Pianist Seán Duggan, OSB
Benedictine monk and American pianist Seán Duggan, OSB, will be the guest of the Department of Music at Gustavus Adolphus College on Sunday, March 3 and will present a recital of the music of J.S. Bach beginning at 1:30 p.m. in the College’s Jussi Björling Recital Hall. This performance is part of the Department’s Colloquium Series and is free and open to the public.
Father Duggan will open Sunday’s recital with the Fantasy and Fugue in A minor followed by the three-movement Italian Concerto. He will conclude the first half of the program with the Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue. When he returns to the stage following a brief intermission, he will present The 15 Sinfonias, BWV numbers 787-801, to conclude the recital.
Seán Brett Duggan, OSB, earned his Bachelor of Music degree in piano performance at Loyola University in New Orleans and his Master of Fine Arts degree at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh in 1979. For the next three years he was the Pittsburgh Opera Company’s pianist and assistant chorus master while teaching piano at Carnegie Mellon and performing as a member of the Carnegie Mellon Piano Trio. Duggan left Pittsburgh to enter the Benedictine order at St. Joseph Abbey near Covington, Louisiana, in 1982, graduated summa cum laude with a Master of Arts degree in Theology from Notre Dame Seminary in New Orleans, and was ordained to the priesthood in 1988.
In September 1983, after entering the monastery, Seán Duggan won first prize in the Johann Sebastian Bach International Competition for pianists in Washington D.C., which entitled him, among other honors, to various concerts around the country and a two- month tour of Germany. In the “Bach Year”, 1985, he gave complete performances of J.S. Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier in New Orleans, Pittsburgh and Birmingham to critical acclaim. In 1991 he participated again in the Bach Competition in Washington D.C.; this time he was one of three first-place winners, and this entitled him to another round of concert engagements and a second tour of Germany.
Father Seán Brett Duggan is a Benedictine monk of Saint Joseph Abbey in Saint Benedict, Covington, Louisiana. From 1988 to 2001 he taught music, Latin and religion at St. Joseph Seminary College in Louisiana and was director of music and organist at St. Joseph Abbey. From 2001 to 2004 he was a visiting professor of piano at the University of Michigan. Since then he has been associate professor of piano at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Fredonia. During the fall semester of 2008 he was also a guest professor of piano at Eastman School of Music. He has been a guest artist and adjudicator at the Chautauqua Institution for several summers, and is also a faculty member of the Golandsky Institute at Princeton, New Jersey. He continues to study the Taubman approach with Edna Golandsky in New York City.
Seán Duggan’s recital at Gustavus Adolphus College on Sunday, March 3 and will feature the music of J.S. Bach and will begin at 1:30 p.m. in the College’s Jussi Björling Recital Hall. This performance is part of the Department’s Colloquium Series. It is free and open to the public.