligi in Mozart’s Così fan tutte, Hannah Glawari in Lehár’s Merry Widow, Cunegonde in Bernstein’s Candide, Rosalinda in Strauss’s Die Fledermaus, Susanna in Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro, Euridice in Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice, and Belinda in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas. King was also a member of the GRAMMY Award-winning Oregon Bach Festival Choir from 1998-2004, under the direction of Helmuth Rilling.

Robert Nathanson, classical and baroque guitarist, is an active recitalist and orchestral soloist, now focusing on chamber music, with concerts throughout the United States, as well as performances in Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, Spain, Austria, Slovenia, and Canada. He has been performing as part of the Ryoanji Duo (guitar and saxophone) and the North Carolina Guitar Quartet since 1992 and as part of Duo Sureño (guitar and soprano) since 1999. A champion of new music, Nathanson has commissioned, premiered, and recorded works by David Kechley, William Neil, Jing Jing Luo, Ernesto García de León, Leo Brouwer, John Anthony Lennon, Ernesto Cordero, Marilyn Shrude, Shih-Hui Chen and others. He has hosted several New Music Festivals, inviting composers and performers to the campus of University of North Carolina Wilmington, where he is Professor of Music, to perform, record and conduct master classes. Since 2010, Nathanson has been the Artistic Director of PRO MUSICA, a concert series celebrating the music of living composers, sponsored by and performed at the Cameron Art Museum in Wilmington, NC. In March 2016, his most recent CD, Sea of Stones: New Guitar and Saxophone Music by David Kechley, was released by Innova Records, where he serves as both performer and producer. Nathanson has also released Images, a CD of new music for guitar and saxophone, and At the Edge of the Body’s Night, a CD of new music for soprano, saxophone and guitar. Nathanson has also recorded two solo CDs, New York Sally and Exposure, on the Liscio Recording label.