SHINE! Gala

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater

Thu – Sun | May 2 – 5 | 8pm, 8pm, 2pm & 8pm, 3pm

Boch Center Wang Theatre

An Ailey performance is always a special experience. From the moment the house lights dim until the jubilant curtain calls at the end of Revelations, a performance by the “phenomenal” and “electrifying” (TV host Tamron Hall) dancers of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater will excite you, inspire you, and uplift you.

Dance magazine wrote, “the Ailey brand has remained synonymous with authenticity, artistic integrity, inclusive storytelling and culture of the highest quality” for decades.

In what has become a beloved spring tradition, the company returns to Boston with classic works by Mr. Ailey, notable selections by other modern and contemporary choreographers, and new commissions that carry forward the founder’s and the company’s legacy and depict the many facets of Black American life, culture, and history.

–The Boston Globe

Duets – Dianne Reeves, Chucho Valdés, and Joe Lovano

Saturday | May 4 | 8pm

Berklee Performance Center

Three all-time greats come together for a rare evening of intimate duets. Winner of seven Grammy and four Latin Grammy Awards, the Cuban pianist, composer, and arranger Chucho Valdés is the most influential figure in modern Afro-Cuban jazz and a perennial Celebrity Series audience favorite.

Five-time Grammy Award-winning vocalist and 2018 NEA Jazz Master Dianne Reeves is “the most admired jazz diva since the heyday of Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday,” according to the New York Times. Her arsenal of talents is richly on display in every song of her limitless repertoire.

Hailed by the New York Times as “one of the greatest musicians in jazz history,” Grammy Award-winning saxophone titan Joe Lovano has distinguished himself as a prescient and pathfinding force in jazz for decades.