DePaul University’s School of Music will launch a new recital series for devotees of harpsichord music with an all-Bach concert by critically-acclaimed harpsichordist David Cates at 8 p.m. April 7 in the DePaul Concert Hall, 800 W. Belden Ave.

The first concert in the Charles E. McGuckin Harpsichord Recital Series features a program of “Prelude in b minor,” “Suite in e minor” (originally for lute), “Partita IV in D major,” ”Prelude and Fugue in F major” (Well Tempered Clavier Book II) and the “English Suite in g minor.” Cates will play DePaul's recently acquired double manual Willard Martin harpsichord. The event is free and open to the public.

A dynamic performer who lives and teaches privately in Berkeley, Calif., Cates is one of the country’s leading young harpsichordists and an original, exciting and powerful voice on the early music scene. He has appeared at the Berkeley Early Music Festival and in various concerts. Critics have consistently praised his performances as original, very moving, and virtuosic, yet always emotionally connected to the music.

“These performances resist falling into any particular categories besides those of exceptional beauty, elegance and understated virtuosity,” said The Southern California Early Music Society News, reviewing a Cates’ recital last September.

Cates’ has recorded two CDs on the Wildboar label, one featuring the works of Johann Jacob Froberger and the other featuring the music of Bach. Both received rave reviews. His third recording, a CD of Bach’s French Suites, is expected to be released in late summer 2001.

Cates studied piano with Easley Blackwood at the University of Chicago and with Jacob Lateiner of the Julliard School of Music in New York. While a pianist, he specialized in the music of Charles Ives and Lieder accompaniment, especially the songs of Schubert. He began to focus on the harpsichord in 1990 and has studied with Roger Goodman of DePaul’s School of Music and Edward Parmentier, a University of Michigan music professor and noted interpreter of early keyboard music.

The purchase of DePaul’s harpsichord and the three-year annual concert series were made possible through gifts from Marie McGuckin of Palos Heights, a 1964 School of Music alumna. The harpsichord series is named in honor of McGuckin’s late husband, Charles E. McGuckin, a former Chicago public school principal and a 1956 graduate of DePaul School of Education.

DePaul’s handmade harpsichord took more than a year to construct by the well-known harpsichord maker Willard Martin of Bethlehem, Penn. Dedicated by DePaul in the spring of 1999, the instrument is used by DePaul piano students studying with Goodman to perform the works of Bach, Handel and other Baroque musicians whose compositions predate the piano.

For more information about the concert, call 773/325-7664.