UCSB Arts & Lectures - Fall Program 2025

Fall Program 2025

Dear Friends,

I’m honored to begin this new chapter as the Miller McCune Executive Director and to welcome you to our 66th season. Like many of you, I’ve grown alongside Arts & Lectures, shaped by years of inspiring performances, thought-provoking ideas, and shared joy.

Looking ahead, I’m excited by what’s to come – not only this fall, but all year long. Our dance series spans the Monks of the Shaolin Temple this fall, the world’s greatest ballet stars in winter, and the contemporary stylings of A.I.M by Kyle Abraham in spring.

With the addition of our new Keyboard Virtuosos series, alongside Great Performances and Hear & Now, A&L continues to emerge as a leader in presenting keyboard music. Join us on opening night, September 30, as Daniil Trifonov launches the series – and the season – at Campbell Hall.

As you review this program, you’ll notice several added events as part of our Justice for All programming initiative. Vietnamese American writer Ocean Vuong, journalist and memoirist Alexis Okeowo, social justice poet Martín Espada, and civil rights attorney Sherrilyn Ifill all represent the thoughtful leadership that can guide us toward a more compassionate, empathetic society.

It’s no accident that so many of the world’s most gifted artists and thinkers want to come here. Santa Barbara is a place where attention runs deep. These artists feel the spirit in every full house and the focus of every hushed moment. They thrive on the sparks of imagination you provide.

This year’s Thematic Learning Initiative builds on that shared energy with Paradigms at Play, offering experiences that explore connections, challenge perceptions, and bring art and culture to life.

Thank you for the vital role you play in Arts & Lectures’ mission to educate, entertain, and inspire. I look forward to seeing you at an event soon!

Warmly,

Meghan Bush

Miller McCune Executive Director

Season Sponsor

Community Partners

photo:

Jean-Claude Carbonne

photo: Isaac Hernández de Lipa

Illuminating a wide spectrum of systemic injustice, the Justice for All programming initiative looks to today’s great minds and creators and to the courageous leaders across the globe who are forging a new path forward. Join us as we learn from those confronting uncomfortable questions, solving difficult problems, and guiding us all toward a more equitable world.

Alexis Okeowo, Oct 14

Challenging stereotypes, uncovering untold stories

Sherrilyn Ifill, Nov 6

Martín Espada, Nov 13

Countering injustice through poetic action

Championing civil rights through legal advocacy

Ocean Vuong, Dec 3

Look for additional events to be added throughout the season.

Centering queer immigrant perspectives in America

JUSTICE FOR ALL Lead Sponsors: Marcy Carsey, Eva & Yoel Haller, Dick Wolf, and Zegar Family Foundation

JUSTICE FOR ALL UCSB Faculty Advisory Committee: Daina Ramey Berry, D. Inés Casillas, Charles Hale, Beth Pruitt, Susannah Scott, Je rey Stewart, Sharon Tettegah

Arts & Lectures’ Thematic Learning Initiative (TLI) extends the conversation from the stage into the community, enriching lifelong learning and initiating dialogue and empowerment through special events, book giveaways and more.

2025-2026 Theme: Paradigms at Play

Paradigms shift when we begin to experience the world around us in new ways. This season’s theme highlights artists and thinkers who play with our perceptions and expand how we feel, see, hear and imagine. Through shared experiences, we will play with paradigms to explore how we learn, connect and imagine what’s possible.

Fall Book Giveaway

Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson

In the last few decades, our capacity to see problems has sharpened while our ability to solve them has diminished. Exploring how we can move from a liberalism that not only protects and preserves but also builds, Klein and Thompson trace the political, economic and cultural barriers to progress and issue a paradigmshifting call to renew a politics of plenty.

FREE copies of Abundance will be available starting September 23 at Arts & Lectures’ Campbell Hall Box Office at UCSB and the Santa Barbara Public Library (40 E. Anapamu St.). Books available while supplies last.

RELATED EVENT Ezra Klein, Nov 4 (p. 41)

With thanks to our visionary partners, Lynda Weinman and Bruce Heavin, for their support of the Thematic Learning Initiative

Paradigms at Play - Free Events

The Last Class

Documentary Screening and Filmmaker Q&A

Thu, Oct 9 / 7 PM / Campbell Hall

FREE (registration recommended)

A love letter to education, The Last Class is a nuanced and deeply personal portrait of former labor secretary Robert Reich as he teaches his final course and reflects on a period of immense personal and global transformation. Step into the mind, heart and classroom of a teacher who will change how you see the world, and yourself in it. (Elliot Kirschner, 2025, 71 min.)

Dance on Film - Double Feature

Sun, Oct 19 / Mary Craig Auditorium, Santa Barbara Museum of Art

FREE (registration required; limited availability)

2 PM Don’t Put Me in a Box

Witness the creative process of Sutra co-creator and celebrated choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui in this 2025 documentary film. Whether collaborating with Shaolin monks or choreographing for Beyoncé and Lady Gaga, Cherkaoui’s work defies labels and comes alive when set free. (Romain Girard, 2025, PG-13, 58 min.)

RELATED EVENT Sutra, Oct 29 (p. 25)

3:15 PM Angelin Preljocaj, dancing the invisible

Explore the creative world of renowned choreographer Angelin Preljocaj at Pavillon Noir, following the making of Gravity, a ballet that blends classical and contemporary styles to examine the powerful relationship between human movement and the force that grounds it. (Florence Platarets, 2019, PG, 53 min.)

RELATED EVENT Ballet Preljocaj, Nov 5 (p. 42)

Community Dance Class with Ballet Preljocaj

Mon, Nov 3 / 3:30-5 PM / Carrillo Ballroom, 100 E. Carrillo St.

FREE (registration recommended)

Taught by members of the internationally-renowned Ballet Preljocaj, this community dance class will focus on basic principles of ballet movement, but with a contemporary twist. All ages and levels welcome. Ballet shoes are not required.

RELATED EVENT Ballet Preljocaj, Nov 5 (p. 42)

Look for additional events to be added throughout the season.

Daniil Trifonov, piano

Tue, Sep 30 / 7 PM / Campbell Hall

Program

Sergei Taneyev:

Prelude and Fugue in G-sharp minor, op. 29

Prelude, Andante

Fugue, Allegro vivace e con fuoco

Sergei Prokofiev: Visions Fugitives, op. 22

Lentamente

Andante

Allegretto Animato

Molto giocoso

Con eleganza

Pittoresco (Arpa)

Comodo

Allegro tranquillo

Ridicolosamente

Con vivacita

Assai moderato

Allegretto

Feroce

Inquieto

Dolente

Poetico

Con una dolce lentezza

Presto agitatissimo e molto accentuato

Lento irrealmente

Nikolai Myaskovsky: Sonata No. 2 in F-sharp minor, op. 13

- Intermission -

Robert Schumann: Sonata No.1 in F-sharp minor, op. 11

Introduzione: Un poco adagio – Allegro vivace

Aria

Scherzo: Allegrissimo – intermezzo: Lento

Finale: Allegro, un poco maestoso

photo: Dario Acosta

Daniil Trifonov

Grammy Award-winning pianist Daniil Trifonov is a solo artist, champion of the concerto repertoire, chamber and vocal collaborator and composer. Combining consummate technique with rare sensitivity and depth, his performances are a perpetual source of wonder to audiences and critics alike. He won the Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Solo Album of 2018 with Transcendental, the Liszt collection that marked his third title as an exclusive Deutsche Grammophon artist.

Trifonov’s 2025-2026 season includes three performances at Carnegie Hall. He first reunites with German baritone Matthias Goerne for a performance of Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin, as the culmination of their North American tour of Schubert’s great song cycles that also sees them perform Schwanengesang in Québec City and Boston, and Winterreise in Toronto, Washington, D.C. and Dallas. After the North American performances, Trifonov and Goerne will tour to multiple German and Austrian cities, as well as to Paris in the spring. In November, Trifonov returns to Carnegie Hall in the company of Cristian M celaru and the Orchestre National de France for two great French piano concertos: Saint-Saëns’ Second and Ravel’s jazz-inflected Piano Concerto in G. Finally in December, Trifonov’s third Carnegie Hall appearance of the season is a mainstage solo recital with the same program performed throughout the season in both the U.S. and Europe. Other season highlights for Trifonov include a short duo tour in Sweden and Austria with violinist Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider; a reprise of Brahms’ Second Piano Concerto with the Cleveland Orchestra and Music Director Franz Welser-Möst, as well as three performances of the same work with the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia under the baton of Daniel Harding; and Beethoven’s Second Piano Concerto with both the Cincinnati Symphony led by M celaru and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra – where Trifonov served as 2024-2025 artist-in-residence – led by Esa-Pekka Salonen.

Trifonov’s existing Deutsche Grammophon discography includes 2024’s My American Story: North, which received the U.K.’s Presto Music Award; the Grammynominated live recording of his Carnegie recital debut; Chopin Evocations; Silver Age, for which he received Opus Klassik’s Instrumentalist of the Year/Piano award; the bestselling, Grammy-nominated double album Bach: The Art of Life; and three volumes of Rachmaninov works with the Philadelphia Orchestra and

Yannick Nézet-Séguin, of which two received Grammy nominations and the third won BBC Music’s 2019 Concerto Recording of the Year. Named Gramophone’s 2016 Artist of the Year and Musical America’s 2019 Artist of the Year, Trifonov was made a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government in 2021.

During the 2010-2011 season, Trifonov won medals at three of the music world’s most prestigious competitions: Third Prize in Warsaw’s Chopin Competition, First Prize in Tel Aviv’s Rubinstein Competition and both First Prize and Grand Prix in Moscow’s Tchaikovsky Competition. He studied with Sergei Babayan at the Cleveland Institute of Music.

Exclusive Management:

Opus 3 Artists

WorkLife Office, Suite 313 250 West 34th Street New York, NY 10119

Mr. Trifonov records exclusively for Deutsche Grammophon

Special Thanks

Samara Joy

Thu, Oct 2 / 7:30 PM / Granada Theatre

Jazz Series Lead Sponsor: Manitou Fund

Samara Joy, vocals

Connor Rohrer, piano

Kendric McCallister, tenor saxophone

David Mason, alto saxophone, fl ute

Conway Campbell, bass

Evan Sherman, drums

Alexandra Ridout, trumpet

Donavan Austin, trombone

A native of the Bronx, Samara Joy became entranced by classic R&B as a child and cut her teeth as a singer in her church’s gospel choir. And while her family history is deeply musical – her grandparents helmed the Philadelphia gospel group the Savettes, and her father, the musician and songwriter Antonio McLendon, has produced, composed and arranged his own astounding original work – she didn’t delve into the jazz tradition until college at SUNY Purchase. During her studies there she won the 2019 Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Vocal Competition, which introduced her as a rising star to watch. She was heard, by audiences and critics alike, as a masterful interpreter of jazz standards and a rightful heiress of the sound, technique and charisma that defined her jazz heroines – including Vaughan, Betty Carter, Abbey Lincoln and Carmen McRae.

Joy released her self-titled debut on the Whirlwind label in 2021, followed a year later by Linger Awhile, her breakout Verve debut, of which DownBeat said, “With this beautiful recording, a silky-voiced star is born.”

The album earned her a Grammy Award for Best Jazz Vocal Album in addition to a headline-making win for Best New Artist. A deluxe edition of the album was released, as well as the EP A Joyful Holiday, which took home Grammys for Best Jazz Vocal Album and Best Jazz Performance in 2025.

Her new Verve album, Portrait, which Joy co-produced with the veteran trumpeter/bandleader and multiGrammy winner Brian Lynch, showcases the intimate, soulful chemistry she’s developed with her touring band, already earning her an NAACP Image Award this year for Outstanding Jazz Album. Ultimately, Portrait is the perfect recording for Samara Joy to release at this critical juncture in her spellbinding career. It nods to the gifts that made her a phenomenon – her singular voice, with its organic blend of jazz heritage and R&B emotion; her heavenly way with American standards –while allowing her to stake out bold new territory as a writer and bandleader.

Special Thanks

I’m With Her

With the 2014 formation of I’m With Her, singersongwriters Sarah Jarosz, Aoife O’Donovan and Sara Watkins introduced an essential new force into the world of folk music: a close-knit alliance of highly esteemed musicians, each graced with a deep understanding of folk tradition and unbridled passion for expanding its possibilities. Since delivering their critically lauded debut See You Around and standalone singles like “Call My Name” (winner of the 2020 Grammy for Best American Roots Song), the trio have routinely taken time out from their individual careers to dream up songs together – eventually arriving at a new album exploring themes of ancestry, lineage and the collective human experience. On their long-awaited sophomore LP Wild and Clear and Blue, I’m With Her now bring their luminous harmonies to a soul-searching body of work about reaching into the past, navigating a chaotic present and bravely moving forward into the unknown.

In a departure from the stripped-back intimacy of See You Around – a 2018 release that turned up on best-ofthe-year lists from the likes of The New York Times – Wild and Clear and Blue centers on a far more elaborate sound informed by the trio’s intensified sense of musical kinship. All multi-Grammy winners with deep roots in the folk scene, Watkins, Jarosz and O’Donovan first discovered their near-telepathic chemistry during a performance at the 2014 Telluride Bluegrass Festival, then co-founded I’m With Her and began touring extensively and performing at acclaimed festivals across the globe.

I’m With Her

Wild and Clear and Blue 2025 with special guest Jon Muq Fri, Oct 3 / 8 PM / Campbell Hall

Sara Watkins fi ddle, ukulele, guitar

Sarah Jarosz

mandolin, octave mandolin, guitar, banjo

Aoife O’Donovan guitar

Produced by Josh Kaufman, a member of Bonny Light Horseman, multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, arranger and producer who’s worked with Bob Weir and The National, Wild and Clear and Blue ultimately adds a bold new urgency to I’m with Her’s delicate entangling of lived-in narrative, fable-like storytelling and nuanced reflection on cycles of life.

Jon Muq

For Jon Muq, a singer-songwriter born in Uganda and now living in Austin, Texas, music is part of a larger conversation he’s having with the world and everybody in it. Drawing from African as well as western musical trends and traditions, he devises songs as small gifts, designed to settle into everyday life and provoke reflection and resilience.

Muq’s experiences as a child in Uganda and as a man in America give him a unique perspective on the world he’s addressing. “I grew up in a very different life, where so many people pass through hard times just because they don’t have much. Our biggest issue was food scarcity. Then I came to a different world, which gave me a picture of how to write a song that can find balance with everyone wherever they are, whether they have a lot or not much.” With Flying Away, his debut album with producer Dan Auerbach, and tours with Billy Joel, Norah Jones, Mavis Staples, Amythyst Kiah, Corinne Bailey Rae and others, Muq is expanding the scope of his music to speak to more and more people.

photo: Alysse Gafkjen

Ira Glass

Ira Glass

in Conversation with Pico Iyer

Sat, Oct 4 / 7:30 PM / Campbell Hall

Event Sponsor: Crystal & Cliff Wyatt

Speaking with Pico Series Sponsors: Martha Gabbert, Robin & Roger Himovitz, Laura & Kevin O’Connor, Siri & Bob Marshall

Ira Glass is the host and creator of the public radio program This American Life. The show is heard each week by more than five million listeners on public radio stations and podcast.

Glass began his career as an intern at National Public Radio’s network headquarters in Washington, D.C. in 1978, when he was 19 years old. He put This American Life on the air in 1995. He also served as an editor for the groundbreaking podcasts Serial, S-Town and Nice White Parents

Under Glass’ editorial direction, This American Life has won the highest honors for broadcasting and journalistic excellence, including nine Peabody awards and the first Pulitzer Prize ever awarded for audio journalism.

In 2021, the This American Life episode “The Giant Pool of Money” was inducted into the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry, the first podcast ever so honored.

Pico Iyer

Pico Iyer is the author of 17 books, translated into 23 languages, and dealing with subjects ranging from Graham Greene to Islamic mysticism and from globalism to the Cuban Revolution. They include such national bestsellers as The Open Road (a meditation on his first 34 years of talks with the XIVth Dalai Lama), The Art of Stillness, The Half Known Life and Aflame. He has also written the introductions to more than 90 other books, the liner notes for many Leonard Cohen albums and a screenplay for Miramax. For 40 years, he has been a constant essayist for Time, The New York Times, Harper’s, The New York Review of Books and many others.

His five TED talks have received more than 11 million views, and he has been featured in program-length interviews with Oprah, Krista Tippett and Larry King. Born in Oxford, England in 1957, Iyer was a King’s Scholar at Eton and was awarded a Congratulatory Double First at Oxford University, where he received the highest marks of any student of English Literature. He earned a second master’s degree at Harvard and later served as a Ferris Professor at Princeton.

Dividing his time between Japan and Santa Barbara, he has led events for Arts & Lectures for more than a quarter of a century, interviewing such visionaries as Zadie Smith, Philip Glass, Salman Rushdie, Isabella Rossellini and Marina Abramović.

photo: OK McCausland

Elizabeth Gilbert

All

the Way to the River

Sat, Oct 11 / 7:30 PM / Arlington Theatre

Word of Mouth Series Sponsor: Laura & Geof Wyatt

In her critically acclaimed novels and immensely popular works of nonfiction, Elizabeth Gilbert expands our understanding of creativity, spirituality and love. Whatever her subject – her own transformative experiences, the institution of marriage or 1940s showgirls – Gilbert writes with “a mix of intelligence, wit, and colloquial exuberance that is close to irresistible” (The New York Times Book Review). The woman Oprah Winfrey called a “rock star author” is among her generation’s most beloved and inspiring voices; with her books selling more than 25 million copies worldwide, she has an avid international readership and devoted following.

Gilbert’s memoir, Eat, Pray, Love, exploded onto the scene in 2006. The No. 1 New York Times bestseller famously chronicled the year Gilbert spent traveling the world after a shattering divorce. Translated into more than 30 languages, it was adapted into a 2010 film starring Julia Roberts and Javier Bardem. Following Eat, Pray, Love, Gilbert wrote Committed: A Love Story, a meditation on marriage as a sociohistorical institution.

In fall 2025, Gilbert returns with a highly anticipated memoir, All the Way to the River, which follows her relationship with her late partner Rayya Elias. An intense and unlikely curiosity sparked between these two apparent opposites: Rayya, an East Village badass who lived boldly on her own terms but feared she was a failed artist; Liz, a married people-pleaser with a surprisingly unfettered sense of creativity. Over the years, they became friends, then best friends, then inseparable.

When tragedy entered their lives, the truth was finally laid bare: The two were in love. Unacknowledged: they were also a pair of addicts, on a collision course toward catastrophe. As Gilbert shared with People, “I am writing for people who are seekers, people who are hungry, people who are restless, people who, perhaps, since earliest childhood have felt that there absolutely has to be a higher meaning to life than what we have been shown.”

In the years since Eat, Pray, Love, people around the world have looked to Gilbert for guidance in leading brave, authentic and creative lives. Gilbert’s bestselling nonfiction treatise, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear, unpacks her own generative process and shares her wise, witty insights into the mysteries of curiosity and inspiration.

“Part inspiration, part how-to,” wrote The Washington Post, “[Big Magic] offers up both a philosophy of creativity and advice for living a more creatively fulfilling life.”

Written in Gilbert’s “charming, personable, self-aware, jokey, conversational” voice (The New York Times Book Review) and with over one million copies sold, Big Magic underscores Gilbert’s status as a mentor for spiritual seekers and introspective explorers.

From the beginning of her writing career, Gilbert’s observant eye and abiding appreciation for her subjects has distinguished her work. Not merely a writer but also an explorer, she worked in a Philadelphia diner, on

photo: Deborah Lopez

a western ranch, and in a New York City bar to scrape together the funds to travel. Her persistent longing to understand the world and her place in it led her “to create experiences to write about,” she says, “to gather landscapes and voices.”

Starting as a magazine journalist, she wrote articles published in Harper’s Bazaar, Spin and The New York Times Magazine. Her work caught the attention of editors at GQ, where she soon became a stalwart, writing vivid, provocative pieces that grew into books and even a film: 2000’s Coyote Ugly. Gilbert was a finalist for the National Magazine Award, and her work was anthologized in Best American Writing 2001.

Though best known for these works of nonfiction, Gilbert is at her heart an inventive storyteller. She is the author of The Signature of All Things, a sweeping story of botany, exploration and desire that The New York Times Magazine called a “rip-roaring tale… unlike anything Gilbert has ever written.” Her novel City of Girls is the “fiercely feminist” (Esquire) story of a young woman coming into her own in the theater world of 1940s New York. City of Girls debuted at No. 2 on The New York Times bestseller list, selling nearly one million copies.

While her more recent work has grabbed the spotlight, Gilbert’s earlier books met critical acclaim. Her publishing debut, a collection of short fiction titled Pilgrims, was a New York Times Most Notable Book and won a Pushcart Prize, among other honors. Her first novel, Stern Men, won the Kate Chopin Award and her third book, The Last American Man, which explores America’s long-standing intrigue with the pioneer lifestyle, was a finalist for the National Book Award.

Gilbert is also the founder and host of The Onward Book Club, which serves to spotlight, promote, celebrate and uplift the work of Black female authors. She is also the creator of a popular newsletter on Substack called “Letters from Love” (elizabethgilbert.substack.com), in which she teaches the practice of writing oneself daily letters from unconditional love as an antidote to the epidemic of loneliness, self-loathing and perfectionism from which so many modern people suffer. She divides her time between New York City and New Jersey and is always working on something new.

elizabethgilbert.com

Special Thanks

Alexis Okeowo Blessings and Disasters: A Story of Alabama

Tue, Oct 14 / 7:30 PM / Campbell Hall

Justice for All Lead Sponsors: Marcy Carsey, Eva & Yoel Haller, Dick Wolf, and Zegar Family Foundation

Alexis Okeowo is the author of Blessings and Disasters: A Story of Alabama and A Moonless, Starless Sky: Ordinary Women and Men Fighting Extremism in Africa, which received the 2018 PEN Open Book Award. She has reported on conflict, human rights and culture across Africa, Mexico, Europe and the American South for The New Yorker and other publications, and her work has been anthologized in The Best American Sports Writing and The Best American Travel Writing.

Okeowo was named journalist of the year by the Newswomen’s Club of New York in 2020 and received the Reed Environmental Writing Award in 2022.

Special Thanks

Books are available for purchase in the lobby and a signing follows the event

photo: Maya Fuhr

Fareed Zakaria What It Takes

Thu, Oct 16 / 7:30 PM

Arlington Theatre Roman

Lead Sponsor: Sara Miller McCune

Word of Mouth Series Sponsor: Laura & Geof Wyatt

Fareed Zakaria hosts Fareed Zakaria GPS for CNN Worldwide, a weekly international and domestic affairs program that airs around the world on CNN. Since its debut in 2008, it has featured interviews with Barack Obama, Emmanuel Macron, Vladimir Putin, Benjamin Netanyahu, Condoleezza Rice, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Greta Thunberg and the Dalai Lama, among others.

Zakaria regularly hosts primetime specials for CNN. He has been nominated for several Emmys for his television work and has won one. His weekly show has won the prestigious Peabody Award. Fareed’s Global Briefing, a daily digital newsletter, is one of the most widely read of CNN’s newsletters around the world. His column for The Washington Post remains one of the longest running for that newspaper.

Zakaria is the author of five highly-regarded New York Times bestselling books. His most recent release, Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash From 1600 to the Present (2024), debuted at No. 2 on the New York Times bestseller list and was called “the indispensable book for understanding the world today” by Walter Isaacson. The book offers insight into how societies have historically embraced and resisted change to help readers better comprehend the four major revolutions in economics, technology, identity and geopolitics that are shaping our unstable and polarized world today.

Previous titles include: Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World (2020), on how the pandemic reshaped society;

The Post-American World (2008), a discussion of the rise of non-Western powers; The Future of Freedom (2003), a study of “illiberal democracy” in various countries; and In Defense of a Liberal Education (2015), a commentary on the importance of a well-rounded education.

Zakaria was named a Top 10 Global Thinker of the Last 10 Years by Foreign Policy magazine in 2019, and Esquire called him “the most influential foreign policy adviser of his generation.” In 2010, the Government of India awarded him the Padma Bhushan, one of its highest civilian honors, and in 2022, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy awarded him the Order of Merit.

Prior to his tenure at CNN, Zakaria was editor of Newsweek International, managing editor of Foreign Affairs, a columnist for Time, an analyst for ABC News and the host of Foreign Exchange with Fareed Zakaria on PBS. Zakaria earned a bachelor’s degree from Yale University, a doctorate in political science from Harvard University and has received numerous honorary degrees.

Special Thanks

Books are available for purchase in the lobby

Noam Pikelny is widely recognized as the preeminent banjoist of his generation, hailed by the Chicago Tribune as the “pros’ top banjo picker.” Pikelny is a founding member of Punch Brothers, a string ensemble which The Boston Globe called “a virtuosic revelation” and The New Yorker described as “wide-ranging and restlessly imaginative.”

Pikelny was awarded the first annual Steve Martin Prize for Excellence in Banjo and Bluegrass and is a two-time International Bluegrass Music Association Banjo Player of the Year. In 2019, he was awarded the Best Folk Album Grammy award for the Punch Brothers’ release, All Ashore

Most recently, Pikelny has been performing with the new bluegrass band, Mighty Poplar, and co-hosting The Energy Curfew Music Hour, a Chris Thile and Punch Brothers musical variety podcast released by Audible in 2024.

Special Thanks

Noam Pikelny and Friends

Sat, Oct 18 / 7:30 PM / Campbell Hall

Noam Pikelny, banjo

Jake Eddy, guitar

Dan Klingsberg, bass

Julian Pinelli, fi ddle

Teo Quale, mandolin

photo: Bryan Lask

Boz Scaggs, vocals, guitar

Willie Weeks, bass

Jamison Ross, drums

Jon Herrington, guitar

Branlie Mejias, percussion, vocals

Michael Logan, keyboard

Eric Crystal, saxophone, keyboard

Boz Scaggs Rhythm Review 2025

Tue, Oct 21 / 7:30 PM / Arlington Theatre

Boz Scaggs is an American singer, songwriter and guitarist. An early bandmate of Steve Miller in The Ardells and the Steve Miller Band, he began his solo career in 1969, though he lacked a major hit until his 1976 album Silk Degrees peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard 200, featuring the hit singles “Lido Shuffle” and “Lowdown.” Scaggs produced two more platinumcertified albums in Down Two Then Left and Middle Man, with the latter producing two top-40 singles: “Breakdown Dead Ahead” and “Jojo.” After a hiatus for most of the 1980s, he returned to recording and touring in 1988, joining The New York Rock and Soul Revue and opening the nightclub Slim’s, a popular San Francisco music venue until its closure in 2020. He continued to record and tour throughout the 1990s, 2000s and 2010s, with his most recent studio albums being 2018’s Out of the Blues and 2025’s Detour.

Scaggs is credited for helping the formation of Toto. For his 1976 album, Silk Degrees, he hand-picked musicians after taking suggestions from several people. These musicians were David Paich, David Hungate and Jeff Porcaro. The three were already friends and had frequently performed together on other albums such as Steely Dan’s Pretzel Logic, but going on tour with Scaggs solidified the prospect of starting a band. Columbia picked up on this talent by offering the new group a contract without audition. Bandmember Steve Porcaro described this as “a record deal thrown in our laps,” while Paich stated “I’m not sure if Toto would have happened as soon, or quite the same way, without Silk Degrees.” Their friendship has continued throughout the decades, as shown by the varying collaborations and concerts performed together. Paich and Scaggs teamed up once more for Scaggs’ 2001 album, Dig, where he contributed to six out of the 11 songs.

Scaggs was born in Canton, Ohio, the eldest child to Royce and Helen Scaggs. His father was a traveling salesman who had flown in the Army Air Corps during World War II. Their family moved to McAlester, Oklahoma, then to Plano, Texas (at that time a farm town), just north of Dallas. He learned his first instrument, the cello, at age 9. He received a scholarship to attend a private school in Dallas, St. Mark’s School of Texas.

photo: Chris Phelps

At St. Mark’s he met Steve Miller, who helped him to learn the guitar at age 12. A classmate wanted to give Scaggs a “weird” nickname. This started out as “Bosley,” then “Boswell” and “Bosworth.” The name was later shortened to Boz. In 1959, he became the vocalist for Miller’s band, The Marksmen. After graduation in 1962, the pair later attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison together, playing in blues bands like The Ardells and the Fabulous Knight Trains.

Leaving school due to his love for music in 1963, Scaggs signed up for the Army Reserve and formed a new band, The Wigs. By 1965, the band joined the burgeoning R&B scene in London. However success never materialized and the group disbanded within a few months. Scaggs then traveled throughout Europe, earning money from busking. He arrived in Stockholm, Sweden where he recorded his first solo debut album, Boz, in 1965, which failed commercially. He also had a brief stint with the band the Other Side with Mac MacLeod and Jack Downing.

Returning to the U.S., Scaggs promptly headed for the booming psychedelic music center of San Francisco in 1967 after receiving a postcard invitation from Steve Miller to join his band. He appeared on the Steve Miller Band’s first two albums, Children of the Future and Sailor, in 1968. He left the band due to different music tastes and an upset between himself and Miller at the time. Scaggs secured a solo contract with Atlantic Records in 1968, releasing his second album, Boz Scaggs, featuring the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section and session guitarist Duane Allman, in 1969. Despite good reviews, this release achieved only moderate sales. He then briefly hooked up with Bay Area band Mother Earth in a supporting role on their second album Make a Joyful Noise.

Scaggs next signed with Columbia Records, releasing the albums Moments in 1971 and My Time in 1972. His first two Columbia albums were modest sellers and, seeking a new, more soulful direction, his record company brought in former Motown producer Johnny Bristol for 1974’s Slow Dancer album. Although the album only made No. 81 on the U.S. Billboard Album Chart, it subsequently attained gold status, no doubt getting a boost from the huge success of Scaggs’s next album, Silk Degrees.

Special Thanks

Program

Víkingur Ólafsson, piano

Opus 109

Wed, Oct 22 / 7 PM / Campbell Hall

Johann Sebastian Bach: Prelude in E Major, BWV 854

Ludwig van Beethoven: Sonata No. 27, op. 90

Mit Lebhaftigkeit und durchaus mit Empfi ndung und Ausdruck

Nicht zu geschwind und sehr singbar vorgetragen

Johann Sebastian Bach: Partita No. 6 in E minor, BWV 830

Toccata

Allemande

Corrente

Air

Sarabande

Tempo di Gavotta

Gigue

Franz Schubert: Sonata in E minor, D. 566

Moderato

Allegretto

Ludwig van Beethoven: Sonata No. 30, op. 109

Vivace ma non troppo - Adagio espressivo

Prestissimo

Gesangvoll mit innigster Empfi ndung; Andante molto cantabile ed espressivo

Víkingur Ólafsson

Víkingur Ólafsson is one of the most celebrated classical artists of our time; a unique and visionary musician who brings his profound originality to some of the greatest works in music history. His recordings resonate deeply with audiences around the world, reaching over one billion streams and winning numerous awards including the 2025 Grammy for Best Classical Instrumental Solo for his album of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, BBC Music Magazine Album of the Year and Opus Klassik Solo Recording of the Year (twice). Other notable honors include the Rolf Schock Music Prize, Gramophone’s Artist of the Year, Musical America’s Instrumentalist of the Year, the Order of the Falcon (Iceland’s order of chivalry) as well as the Icelandic Export Award, given by the president of Iceland.

November 2025 sees Ólafsson present his latest album, Opus 109, which places Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 30, Op. 109 at its heart. In an illuminating and thrilling musical dialogue with Schubert, J.S. Bach and other works by Beethoven, it traces the lineages that converge on this masterpiece of the piano literature. He tours the anticipated new program widely, bringing it to the greatest concert halls across Europe and North America.

photo: Markus Jans

In 2025-2026 Ólafsson opens the season and tours the U.S. with Philharmonia Orchestra as featured artist, as well as returning to the Berlin Philharmonic with Semyon Bychkov and the Czech Philharmonic with Sir Antonio Pappano. He also reunites with John Adams and the Los Angeles Philharmonic for performances of After the Fall, the piano concerto written expressly for him. Ólafsson will mark the Kurtag centenary celebrations in 2026 and appear as artist in residence at Cal Performances in Berkeley, California and at Müpa Budapest.

Special Thanks

Coming in Spring

Must-see Classical Highlight

One of Today’s Most Captivating Musicians in a Dual Role

Yuja Wang

& Mahler Chamber Orchestra

Thu, Apr 23 / 7 PM / Granada Theatre

Program

Prokofi ev: Symphony No.1

Chopin: Piano Concerto No.1

Prokofi ev: Piano Concerto No.2

photo: Wel Lai Beijing

photo: Gaël Cornier

Lila Downs Día de Muertos

Thu, Oct 23 / 7:30 PM / Arlington Theatre

Presented in association with Santa Barbara Mariachi Festival

George Saenz Jr., Music Director , trombone, accordion

Josh Deutsch, trumpet, keyboard

Rafael Gomez, guitars

Sinuhe Padilla, jarana, guitar, zapateado

Luis Guzman, bass, synthesizer

Nakeiltha Campbell, percussion

Lautaro Burgo, drums

Lila Downs is one of the most influential artists in Latin America. She has one of the world’s most singular voices, and is known for her charismatic performances. Her own compositions often combine genres and rhythms as diverse as Mexican rancheras and corridos, boleros, jazz standards, hip hop, cumbia and North American folk music. Her music often focuses on social justice, immigration and women’s issues.

She grew up in both Minnesota and Oaxaca, Mexico. Her mother is from the Mixtec Indigenous group and her father was Scottish American. Downs sings in Spanish, English and various Native American languages such as Zapotec, Mixtec, Nahuatl, Maya and Purepecha.

She has recorded duets with artists as diverse as Mercedes Sosa, Caetano Veloso, Juanes, Norah Jones, Yo-Yo Ma, Juan Gabriel, Carla Morrison, Natalia Lafourcade, Santana, The Chieftains, Nina Pastori, Soledad, Aída Cuevas, Totó la Momposina and Bunbury. Legendary singer Chavela Vargas named Downs her artistic successor.

Downs has performed with symphonies such as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony and the Orquesta Filarmónica de la UNAM in Mexico, as well as with Wynton Marsalis and Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. She has given concerts at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, the Hollywood Bowl, Auditorio Nacional and Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City. She was invited by Barack Obama to sing at the White House, and has performed at the Oscars for her participation in the film Frida.

Downs has recorded 12 studio albums. She has been nominated for 12 Grammy/Latin Grammy Awards and has won seven.

Special Thanks

photo: Enrique Leyva

Blind Boys of Alabama

The Blind Boys of Alabama are recognized worldwide as living legends of gospel music. Celebrated by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and The Recording Academy/ Grammys with Lifetime Achievement Awards, inducted into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame and winners of six Grammy awards, they have attained the highest levels of achievement in a career that spans over 70 years. The Blind Boys are known for crossing multiple musical boundaries with their remarkable interpretations of everything from traditional gospel favorites to contemporary spiritual material by songwriters such as Eric Clapton, Prince and Tom Waits. They have appeared on recordings with many artists, including Lou Reed, Peter Gabriel, Bonnie Raitt, Willie Nelson, Aaron Neville, Susan Tedeschi, Ben Harper, Patty Griffin and Taj Mahal.

The Blind Boys released their latest album, Echoes of the South, in 2023. It found the Gospel Music Hall of Fame inductees coming home to Alabama to record in Muscle Shoals. The 11-song collection is a portrait of perseverance from a group well-versed in overcoming incredible odds – from singing for pocket change in the Jim Crow South to performing for three different American presidents, soundtracking the Civil Rights movement and helping define modern gospel music as we know it. The album garnered three Grammy Award nominations and won for Best Roots Gospel Album.

Blind Boys of Alabama with special guest Cory Henry

Sat, Oct 25 / 7:30 PM / Campbell Hall Program will be announced from the stage

That win continued a run of Grammy nominations from the two previous years. In 2021, the group’s collaborative recording with Béla Fleck, “I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free,” was tapped in the Best American Roots Performance category. In 2022, they garnered another nod for their collaboration with the band Black Violin on “The Message” in the Best Americana Performance category.

In March 2024, the definitive book on the Blind Boys of Alabama, titled Spirit of the Century, was released. It’s an insider history of America’s longest-running group and the untold story of their world, written with band members and key musical colleagues. Appearances on The View television show and other major media outlets followed. After all these years, the Blind Boys show no signs of slowing down.

Cory Henry

Grammy-winning artist Cory Henry has made a significant mark in the music industry, recently clinching the award for Best Roots Gospel Album in 2025 for his deeply personal project, Church. The album features contributions from his family, including his grandmother, reflecting the rich musical heritage that has shaped his artistry and resonated with audiences worldwide. Along with his Grammy-winning album, PBS aired a documentary on his life and the making of Church, providing an intimate look at his journey and creative process.

photo: Cole Weber

Henry’s impressive accolades also include a Grammy win for his collaboration with the acclaimed Spanish artist Rosalía in 2023, as well as a Grammy for his contributions to Kanye West’s groundbreaking album, Donda. His versatility as a musician has led him to work with a diverse array of artists, including Bruce Springsteen, Imagine Dragons, Kanye West, Stevie Wonder and more.

Originally hailing from Brooklyn, New York, Henry was a key member of the Grammy-winning group Snarky Puppy before launching his solo career in 2018 with his debut album, Art of Love. His sophomore project, Something to Say, was Grammy-nominated for Best Progressive R&B Album in 2022, showcasing his growth as an artist. He followed up with Operation Funk in 2023 and his live album, Live at the Piano, received a nomination in 2024.

In 2024, while touring with the legendary Stevie Wonder, Henry took the opportunity to record a holiday album titled A Wonderful Holiday during his days off, collaborating with members of Wonder’s band. This project showcases his ability to blend his unique style, further highlighting his musical versatility. Additionally,

Henry made a memorable appearance as a guest performer with Jon Batiste at Coachella in 2024.

Henry was also featured in the film Saturday Night in 2024 and appeared in the Little Richard documentary I Am Everything in 2023, further expanding his role in both music and film.

Henry currently leads his own band, The Funk Apostles, captivating audiences with electrifying performances around the world.

Cory Henry’s journey from the vibrant streets of Brooklyn to international stages is a testament to his extraordinary talent and unwavering dedication to his craft. As he continues to explore new musical territories and push boundaries, he remains an influential figure in contemporary music and is quickly becoming an icon around the world – inspiring countless fans and fellow musicians alike.

Special Thanks

A Sadler’s Wells and Shaolin Temple Production

Sutra

Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui / Antony Gormley / Szymon Brzóska with Monks from the Shaolin Temple

Wed, Oct 29 / 7:30 PM / Granada Theatre

Running time: approx. 60 minutes, no intermission

Dance Series Sponsors:

Margo Cohen-Feinberg, Barbara Stupay, Sheila Wald, and Anonymous

Direction and Choreography: Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui

Visual Creation and Design: Antony Gormley

Music: Szymon Brzóska

Performers

Bian Yonghui, Cong Xinle, Gao Youhe, Guan Jinhao, Liu Xinlei, Li Jiaheng, Li Jiaxiang, Li Rui, Li Wenli, Meng Tianpeng, Qin Haobo, Wang Dezhi, Yang Shenglian, Yang Haoran, Zhang Dinghao, Zhen Zijie, Zhao Jiale, Wang Ziyang, Shu Yu, Zeng Chenfeng

Understudy: Peng Ho

Assistant Choreographer/Rehearsal Director: Ali Thabet

Additional Choreographic Assistants: Satoshi Kudo, Damien Fournier, Damien Jalet

Dramaturgical Advice: Lou Cope, An-Marie Lambrechts

Translator/Coordinator: Lifei Zhang

Production Manager/Head of Lighting: Amelia Hawkes

Sound Engineer: Jon Beattie

Company Stage Manager: Marius Arnold-Clarke

Production Carpenter: Seorais Graham

Head of Wardrobe: Heather Cohen

Musicians

Coordt Linke, percussion

Emanuel Salvador, violin

Emilia Goch-Salvador, viola Rebecca Hepplewhite, cello Szymon Brzóska, piano

A Sadler’s Wells production, co-produced with Athens Festival, Festival de Barcelona Grec, Grand Théâtre de Luxembourg, La Monnaie Brussels, Festival d’Avignon, Fondazione Musica per Roma and Shaolin Cultural Communications Company

World Premiere: May 27, 2008 at Sadler’s Wells

photo: Hugo Glendinning

Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui

Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui defies easy description: choreographer, opera director, dancer, composer, pianist, draftsman... and a maker who works across multiple disciplines and platforms including cinema, Broadway, music videos, opera, museums and community art. The director of the Ballet of the Grand Théâtre de Genève first appeared on the dance scene as a startlingly limber performer and, immediately after, as a prolific choreographer with a remarkable ability to create worlds where movement and music and architecture meld seamlessly.

While artistic director of Eastman, his contemporary dance company founded in 2010, and associate artist at London’s Sadler’s Wells and Théâtre National de Bretagne in Rennes, Cherkaoui also helmed Ballet Vlaanderen (Royal Ballet of Flanders) between 2015 and 2022. His journey as a ballet choreographer, though, began more than 15 years ago. The first invitation to the realm of western classical dance came from JeanChristophe Maillot and Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo for whom he made In Memoriam (2004) early in his career. This relationship also produced the unflinching yet beautiful gaze on colonial legacy, Mea Culpa (2006), and 2017’s somber reflection around mortality, Memento Mori

Loin (2005), originally made for the Grand Théâtre du Genève, End (2006) for the Cullberg Ballet, L’Homme de Bois (2006) for the Royal Danish Ballet, Labyrinth (2011) for the Dutch National Ballet, Boléro (2013) for the Paris Opera Ballet, with choreographer Damien Jalet and performance artist Marina Abramović, L’Oiseau de Feu (2015) for Stuttgart Ballet, Medusa (2019) for the Royal Ballet in London and Laid in Earth (2021) for the English National Ballet were the result of memorable encounters with ballet companies across Europe. Cherkaoui made Fall (2015), Exhibition (2016) and Requiem (2017) with the dancers of the Royal Ballet of Flanders after joining the company as artistic director. He has also created pieces for celebrated principal dancers like Natalia Osipova, Carlos Acosta, MarieAgnès Gillot and Friedemann Vogel.

Cherkaoui first experienced the world of opera when he was invited to choreograph Der Ring des Nibelungen (2010-2013), directed by Guy Cassiers at Teatro alla Scala in Milan. As opera director he debuted at La Monnaie with the creation of Shell Shock, A Requiem of War (2014) by Nicholas Lens and Nick Cave. Since

then he directed Jean-Philippe Rameau’s baroque opus Les Indes galantes (2016), Christoph Willibald Gluck’s Alceste (2019), and Toshio Hosokawa’s Hanjo (2023) at Bayerische Staatsoper, Munich, Philip Glass’ minimalist Satyagraha (2017) at Theater Basel, Komische Oper Berlin and Opera Vlaanderen, Claude Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande (2018) with Damien Jalet at Opera Vlaanderen and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Idomeneo (2024) at the Grand Théâtre de Genève.

His affinity for ballet and opera has led to some of his most enduring and high-profile works, and exciting cross-arts collaborations with visual artists including Marina Abramović, Amine Amharech, Hans Op de Beeck and Chiharu Shiota, designers including Hedi Slimane, Karl Lagerfeld, Riccardo Tisci, Jan-Jan Van Essche, Dries Van Noten and Yuima Nakazato and musicians including A Filetta, Woodkid and Felix Buxton.

Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s contemporary dance productions have been celebrated across the globe, from the Nijinski Award-winning Rien de Rien (2000) and early company works like Foi (2003) and Origine (2008) to the more recent Fractus V (2015), Nomad (2019) and Vlaemsch (chez moi) (2022). Cherkaoui’s insatiable curiosity about other movement languages and artistic legacies led to virtuosic and moving experiences including zero degrees (2005) alongside Akram Khan, Sutra (2008) for the warrior monks of the Shaolin Temple in Henan, China, Dunas (2009) with flamenca Maria Pagés, Play (2011) beside kutchipudi danseuse Shantala Shivalingappa, Session (2019) with Irish traditional dance exponent Colin Dunne, and an Accident / a Life (2024), a dance-theater solo directed with and for Marc Brew.

The last decade has seen increased forays into choreography for cinema, theater and pop music. Collaborations with filmmaker Joe Wright resulted in memorable celluloid ventures (such as Anna Karenina in 2012 and Cyrano in 2022). Cherkaoui teamed up with Wright as co-director and choreographer on a searing stage adaptation of Aimé Césaire’s A Season in the Congo (2013) as well. He also choreographed Lyndsey Turner’s 2015 production of Hamlet at the Barbican Centre in London. With Bunkamura in Tokyo he directed Pluto (2015), based on the award-winning manga series by Naoki Urasawa and Takashi Nagasaki, and Evangelion Beyond (2023), an original play showing an alternative version of Hideaki Anno’s Evangelion franchise.

Since the mid-2010s, Cherkaoui has choreographed several of Beyoncé’s music videos and stage performances, beginning with a medley performance of Lemonade for the 2017 Grammy Awards and continuing right up to the music video of 2019’s “Spirit,” the single originally composed for the soundtrack of The Lion King. In the same year, Cherkaoui made his Broadway debut as choreographer for the Alanis Morissette musical Jagged Little Pill, for which he picked up a Tony Award nomination in the Best Choreography for a Musical category, the first Belgian artist to do so. He is also the movement director behind the 2022 revival of Michel Berger and Luc Plamondon’s rock-opera Starmania, which was laurelled with a Q d’Or, two Molières and two Trophées de la Comédie Musicale. Most recently, he choreographed several songs in Madonna’s Celebration tour.

Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s diverse collection of awards and nominations are a useful shorthand for his immense range. His work has picked up a staggering number, including two Olivier Awards, three Tanz Awards, a Giraldillo Award, the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award, an Ultima from the Flemish government and the Kairos Prize for his services to art and culture. There are more unusual ones too, such as a Fred and Adele Astaire Award – otherwise known as the Oscars of dance in cinema – and the title of Young Artist for Intercultural Dialogue between the Arab and Western Worlds, conferred by UNESCO in 2011. His latest awards include the 2019 Fedora-Van Cleefs Prize for Ballet and an MTV Video Music Awards nomination for Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s “Apeshit,” shot at the Louvre Museum in Paris. In November 2024, the King of Belgium officially bestowed upon Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui the title of Baron, the first Belgian Baron of North African descent.

Antony Gormley

Antony Gormley is widely acclaimed for his sculptures, installations and public artworks that investigate the relationship of the human body to space. His work has developed the potential opened up by sculpture since the 1960s through a critical engagement with both his own body and those of others in a way that confronts fundamental questions of where human beings stand in relation to nature and the cosmos. Gormley continually tries to identify the space of art as a place of becoming in which new behaviors, thoughts and feelings can arise.

Gormley’s work has been widely exhibited throughout the U.K. and internationally with exhibitions at the Long Museum, Shanghai (2017); National Portrait Gallery, London (2016); Forte di Belvedere, Florence (2015); Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern (2014); Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Brasilia (2012); Deichtorhallen, Hamburg (2012); The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg (2011); Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria (2010); Hayward Gallery, London (2007); Malmö Konsthall, Sweden (1993) and Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark (1989). Permanent public works include the Angel of the North (Gateshead, England), Another Place (Crosby Beach, England), Inside Australia (Lake Ballard, Western Australia), Exposure (Lelystad, The Netherlands) and Chord (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass., USA).

Gormley was awarded the Turner Prize in 1994, the South Bank Prize for Visual Art in 1999, the Bernhard Heiliger Award for Sculpture in 2007, the Obayashi Prize in 2012 and the Praemium Imperiale in 2013. In 1997 he was made an Officer of the British Empire (OBE) and was made a knight in the New Year’s Honours list in 2014. He is an honorary fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects, an honorary doctor of the University of Cambridge and a fellow of Trinity and Jesus Colleges, Cambridge. Gormley has been a Royal Academician since 2003.

Antony Gormley was born in London in 1950.

Szymon Brzóska

Originally from Poland, Szymon Brzóska graduated from the Music Academy in Poznań, Poland as well as the Royal Flemish Conservatory in Antwerp, Belgium, where he studied under composers such as Mirosław Bukowski and Luc Van Hove. Szymon Brzóska’s work explores synergy between music, movement, and image. The composer’s particular interest has led him to participate in many collaborative projects across various art forms. Next to his autonomous work, Szymon Brzóska has an established career in creating music for contemporary dance. He worked with many award-winning choreographers (Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, David Dawson, Maria Pages, Vladimir Malakhov, Yabin Wang), acclaimed orchestras and ensembles (Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden, The Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, The Bruckner Orchester), outstanding soloists (Patrizia Bovi, Barbara Drazkov, Fernando Marzan) and reputable dance companies (Het Nationale Ballet, GöteborgsOperans Danskompani,

Semperoper Ballet, Cedar Lake Company, Eastman). His compositions have been performed many times over in numerous prestigious venues and festivals across the world such as Sadler’s Wells Theatre, Sydney Opera House, Lincoln Center and BAM in New York, Semperoper in Dresden, Esplanade in Singapore as well as at the Festival D’Avignon. An author of two original soundtracks, his music was performed live accompanying animation films at the 2017 and 2019 editions of the International Animated Film Festival ANIMATOR in Poznań. Brzoska’s autonomous compositions were performed at the Venture Festival in Antwerp, Festival of Polish Piano Music in Słupsk, Sounds New Contemporary Music Festival in Canterbury, Operadagen in Rotterdam, Tehran International Contemporary Music Festival and En Avant Mars Festival in Gent.

Shaolin Temple

The warrior monks performing in Sutra are from the Shaolin Temple, situated near Songshan Mountain in the Henan Province of China and established in 495 AD by monks originating from India. In 1983, the State Council defined the Shaolin Temple as the key national Buddhist Temple. They follow a strict Buddhist doctrine, of which kung fu and Tai Chi martial arts are an integral part of their daily regime.

A patriarchal clan system presides within the Temple and in nearly 800 years, there have been over 30 generations of monks. The representatives of the current generations have, in their surnames, the characters of Su, De, Xing, Yong, Yan and Heng. Shaolin kung fu is one of the oldest Chinese martial arts traditions.

Based on a belief in the supernatural power of Chan Buddhism, the moves practiced by the Shaolin kung fu monks are its major form of expression. According to the guidebooks handed down in the Shaolin Temple, kung fu has 708 movement sequences, plus another 552 boxing sequences and 72 unique skills for capturing, wrestling, disjointing and touching vital points in order to cause injury.

The monks of the Shaolin Temple regard the perfection of their kung fu warrior skills as their lifelong goal. Fully understanding life with no fear in their hearts, their physical and mental practice embodies the ancient Chinese belief in the unity between heaven and man.

Sadler’s Wells

Sadler’s Wells is a world-leading creative organization based in London committed to the making of dance, with over three centuries of theatrical heritage. Since 2005, Sadler’s Wells has created award-winning dance productions, co-productions and touring projects in collaboration with its portfolio of associate artists, as well as international dance companies and partners.

These include Russell Maliphant’s multi-award-winning production PUSH with Sylvie Guillem; Crystal Pite’s Polaris with Thomas Adès; Gravity Fatigue, directed by fashion designer Hussein Chalayan; Sutra by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and sculptor Antony Gormley; Michael Keegan-Dolan’s Swan Lake/Loch na hEala; productions by Carlos Acosta’s company Acosta Danza; Natalia Osipova’s Pure Dance; Botis Seva’s Olivier Award winning BLKDOG and William Forsythe’s A Quiet Evening of Dance.

Sadler’s Wells plays a significant role in the development of dance, bringing innovative and inspiring works to worldwide audiences. In the last 15 years, it has created 87 productions that have been enjoyed by 2.6 million people, with over 2,500 performances given at 388 venues in 51 countries. Sadler’s Wells productions have toured to some of the most prestigious theaters and festivals around the world, such as the Sydney Opera House, Park Avenue Armory New York, Theatres de la Ville Luxembourg, the Shanghai International Dance Centre, LA Music Center, Chekhov International Theatre Festival in Moscow and Tokyo International Forum.

In 2020, Sadler’s Wells premiered Message In A Bottle, a Sadler’s Wells and Universal Music U.K. production by Kate Prince, based on the songs of Sting. In 2021 The Rite of Spring / common ground[s] received its world premiere, in partnership with the Pina Bausch Foundation and Ecole des Sables in Senegal. Recent projects include Pete Townshend’s Quadrophenia: A Mod Ballet and Kontakthof – Echoes of ’78 by Pina Bausch and Meryl Tankard.

sadlerswells.com

(continued on page 37)

¡Viva el Arte de Santa Bárbara! brings people together to share the rich cultural heritage of Latin America, serving more than 15,000 students and community members each year throughout Santa Barbara County.

Created in 2006 out of a commitment to arts access for all, Viva works with dozens of local partners to present high-quality artists who share their knowledge and passion. Schools, neighborhood spaces and community centers come alive in these free programs for youth and families.

¡Viva el Arte de Santa Bárbara! is a collaboration between The Marjorie Luke Theatre, Guadalupe Visual & Performing Arts Center, Isla Vista School Parent Teacher Association and UCSB Arts & Lectures, serving Carpinteria, Santa Barbara, Goleta, Lompoc, Santa Maria, Guadalupe and New Cuyama.

Coming in Fall of 2025

Grupo Bella

September 18-21

Gaby Moreno

November 6-9

Performances are FREE

(no registration required)

For nearly two decades, Viva has brought vibrant cultural performance and educational opportunities to the most underserved in Santa Barbara County.

Join us in securing the future of this vital partnership with a gift to ¡Viva el Arte de Santa Bárbara!

For more information about supporting Viva, contact Elise Erb, Senior Director of Development, at (805) 893-5679.

photo: Isaac Hernández de Lipa

Ballet Nepantla performs a free concert

Access for ALL | Arts & Lectures Learning

Through Access for ALL, inspirational, dynamic learning experiences are possible for students and lifelong learners across classrooms, our community and the UCSB campus.

UCSB Students

• Classroom visits

• Master classes

• Panel discussions

• Lecture-demonstrations

• Discounted and free admission to A&L mainstage events

K-12

• Matinee field trips for students from across the county

• Assemblies

• Workshops

• Q&As

Lifelong Learners

• Thematic Learning Initiative (TLI): Extending the conversation through film screenings, special events and book giveaways

• Author signings

• Pre-show talks and post-show Q&As

• Community workshops

Access for ALL serves more than 30,000 students and community members annually.

Please consider a contribution to A&L’s award-winning educational outreach programs. Call Elise Erb, Senior Director of Development, at (805) 893-5679 to learn more.

“Art, whether you are a maker of it or a receiver of it, can teach you how to be artful and gentle with the things that you don’t fully understand about the world and about yourself.” – Jacob Collier

Thank you to our Education and ¡Viva el Arte de Santa Bárbara! Sponsors

Arnhold A&L Education Initiative

William H. Kearns Foundation

Kath Lavidge & Ed McKinley

Dorothy Largay & Wayne Rosing

Sara Miller McCune

Linda Stafford Burrows

La Centra-Sumerlin Foundation

Audrey & Timothy O. Fisher

Connie Frank & Evan Thompson

Eva & Yoel Haller

Robin & Roger Himovitz

Hutton Parker Foundation

Little One Foundation and Belle Hahn

Lucky One Foundation and Hahn Shining Family

The Roddick Foundation

Stone Family Foundation

Towbes Fund for Performing Arts, an interest area of the Santa Barbara Foundation

1.

University Support: Office of the Executive Vice Chancellor Office of the Chancellor

Grammy Award-winning musician Jacob Collier leads a FREE master class for UCSB students 2. Story Pirates visits Guadalupe Elementary School 3. Fredrik Sjölin of Danish String Quartet teaches a master class for UCSB music students 4. Elementary school students enjoy a free performance by Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater as part of A&L’s Arts Adventures bus-in program.

The Benefits of Giving

Your seat is waiting! Become a member and join a network of arts advocates that enable us to deliver remarkable programming on and off stage.

The Benefi ts of Giving

Unrivaled access to A&L’s most exceptional experiences – crafted just for you

Invitations to dinners with artists or lecturers and other A&L members

Opportunity to host reception with an artist or lecturer

Sponsorship opportunities

Complimentary reserved parking for all ticketed Campbell Hall events

Opportunity to introduce guests to Arts & Lectures with a pair of complimentary tickets to an A&L public event, as available

Access to reserved VIP seating at A&L Summer Cinema Series at the Santa Barbara Courthouse Sunken Garden

VIP Ticketing Concierge Service and Priority Seating

Complimentary ticket exchange when your plans change

Invitations to Producers Circle Receptions with featured artists and speakers

Access to Intermission Lounge in the McCune Founders Room during A&L performances and lectures at The Granada Theatre

Invitation to A&L’s exclusive Season Announcement Party

Opportunity to attend master classes and other educational activities

Invitation to a member appreciation event

Recognition in A&L event programs or digital media

To learn more about membership, contact Annual Giving & Membership Manager Austin Janisch at membership@artsandlectures.ucsb.edu or (805) 893-2174.

Thank You Arts & Lectures Supporters!

Arts & Lectures Council

Arts & Lectures is privileged to acknowledge our Council, a group of insightful community leaders and visionaries who help us meet the challenge to educate, entertain and inspire.

Marcy Carsey

Timothy O. Fisher

Rich Janssen

Dorothy Largay, Co-Chair

Kath Lavidge

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Arts & Lectures Ambassadors

Jillian Muller

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Tom Sturgess

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Arts & Lectures is proud to acknowledge our Ambassadors, volunteers who help ensure the sustainability of our program by cultivating new supporters and assisting with fundraising activities.

Winnie Dunbar

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Arts & Lectures Program Advisor

Bruce Heavin

Leadership Circle

Maxine Prisyon

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Our Leadership Circle members, a group of key visionaries giving $10,000 to $100,000 or more each year, make a significant, tangible difference in the community and help bring A&L’s roster of premier artists and global thinkers to Santa Barbara. We are proud to recognize their philanthropy.

$100,000+

Jody & John Arnhold

Marcy Carsey

Audrey & Timothy O. Fisher ◊ ‡

G.A. Fowler Family Foundation

Martha Gabbert

Eva & Yoel Haller ◊

$50,000+

Patricia Bragg Foundation

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Cancer Foundation of Santa Barbara

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William H. Kearns Foundation ‡

$25,000+

Betsy Atwater

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Otis Booth Foundation

Gary Bradhering & Sheraton Kalouria

Marcia & John Mike Cohen ‡

Margo Cohen-Feinberg

Cottage Children’s Medical Center

Robin & Roger Himovitz

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Dorothy Largay & Wayne Rosing ◊

Manitou Fund

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Arts & Lectures gratefully recognizes the commitment and generosity of our Producers Circle members, who have made gifts between $2,500 and $9,999. Recognition is based upon a donor’s cumulative giving/pledges within a 12-month period.

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List current as of Sep 9, 2025. Every effort has been made to ensure accuracy. Please notify our office of any errors or omissions at (805) 893-2174.

* In Memoriam

◊ Indicates those who have made plans to support UCSB Arts & Lectures through their estate

‡ Indicates those that have made gifts to Arts & Lectures endowed funds in addition to their annual program support

Legacy Circle

Legacy Circle members listed below have made provisions in their estate plans to support A&L and ensure our exciting programs continue for future generations. We are pleased to acknowledge these thoughtful commitments.

Judy & Bruce Anticouni

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Arts & Lectures Endowments

Roman Baratiak Endowed Lecture Fund for A&L Fund for Programmatic Excellence

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Education and Outreach Fund

Sara Miller McCune Executive Director of Arts & Lectures

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¡Viva el Arte de Santa Bárbara! Endowment

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California Arts Council

City of Santa Barbara

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University Support

Arts & Lectures is especially grateful to UCSB students for their support through registration and activity fees. These funds directly support lower student ticket prices and educational outreach by A&L artists and writers who visit classes.

Arts & Lectures Staff

Meghan Bush, Miller McCune Executive Director

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Production Specialist

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Jennifer Ramos, Programming Manager

Mike Rojas, Production Coordinator

Heather Silva, Managing Director of Development

Angelina Toporov, Marketing Specialist

Laura Wallace, Finance & HR Manager

Eliot Winder, Production Manager

(continued from page 28)

Credits

For Sadler’s Wells

Artistic Director & Co-Chief Executive: Alistair Spalding CBE

Executive Producer: Suzanne Walker

Senior Producer: Rosalind Wynn

Assistant Producer: Andrea Obinna Pelagatti

Tour Producer: Aristea Charalampidou

Head of Production: Adam Carrée

Marketing Manager: Natalie Zagaglia

Head of Media and Communications: Freddie Todd Fordham

Media Officer: Laura Neil

Marketing and Communications Coordinator: Steven Lou

Producing and Touring Trainee: Peijia Hu

Associate Producer: Hisashi Itoh

Consultant Producer for Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui: Karthika Nair

For Shaolin Temple

Abbot of the Shaolin Temple: Master Shi Yinle

Sutra Project Coordinator & Interpreter: Lifei Zhang

Special Thanks

Dazzling Hip Hop Choreography From France

Compagnie Hervé KOUBI

Sol Invictus

Hervé Koubi, Artistic Director Sun, Jan 25 / 7:30 PM Granada Theatre

“The dancers of Compagnie Hervé KOUBI… could be mistaken for gods. They glide, spin, toss one another in high arcs through the air, exhibiting an uncanny mastery of the body and a gravitas that renders their movements into poetry.” The New Yorker

Dance Series Sponsors: Margo Cohen-Feinberg, Barbara Stupay, Sheila Wald, and Anonymous

Itzhak Perlman

In the Fiddler’s House

Featuring: Hankus Netsky, Andy Statman, Members of the Brave Old World and Klezmer Conservatory Band and other special guests

Thu, Oct 30 / 7 PM / Granada Theatre

Program will be announced from the stage

Lead Sponsor: Sara Miller McCune

Itzhak Perlman, violin

Hankus Netsky,

Music Director, arranger, saxophone, piano

Andy Statman, clarinet, mandolin

Michael Alpert, vocals, guitar, accordion, violin

Lorin Sklamberg, vocals, accordion

Judy Bressler, vocals, tambourine

Frank London, trumpet

Klezmer Conservatory Band

Ilene Stahl, clarinet

Mark Berney, trumpet

Mark Hamilton, trombone

James Guttmann, bass

Grantley Smith, drums

Pete Rushefsky, tsimbl

Itzhak Perlman

Undeniably the reigning virtuoso of the violin, Itzhak Perlman enjoys superstar status rarely afforded a classical musician. Beloved for his charm and humanity as well as his talent, he is treasured by audiences throughout the world who respond not only to his remarkable artistry but also to his irrepressible joy for making music.

Having performed with every major orchestra and at concert halls around the globe, Perlman was granted a Presidential Medal of Freedom – the Nation’s highest civilian honor – by President Obama in 2015, a National Medal of Arts by President Clinton in 2000 and a Medal of Liberty by President Reagan in 1986. Perlman has been honored with 16 Grammy Awards, four Emmy Awards, a Kennedy Center Honor, a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and a Genesis Prize.

In the 2025-2026 season, Perlman celebrates his 80th birthday season with a variety of programs. He performs his iconic PBS special In the Fiddler’s House program alongside today’s klezmer stars. His orchestral engagements include Cinema Serenade programs with the Cleveland Orchestra, Louisville Orchestra and Colorado Springs Philharmonic as well as a play/ conduct program with the San Francisco Symphony. He also makes a special appearance with the Colorado Symphony at Carnegie Hall. He continues touring An Evening with Itzhak Perlman and plays recitals across the U.S. with longtime collaborator Rohan De Silva.

photo: Drew Gurian 2018

For over 30 years, Perlman has been devoted to music education, mentoring gifted young string players alongside his wife Toby in the Perlman Music Program (PMP). With close to 800 alumni, PMP is shaping the future landscape of classical music worldwide. Perlman has an exclusive series of classes with Masterclass.com, the premier online education company that enables access to the world’s most brilliant minds, as the company’s first classical-music presenter.

Hankus Netsky

A multi-instrumentalist, composer and ethnomusicologist, Dr. Hankus Netsky is co-chair of New England Conservatory’s Contemporary Musical Arts Department, founder and director of the Klezmer Conservatory Band and former vice president for education at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts. He has composed extensively for film, theater and television, collaborated closely on musical projects featuring Itzhak Perlman, Robin Williams, Joel Grey, Theodore Bikel, Alicia Svigals, Ran Blake, Robert Brustein, Linda Chase, Janice “Octavia” Allen, Eden MacAdam-Somer, Rosalie Gerut and Robert Pinsky and produced numerous recordings, including 10 by the Klezmer Conservatory Band. He has taught at McGill University, Hampshire College, Wesleyan University, Hebrew College and for Silkroad’s Global Musician Workshops. His essays on Jewish and improvisational music have been published by the University of California Press, University of Pennsylvania Press, Indiana University Press, University of Scranton Press, Hips Roads and University Press of America. He edited The Hoffman Book, a collection of 161 klezmer tunes that formed the basis of Philadelphia’s early 20th century klezmer repertoire published in 2023, and Temple University Press published his book Klezmer, Music and Community in 20th Century Jewish Philadelphia in 2015.

Andy Statman

Born into a family with a long line of cantors, composers and both classical and vaudeville musicians, Andy Statman grew up in Queens, New York. His early musical memories include 1950s rock and roll, big band jazz and classical music; family get-togethers where the celebrants danced to klezmer melodies and Tin Pan Alley and Broadway tunes; and the rabbi in his afternoon religious school who sang Hasidic songs. Statman started playing bluegrass at the age of 12

and was soon performing with local bands at colleges, on the radio, in clubs and Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village. At 17, after hearing avant-garde jazz saxophonist Albert Ayler, he began studying saxophone. He became a protégé of legendary klezmer clarinetist Dave Tarras, who wrote a number of melodies and bequeathed four of his clarinets to Statman.

Andy Statman has appeared on more than 100 recordings. He has recorded and toured with the Grateful Dead, Bob Dylan, Dr. John, Ricky Skaggs, Béla Fleck, David Grisman and Itzhak Perlman, among others. A Grammy Award nominee and recipient of grants from the NEA Fellowship and New York State Council on the Arts, Statman has performed at Carnegie Hall, Town Hall, Lincoln Center and The Met, and at major venues throughout the United States, Europe, Canada, Japan and Israel. In 2012 Statman received the National Heritage Award from the National Endowment for the Arts – the highest honor given to tradition-based musicians and artists in the United States. In June 2022, Statman made his debut on the Grand Ole Opry stage in Nashville where he continues to make guest appearances.

Klezmer Conservatory Band

A leading voice in the world of klezmer music and Yiddish song for more than 45 years, the Klezmer Conservatory Band (KCB) continues to thrill audiences all over the world. With a repertoire ranging from Yiddish standards to rousing dance medleys and little-known gems, the KCB musicians have served as important ambassadors in promoting the universal appeal of Eastern European Jewish music.

Over the years, the band has appeared at dozens of international music festivals in major venues across the United States, Europe and Australia and on 12 international broadcasts of NPR’s A Prairie Home Companion. The KCB was prominently featured in the 1988 documentary film A Jumpin’ Night in the Garden of Eden, and in 1988 world-renowned choreographer Bill T. Jones choreographed a major work for the Boston Ballet based on selections from their album, A Jumpin’ Night in the Garden of Eden. They also provided the musical accompaniment for “The Fool and the Flying Ship,” a 1991 video featuring Robin Williams; played an integral role in Joel Grey’s Borscht Capades ’94; and performed the music for the acclaimed American Repertory Theatre and American Musical Theatre Festival production, Shlemiel the First

Since the mid-1990s, Itzhak Perlman has featured the KCB in his album, video and touring project, In the Fiddler’s House, including performances at Wolftrap, the Hollywood Bowl, Radio City Music Hall, Ravinia Festival, Saratoga Music Festival, Moscow’s Barvikha Concert Hall, Mizner Park Amphitheater in Boca Raton and Mann Music Center in Philadelphia. In December 2002, the KCB performed a concert of orchestral arrangements of klezmer and Yiddish vocal music with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. In 2013, the band joined Perlman as an integral part of his cantorial/Hassidic/klezmer/ Yiddish folk music project, Eternal Echoes, which received rave reviews as a Sony album release and for live concert performances at venues including Boston’s Symphony Hall, Brooklyn’s Barclay’s Center, Roy Thompson Hall in Toronto and the Hollywood Bowl. The band was also featured with Perlman in 2013’s

Great Performances 40th Anniversary Gala Broadcast from Lincoln Center and 2014’s Rejoice, a full-length PBS Great Performances Jewish music special.

The band’s recordings include Yiddishe Renaissance, Klez and A Touch of Klez on the Vanguard label, and Oy Chanukah, A Jumpin’ Night in the Garden of Eden, Old World Beat, Live!: The Thirteenth Anniversary Album, Dancing in the Aisles, A Taste of Paradise and the highly acclaimed Dance Me to the End of Love on Rounder.

Special Thanks

Nicola Benedetti, violin Director, Edinburgh International Festival

Wed, Jan 28 / 7 PM / Campbell Hall

Program

Bloch: “Prayer” from From Jewish Life

Ponce: Estrellita

Sarasate: Carmen Concert Fantasy

Sarasate: Caprice Basque

Jay Ungar: Ashokan Farewell

Peter Maxwell Davies: Farewell to Stromness

Plus works by Clara Schumann and Arturo Paganini along with new commissions and arrangements of traditional Scottish music

Lead Sponsor: Sara Miller McCune

Ezra Klein Abundance

Tue, Nov 4 / 7:30 PM / Arlington Theatre

Event Sponsor: Natalie Orfalea Foundation & Lou Buglioli

Word of Mouth Series Sponsor: Laura & Geof Wyatt

Using his trademark depth of policy knowledge and academic research, Ezra Klein gives audiences a systematic look at why American politics is so polarized, and what that polarization has done to electoral institutions, policymaking and the media.

Ezra Klein is a columnist on the New York Times Opinion page, host of the award-winning Ezra Klein Show podcast, and author of two bestselling books: Why We’re Polarized and his latest, Abundance, which explores how America can break through stagnation and rekindle a sense of shared national possibility.

Before that, he was the founder, editor-in-chief and then editor-at-large of Vox, the explanatory news platform, which has won a bevy of awards and now reaches more than 50 million people each month. He was also a creator and executive producer of its hit Netflix show Explained.

Prior to starting Vox, Klein founded and led The Washington Post’s Wonkblog. He is also a columnist for Bloomberg News and a regular contributor/policy analyst for MSNBC.

The Economist named him one of the Minds of the Moment. In 2011, Time named his blog one of the 25 best financial blogs and the Society of American Business Editors and Writers named Klein as their 2011 Opinion Columnist of the Year. In 2012, GQ named him to their 50 Most Powerful People in

Washington list and Esquire named him to their 79 Things We Can All Agree On list, saying, “Ezra Klein gives economics columnists a good name.”

Special Thanks

Books are available for purchase in the lobby

Choreography: Angelin Preljocaj

Music: Maurice Ravel, Johann Sebastian Bach, Iannis Xenakis, Dimitri Shostakovich, Daft Punk, Philip Glass, 79D

Costumes: Igor Chapurin

Lighting: Éric Soyer

Dancers:

Angie Armand, Liam Bourbon Simeonov, Clara Freschel, Mar Gomez Ballester, Paul-David Gonto, Lucas Hessel, Verity Jacobsen, Beatrice La Fata, Yu-Hua Lin, Florine Pegat-Toquet, Valen Rivat-Fournier, Leonardo Santini

Ballet Preljocaj

Angelin Preljocaj, Director Gravity

Wed, Nov 5 / 7:30 PM / Granada Theatre

Running time: approx. 80 minutes, no intermission

Dance Series Sponsors: Margo Cohen-Feinberg, Barbara Stupay, Sheila Wald, and Anonymous

Rehearsal Assistant: Paolo Franco

Choreologist: Dany Lévêque

Technical Director: Luc Corazza

General Production and Sound Manager: Martin Lecarme

Lighting Manager: Gaspard Juan

Stage Manager: Michel Pellegrino

Wardrobe Manager: Tania Heidelberger

Production: Ballet Preljocaj

Coproduction:

Chaillot - Théâtre National de la Danse - Paris, Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg, Biennale de la danse de Lyon 2018, Grand Théâtre de Provence, Scène Nationale d’Albi, Theater Freiburg (DE)

World Premiere: September 20, 2018, Théâtre National Populaire de Villeurbanne within Biennale de la danse de Lyon, France

The Ballet Preljocaj, National Choreographic Centre is subsidized by the Ministry of Culture and Communication – DRAC PACA, ProvenceAlpes-Côte d’Azur Region, Bouches-du-Rhône Department, AixMarseille Provence Metropolis, City of Aix-en-Provence, supported by Groupe Partouche - Pasino Grand Aix-en-Provence, Individuals and companies sponsors and private partners. This US tour is supported by the Paris French Institute.

photo: Jean-Claude Carbonne

Choreographer’s Note

Gravitation is one of the four fundamental forces that govern the universe. It refers to the force which means two masses are attracted to one another. It is invisible, intangible, essential. But it is the force which creates the attraction that we call weight.

For years, these issues of weight, space, speed and mass have intuitively run through my choreographic experiments. My day-to-day work with the dancers leads me to experiment with forms whose basic components revolve around this question, which is both abstract and terribly concrete.

Today, according to a principle of alternation between pieces based on pure research and more narrative ballets, I expect this set of problems involving gravity to open up new writing spaces for me.

– Angelin Preljocaj

Ballet Preljocaj

Founded by Angelin Preljocaj in 1985, the Preljocaj company became the National Choreographic Centre of Champigny-sur-Marne and Val-de-Marne in 1989. In 1996, the ballet was welcomed at the Cité du Livre in Aix-en-Provence and became the Ballet Preljocaj – National Choreographic Centre of the ProvenceAlpes-Côte d’Azur Region, the Bouches-du-Rhône Department, the Pays d’Aix Community and the City of Aix-en-Provence. The company is now composed of 30 permanent dancers and performs about 120 dates per year on tour, in France and abroad.

Since October 2006, the Ballet Preljocaj has been located at the Pavillon Noir, designed by the architect Rudy Ricciotti in Aix-en-Provence. The Pavillon Noir is the first production center built for dance, where artists are able to go through the entire creative process, from workshops and rehearsals to staging and performance. Performances are programmed all year round, Angelin Preljocaj’s creations and also invited companies, as well as local actions in Aix-en-Provence and neighbouring communities, in order to share the passion for dance with a broader public: video-dance, public rehearsals, contemporary dance classes and workshops – all means of viewing and understanding dance from different perspectives.

Angelin Preljocaj

Angelin Preljocaj was born in the Paris region, in France, and began studying classical ballet before turning to contemporary dance, which he studied with Karin Waehner. In 1980, he went to New York to work with Zena Rommett and Merce Cunningham, after which he resumed his studies in France. There his teachers included American choreographer Viola Farber and French choreographer Quentin Rouillier. He then joined Dominique Bagouet before founding his own company in 1984.

Angelin Preljocaj collaborates regularly with other artists in various fields such as music (Goran Vejvoda, Air, Laurent Garnier, Granular Synthesis, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Thomas Bangalter), visual arts (Claude Lévêque, Subodh Gupta, Adel Abdessemed), design (Constance Guisset), fashion (Jean Paul Gaultier, Azzedine Alaïa, Igor Chapurin), drawing (Enki Bilal), literature (Pascal Quignard, Éric Reinhardt, Laurent Mauvignier) and animation movies (Boris Labbé).

His productions are now part of the repertoire of many companies, many of which also commission original productions from him, notably La Scala of Milan, the New York City Ballet and the Paris National Opera Ballet. In 2019 he was appointed to the French Academy of Fine Arts in its new choreography section.

After Swan Lake in 2020 and Deleuze / Hendrix in 2021, he created and directed Lully’s opera Atys for the Grand Théâtre de Genève in 2022. At the same time, he created a short choreography for the Danse l’Europe! app. For Dior, he created the choreography and film Roman Night with the dancers of the Rome Opera Ballet. He also participated in the television series Irma Vep by Olivier Assayas, as an actor and choreographer. In July 2022, he created Mythologies with original music by ex-Daft Punk Thomas Bangalter at the Opéra National de Bordeaux. In February 2023 he created Birthday Party for senior performers at the Théâtre National de Chaillot, on a commission from Aterballetto, and Torpeur in June 2023 within Festival Montpellier Danse. His latest production Requiem(s) was created in May 2024 at Grand Théâtre de Provence.

Sherrilyn Ifill Reimagining a New American Democracy

Thu, Nov 6 / 7:30 PM / Campbell Hall

Justice for All Lead Sponsors: Marcy Carsey, Eva & Yoel Haller, Dick Wolf, and Zegar Family Foundation

Sherrilyn Ifill is a civil rights lawyer and scholar. From 2013 to 2022, she served as the president and directorcounsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF), the nation’s premier civil rights law organization fighting for racial justice and equality. She recently served as a Ford Foundation Fellow and as the Klinsky Visiting Professor for Leadership & Progress at Howard Law School. Ifill is currently the Vernon Jordan Distinguished Professor in Civil Rights at Howard Law School, where she launched the 14th Amendment Center for Law and Democracy. Ifill holds a fellowship at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Ifill’s tenure at the helm of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund was widely praised for elevating the profile, voice and influence of the organization, and for expanding and deepening its work across multiple areas of civil rights law. Ifill’s voice and analysis played a prominent role in shaping our national conversation about race and civil rights during a tumultuous period of racial reckoning in our country. Her strategic vision and counsel remains highly sought after by leaders in government, business, law, grassroots organizations and academia.

Ifill began her legal career as a fellow at the American Civil Liberties Union before joining the staff of the LDF as an assistant counsel, where she litigated voting rights cases in the South. In 1993 Ifill left LDF to join the faculty at University of Maryland School of Law in Baltimore, where she taught for 20 years before rejoining LDF in 2013 as its president and director-counsel.

Ifill is a scholar whose work has appeared in leading law journals, periodicals and the nation’s leading newspapers. Her book On the Courthouse Lawn: Confronting the Legacy of Lynching in the 21st Century was highly acclaimed, and is credited with laying the foundation for contemporary conversations about lynching and reconciliation. She is currently completing a new book about race and the current crisis in American democracy entitled Is This America? which will be published by Penguin Press.

Ifill is a graduate of Vassar College and earned her J.D. from New York University School of Law. She is the recipient of numerous honorary doctorates and many of the most prestigious medals in the legal profession including the Radcliffe Medal, the Brandeis Medal, the Thurgood Marshall Award from the American Bar Association and The Gold Medal from the New York State Bar Association. Ifill was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2019 and was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World in 2021. She serves on the boards of the Mellon Foundation, New York University School of Law and the Baltimore Museum of Art.

Special Thanks

photo: The Washington Post

An Evening with David Sedaris

Fri, Nov 7 / 7:30 PM / Arlington Theatre

David Sedaris is one of America’s preeminent humor writers. He is a master of satire and one of today’s most observant writers. Beloved for his personal essays and short stories, David Sedaris is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Barrel Fever, Holidays on Ice, Naked, Me Talk Pretty One Day, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, When You Are Engulfed in Flames, Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls and Calypso. His book The Best of Me collects 42 previously published stories and essays. Sedaris also wrote Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modest Bestiary, a collection of fables with illustrations by Ian Falconer. He is the editor of Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules: An Anthology of Outstanding Stories. His pieces regularly appear in The New Yorker and have twice been included in The Best American Essays. The two volumes of his diaries, Theft By Finding: Diaries (19772002) and A Carnival of Snackery: Diaries (2003-2020) were New York Times bestsellers. An art book of Sedaris’ diary covers, David Sedaris Diaries: A Visual Compendium, was edited by Jeffrey Jenkins. His most recent book, Happy-Go-Lucky, debuted at No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list. The audio version of Happy-GoLucky, written and narrated by Sedaris, won the 2023 Audie Award. His first children’s book, Pretty Ugly, has illustrations by Ian Falconer and received a ‘star’ review from Kirkus.

Sedaris and his sister, Amy Sedaris, have collaborated under the name The Talent Family and have written halfa-dozen plays which have been produced at La Mama, Lincoln Center and The Drama Department in New York

City. These plays include Stump the Host, Stitches, One Woman Shoe, which received an Obie Award, Incident at Cobbler’s Knob and The Book of Liz, which was published in book form by Dramatists Play Service.

Sedaris has been nominated for five Grammy Awards for Best Spoken Word and Best Comedy Album. His audio recordings include David Sedaris: Live for Your Listening Pleasure and David Sedaris Live at Carnegie Hall. A feature film adaptation of his story C.O.G. was released after a premiere at the Sundance Film Festival (2013). Since 2011, he can be heard annually on a series of live recordings on BBC Radio 4 entitled Meet David Sedaris. In 2019 Sedaris became a regular contributor to CBS New Sunday Morning, and his Masterclass, “David Sedaris Teaches Storytelling and Humor,” was released.

There are more than 16 million copies of Sedaris’ books in print and they have been translated into 32 languages. He has been awarded the Terry Southern Prize for Humor, Thurber Prize for American Humor, Jonathan Swift International Literature Prize for Satire and Humor, Time 2001 Humorist of the Year Award, as well as the Medal for Spoken Language from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In March 2019 he was elected as a member into the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Books are available for purchase in the lobby and a signing follows the event

photo: Anne Fishbein

An Evening with

Martín Espada

Thu, Nov 13 / 7:30 PM / Campbell Hall

Co-presented with the Walter H. Capps Center for the Study of Ethics, Religion, and Public Life; and the UCSB Department of Religious Studies

Justice for All Lead Sponsors: Marcy Carsey, Eva & Yoel Haller, Dick Wolf, and Zegar Family Foundation

Martín Espada has published more than 20 books as a poet, editor, essayist and translator. His new book of poems is called Jailbreak of Sparrows. His previous book, Floaters, won the National Book Award for Poetry in 2021. Other poetry collections include Vivas to Those Who Have Failed (2016), The Trouble Ball (2011), The Republic of Poetry (2006), Alabanza (2003) and Imagine the Angels of Bread (1996). He is the editor of What Saves Us: Poems of Empathy and Outrage in the Age of Trump (2019).

Espada has received the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Shelley Memorial Award, the Robert Creeley Award, an Academy of American Poets Fellowship, the PEN/ Revson Fellowship, a Letras Boricuas Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship. The title poem of his collection Alabanza, about 9/11, has been widely anthologized and performed. His book of essays and poems, Zapata’s Disciple (1998), was banned in Tucson as part of the Mexican-American Studies Program outlawed by the state of Arizona. A former tenant lawyer with Su Clínica Legal in Greater Boston, Espada is a professor of English at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.

www.martinespada.net

Books are available for purchase in the lobby and a signing follows the event

photo: Lauren Marie Schmidt

Musicians

Vaea A‘etonu, lead guitar, vocals

Kai Kalama, drum set, percussion

Ryan Keau Kalama, bass, vocals

Lauren Kosty, percussion

Disney’s Moana Live-To-Film Concert

Sun, Nov 16 / 2 PM / Arlington Theatre

Running time: approx. 120 minutes, including intermission

Some fl ashing lights sequences or patterns may affect photosensitive viewers

Erica Kika Parra, Music Director, percussion

Lester Paredes, woodwind

Anthony Kauka Stanley, percussion

Sioeli Tameifuna, percussion

Nina Sosefi na, vocals

About the Movie

Three thousand years ago, the greatest sailors in the world voyaged across the vast Pacific, discovering the many islands of Oceania. But then, for a millennium, their voyages stopped – and no one knows why. From Walt Disney Animation Studios comes Moana, a sweeping film about an adventurous teenager who sails out on a daring mission to save her people. During her journey, Moana (Auli‘i Cravalho) meets the mighty demigod Maui (Dwayne Johnson), who guides her in her quest to become a master wayfinder. Together, they sail across the open ocean on an action-packed voyage, encountering enormous monsters and impossible odds. Along the way, Moana fulfills the ancient quest of her ancestors and discovers the one thing she’s always sought: her own identity.

About Disney Concerts

Disney Concerts is the concert production and licensing division of Disney Music Group, the music arm of The Walt Disney Company. Disney Concerts produces concerts and tours, and licenses Disney music and visual content to symphony orchestras, choruses, choirs and presenters on a worldwide basis. Disney Concerts’ licensed concert packages include a variety of formats, such as “live to film” concerts and themed instrumental and vocal compilation concerts that range from instrumentalonly symphonic performances to multimedia productions featuring live vocalists and choir. Featuring concerts from the largest movie franchises in the world – from Walt Disney Pictures, Walt Disney Animation Studios, Marvel Studios, Lucasfilm, Pixar and 20th Century Studios – current titles include the Star Wars Film Concert Series, Toy Story, Aladdin, Disney Princess - The Concert, Coco, The Lion King, Up, Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas and The Muppet Christmas Carol.

Corporate Event Sponsor: Cottage Children’s Medical Center

Credits

The performance is a presentation of the complete film Disney Moana with live music performed by Polynesian rhythm masters and vocalists. Out of respect for the musicians and your fellow audience members, please remain seated until the conclusion of the end credits.

Tour Direction

Artist Management Partners Worldwide LLC

Tim Fox | Alison Ahart Williams | Georgina Ryder www.amp-worldwide.com

Tour Staff

Jennifer Holsapple, Company Manager

Brianna Ballow, Production Manager

Mario Alonso, Audio Engineer

Todd McClain, Driver

Special Thanks

Diane Burrell, Tour Logistics Coordinator

Mike Kasprzyk, Black Ink Presents Road Rebel Global, Hotel Arrangements

L.A. Percussion & Backline Rentals

Clair Global, Audio Equipment

Tri-State Travel, Bus Transportation

Film Credits

Directed by John Musker, Ron Clements

Co-directed by Chris Williams, Don Hall

Produced by Osnat Shurer

Screenplay by Jared Bush, Jennifer Lee

Original Score by Mark Mancina

Original Songs by Lin-Manuel Miranda, Opetaia Foa’i, Mark Mancina

Film Voice Cast

Moana: Auli’i Cravalho

Maui: Dwayne Johnson

Gramma Tala: Rachel House

Chief Tui: Temuera Morrison

Tamatoa: Jemaine Clement

Sina: Nicole Scherzinger

Heihei/Villager: #3 Alan Tudyk

Fisherman: Oscar Kightley

Villager #1: Troy Polamalu

Villager #2: Puanani Cravalho

Toddler Moana: Louise Bush

© Disney

Presentation licensed by Disney Concerts. © All rights reserved.

Special Thanks

Colm Tóibín

Colm Tóibín

in Conversation with Pico Iyer

Wed, Nov 19 / 7:30 PM / Campbell Hall

Supporting Sponsor: Jane Eagleton

Speaking with Pico Series Sponsors: Martha Gabbert, Robin & Roger Himovitz, Laura & Kevin O’Connor, Siri & Bob Marshall

The Irish writer Colm Tóibín grew up in a home where, he once said, there was “a great deal of silence.” He has since made a career of talking to the world through his many volumes of fiction and nonfiction, drama and poetry. The newest of Tóibín’s 11 novels is Long Island. A New York Times bestseller, the book was chosen for Oprah’s Book Club and received star reviews from Kirkus, Publishers Weekly and Booklist. In their rave review the Minnesota Star Tribune called the novel “a wonder, rich with yearning and regret.” Long Island continues the story of Eilis Lacey, first introduced in Tóibín’s acclaimed novel Brooklyn.

An international bestseller, Brooklyn is the unforgettable story a young Irish immigrant and the complications surrounding love and family which she finds in the early 1950s. Brooklyn was honored with the Costa Novel Award, while The Observer named it one of The 10 Best Historical Novels. The book was turned into a 2015 film starring Saoirse Ronan, which garnered four Academy Award nominations including Best Picture, and in 2019, it was ranked 51st on The Guardian’s list of the 100 best books of the 21st century.

Tóibín is also the author of The Heather Blazing, Nora Webster, House of Names and The Blackwater Lightship. The latter was shortlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Prize and the Booker Prize, and later made into a film starring Angela Lansbury. His fifth novel, The Master, is

a fictional account of the inner life of American writer Henry James. It was awarded the International Dublin Literary Award, Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction, Stonewall Book Award and Lambda Literary Award. The New Yorker noted the novel’s portrait of a creative mind at work struck other writers as uncanny, while Cynthia Ozick praised Tóibín’s “writer’s wizardry.” Tóibín’s devotion to James led him to author All a Novelist Needs: Colm Tóibín on Henry James, a collection of critical essays.

More recently, Tóibín’s longtime interest in the German writer Thomas Mann led him to write The Magician, a New York Times Notable Book which was named the Best Book of the Year by NPR, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal Time magazine praised Tóibín for crafting “a complex but empathetic portrayal of a writer in a lifelong battle against his innermost desires, his family, and the tumultuous times they endure.” The Magician was awarded the Rathbones Folio Prize.

Tóibín’s literary conversation with the world explores a number of significant themes: the nature of Irish society, living in exile, the legacy of Catholicism, the process of creativity and the preservation of personal identity, especially when confronted by loss.

Colm Tóibín is many things – not only a novelist, but also a short story writer, essayist, journalist, critic,

photo: Brigitte Lacombe

playwright and poet. Among his works of non-fiction are The Modern Library: the 200 Best Novels Since 1950 (with Carmen Callil), a book on the Irish revival, Lady Gregory’s Toothbrush, New Ways to Kill Your Mother: Writers and Their Families, Love in a Dark Time: And Other Explorations of Gay Lives and Literature, and A Guest at the Feast: Essays. His book On Elizabeth Bishop was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism. Among the books he has edited is The Penguin Book of Irish Fiction. His book of poetry is titled Vinegar Hill. His 2024 non-fiction book On James Baldwin is about the works of James Baldwin and their influence on his writing.

Over the years, Tóibín’s plays have been staged in Ireland and on Broadway. The Testament of Mary, which Tóibín based on his novella of the same name, was nominated for three Tony Awards, including Best Play.

Tóibín has been honored with the E. M. Forster Award by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Irish PEN Award for contribution to Irish literature, Dayton Literary Peace Prize Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award, Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement, Premio Malaparte (Italy), Bob Hughes Lifetime Achievement Award, David Cohen Prize for Literature and the Bodley Medal. In 2022 the Arts Council of Ireland appointed him laureate for Irish Fiction 2022-2024. In 2024 he received the Medal of Honor for Achievement in Literature from the National Arts Club.

Tóibín is Irene and Sidney B. Silverman Professor of the Humanities in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. He has curated exhibits for the Morgan Library & Museum in Manhattan and, with his agent, Peter Straus, runs a small publishing imprint in Dublin called Tuskar Rock Press. Tóibín lives in Ireland and the United States.

Pico Iyer

Pico Iyer is the author of 17 books, translated into 23 languages, and dealing with subjects ranging from Graham Greene to Islamic mysticism and from globalism to the Cuban Revolution. They include such national bestsellers as The Open Road (a meditation on his first 34 years of talks with the XIVth Dalai Lama), The Art of Stillness, The Half Known Life and Aflame. He has also written the introductions to more than 90 other books, the liner notes for many Leonard Cohen albums and a screenplay for Miramax. For 40 years, he has been a constant essayist for Time, The New York Times, Harper’s, The New York Review of Books and many others.

His five TED talks have received more than 11 million views, and he has been featured in program-length interviews with Oprah, Krista Tippett and Larry King. Born in Oxford, England in 1957, Iyer was a King’s Scholar at Eton and was awarded a Congratulatory Double First at Oxford University, where he received the highest marks of any student of English Literature. He earned a second master’s degree at Harvard and later served as a Ferris Professor at Princeton.

Dividing his time between Japan and Santa Barbara, he has led events for Arts & Lectures for more than a quarter of a century, interviewing such visionaries as Zadie Smith, Philip Glass, Salman Rushdie, Isabella Rossellini and Marina Abramović.

Special Thanks

Books are available for purchase in the lobby and a signing follows the event

An

Evening with

Ocean Vuong

Wed, Dec 3 / 7:30 PM / Campbell Hall

Justice

All Lead Sponsors:

Ocean Vuong’s striking body of work explores timeless themes of class, queerness and identity. Vuong erupted onto the literary scene in 2016 with his first poetry collection, Night Sky with Exit Wounds, for which he became only the second debut poet to win the T.S. Eliot Prize. His bestselling novel, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, is an evocative coming-of-age epistolary work of self-discovery and diaspora. Framed as a letter from a son to his mother, this shattering portrait of family, first love and the redemptive power of storytelling asks how to survive, how to find joy in darkness and the meaning of American identity.

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous debuted for six weeks on The New York Times bestseller list and has since sold more than a million copies in 40 languages, launching Vuong into the upper echelon of contemporary literature. Hailed as “expansive and introspective, fragmented and dreamlike” by the Los Angeles Times, it won the American Book Award, the Mark Twain Award and the New England Book Award, and was nominated for the National Book Award.

Vuong’s 2023 poetry collection, Time is a Mother, tackles personal and social loss, embodying the paradox of sitting in grief while determined to survive beyond it. Shifting through memory, and in conversation with On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, Vuong contends with the meaning of family and the cost of being the product of an American war in America.

An Oprah’s Book Club pick, Vuong’s second novel, The Emperor of Gladness, is a bighearted story of chosen family, unexpected friendship and second chances. The novel reveals the profound ways in which love, labor and loneliness form the bedrock of American life.

A Ruth Lilly fellow from the Poetry Foundation, Vuong’s honors include fellowships from the Lannan Foundation, the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, the Elizabeth George Foundation, the Academy of American Poets and the Pushcart Prize. He is also the winner of the Whiting Award, the Thom Gunn Award, the Stanley Kunitz Prize for Younger Poets and the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. In 2019, he received a MacArthur Fellowship as the youngest recipient in that year’s class.

Vuong’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Harper’s, The Nation, New Republic, The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Village Voice and American Poetry Review. Named a 2016 Leading Global Thinker by Foreign Policy magazine, he was also recognized as an Essential Asian American Writer by Buzzfeed Books and has been widely profiled.

Special Thanks Books are available for purchase in the lobby

for

Marcy Carsey, Eva & Yoel Haller, Dick Wolf, and Zegar Family Foundation

photo: Gioncarlo Valentine

Molly Tuttle

The Highway Knows Tour with special guests Kaitlin Butts and Meels

Sun, Dec 7 / 7 PM / Arlington Theatre

Supporting Sponsor: Sharon & Bill Rich

Molly Tuttle, vocals, guitar

Mair Meyer, mandolin

Ellen Angelico, electric and steel guitar

Vanessa McGowan, bass

Megan Jane, drums

On the heels of two Grammy-winning albums with her band Golden Highway – 2022’s Crooked Tree and 2023’s City of Gold – plus a nomination for Best New Artist, Molly Tuttle returns with a solo album that’s her most dazzling to date: So Long Little Miss Sunshine.

Recorded in Nashville with producer Jay Joyce (Orville Peck, Miranda Lambert, Lainey Wilson, Eric Church, Cage the Elephant), the fifth full album from the California-born, Nashville-based singer, songwriter and virtuoso guitarist features 12 new songs – 11 originals and one highly unexpected cover of Icona Pop and Charli xcx’s “I Love It.”

Tuttle’s career, which began at age 15, has charted a course between honoring bluegrass and stretching its boundaries. On this album – a hybrid of pop, country, rock and flat-picking, plus one murder ballad – she goes to a whole new place. Her stunning guitar work is more up-front on this album than ever before. One of the most decorated female guitarists alive, Tuttle was the

first woman to win the prestigious International Bluegrass Music Award’s Guitar Player of the Year in 2017 at age 24, and won again the following year, with nominations nearly every year since. She has also won Americana Music Association’s Instrumentalist of the Year award. So Long Little Miss Sunshine also features Tuttle playing banjo, something she’s never done on one of her albums before.

“I like to be a bit of a chameleon with my music,” she says. “Keep people guessing and keep it full of surprises.”

Tuttle has been slowly building this collection of songs over the last five years, while also writing and releasing two hugely successful albums and a six-song EP (last year’s Into the Wild) and playing more than 100 shows each year with Golden Highway. Along the way she’d send songs to Joyce, who she first started talking to about collaborating on the album a few years ago.

“I’ve been wanting to make this record for such a long time. Part of me was scared to do such a big departure, and that went into the album title So Long Little Miss Sunshine. It’s like, ‘You know what? I’m just not going to care what people think. I’m going to do what I want.’”

The album was recorded with a group of musicians that includes drummer/percussionists Jay Bellerose and Fred Eltringham, bassist Byron House and Joyce on multiple instruments. Ketch Secor (Old Crow Medicine Show) also plays banjo, fiddle and harmonica, as well as singing harmony.

Tuttle also conceived the artwork for So Long Little Miss Sunshine, which features multiple Mollys, each wearing a different wig except for one with nothing on her head at all. “I probably own as many wigs as I own guitars,” she says. Tuttle has been bald since she was 3 years old due to the autoimmune condition alopecia areata; she acts as a spokesperson for the National Alopecia Areata Foundation.

“I love raising awareness,” she says. “I talk about it onstage a lot and broaden it to include anyone who’s ever had something that makes them stick out and look or feel different from others. Playing my song ‘Crooked Tree’ live is very meaningful to me, because it’s a moment where sometimes I’ll take off my wig and talk about my struggles with self-acceptance.”

One album track, “Old Me (New Wig),” is “about leaving all these things behind that don’t serve you anymore,” she says. “Parts of yourself that really aren’t in your best interest, like low self-esteem, anxieties and not feeling confident. Learning to own these different aspects of my personality but not letting them control me is another theme of the record that inspired the album title and the cover art. Those are all things I’ve struggled with through the years – just feeling like an impostor, like I wasn’t good enough. I like singing this song because there are days when I still have to tell myself to leave that stuff behind.’”

Most of the So Long Little Miss Sunshine songs were co-written with Secor, who is also Tuttle’s partner. “We spend so much time together, we live together, and anytime I have a song idea, or he has one, it’s just so easy to transition from whatever we’re doing into writing a song.”

Although they were written in different times and circumstances, Tuttle found to her surprise that the songs were all tied together by interwoven themes. The opening track, “Everything Burns” – a dark, intense, big-guitar song – was written in 2020, during the chaos and division of the start of the COVID pandemic. It might as easily refer to the current chaos and division in America since Election Day 2024, though. In fact, they recorded it the day after the election.

There are several songs about traveling – sometimes down the open road, like “Highway Knows” and “Oasis” – but also back in time, as on “Easy” and “Golden State of Mind.”

The record also tells “a kind of coming-of-age story,” Tuttle says. “‘Golden State of Mind’ is one of the songs I feel is a through-line to that. It makes me think about people I’ve been close to in the past that I’ve drifted away from, and about growing up and figuring out who you are.”

That theme is in turn picked up in the beautiful ballad “No Regrets,” one of the last songs Tuttle wrote for the album. “It’s about looking back on your life and thinking, ‘Well, maybe I could have done things differently, but if I hadn’t made certain mistakes or gone down certain roads, then I wouldn’t be here.’ And I really like where I am now!”

So Long Little Miss Sunshine closes, as her last two albums did, with an autobiographical song, “Story of My So-Called Life.” “This is me looking back on my life, from growing up to going to school in Boston to moving to Nashville to where I am now – taking stock of all these pivotal moments throughout my life that made me who I am. I feel like after I’ve said so much in all the other songs, it’s just kind of nice to end it on a note of, ‘Here’s how this all came to be,’” she says.

Earlier this year, Tuttle played guitar and sang on Ringo Starr’s new country album, Look Up. She also played with him and a host of other stellar musical guests at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium and Grand Ole Opry as part of his televised Ringo & Friends shows. She was inspired by his fearlessness in following his passion for country music. “It is cool to see someone like that who has done everything you could imagine doing in a music career and he’s still just so psyched and still has a list of things that he wants to accomplish,” Tuttle says.

Looking back on her own career, Tuttle admits that she also has pursued what interests her: “It has never been a cookie-cutter thing where I’m just going down a straight road. I always had this crooked path.”

Special

Thanks

Jake Shimabukuro’s Holidays in Hawai‘i

Featuring Jackson Waldhoff and Justin Kawika Young

Wed, Dec 10 / 7:30 PM / Arlington Theatre

Jake Shimabukuro, ukulele

Jackson Waldhoff, bass

Justin Kawika Young, vocals

Since gaining prominence in the early 2000s, ukulele marvel Jake Shimabukuro has mesmerized audiences with his innovative and dynamic style, taking the instrument to dizzying new heights. Over a dozen solo albums, he has shown a knack for moving effortlessly between genres, sometimes in the same song. After being taught the instrument by his mother at age 4, Shimabukuro became a local phenom, performing on his own and in a local group Pure Heart. Early in his solo career he became a YouTube sensation when his cover of George Harrison’s “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” went viral. Since then, he has gone on to play the world’s most venerable venues, from the Hollywood Bowl to Lincoln Center to the Sydney Opera House and The N.O. Jazz Fests and collaborated with some of the world’s greatest musicians, including Yo-Yo Ma, Béla Fleck and The Flecktones, Jimmy Buffett, Jack Johnson, Bette Midler, Ziggy Marley, Sonny Landreth, Billy Strings, Lukas and Willie Nelson and Warren Haynes. Shimabukuro has also won his share of awards and was recently nominated by President Joe Biden to serve as a member for the National Council on the Arts.

Shimabukuro’s unparalleled talent on the ukulele has captivated audiences around the globe, and now he’s here to spread his unique brand of holiday cheer. Prepare to be enchanted as he strums his way through a dynamic repertoire that combines his signature show favorites with a vibrant collection of holiday classics. From the timeless melodies of “We Three Kings” and “O Holy Night” to the playful tunes of

“All I Want For Christmas Is You” and “I’ll Be Home For Christmas,” Shimabukuro will transport you to a musical wonderland, reimagining these beloved songs in his own inimitable style.

Shimabukuro will also showcase selections from his new album Grateful, which is the follow-up to the critically acclaimed duets album with artists from Willie Nelson, Ziggy Marley and Bette Midler to Jimmy Buffett, Jack Johnson and Kenny Loggins. It was these collaborations that inspired him to go back to the beginning and play with the musicians who first inspired him as he was growing up in Hawai`i. Shimabukuro shares a connection with each and every artist on this album.

Shimabukuro will be joined on stage with the talented bassist Jackson Waldhoff, whose rhythmic prowess will provide the perfect foundation for the melodic brilliance of the ukulele. Additionally, the show will feature the soulful and captivating voice of special guest singer-songwriter Justin Kawika Young. Together, this exceptional ensemble will create an atmosphere of pure merriment, ensuring that spirits remain bright throughout the entire performance.

Special Thanks

photo: Sienna Morales

Santa Barbara’s independent bookstore with over 150,000 titles.

photo: David Bazemore

Pediatric Specialty Care at Cottage Health

At Cottage, we provide trusted care for your child – and your family –with excellence and compassion. Cottage Children’s Medical Center’s new Grotenhuis Pediatric Clinics are opening this winter with an expanded space, new specialties and an ocean-themed environment created for families. With Cottage’s expert care team, and generous support from community members like you, parents can count on Grotenhuis Pediatric Clinics for advanced care.

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