Robert Parkins is the University Organist and a Professor of the Practice of Music at Duke University. He has performed throughout the United States, in Europe, and in Central America, and his playing has been described as “fresh and spontaneous, transforming the music from museum artifacts to living works of beauty.” (The American Organist)
For a number of years, he has specialized in early Iberian keyboard music, and more recently he has focused his attention on the German Romantic organ and its literature. His organ and harpsichord recordings have appeared on the Calcante, Gothic, Loft, Musical Heritage Society, and Naxos labels–including the CD’s Early Iberian Organ Music, Brahms: Complete Organ Works, German Romantic Organ Music, Iberian and South German Organ Music, Organ Music of Frescobaldi, and Salome’s Dance. His publications include articles for a number of professional journals, some of them on performance practices in early Iberian keyboard music, as well as the chapter on “Spain and Portugal” in Keyboard Music Before 1700.
Dr. Parkins received his undergraduate degree in organ from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music as a student of Gerre Hancock. He completed his DMA at the Yale University School of Music, where he studied organ with Charles Krigbaum and Michael Schneider, as well as harpsichord with Ralph Kirkpatrick. In 1973 he was awarded a Fulbright grant to study in Vienna as a pupil of Anton Heiller.
