92nd Street Y to Feature Julia Bullock, Seth Parker Woods, and Conor Hanick in Concert

The 92nd Street Y, New York will presentJulia Bullock, soprano; Seth Parker Woods, cello; and Conor Hanick, piano in Kaufmann Concert Hall, 1395 Lexington Ave, New York, NY 10128, on Friday, January 23, 2026 at 7:30PM. Tickets start at $45 in-person and are available online.

Three of music's most inventive young artists - Grammy-winning vocalist Julia Bullock, renowned cellist Seth Parker Woods, and acclaimed pianist Conor Hanick - unite to perform From Ordinary Things, a program of works by some of the 20th- and 21st-centuries' most compelling musical storytellers.

From Ordinary Things looks at identity, hope, unrequited love and more in lyrical works by luminaries from Nina Simone to Ravel, Rodgers and Hart to André Previn, Pulitzer Prize winners Tania León and George Walker, and more. Exploring themes of connection, mysticism, and love through song, it's a deeply personal program Woods calls "a love letter to the library of our lives and the company we keep."

Program

FROM ORDINARY THINGS

NINA SIMONE "Images"

Maurice Ravel "Nahandove," from Chansons madécasses

TANIA LEÓN "Oh Yemanja (Mother's Prayer)" from Scourge of Hyacinths

LEÓN Young Songs* (NY premiere, 92NY commission)

George Walker Sonata for Cello and Piano

ROBERT OWENS Drei Leider, Op. 19

SALVATORE SCIARRINO "Ultime rose" from Vanitas

SIMONE (arr. J. Siskind) "Four Women"

ANDRÉ and Dory Previn "It's Good To Have You Near Again"

GERSHWIN (arr. A. Previn) "Love Walked In" from The Goldwyn Follies

ANDRÉ PREVIN "Shelter" from Four Songs for Soprano, Cello, and Piano

Richard Rodgers "Nobody's Heart" from By Jupiter

(arr. A. Previn)

*Commissioned by The 92nd Street Y, New York with additional support from The Center for the Arts at Virginia Tech.

Biographies

Grammy winner Julia Bullock combines versatile artistry with a probing intellect and commanding stage presence. As well as headlining productions and concerts around the world, she has been artist-in-residence at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Cal Performances, and the San Francisco Symphony.

Bullock's operatic career spans repertoire from the Baroque to contemporary works written for her. This season, she premieres Matthew Aucoin's Song of the Reappeared with the commissioning Chicago Symphony Orchestra and sings La Voix humaine with Sweden's Gävle Symphony Orchestra. She premieres a Tania León commission on a U.S. solo recital tour and curates the Cincinnati May Festival, and reprises two signature projects at Australia's Adelaide Festival.

Recent operatic highlights include headlining John Adams' Antony and Cleopatra and El Niño at the Metropolitan Opera and creating important roles in Terence Blanchard's Fire Shut Up in My Bones, Michel van der Aa's Upload, and Adams's Girls of the Golden West. In concert, Bullock has performed with the Los Angeles and New York Philharmonics; the Baltimore, Boston, London, NHK, and San Francisco symphony orchestras; Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin; and London's Philharmonia Orchestra and Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. Solo highlights include tours with the American Modern Opera Company, of which she is a founding core member; American, British, Belgian, and Russian premieres of Zauberland; and recitals at Carnegie Hall, Disney Hall, the Kimmel Center, Kennedy Center, and Wigmore Hall.

Bullock has developed and launched three signature projects: the ensemble program History's Persistent Voice addresses the transatlantic slave trade through songs by people enslaved in the U.S., visual art, poetry, and new music by Black female composers; devised with her husband, Christian Reif, El Niño: Nativity Reconsidered is a chamber arrangement of Adams' El Niño that amplifies voices of women and Latin American poets; Perle Noire: Meditations for Joséphine, created with Tyshawn Sorey, Claudia Rankine, Michael Schumacher, and Peter Sellars, reexamines the legacy of Joséphine Baker. Bullock's solo debut, Walking in the Dark, won the 2024 Grammy Award for Best Classical Solo Vocal, plus Opus Klassik and Edison Klassiek awards.

Her discography also includes Grammy-nominated recordings of Doctor Atomic and West Side Story.

Three-time Grammy-nominated cellist Seth Parker Woods is recognized for his versatility and innovation across genres. The New York Times writes that "Woods is an artist rooted in classical music, but whose cello is a vehicle that takes him, and his concertgoers, on wide-ranging journeys."

After a notable 2024/25 season that included debuts with the New York and Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestras, Woods enters 2025/26 with several high-profile engagements. He joins longtime musical partner, violinist Hilary Hahn, for the world premiere of Carlos Simon's double concerto with the National Symphony Orchestra under Gianandrea Noseda and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra under Stéphane Denève. He also makes his solo debut at London's Barbican Centre, returns to Brazil for the South American premiere of Nathalie Joachim's Had To Be with the São Paulo State Symphony Orchestra, and appears with Ensemble Resonanz at Elbphilharmonie Hamburg in works by Jessie Montgomery, Chinary Ung, and Julius Eastman.

This month Woods launches a new trio with soprano Julia Bullock and pianist Conor Hanick on a national tour featuring a world premiere by Tania Leon, with additional performances at CAP UCLA and the University of Chicago.

An advocate for contemporary music, Woods has premiered concertos written for him by Tyshawn Sorey (For Roscoe Mitchell) with the Seattle Symphony; Nathalie Joachim (Had To Be) at Spoleto Festival USA and with the New York Philharmonic, Orchestre Métropolitain (Montreal), and Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra; and Julia Adolphe (Chrysalis) with the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

His Grammy-nominated autobiographical work Difficult Grace has been performed nationally, and he has appeared at Carnegie Hall, the Library of Congress, the Kennedy Center, Konzerthaus Dortmund, and Harvard University.

Woods's discography includes Difficult Grace (Cedille, 2023); recordings with Claire Chase; and releases with Wild Up's Eastman Project, including the Grammy-nominated Julius Eastman, Vol. 4: The Holy Presence. His next solo recording will be released by Platoon in early 2026.

Woods has served on the faculty of USC's Thornton School of Music since 2022 and became the Robert Mann Chair in Strings and Chamber Music in 2024. He holds degrees from Brooklyn College, the Musik-Akademie der Stadt Basel, and the University of Huddersfield (PhD). In 2022 he received the Chamber Music America Michael Jaffee Visionary Award and was honored at the Seattle Symphony's 25th Anniversary Silver Gala. He has also appeared on Best Dressed lists in Variety, Texas Monthly, and The Orange County Register.

Pianist Conor Hanick is regarded as one of his generation's most inquisitive interpreters of music new and old whose "technical refinement, color, crispness, and wondrous variety of articulation benefit works by any master" (The New York Times).

Hanick has worked with conductors Esa-Pekka Salonen, Ludovic Morlot, Alan Gilbert and David Robertson; collaborated with the San Francisco, Seattle, Phoenix and Alabama symphony orchestras, Orchestra lowa, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Juilliard Orchestra; and been presented by the Gilmore Festival, New York Philharmonic, Elbphilharmonie, De Singel, Centre Pompidou, Cal Performances, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, Park Avenue Armory, and the Ojai Festival, where in 2022 with AMOC* (American Modern Opera Company) he served as the festival's artistic director and where in 2026 he'll be a featured artist under director Esa-Pekka Salonen.

A fierce advocate for the music of today, Hanick has premiered over 200 pieces and collaborated with composers ranging from Pierre Boulez, Kaija Saariaho, and Steve Reich, to the leading composers of his generation, including Nico Muhly, Caroline Shaw, Tyshawn Sorey, Marcos Balter, and Samuel Carl Adams, whose piano concerto, No Such Spring, he premiered in 2023 with Salonen and the San Francisco Symphony.

This season Hanick presents solo and chamber recitals in the U.S. and Europe, including concerts at the Barbican Centre, Cal Performances, Da Camera, Kaufman Center, and Aviva Studios Manchester, where he'll join the BBC Philharmonic in the U.K. premiere of No Such Spring. He also appears with Orchestra lowa, Ensemble New SRQ, and AMOC*, and collaborates with Julia Bullock, Seth Parker Woods, Jay Campbell, and Sandbox Percussion, including the premiere of new works by Tania León, Samuel Adams, Marcos Balter, and others.