2024-25 Season

Sierra Hull is widely regarded as a master of the mandolin. She is a two-time Grammy-nominated artist and songwriter, recognized for her most recent projects, 25 Trips (2020) and Weighted Mind (2016). She is also the six-time recipient of the International Bluegrass Music Association’s Mandolin Player of the Year, the first woman to ever receive this distinction.

Award-winning Guinness World Record-holder Maxim Laurin performs a spectacular duet with Guillaume Larouche on a spinning teeterboard that brings audiences into the elusive world between fall and flight.

Cirque Kikasse presents SANTÉ!, a dynamic circus show with high-level acrobatics, contagious energy and breathtaking balancing, all on an extraordinary food-cirque truck. The performers arrange furniture that turns into a tower 30 feet off the ground; playfully and inefficiently clean the truck and trampoline, and react to an overflowing popcorn machine. This fun concept will give thrills to even the most seasoned in the audience.

Los Angeles-native Victor Quijada brings together classical dance composition and West Coast hip-hop like no one before him. Bursting onto the scene with his Montreal-based company in 2002, Quijada uprooted the boundaries of contemporary dance, creating a singular language that is uniquely his own. His dance technique, the RUBBERBAND Method, is taught in some of the most prestigious dance schools and conservatories from Los Angeles to London.

When Sean Mason speaks about music, the notes fall into place. The cadence of his ideas unfolds with deliberate tempo, each exploring and resolving tension like an inspired chord progression. On his debut album, The Southern Suite, he emerged as a guiding luminary, shining his introspective command as both a pianist and composer through the historic lens of jazz to create a work that distilled the essence of the genre, even as it pointed the way forward.

Alex and Olmsted’s Jim Henson Foundation grant-awarded MAROONED! A Space Comedy is an innovative new puppet show that features music from the Voyager Golden Record and takes place at the outer reaches of space. An astronaut crashes on an uncharted planet. Will she be able to survive strange creatures, an anomalous atmosphere and isolation in order to find her way home? See for yourself in MAROONED!

Pablo Giménez is a flamenco and classical guitarist who performs as a soloist, in chamber music ensembles and as an accompanist for flamenco dance and song. He is also the artistic director and guitarist of the Pablo Giménez Spanish Ensemble and the Corazon de Granada flamenco company.

Brazilian pianist and composer Heloísa Fernandes encapsulates the sound of a woman free to study literature, poetry, nature and the classical, jazz and Brazilian musical worlds, and to let them shape her identity and flow into compositions. Her creations, described as both strong and original, effortlessly bridge ancient and modern influences, blossoming with rhythmic vitality and melodic delicacy. With her skill as an improviser, she searches for emotional depths and soars with joy. “Fernandes is beyond categorization,” wrote the Post and Courier of her American debut. “She is herself, and I’ll always be interested in any music she cares to explore.” In addition to herself, the quartet includes Toninho Carrasqueira (flute), Sidiel Vieira (bass) and Ari Colares (percussion).

Nate Smith is a drummer, composer and producer from Chesapeake, Va. His visceral, instinctive and deep-rooted style of drumming has led to three Grammy nominations. Smith fuses his original compositions with an eclectic mix of music, including everything from jazz to rhythm and blues and hip-hop to pop.

DakhaBrakha is a world music quartet from Kyiv, Ukraine. Reflecting fundamental elements of sound and soul, Ukrainian “ethno-chaos” band DakhaBrakha creates a world of unexpected new music.

DakhaBrakha was created in 2004 at the Dakh Contemporary Art Center by the avant-garde theatre director Vladyslav Troitskyi and given the name that means “give/take” in the old Ukrainian language. Theatre work has left its mark on the band’s performances; their shows are always staged with a strong visual element.

Since forming in 2010, the Grammy-nominated Neave Trio, including violinist Anna Williams, cellist Mikhail Veselov and pianist Eri Nakamura, has earned enormous praise for its engaging, cutting-edge performances. Gramophone praised the trio’s “taut and vivid interpretations,” while The Strad called out the musicians’ “eloquent phrasing and deft control of textures” and BBC Music Magazine described the performances as balancing “passion with sensitivity and grace.”

Renowned for her ability to weave together a tapestry of diverse musical influences ranging from gospel and blues to folk and soul, Ruthie Foster's musical odyssey has taken her from singing in churches in rural Texas to earning multiple Grammy nominations, gracing the stage of New York’s Beacon Theatre with the Allman Brothers, and collaborating with icons such as Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks. With her milestone tenth studio album, Mileage, released by the legendary Sun Records, Foster continues to tell stories that reflect her personal triumphs, losses, and the universal human experience.