Dr. Kenneth Drake will perform a piano recital on Friday, Feb. 19 at 7:30 p.m. in Edmunds hall on the Presbyterian College Campus. His recital is part of the 2016 PC Piano Clinic held Feb. 19-20. His program will include works by Hayden, Mozart and Beethoven. The recital is open to the public. Tickets are on sale for $10.

Drake is Professor Emeritus at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s school of music. He was an early exponent of playing repertoire of the classic period on instruments of that period. Drake has been on the piano staff of the University of Illinois since 1973. Before moving to Illinois, he was on the faculty at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, where he was a member of the fine arts trio.

For 40 years, Drake has promoted the use of period pianos for the music of the classic era, making him one of the earliest exponents of the fortepiano. In appearances at colleges and universities in the U.S. and Canada, he has given recitals and workshops using the Walter copy and fortepianos manufactured in the early 18th century by the English maker Broadwood.

Additional performances have been at four seasons of the Cambridge Early Music Society of Mass., the Michigan Mozartfest, and conventions of the Music Teachers’ National Association.

Drake’s doctoral dissertation was published by MTNA as “The Sonatas of Beethoven as he Played and Taught Them,” and later reissued by Indiana University Press in its series on early music performance. Indiana University Press also published Drake’s “Beethoven Sonatas and the creative Experience” in 1994.