Harlem Stage Reveals Details For 40th Anniversary Season

Harlem Stage (Artistic Director and CEO Patricia Cruz) makes tickets available for its 40th Anniversary Season on Tuesday, September 5, and announces the full lineups for its Uptown Nights music series and the newly launched Uptown Nights Latin Music Series. The milestone season celebrates the institution that has, since its founding, provided an indispensable platform to both emerging and established artists of color working in an array of forms. In events throughout 2023–2024, Harlem Stage engages artists with whom the organization has, through four decades, cultivated lasting relationships—to in turn champion visionary emerging artists of color they admire, offering a platform and building relationships for the institution’s future.

Artistic Director and CEO Patricia Cruz says, “Artists have some of the biggest ears and eyes for exciting new work; they are uniquely positioned to spot, and understand, both the daring and the technical requirements of extraordinary artists at the beginnings of their careers. As emerging artists are lifted up, the whole field is lifted up, and our culture is lifted up and sustained. On the occasion of our 40th anniversary, we see a process of renewal, facilitated in part by artists acting as guest curators, providing us an opportunity to expand our curatorial vision, and discover the new for ourselves and our audiences.

Originating as a hub for art and ideas long excluded from and ignored by other cultural institutions, Harlem Stage has in its 40 years become an epicenter for groundbreaking performance and vital thought from around the corner and across the globe, helping sustain and propel forward the monumental and ever-evolving artistic legacy of one of the world’s most culturally influential neighborhoods. In an era of surging censorship of ideas that challenge dominant historical narratives, Harlem Stage continues to offer thoughtful, thought-provoking, and eye-opening work from voices that expand our understanding of the world.”

Cruz adds, “Harlem Stage began in a time of great inequity, resulting in a form of censorship by exclusion of visionary artists of color. Our intent was to level the playing field by supporting the development of their new work in new forms. Artists of color are constantly in a dialogue with their worlds—and Harlem Stage has always sought to be a place where all of our constituents can engage in the kind of transformative discourse that enriches our lives and broadens our horizons. Join us at our intimate and historic land-marked theater where artists create fearlessly and audiences share in the flow of ideas.”

The season kicks off with a performance by José James, co-presented with Bryant Park on the occasion of Harlem Stage’s 40th Anniversary. James performs On & On: José James Sings Badu, his latest record honoring the legendary high priestess of neo-soul, singer-songwriter Erykah Badu.

Throughout the season, acclaimed artists—recipients of prestigious awards and honors including the MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, Doris Duke Artist Award, Guggenheim Fellowship, The Herb Alpert Award, United States Artists Fellowship, and GRAMMY, Tony, Obie, and Bessie Awards—bring together other creative forces in their orbit for unique events that embody Harlem Stage’s mode of looking back and creating forward. Jason Moran’s guest-curated event, for instance, reimagines a program Cruz first presented at Harlem Stage (then known as Aaron Davis Hall) in 1999 celebrating the music of Duke Ellington—for which Moran was the youngest of six pianists (and is now the only living pianist to have participated). Now, nearly 25 years later—on the occasion of the 125th anniversary of Ellington’s birth—Moran organizes an evening, presented in the round, with legendary jazz pianist Abdullah Ibrahim alongside extraordinary piano talents Bertha Hope, Joanne Brackeen, and Matthew Whitaker in Pianos for Duke Reimagined: Featuring Jason Moran, Abdullah Ibrahim, and Friends (April 26 & 27, 2024). Vijay Iyer enlists musicians Nasheet Waits (drummer), Milena Casado (trumpet player), Mark Shim (saxophonist), and others in celebration of another jazz legend, composer and pianist Andrew Hill (March 1 & 2, 2024).

Ambrose Akinmusire’s multipart suite banyan seed speaks to the power of intergenerational connection, using interviews to coalesce community between jazz elders and younger musicians (March 29 & 30, 2024). (This work is one of this season’s WaterWorks commissions—a program created to identify, cultivate, and nurture the talents of visionary artists of color). Another special 40th Anniversary project, Craig Harris’ TONGUES OF FIRE (in a harlem state of mind), convenes three generations of Harlem-based artists to explore the community’s evolution from the mid-70s through today (October 20 & 21, 2023).
 

E-Moves, Harlem Stage’s flagship dance series known for showcasing dance artists across the spectrum of their careers, celebrates 25 years. On the occasion of Harlem Stage’s 40th Anniversary, the organization invites back to the Gatehouse artists who have been critical to the legacy of the institution’s dance programming and who serve as inspiration for the future of dance. Choreographer Bill T. Jones has participated in various presentations at Harlem Stage since the 1980s; in 2006, he created the Harlem Stage commission Chapel/Chapter, inaugurating the Harlem Stage Gatehouse with what The New York Times would deem the “most affecting, the most disturbing, the most powerful and the most compassionate” dance from Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company. In this season’s E-Moves, Jones returns to present a dynamic program of works, including an intervention, revisiting and reflecting on Degga (1995)—a performance that was created through a legendary collaboration between Jones, Max Roach, and Toni Morrison—as well as a piece from an emerging artist he will select (April 19 & 20, 2024). Ronald K. Brown’s company EVIDENCE also returns for an evening highlighting emerging choreographer Joya Powell while revisiting beloved repertory (October 13 & 14, 2023). nora chipaumire—whose revolutionary dance performance has enlivened Harlem Stage on numerous occasions—presents an immersive performance installation that turns into a dance party, ShebeenDUB, featuring designs from celebrated artists Ari Marcopoulos and Kara Walker, and constructed by Matt Jackson Studio (May 17 & 18, 2024). Camille A. Brown, who has a long and rich history of performing work at Harlem Stage, will present a new work of her own, and curates works by dancers/choreographers who have contributed to her growing body of creations—Chloe Davis, Juel D. Lane, Mayte Natalio, Rickey Tripp, and Maleek Washington (June 14 and 15, 2024).

The past inspires innovative performance throughout the season. In another WaterWorks commission this season, Tamar-kali presents excerpts from Black Damask—an opera she is developing featuring a libretto by Harlem Stage Associate Artistic Director and Curator-in-Residence, Carl Hancock Rux, with stage direction by James Blaszko, about the life and times of William Dorsey Swann. Once enslaved, Swann was the first known person to identify as a “queen of drag” (May 3 & 4, 2024). george emilio sanchez collaborates with visual artist Patty Ortiz on In the Court of the Conqueror, a solo performance unpacking 200-year-old U.S. Supreme Court Rulings that have diminished the Tribal Sovereignty of Native Nations (November 3, 2023). Tony-winning musician and composer Stew performs an irreverent musical tribute to radical poet and playwright Amiri Baraka/LeRoi Jones’ influences within his own art and life, HIGH SUBSTITUTE FOR THE DREAD LECTURER: Baraka Jones in Dub (March 22 & 23, 2024).

Harlem Stage also returns with its beloved music series, Uptown Nights, to present a dynamic set of artists across a wide range of genres throughout the anniversary year. From September to December 2023, the institution inaugurates the Uptown Nights Latin Music Series, an exciting lineup that celebrates music from the Latin diaspora, including Colombian-born, pan-Latin pianist, composer, and educator Pablo Mayor, performing with his Folklore Urbano Orchestra (September 22, 2023); Cuban-born MacArthur Fellow and GRAMMY-winning drummer, composer, and bandleader, Dafnis Prieto, with the New York debut of songs from his recent Cantar album (October 27, 2023); all-women mariachi band Flor de Toloache (co-presented with Carnegie Hall Citywide, November 10, 2023); and Afro-Dominican bandleader and guitarist Yasser Tejeda, performing a combination of traditional folkloric music, rock with Caribbean rhythms, and jazz, culminating in a dance party with music spun by DJ Sabine Blaizin, co-presented with World Music Institute and Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute (December 1, 2023).

As part of Uptown Nights, Harlem Stage presents an electric double bill featuring international punkSoul/Rock artist Kimberly Nichole and Ian Isiah, a rising star in music, fashion, and LGBTQ+ activism (January 26, 2024). Harlem Stage also collaborates with Harlem-based Sugar Hill Salon and Concert Artists Guild to curate an evening of chamber music at the Gatehouse, featuring works by living composers of color, performed by musicians from each organization’s ranks, including Alexander Davis (bassoon), Adam W. Sadberry (flute), David Valbuena (clarinet), and Wynona Wang (piano) (February 23, 2024).

In a work-in-progress showcase that culminates a yearlong experience, Harlem Stage presents works by the 2023 WaterWorks Emerging Artists cohort: interdisciplinary performing artist and painter Shantelle Courvoisier Jackson; singer/songwriter Hannah Lemmons; choreographer and dancer Bobby Morgan; interdisciplinary artist, composer, and pianist Mary Prescott; and trumpeter and composer Kalí Rodríguez-Peña (December 9, 2023).

Finally, on Monday, June 3, near the season’s close, the Harlem Stage’s 40th Anniversary Gala celebrates the significance of the organization’s history and work, its transformative mission, and its boundary-pushing future.

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