December 2019
Freedom and Faith, PubliQuartet
“A perfect encapsulation of today’s trends in chamber music.”—Washington Post Known for their fresh, creative perspective, PUBLIQuartet’s genre-bending programs range from 20th century masterworks to newly commissioned pieces. In Freedom and Faith, the string quartet celebrates underrepresented composers who have staked their places in history with virtuosity and power. Featuring works by Jessie Montgomery, Meredith Monk, Caroline Shaw, Jihyun Kim, and others, the program features music that captures the essence of resilience through oppression, time, and injustice.
Find out more »January 2020
Fanm d’Ayiti: Nathalie Joachim with Spektral Quartet
A new evening-length work created by flutist and composer Nathalie Joachim of Flutronix, Fanm d’Ayiti (Women of Haiti) is a celebration of some of Haiti’s most iconic yet under recognized female artists, through new musical arrangements and compositions for flute, string quartet, vocals, and electronics seamlessly interwoven with recorded interviews telling stories of political exile, cultural affirmation, and independence. At the same time, the project is a deeply personal exploration of Joachim’s Haitian heritage, featuring original songs incorporating the recorded…
Find out more »Invisible(s): Cristina Pato and Mazz Swift
How might our social, political, and cultural landscape be different if history had been written by the people of forgotten communities? Featuring stirring new music commissioned or curated by Cristina Pato (of the Silkroad Ensemble, Cristina Pato Quartet, and more) this brand new work by the internationally acclaimed Galician bagpiper and passionate educator explores this idea, in partnership with critically acclaimed composer and violinist Mazz Swift.
Find out more »Antigonick: Big Dance Theater
With its inspired use of dance, music, text, and visual design, Big Dance Theater returns to Carolina Performing Arts with Antigonick: a “popup play under construction” of renowned poet and classicist Anne Carson’s one-act, radical-feminist, philosophical take on Sophocles’ Antigone. Using Carson’s text, Annie-B Parson braids disparate strands into a multi-dimensional performance featuring the deft wit and imagination for which Big Dance Theater is known. Each evening between performances, ticket holders are welcome to a Dionysian Libation with complimentary food…
Find out more »Antigonick: Big Dance Theater
With its inspired use of dance, music, text, and visual design, Big Dance Theater returns to Carolina Performing Arts with Antigonick: a “popup play under construction” of renowned poet and classicist Anne Carson’s one-act, radical-feminist, philosophical take on Sophocles’ Antigone. Using Carson’s text, Annie-B Parson braids disparate strands into a multi-dimensional performance featuring the deft wit and imagination for which Big Dance Theater is known. Each evening between performances, ticket holders are welcome to a Dionysian Libation with complimentary food…
Find out more »Antigonick: Big Dance Theater
With its inspired use of dance, music, text, and visual design, Big Dance Theater returns to Carolina Performing Arts with Antigonick: a “popup play under construction” of renowned poet and classicist Anne Carson’s one-act, radical-feminist, philosophical take on Sophocles’ Antigone. Using Carson’s text, Annie-B Parson braids disparate strands into a multi-dimensional performance featuring the deft wit and imagination for which Big Dance Theater is known. Each evening between performances, ticket holders are welcome to a Dionysian Libation with complimentary food…
Find out more »The Eve Project: Martha Graham Dance Company
“The EVE Project celebrates female power.” –New York Times Martha Graham Dance Company returns to Carolina Performing Arts with stunning new works from The EVE Project, created in honor of the hundredth anniversary of the 19th Amendment and featuring the work of women choreographers and composers. Alongside classic repertory highlighting Graham heroines and anti-heroines, The EVE Project honors the progress of women in the last 100 years and provides an entrée into today’s most pressing conversations about gender and power.…
Find out more »February 2020
Lucia Lucas, Baritone
Baritone Lucia Lucas has emerged as a performer guaranteed to “shatter opera’s glass ceiling” (NewNowNext). The first known transgender opera singer to star in a lead role in the US, Lucas and her powerful voice have made waves at opera houses across the globe. Now, the critically acclaimed singer makes her Carolina Performing Arts debut.
Find out more »Edna Lewis
The impact of the late Southern chef Edna Lewis on American cuisine—and generations of people—cannot be overstated. Inspired by Hilton Als’ childhood recollections of admiring Lewis from afar during her years in New York City, Edna Lewis is a meditative love letter to her by a celebrated writer. Featuring the sensational Helga Davis (CPA artist-in-residence, who starred in Als’ Lives of the Performers at CURRENT in fall 2018) as “Edna” ruminating on her storied life and acclaimed performer Justin Hicks…
Find out more »Edna Lewis
The impact of the late Southern chef Edna Lewis on American cuisine—and generations of people—cannot be overstated. Inspired by Hilton Als’ childhood recollections of admiring Lewis from afar during her years in New York City, Edna Lewis is a meditative love letter to her by a celebrated writer. Featuring the sensational Helga Davis (CPA artist-in-residence, who starred in Als’ Lives of the Performers at CURRENT in fall 2018) as “Edna” ruminating on her storied life and acclaimed performer Justin Hicks…
Find out more »Johnny Gandelsman, violin
Grammy-winning violinist, member of Brooklyn Rider and Silkroad Ensemble, and longtime friend to Carolina Performing Arts Johnny Gandelsman returns for his fifteenth performance at CPA, with a solo program that highlights his singular talent for reinventing music of the classical canon—this time, performing Bach’s Cello Suites on his violin.
Find out more »Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
With a history spanning more than six decades, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater has changed the landscape of arts in America and beyond. Hewing to Alvin Ailey’s original mission, the company presents important works of the past while continuing to innovate. A valued longtime artistic partner to Carolina Performing Arts, the company has performed on the Memorial hall stage more than 20 times. Now, AAADT returns to perform a program featuring the work of women choreographers, created especially for CPA.
Find out more »Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
With a history spanning more than six decades, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater has changed the landscape of arts in America and beyond. Hewing to Alvin Ailey’s original mission, the company presents important works of the past while continuing to innovate. A valued longtime artistic partner to Carolina Performing Arts, the company has performed on the Memorial hall stage more than 20 times. Now, AAADT returns to perform a program featuring the work of women choreographers, created especially for CPA.
Find out more »As One, a Chamber Opera
There is Hannah before, and there is Hannah after. In As One, two voices share the part of a sole transgender protagonist, tracing Hannah’s experiences from her youth in a small town to her college years. CPA’s staging of this powerful chamber opera will include locally based advisors and cast members, including Marc Callahan from UNC’s Department of Music (in the role of Hannah Before) and earspace, the Raleigh-based ensemble directed by UNC alumnus Vincent Povázsay. This production is supported…
Find out more »As One, a Chamber Opera
There is Hannah before, and there is Hannah after. In As One, two voices share the part of a sole transgender protagonist, tracing Hannah’s experiences from her youth in a small town to her college years. CPA’s staging of this powerful chamber opera will include locally based advisors and cast members, including Marc Callahan from UNC’s Department of Music (in the role of Hannah Before) and earspace, the Raleigh-based ensemble directed by UNC alumnus Vincent Povázsay. This production is supported…
Find out more »Maria Schneider Orchestra
Evocative. Majestic. Heart-stoppingly gorgeous. These are a few of the phrases used to describe Maria Schneider’s music. With her 18-member jazz collective, the renowned bandleader defies categorization. One of few artists to have earned Grammys in multiple categories, she is known for tailoring her compositions to highlight the unique talents of her orchestra’s members. For their first performance at Carolina Performing Arts, the Maria Schneider Orchestra headlines the 2020 Carolina Jazz Festival.
Find out more »Isabel Leonard, mezzo-soprano with the UNC Symphony Orchestra
Acclaimed mezzo-soprano and host of the Metropolitan Opera broadcasts, Isabel Leonard returns to Carolina Performing Arts to perform with the award-winning UNC Symphony Orchestra. Designed in collaboration with the ensemble, this special program will highlight selections from Ms. Leonard’s diverse repertoire.
Find out more »March 2020
Cellular Songs Concert, Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble
In this concert version of revolutionary American artist Meredith Monk’s latest music-theater work, she shares her genius in discovery and innovation. Cellular Songs turns to the very fabric of life itself, exploring our interdependent relationship with nature and looking to its underlying systems as inspiration for human behavior in our tumultuous world. Performed by Monk with the women of her acclaimed Vocal Ensemble, this concert features some of Monk’s most adventurous and daring music for the voice to date, paired…
Find out more »Meklit
“An infusion of jazz, rich Ethiopian culture and that artsy San Francisco flavor. It’s also got a spicy dash of visceral poetry that paints pictures in your head as you listen.”—NPR Poet. Singer. Songwriter. Composer. Fierce performer. Ethiopian-born Meklit is all of these things and more. Known for her distinctive style of Ethio-jazz, she makes music that sways between cultures and continents, lighting up every rhythmically charged live performance with undeniable energy, emotion, and a startlingly beautiful new sound.
Find out more »HOME created by Geoff Sobelle
“A wholly unique blend of concept, stagecraft, movement, music, and visual storytelling that gives fast-moving form to the ways, large and small, in which a house becomes a home.” —Boston Globe Where is home? If home is not a place, what is it? In HOME, a house is conjured onstage as if from nothing. Residents move in, move out, get evicted, burn it down, loot it, rent it, remodel it, get married, get divorced, age, die in it, and haunt…
Find out more »HOME created by Geoff Sobelle
“A wholly unique blend of concept, stagecraft, movement, music, and visual storytelling that gives fast-moving form to the ways, large and small, in which a house becomes a home.” —Boston Globe Where is home? If home is not a place, what is it? In HOME, a house is conjured onstage as if from nothing. Residents move in, move out, get evicted, burn it down, loot it, rent it, remodel it, get married, get divorced, age, die in it, and haunt…
Find out more »Mitsuko Uchida and Mahler Chamber Orchestra
Legendary pianist and Mozart interpreter Mitsuko Uchida returns to Chapel Hill with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra for their second performance together on the Memorial Hall stage, where they will dazzle with an all-Mozart piano concerto program. Mitsuko Uchida, Piano and Director Meesun Hong Coleman, Concertmaster and Leader
Find out more »Visions for Frida Kahlo, Melissa Aldana
In a new work inspired by Frida Kahlo, Chilean jazz saxophonist Melissa Aldana pays homage to the groundbreaking artist. With new animation by Ana María Aresti and Diego Pequeño reminiscent of Kahlo’s work and the Latin American style of magical realism set to Aldana’s music, Visions for Frida Kahlo is a bold sonic and visual tapestry.
Find out more »April 2020
Discourse, Flutronix
In this emotionally resonant new work from flute and electronics duo Flutronix, the voices and personal stories of Chapel Hill are brought to vibrant life. Commissioned by Carolina Performing Arts, Discourse draws inspiration from—and incorporates—individual stories from this place for a stunning immersive musical performance in the intimate setting of CURRENT ArtSpace + Studio. Created over a two-year residency at Carolina Performing Arts, the seeds of Discourse were planted in response to the fear, uncertainty, and frustration dividing the US.…
Find out more »Discourse, Flutronix
In this emotionally resonant new work from flute and electronics duo Flutronix, the voices and personal stories of Chapel Hill are brought to vibrant life. Commissioned by Carolina Performing Arts, Discourse draws inspiration from—and incorporates—individual stories from this place for a stunning immersive musical performance in the intimate setting of CURRENT ArtSpace + Studio. Created over a two-year residency at Carolina Performing Arts, the seeds of Discourse were planted in response to the fear, uncertainty, and frustration dividing the US.…
Find out more »The Soul Rebels with special guest Big Freedia
The Soul Rebels started with an idea: take the pop music they loved to hear on the radio and the New Orleans brass tradition of their hometown and make it into something new. The result? A revolutionary, deep pocket funk fusing soul, hip-hop, jazz, and rock with a popping brass band sound. Joined by New Orleans-based rapper—and Queen of Bounce music—Big Freedia, they make their Carolina Performing Arts debut in style.
Find out more »she is called, Brooklyn Youth Chorus
A remarkable musical portrait of women’s experiences from biblical times to the present day, she is called traces a path from early texts by men about women to explorations of current themes through the work of contemporary women composers, including Shara Nova and Toshi Reagon (Carolina Performing Arts Mellon Foundation Creative Futures fellows). Brought to life by the acclaimed Brooklyn Youth Chorus (BYC), this program illuminates the musical and spiritual lives of women today in radiant form. This performance is…
Find out more »Kiran Ahluwalia
Bringing the great vocal traditions of India and Pakistan squarely into the present, Kiran Ahluwalia honors her roots while departing from them in masterful, personal ways. With original compositions that embrace influences from across the globe, Ahluwalia and her band invite us to explore the human condition in a transcendent, melodic groove.
Find out more »May 2020
London Symphony Orchestra with Sir Simon Rattle, music director
Led by renowned conductor Sir Simon Rattle, the internationally acclaimed London Symphony Orchestra—named one of the top five orchestras in the world by Gramophone— makes their debut on the Memorial Hall stage with a two-night engagement.
Find out more »London Symphony Orchestra with Sir Simon Rattle, music director
Led by renowned conductor Sir Simon Rattle, the internationally acclaimed London Symphony Orchestra—named one of the top five orchestras in the world by Gramophone— makes their debut on the Memorial Hall stage with a two-night engagement.
Find out more »Goldberg Variations, Lang Lang
Few artists can claim to have the same profound impact on the world of music as Lang Lang, who has broken untold boundaries in bringing classical music into the 21st century. One of the world’s most renowned pianists, Lang Lang returns to Carolina Performing Arts to perform the Goldberg Variations by Johann Sebastian Bach.
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