Yale Schwarzman Center Unveils Spring 2026 Season

Yale Schwarzman Center has announced its Spring 2026 season, featuring a lineup of performances across dance, music, opera, and multimedia art. The season brings together visiting artists, Yale-affiliated creators, and international performers in a series of residencies, premieres, and collaborative projects presented at venues throughout the Center. All events are free and open to the public.

The season includes immersive and interdisciplinary works that explore movement, sound, storytelling, and technology. Among the highlights is The Comet / Poppea, an experimental operatic hybrid directed by Yuval Sharon, with music by George Lewis and Claudio Monteverdi. The work was a finalist for the 2025 Pulitzer Prize in Music and juxtaposes Monteverdi’s The Coronation of Poppea with Lewis’s setting of W.E.B. Du Bois’s short story The Comet. Other featured artists include media artist Toni Dove; choreographer Andrea Miller and her company GALLIM; composer David Lang with Attacca Quartet and vocalist Theo Bleckmann; Gabriel Kahane; Lorelei Ensemble and Cantus; violinist Alexi Kenney; and ensemble Owls.

Dance programming includes GALLIM’s BLUSH, Emily Coates’s Tell Me Where It Comes From, and a work-in-progress presentation by Sweat Variant, the collaborative practice of Okwui Okpokwasili and Peter Born. Music highlights range from chamber and choral performances to jazz, including appearances by the Yale Undergraduate Jazz Collective and a solo album release event by Yale faculty member Maiani da Silva. Multimedia and installation-based work is represented by Toni Dove’s Sunjammer 6: A Tale Blown by a Solar Breeze, which opens the season.

Rachel Fine, executive director of Yale Schwarzman Center, said the season emphasizes creative exchange and shared experience through live performance. Associate artistic director Jennifer Harrison Newman added that the programming reflects the Center’s role as a cultural hub for both Yale and the wider New Haven community.