February 13, 2025 | 7:30 PM
Camp Concert Hall
Thank You
LEYLA MCCALLA
IS MADE POSSIBLE IN PART BY THE GENEROUS SUPPORT OF
H. G. Quigg Fund
Dewitt Fund for the Arts
In Special Partnership with the University of Richmond Department of Music
THANKS TO OUR 2024-25 MODLIN ARTS PRESENTS SEASON SPONSORS & COMMUNITY PARTNERS THIS PRESENTATION OF
Louis S. Booth Arts Fund
E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation
A. Dale Mayo Fund
Virginia B. Modlin Endowment
Tucker-Boatwright Festival
Norman and Eleanor Leahy
William and Pamela O'Connor
Welcome
At Modlin Center for the Arts, we are committed to providing the University of Richmond campus and our broader community with the best in diverse, thoughtprovoking, and captivating performances. Each season is cultivated with our attention to showcasing artists who provide insight into our shared humanity. At the University of Richmond, we pledge to you—our patrons and partners, on campus and in our region—that the arts will provide broad access to rich voices, creative passion, and unforgettable experiences.
Brohan, Executive Director
Paul
PHOTO: CHRIS SCHEURICH
Spring 2025
P
Ticketed: Paid
F Free: Tickets Required
F Free: No Tickets Required
Modlin Arts Presents
Department of Theatre and Dance
Department of Music
World Premier Modlin Commission
January
BODYTRAFFIC
Fri 24 Jan 7:30pm
February
Manual Cinema, Frankenstein Sat 1 Feb 7:30pm
Lab Project: The Woman in Black Thu-Sat 6-8 Feb 7:30pm Sun 9 Feb 2pm
Billy Childs Quartet with Sean Jones, The Winds of Change Fri 7 Feb 7:30pm
Leyla McCalla Thu 13 Feb 7:30pm
Documentary Film
Screening: The Sound of Santiago by Dr. Mike Davison and Ed Tillett Wed 19 Feb 7:30pm
Third Coast Percussion with Salar Nader Fri 21 Feb 7:30pm
University Dancers
40th Anniversary Concert Fri-Sat 28 Feb-1 Mar 7:30pm Sun 2 Mar 2pm
March
Doris Wylee-Becker, piano
Sun 2 Mar 3pm
Anzû Quartet
Wed 5 Mar 7:30pm
Kronos Quartet with Peni Candra Rini
Fri 21 Mar 7:30pm
Tanya Tagaq
Thu 27 Mar 7:30pm
Neumann Lecture on Music: Robert Fink
Mon 31 Mar 7:30pm
April
Twyla Tharp Dance with Third Coast Percussion
Sat 5 Apr 7:30pm
Global Sounds Sun 6 Apr 3pm
Jazz & Contemporary Combos
Wed 9 Apr 7:30pm
Simone Dinnerstein, piano
Fri 11 Apr 7:30pm
Spring Choral Concert
Sun 13 Apr 3pm
Wind Ensemble
Mon 14 Apr 7:30pm
Popular Music Ensemble
Tue 15 Apr 7:30pm
Urinetown
Thu-Sat 17-19 Apr 7:30pm Sun 20 Apr 2pm
Chamber Ensembles
Mon 21 Apr 7:30pm
University Symphony Orchestra
Wed 23 Apr 7:30pm
Cuban Spectacular: From Mambo to Motown Thu 24 Apr 7:30pm
MODLIN CENTER FOR THE ARTS PRESENTS
Leyla McCalla
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
LEYLA MCCALLA
Born in New York City to Haitian emigrants and activists, Leyla McCalla finds inspiration from her past and present– her music vibrates with three centuries of history and influences from around the globe. McCalla possesses a stunning mastery of the cello, tenor banjo and guitar and, as a multilingual singer and songwriter, has risen to produce a distinctive sound that reflects the union of her roots and experience. In addition to her solo work, McCalla is a founding member of Our Native Daughters (with Rhiannon Giddens, Amythyst Kiah and Allison Russell) and alumna of Grammy award-winning Black string band The Carolina Chocolate Drops.
McCalla’s new album and fifth studio recording, Sun Without the Heat, is playful and full of joy while holding the pain and tension of transformation. Throughout Sun Without the Heat’s ten tracks, McCalla achieves a balance of heaviness and light with melodies and rhythms derived from various forms of Afro-diasporic music including Afrobeat, Ethiopian modalities, Brazilian Tropicalismo, and American folk and blues.
Her 2022 album, Breaking the Thermometer (ANTI-), is the album companion to a multidisciplinary music, dance and theatre work commissioned by Duke
PHOTO: CHRIS SCHEURICH
Performances. Through the story of the brave journalists at Radio Haiti who risked their lives to report news in Haitian Kreyol, Breaking the Thermometer identifies the critical importance of a free and independent press to promote self and societal liberation. Breaking the Thermometer was named one of the Best Albums of the year by The Guardian, Variety, Mojo and NPR Music, and her song “Dodinin” made Barack Obama’s short list of favorites. McCalla was awarded the 2022 People’s Voice Award by Folk Alliance International, an award given to artists who unabashedly embrace social change in their creative work.
While conceiving her next project, McCalla expanded her musical palate and revisited her longstanding creative influences. “I like when music feels urgent,” McCalla says, “but I also wanted the new album to be playful and fun. I wanted that levity to come through.”
On Sun Without the Heat, McCalla draws lyrical inspiration from the writings of Black feminist Afrofuturist thinkers including Octavia Butler, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, and adrienne maree brown. Like these authors, McCalla looks to songwriting as a way to increase faith and hope, encourage community thinking, and catalyze personal transformation. “Songwriting is a modality to tell the stories that need to be told,” she explains. “Sometimes these are painful stories to tell.”
This is especially vivid in the album’s title track, which pulls from Frederick Douglass’s 1857 speech to a largely white crowd of abolitionists six years before the Emancipation Proclamation. His words echo in the song: “You want the crops without the plow / You want the rain without the thunder / You want the ocean without the roar of its waters.” Douglass’s point — which McCalla weaves into the song’s central message —is that liberation and equity are not possible without committing to transformative action.
“We all want the warmth of the sun but not everybody wants to feel the heat,” McCalla explains. “You have to have both.”
Moved by this speech, and by Susan Raffo’s 2022 book Liberated to the Bone, McCalla asserts this idea fully by adding the lyric: “Can’t have the sun without the heat.” This song serves as a reminder of the continued work for social change and the struggle that we still bear. “These wounds,” McCalla reminds us, “are so old.”
Sun Without the Heat was recorded in an intense nine-day session at Dockside Studios in New Orleans. Produced by Maryam Qudus, McCalla was joined by longtime bandmates and collaborators Shawn Myers on percussion and drums, Pete Olynciw on electric bass and piano, and Nahum Zdybel on guitars. Qudus is featured on synthesizers, organs and backing vocals.
“Usually, I go into the studio and have the songs and the framework already
in mind,” says McCalla. “But with this album, we built the frame in real time. It was an intimidating process, but it also helped me realize how held I am by the musicians I work with.”
The result is a transcendent collection of songs that hold the personal and universal, carrying grief and joy at once. Through this album, McCalla explores the elements of transformation and the heat necessary to move from darkness toward light. McCalla is also currently the Artist in Residence at the University of Richmond.
NAHUM ZDYBEL, guitar
Nahum Thelonious Zdybel is a New Orleans-based guitarist, improviser and composer restlessly shifting roles between innovative explorer of improvised musics, creative indie rock sideman, and ardent revivalist of early jazz styles and repertoire. Attracted to musical settings that are intimate and sincere, Nahum deploys a playful, hyper-sensitive approach to re-imagine material from disparate musical traditions as baffling combustions of spontaneity and subtle cleverness. Correspondingly at home amongst jazz tunes, free improvisations, original works, and early 20thcentury American music, Nahum is an inventive improviser who regards with equal fondness and irreverence his relationship with early jazz, hardcore punk, and unstructured improvisation.
PETE OLYNCIW, bass
Pete Olynciw is a New Orleans-based bassist, songwriter, arranger, and recording artist with an innate sense of curiosity and unquenchable thirst for learning and developing his craft. Best known for his work with Grammy-award winning artist Leyla McCalla, Olynciw brings his vibrant, collaborative spirit and versatile musicianship to projects spanning experimental jazz to calypso—performing at prestigious festivals, music halls, and dive bars across the United States, Europe, and beyond.
Born and raised on Long Island, New York, Olynciw received classical bass training as a teen, performing in orchestras and other classical ensembles while also leading a ska and rockabilly band. While pursuing his degree in jazz performance at SUNY Purchase under the mentorship of Doug Weiss and Todd Coolman, he became active in numerous groups ranging from punk to Latin jazz, appearing on several recordings including acclaimed indie rocker Mitski’s Lush (2012). Between his college studies and creative projects, Olynciw returned to New York on weekends to hear modern jazz greats play at clubs like Smalls and the Village Vanguard.
Beginning in 2013, Olynciw began touring and recording with folk punk bands Wood Spider and Blackbird Raum, as well as indie group The Act of Estimating as Worthless. Relocating to New Orleans in 2014, he was soon onstage in Frenchmen Street nightclubs playing everything from honky-tonk to traditional jazz, swing, and Balkan music—and in 2016, became the bassist for celebrated local Bulgarian ensemble, Blato Zlato. Since making New Orleans his home, Olynciw has immersed himself in the city’s many musical traditions. Most recently, with the guidance of various teachers including Cuban percussionist Hector Gallardo, he has broadened his repertoire to include other AfroCaribbean music styles, especially from Cuba, Haiti, and Trinidad & Tobago.
Currently, Olynciw is the regular bassist for Charlie and the Tropicales—a genre-bending, calypso-centered dance band, with whom he’s recorded three albums, most recently The Alcoa Sessions (2022). He also plays locally and tours internationally with Haitian American artist Leyla McCalla, with whom he appeared on NPR’s Tiny Desk series; recorded on the critically acclaimed 2022 record, Breaking the Thermometer; and performed in venues ranging from New Orleans backyard parties and bars to Lincoln Center.
CAITO SANCHEZ, drums
It’s often a good sign when one of your favorite musicians steps out from beyond the studio walls and past the stage lights to fulfill their own inspired and creative intent. And Caíto Sánchez is not just a favorite musician, but as his lengthy resume as a sideman shows, he’s also one of your favorite musicians’ favorite musicians, constantly working without fanfare as an essential ingredient in a larger music feast. Sánchez earned his stripes in the 2000s and beyond as a key session player and an integral touring band member, a quiet standout even among many oversized personalities. A dedicated drummer born in Panama and living in New York, Sánchez is quite capable of keeping time for legends like Charles Bradley, Lee Fields, and Brian Jackson, as well as supporting eclectic outfits like the live groups of Quantic, Chico Mann and Midnight Magic. For all the players who have shared a stage or studio with him it comes as no real surprise, and frankly as a long overdue development, that such a unique artistic force is finally stepping into the spotlight.
With his debut single “Planeador” we get a glimpse into Sánchez’s creative and artistic personal space, more precisely a multi-instrumental discipline of not only drums, but also bass, guitar and lead voice. It’s an intensely intimate recording debut, a fantastic studio concoction born from the heart of its creator, and later fostered and mixed down by the talented hands of NYCT and Daptone veteran Victor Axelrod. The defining result on this initial 7-inch vinyl offering are two heavy psychedelic and moody nuggets of rock en español, a decidedly new wave of sounds and style that are quite capable of shining on their own.
Modlin Arts Presents
THIRD
COAST PERCUSSION WITH SALAR NADER
Fri 21 Feb 2025
Camp Concert Hall
WE ARE HONORED TO PRESENT THE PREMIERE OF MURMURS IN TIME, COMPOSED BY THE LATE TABLA MASTER ZAKIR HUSSAIN. THE CONCERT FEATURES THIRD COAST PERCUSSION AND TABLA VIRTUOSO SALAR NADER, A STAR STUDENT OF HUSSAIN.
KRONOS
QUARTET WITH PENI CANDRA RINI
Fri 21 Mar 2025
Camp Concert Hall
KRONOS HAS REVOLUTIONIZED THE STRING QUARTET GENRE FOR 50 YEARS. IN THAT TIME THEY’VE COMISSIONED WORK FROM HUNDREDS OF COMPOSERS, INCLUDING INDONESIAN GAMELAN VOCALIST PENI CANDRA RINI WHO JOINS TO PERFORM HER COMPOSITIONS WITH THE QUARTET.
TANYA TAGAQ
Thu 27 Mar 2025
Camp Concert Hall
PRAISED BY ROLLING STONE AS “ONE OF THE AVANT-GARDE’S MOST DYNAMIC PERFORMERS,” INDIGENOUS CANADIAN ARTIST TANYA TAGAQ BRINGS HER STUNNING VOICE AND STORYTELLING TO THE MODLIN STAGE.
TICKET INFORMATION
MODLIN BOX OFFICE Regular hours for window service and phone orders Monday - Friday 1pm - 5pm and 60 minutes prior to all ticketed events. Contact us at 804-289-8980 or modlinarts@richmond.edu.
TICKET POLICY All sales are final. No refunds are available, except in the event of a cancellation.
TICKET DELIVERY For all ticketed events, Modlin Center offers ticket delivery as Hold at Box Office or Mobile Tickets. When purchasing tickets that require an ID to be shown, tickets will only be available for in-person pickup at the Box Office.
TICKET DONATIONS Tickets that cannot be used, or transferred to friends of family, may be returned to the Box Office to be donated for resale. No credit will be issued.
TICKETS ARE REQUIRED All ticketed performances require every patron to have a ticket. This includes children, regardless of age. Children are welcome and must always be accompanied by an adult. Parental discretion is advised as some performances may not be suitable for young children.
PROGRAMS ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE Events can change, sometimes without notice. In the event of a cancellation or date change, we will announce as early as possible, and attempts will be made to contact all ticket holders in advance of the performance. Help us keep you informed by ensuring your contact information is up to date.
