The Weis Center for the Performing Arts will welcome jazz pianist Dan Tepfer on Thursday, April 2 at 7:30 p.m. at the Weis Center.
The performance is co-sponsored by the Bucknell Music Department and Kushell Endowment.
Dan Tepfer, born in Paris to American parents and based in New York City, is “a pianist of extraordinary technique and fearless harmonic sensibility” (JazzTimes). He has performed worldwide with artists ranging from Lee Konitz to Renée Fleming and released more than a dozen albums as a leader in solo, duo, and trio settings. The New York Times calls him a “deeply rational improviser drawn to the unknown,” and his concert works include Solar Spiral, Algorithmic Transform, and Three Poems of Virginie Sampeur, for Cécile McLorin Salvant.
He gained international attention with Goldberg Variations / Variations (2011), combining Bach’s masterpiece with his own improvisations, and in 2019 released Natural Machines, a video album exploring algorithms and the rhythms of the heart, featured on NPR’s Tiny Desk. His honors include top prizes at Montreux and the American Piano Awards, and fellowships from major arts institutions. In 2025, he made his Carnegie Hall debut as a leader with Natural Machines 2.0 and The Knights.
When at the Weis Center, Tepfer will perform a program called Inventions / Reinventions.
Following the critical and audience acclaim for his Goldberg Variations / Variations, Dan Tepfer released Inventions / Reinventions on StorySound Records in March 2023. It immediately entered the Classical Billboard Charts at #1, remaining there for two weeks.
Bach composed his set of Inventions as study pieces for his children and students, covering eight major and seven minor keys, for a total of fifteen. But there are twenty-four possible major and minor keys, so there are nine keys missing. In the Inventions / Reinventions program, while playing Bach’s original compositions sequentially, Dan Tepfer creates his own Inventions for the missing keys, freely improvising new ones during each performance. In so doing, he follows the logic behind Bach’s beloved original pieces, in which simple musical ideas, like characters in a novel or a play, are taken on a harmonic journey to foreign keys before returning home.
TICKETS
Tickets are $25 for adults, $20 for seniors 62+ and subscribers, $15 for youth 18 and under, $15 for Bucknell employees and retirees (limit 2), free for Bucknell students (limit 1) and $15 for non-Bucknell students (limit 2).
Tickets can be reserved by calling 570-577-1000 or online at Bucknell.edu/BoxOffice.
Tickets are also available in person from several locations including the Weis Center lobby (weekdays 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.) and the CAP Center Box Office, located on the ground floor of the Elaine Langone Center (weekdays 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.).
For more information about this event, contact Lisa Leighton, marketing and outreach director, at 570-577-3727 or by e-mail at lisa.leighton@bucknell.edu.
For more information about the Weis Center for the Performing Arts, go to Bucknell.edu/WeisCenter or search for the Weis Center on Instagram, Facebook, or YouTube.