2024–25
Camille A. Brown & Dancers | I AM
September 12, 2024 | Luth Concert Hall
The Tony-nominated choreographer, known for co-directing Fire Shut Up In My Bones with the Metropolitan Opera (2021) and choreographing Alicia Keys’ musical Hell’s Kitchen (2023), explores Black joy in an acclaimed new work with her own dance company.
Johnny Gandelsman | This Is America
September 26, 2024 | Luth Concert Hall
A commissioning and recording project from MacArthur Fellow and Grammy Award-winning violinist & producer Johnny Gandelsman, This Is America celebrates our country’s rich cultural imaginary, offering a vivid counterpoint to the idea that this land can be understood through any singular, dominant point of view. Featured performers included members of the Worcester Chamber Music Society.
Aimee Nezhukumatathil
October 3, 2024 | Luth Concert Hall
Aimee Nezhukumatathil is a New York Times-bestselling essayist and poet. Her environmentally attuned work explores how we live in a world she finds rich with wonder.
Mfoniso Udofia’s
Sojourners, a pop-up from The Huntington Theatre
November 19, 2024 | Boroughs Theatre
A young Nigerian couple arrives in Houston looking to earn their degrees and bring insights back to their home country. But Abasiama is soon forced to choose between the Nigerian Dream and her obligations as a matriarch. A pop-up production brought to The Prior by the Huntington Theatre as part of Boston’s nine-part celebration of playwright Mfoniso Udofia.
Julia Keefe Indigenous Big Band
November 22, 2024 | Boroughs Theatre
Led by celebrated vocalist Julia Keefe (Nez Perce), The Julia Keefe Indigenous Big Band is an ensemble of Native and Indigenous jazz musicians from across Indian Country. Opening act by Mali Obomsawin (Odanak First Nation), an award-winning bassist, songwriter, and composer whose debut album Sweet Tooth has received international acclaim.
August Wilson’s Two Trains Running | The Acting Company
February 10, 2025 | Boroughs Theatre
As their neighborhood changes in unpredictable ways, a beloved Pittsburgh diner owner and his customers seek work, love, and justice in this heartfelt and hilarious play. Two Trains Running is the 1960s chapter of acclaimed playwright August Wilson’s American Century Cycle, a decade-by-decade saga of African American life in the 20th century.
Jeremy Flower | A Series of Resolutions
February 27, 2025 | Luth Concert Hall
Composer and multi-instrumentalist Jeremy Flower performs a new work commissioned by Composer-In-Residence Osvaldo Golijov for modular synthesizer, string quartet, and saxophone. A Series of Resolutions aims to live outside genre definitions where moments of harmonic exploration and dissonance can coexist with earnest melodies.
Jha D Amazi of MASS Design
March 18, 2025 | Luth Concert Hall
Jha D Amazi leads the Public Memory and Memorial Lab at the pathbreaking MASS Design Group. The lab’s projects honor the experiences and cultures of communities historically underrepresented in our memorial landscape, with works including The Embrace in Boston and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama.
Sphinx Virtuosi | American Form/s
March 30, 2025 | Luth Concert Hall
A co-production with Music Worcester, the dynamic and inspiring chamber orchestra Sphinx Virtuosi’s American Form/s program is a journey through classically-framed infusions of soul, bluegrass, jazz, blues, and rag.
2023–24
Lloyd Suh | The Far Country
September 19-20, 2023 | Boroughs Theatre
A 2023 Pulitzer finalist for drama and recent off-Broadway hit, The Far Country by Lloyd Suh is an intimate epic following an unlikely family’s journey from rural China to California in the wake of the Chinese Exclusion Act at the turn of the 20th century. Playwright Lloyd Suh is the recipient of the Steinberg Playwright Award, the Horton Foote Prize, and the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts, among others.
Brooklyn Rider | The Four Elements
September 30, 2023 | Luth Concert Hall
The Grammy-nominated quartet shares a new project called The Four Elements, an exploration of the four classical elements (earth, air, water, and fire) as metaphors for the complex inner world of the string quartet and the current health of planet Earth.
LaToya Ruby Frazier
November 1, 2023 | Luth Concert Hall
One of the nation’s most acclaimed contemporary photographers, LaToya Ruby Frazier’s work depicts the stark reality of today’s America: post-industrial cities riven by poverty, racism, healthcare inequality, and environmental toxicity. By featuring voices and collaborating with communities traditionally erased from the American narrative, Frazier not only captures our cultural blind spots but shows how art can be a powerful tool for social transformation.
Hervé Koubi | What the Day Owes to the Night
January 30-31, 2024 | Boroughs Theatre
French dance company Hervé Koubi, What the Day Owes to the Night blends elements of capoeira, martial arts, urban, and contemporary dance together with powerful Sufi imagery as dancers from Algeria, Morocco, Bulgaria, Italy, and France perform to an eclectic range of stirring music.
Reginald Dwayne Betts | An Evening of Poetry
February 26, 2024 | Luth Concert Hall
Confined as an adolescent in the worst prisons in the state of Virginia, Reginald Dwayne Betts became a poet, a scholar, and an advocate for the reform of the criminal justice system. He is the author of a memoir, A Question of Freedom: A Memoir of Learning, Survival, and Coming of Age in Prison, and four acclaimed collections of poetry.
Gonzalo Grau & La Clave Secreta
February 29, 2024 | The Beehive
With Latin music as its foundation, Gonzalo Grau’s La Clave Secreta incorporates elements of jazz, funk, rock, classical, R&B, neo-soul, and the cultural backgrounds of its performers.
Tania El Khoury | Cultural Exchange Rate
March 11-16, 2024 | Boroughs Theatre
In Cultural Exchange Rate, Lebanese artist Tania El Khoury recreates a family diary of the borderlands. Her unforgettable installation reveals that the cruelest of borders are invisible to the naked eye, even as they persist across everyday life.
Rhiannon Giddens
March 14, 2024 | Luth Concert Hall
A two-time Grammy Award-winning singer and instrumentalist, MacArthur “Genius” grant recipient, and Pulitzer Prize-winning opera composer, Rhiannon Giddens works to lift up people whose contributions to American musical history have previously been overlooked or erased, advocating for a more accurate understanding of the country’s musical origins through art.
Boston Lyric Opera | The Wanderer’s Tethering
April 6, 2024 | Luth Concert Hall
With poetry by Boston Poet Laureate Porsha Olayiwola and music by Boston-based composer, vocalist, and multimedia artist Mason Bynes, Boston Lyric Opera brings The Wanderer’s Tethering to The Prior in a program also featuring stirring selections of vocal music and string quartets performed by Boston Lyric Opera artists and Castle of Our Skins.
2022–23
Vijay Gupta & Chester Englander | Mirror/Lens
March 2, 2023 | Beehive & Luth Concert Hall
Reflecting on the early years of the Covid-19 pandemic, this program from Vijay Gupta, violin, and Chester Englander, cymbalom, shares the revelation that isolation can be a mortal wound, but that solitude can open us to new life. A co-production with Music Worcester, Mirror/Lens features works by J. S. Bach, Arvo Pärt, György Kurtág, and Reena Esmail.
