A Charleston son returns. Baltimore Symphony Orchestra Music Director Designate Jonathon Heyward remembers the first time he stepped onto a conductor’s rostrum: as an 8th-grader attending music class at Charleston County School of the Arts. Fast forward 17 years, and the Holy City phenom is making history as one of the youngest music directors of a major American orchestra. In his Spoleto debut, Heyward leads the full Festival Orchestra in Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique, an epic symphonic self-portrait teeming with unbridled joy and tenderness, as well as Edvard Grieg’s piano concerto, featuring sought-after soloist and fellow Charlestonian Micah McLaurin.

EPSG:4326

Symphonie Fantastique

Gaillard Center

Critically acclaimed for his raw emotional honesty, singer, guitarist, and actor Jason Isbell has steadily earned his place as one of music’s greatest performing songwriters. The four-time Grammy Award winner and rock and roll icon celebrated a remarkable year in 2023, starring in Martin Scorcese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, releasing his ninth studio album, Weathervanes, and adding three more Grammy Award nominations to his growing list of accolades. In an intimate acoustic show, Isbell lights up the Cistern Yard with “brutally beautiful” (Rolling Stone) songs such as “Cover Me Up,” “If We Were Vampires,” “King of Oklahoma,” and “Cast Iron Skillet.”

Jason Isbell

College of Charleston

Distinguished pianist and NEA Jazz Master Abdullah Ibrahim remains at the zenith of his career—recently releasing an acclaimed album, Solotude, and celebrating his 88th birthday while on a world tour. A hero to the anti- apartheid movement, Ibrahim’s first album—released under the name Dollar Brand—was censured by the South African government. Years later, he performed at Nelson Mandela’s inauguration. Join us in welcoming Ibrahim and his band Ekaya to hear a true “modern master—steeped in blues, with a classicist’s touch and poet’s sense of phrasing” (The Wall Street Journal).

Abdullah Ibrahim and Ekaya

After sold-out runs at Spoleto in 2014 and 2018, the high-octane Australian physical theater company returns, this time with the electric Out of Chaos—a work the troupe describes as “our boldest and most ambitious yet.” Hard-edged, explosive acrobatics collide with intimate, verbal confessions to create insight into how things—people and planets, sound and light—come together. This US premiere bounces between chaotic creation and a seemingly ordered understanding of the here and now, all the while hinting at the strange spaces in between.

Gravity & Other Myths: Out of Chaos

Festival Hall

Exalted on “Best of” lists at The New York Times, Washington Post, and Time, Only an Octave Apart sparkles from start to finish. In this “breathtaking cabaret-fantasia” (New York Magazine), Justin Vivan Bond—“the greatest cabaret artist of their generation” (The New Yorker)—pairs with the ever-brilliant, world-class countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo for a hilarious, vulnerable, and utterly spectacular opera-meets-cabaret-meets-pop hybrid that “shatters categorical constraints” (Broadway World). Co-created by Zack Winokur, Only an Octave Apart revels in the coexistence of contrasts, celebrating the historical and the hysterical, countertenor to counterculture.

Only an Octave Apart

Dock Street Theatre

At 25 years old, Immanuel Wilkins is already one of the most highly regarded saxophonists and composers in jazz today—his album, The 7th Hand, was included among the 10 Best of 2022 by the The New York Times and NPR’s Nate Chinen’s Favorite Music of the Year. Filled with empathy and conviction, Wilkins’s music draws inspiration from critical thought and spiritual traditions. Experience the musical wunderkind championed by eminent artists including Jason Moran as he performs with his acclaimed quartet in brilliant improvisatory synergy.

Immanuel Wilkins Quartet

Queen Street Playhouse

Experience Thomas Tallis’s majestic work, Spem in alium, considered the greatest piece of English early music, as performed by Spoleto’s masterful 40-strong choral ensemble. This Renaissance motet begins an evening exploring choral density: each subsequent work—by contemporary composers David Lang, Caroline Shaw, and Jonathan Dove—incrementally strips vocal parts, leaving only a soloist for the final piece.

Spoleto Festival USA Chorus: Density 40:1

St. Matthew's Lutheran Church

Lauded by The New York Times as “an incomparable performer…and as close as Afro-Cuban music gets to a superstar” percussionist, singer, and dancer Pedrito Martinez is widely regarded as the world’s first-call rumbero. Martinez has shared the stage with artists such as Paul Simon, Bruce Springsteen, Wynton Marsalis, and Sting; recorded four solo albums; appeared on over 100 others, and earned seven “Jazz Percussionist of the Year” nods from the Jazz Journalists Association. His last appearance at Spoleto concluded with a packed Cistern Yard audience on their feet. Now, the Grammy Award-nominated conguero and batá drum master returns with an expanded band, vocalists, and dancers for a performance featuring a mix of Afro-Cuban rhythms and cutting-edge dance music.

Pedrito Martinez: Echoes of Africa

A composer rooted in the Czech folk tradition of his homeland, Antonin Dvořák arrived in New York in the early 1890s hungry for the “American sound.” Seeking inspiration in the music of Black and indigenous America, he soon composed his ninth symphony, an indelible work of spirit befitting the wide-open spaces of the New World and a triumph that remains among the most popular orchestral works of all time. In this concert, Maestra Mei-Ann Chen, the music director of the Chicago Sinfonietta, pairs Dvořák’s showpiece with works by American artists including Florence Price and Michael Abels.

New World Symphony

2022 NPR Tiny Desk Contest winner With “a powerful voice whose tender performance commands attention and fosters connection” (NPR), Alisa Amador captivates. Her music—a synthesis of rock, jazz, funk, and alternative folk—is deeply rooted in the Latin folk and jazz she grew up with in a family of musicians. Amador’s soulful singing, poetically incisive lyrics, and syncopated rhythms will fill you with longing and leave you wanting more

Alisa Amador

A century after winning the right to vote, how much has really changed for American women? That question lies at the heart of Grammy Award- winning singer-songwriter Aoife O’Donovan’s upcoming album All My Friends, set for release this March. Inspired by the letters and speeches of suffragist Carrie Chapman Catt, the album ponders the nation’s evolution amidst a lush soundscape featuring brass, orchestra, girls’ choir, and O’Donovan’s own mysterious and compelling voice. The 2022 Folk Alliance International Song of the Year winner, who was last seen at Spoleto in 2019 performing with her acclaimed trio, I’m With Her, is joined by members of the Spoleto Festival USA Orchestra for a musical event 100 years in the making.

Aoife O’Donovan with members of the Spoleto Festival USA Orchestra

Cue romance. In 2021, Puerto Rican saxophonist and MacArthur Fellow Miguel Zenón and acclaimed Venezuelan pianist Luis Perdomo reimagined beloved boleros as sensuous jazz ballads in their critically acclaimed album El Arte Del Bolero. Three years later, Zenón and Perdomo share their Grammy Award-winning, two-album project in five intimate engagements. Irresistibly seductive, El Arte Del Bolero delivers “alluring, forward-thinking performances” (Latin Jazz Network) while honoring a timeless Latin American musical tradition.

El Arte del Bolero: Miguel Zenón / Luis Perdomo Duo

Celebrated as one of the most forward-thinking American musicians, Pulitzer Prize winner Henry Threadgill has forged a legendary career in unconventional territory—challenging bedrock ideas about jazz and exploring new approaches to composing and improvising. For this exciting Spoleto debut, Threadgill’s Zooid quintet (an unorthodox combination of reeds, acoustic guitar, cello, tuba, and drums) presents a performance at once radical, reverent, and remarkable.

Henry Threadgill Zooid

The city of Paris was ablaze the night Igor Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du printemps premiered in 1913: Riots that reportedly began in the theater’s aisles—visceral responses to the ballet’s unconventional rhythms and modern aesthetic—poured into the streets. Yet in its 110-year history, the work has become one of the most recognizable and beloved triumphs of the 20th century. In this program, the Festival’s Resident Conductor and Director of Orchestral Activities John Kennedy pairs this monumental work with a thrilling US premiere of Philip Glass’s Symphony No. 14.

The Rite of Spring

Torchbearers of contemporary folk, Watchhouse is the evolution of Andrew Marlin and Emily Frantz, previously known as Mandolin Orange. The North Carolina duo reinvented themselves in 2021 by releasing their self-titled debut album, which includes standout tracks “Better Way” and “Upside Down.” Topping Billboard’s Bluegrass Albums Chart at #1, Watchhouse represents the duo’s “best work to date,” (American Songwriter)— a bold and poetic artistic reinvention that imbues their Appalachian-steeped folk with ambient drone, gauzy soul horns, and experimental texture. A band at the regenerative edges of subtly experimental folk-rock, Watchhouse is one to watch.

Watchhouse

Beethoven’s stirring Symphony No. 3, “Heroic,” marked a decisive turn from the Classical to Romantic period, truly groundbreaking in both form and approach. This ambitious program also features Shostakovich’s sparkling Piano Concerto No. 1, performed by internationally celebrated pianist (and Festival favorite) Inon Barnatan, and Reena Esmail’s Testament (from Vishwas), which showcases the dexterous weaving of Indian and Western classical music we can expect from this year’s chamber music composer-in-residence.

Beethoven’s Third

Spoleto Festival USA’s Jazz Curator Larry Blumenfeld speaks with artists from the 2023 Wells Fargo Jazz Series. These discussions are free (tickets required).

Jazz Talks

Riviera Theater

Native American visual artist and composer Elisa Harkins conceived Wampum / ᎠᏕᎳ ᏗᎦᎫᏗ  as an act of Indigenous Futurism, combining disco and Indigenous language in an effort to preserve and celebrate disappearing languages through active use. Co-presented with the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art at College of Charleston, this innovative performance features Harkins singing in a combination of Cherokee, English, and Muscogee (Creek) and moving rhythmically to electronic dance tracks inspired by Indigenous music. Both dreamy and intense, this piece effortlessly fuses primitive and modern, timeless and of this time.

Elisa Harkins: Wampum / ᎠᏕᎳ ᏗᎦᎫᏗ

Charleston Music Hall

One of indie-music’s most in-demand violinists, multi-instrumentalist Kaoru Ishibashi (a.k.a. Kishi Bashi) has collaborated with such names as Regina Spektor, Sondre Lerche, and of Montreal. Since stepping out on his own, Bashi has “transformed into a mad pop scientist, giving life to earworms by looping together Eastern sounds, Philip Glass improvisations, and ’70s prog-rock inspiration” (NPR). His latest oeuvre celebrates his cultural heritage, using Japanese refrains as compositional and textural devices while exploring themes of love and self-discovery.

Kishi Bashi with Strings

The Spoleto Festival USA Orchestra and Chorus unite for a jubilant production of Joseph Haydn’s 1798 oratorio The Creation. The three-act masterwork chronicles the biblical creation narrative from emptiness to Eden, entwining Haydn’s exultant score with a vivid libretto drawn from Genesis, Psalms, and John Milton’s Paradise Lost—in a riveting journey from chaos to order.

Spoleto Festival USA Chorus + Orchestra: The Creation

Led by 2023 Grammy-winning pianist/composer Kris Davis, this special concert is named for Davis’s 2019 breakthrough album, which was awarded “Jazz Album of the Year” by both The New York Times and NPR. “Bringing together wildly diverse musicians in tangled unity,” Davis often sets her improvisations to “grooves played with prismatic nuance” (The New York Times) by drummer Terri Lyne Carrington—a four-time Grammy winner and NEA Jazz Master herself. Turntablist and electronic musician Val Jeanty, bassist Trevor Dunn, and guitarist Julian Lage add layers of sonic texture for a thrilling and unexpected sound.

Kris Davis Diatom Ribbons

Praise house melodies meet modern jazz in an unforgettable celebration of Gullah history and musical heritage. The star-studded performance—helmed by trumpeter, composer, and Guggenheim Fellow Matt White—unites 20-plus South Carolinian artists including Grammy Award-winning drummer Quentin Baxter and renowned saxophonist Chris Potter. Featuring a full jazz band, a string section, three Gullah elders, and a narrator, Lowcountry forms a prismatic view of the vibrant Gullah culture.

Lowcountry: South Carolina Music in the Gullah Tradition

A New Orleans native, Courtney Bryan is “a pianist and composer of panoramic interests” (The New York Times), an artist shaping the future of American contemporary classical music. Bridging the sacred and the secular, Bryan’s compositions explore human emotions through sound, finding the connective tissue between jazz and traditional gospel, spirituals, and hymns. At the Queen Street Playhouse, Courtney performs solo twice, then adds in a quartet of saxophone, piano, electric bass, and drums.

Courtney Bryan

Based on creator Odile Gakire Katese’s collected letters from survivors and perpetrators of Rwanda’s 1994 genocide, The Book of Life leads audiences on a remarkable journey of pain, grief, acceptance, and rebirth. In this deeply moving performance about finding hope in the aftermath of tragedy, the playwright and cultural entrepreneur’s story reverberates through spoken word and the rhythms of Ingoma Nshya, Rwanda’s first-ever female drumming ensemble founded by Katese. In a world racked with hatred and struggle, The Book of Life celebrates healing after trauma and the resilience of the human spirit.

The Book of Life

Grammy-nominated harpist Brandee Younger is revolutionizing the instrument for the 21st century, stretching its boundaries and musical limitations. An avid hip-hop fan as a teen, she studied classical music at the University of Hartford and soon ventured into the world of jazz. Since then, “the most heralded new voice on the harp” (NPR) has worked with cultural icons including Common, Beyonce, Lauryn Hill, and Stevie Wonder—not to mention some of jazz’s current greats, from Ravi Coltrane to Reggie Workman. In five concerts during Spoleto’s new Jazz at the Playhouse series, Younger presents her signature “dreamy, harp-forward, R&B-inflected jazz.”

Brandee Younger

Talk about a ‘glow-up’: Hans Christian Andersen’s timeless tale “The Ugly Duckling” illuminates the Robinson in a spellbinding production from America’s Got Talent semifinalists Lightwire Theater. The classic story unfolds in a vibrant, family-friendly production featuring handmade electroluminescent costumes, poignant choreography, and creative use of music ranging from classical to pop. With dazzling visuals and enduring themes of belonging and self-discovery, The Ugly Duckling is a feast for both the eyes and the soul.

Lightwire Theater: The Ugly Duckling

Rose Maree Myers Theater

Gustav Mahler’s epic symphony, divided into five rich, wildly distinct movements, is a titanic work, virtually unmatched in expressive intensity. Continuing Spoleto’s commitment to commissioning new music, the concert also features a world premiere concerto by Grammy-nominated flutist, singer, and composer, Nathalie Joachim, performed by a “cellist of power and grace” (The Guardian), guest soloist Seth Parker Woods.

Mahler’s Fifth

A perennial critics’ favorite who’s been nominated for 17 Grammys, Brandy Clark is “universally revered” among fellow country songwriters, having penned hits for Kacey Musgraves, Band Perry, Darius Rucker, and Miranda Lambert (Los Angeles Times). But Nashville’s sought-after tunesmith is coming into the spotlight after a whirlwind year that included her Broadway debut as co-composer/ lyricist of the Tony Award-winning musical Shucked, the release of her latest self-titled album (produced by close friend and collaborator, Brandi Carlile), and winning the Grammy Award for Best Americana Performance for her haunting hit ballad, “Dear Insecurity.” NPR Music, Billboard, Rolling Stone, Variety, and The Los Angeles Times all included her album on their “Best of 2023” lists with Forbes describing it as “an Americana Masterpiece,” and Variety referring to Clark as “one of America’s treasures.” Rare to see a rising star so comfortable in her own skin and in full command of her storytelling powers; don’t miss Clark’s Spoleto premiere at the Cistern Yard.

Brandy Clark

Hailed by the British Theatre Guide as “a truly staggering, relentless theatre experience,” Dark Noon offers an outsider’s perspective on American history. Framed through the lens of a fictional film production, seven South African actors embody traditional American archetypes—cowboys, Indians, prospectors, missionaries, and more—all intent on subduing both the land and one another. The nation’s 300-year path from lawlessness to civilization is mirrored by the show’s ever-evolving stage, which transitions from barren desert to bustling town as the narrative unfolds. Replete with searing themes of violence, genocide, and oppression, the Reumert Award- winning show presents an unflinching glimpse of how the West was really won.

fix+foxy: Dark Noon

Nickel Creek—the platinum-selling, internationally renowned trio of Chris Thile, Sara Watkins, and Sean Watkins—ushered in a new era of bluegrass infused with jazz, classical, pop, and rock for a sound all their own. As multi-Grammy-winning artists, the band has brought their progressive blend of acoustic roots, folk, and “newgrass” to a broad audience, greatly influencing the sound and trajectory of all three genres in the process. As part of their long-awaited reunion tour, the Watkins siblings and Thile—whose blistering mandolin was last heard at Spoleto with the Punch Brothers in 2019—fill the Cistern Yard for two unforgettable nights.

Nickel Creek

The Spoleto Festival USA Chorus, composed of gifted vocal fellows from across the nation, celebrates its third season with two highly anticipated programs.

Spoleto Festival USA Chorus

 Cathedral Church of St. Luke & St. Paul

 St. Matthew's Lutheran Church

More than five decades after being named DownBeat’s 1967 Jazz Artist of the Year, saxophonist, flutist, and composer Charles Lloyd received that very same honor in 2023, affirming his vital presence in music. One of the first jazz artists to sell a million copies of a recording, Lloyd celebrates his 86th birthday with the release of The Sky Will Still Be There Tomorrow— one of his most significant recordings to date. The NEA Jazz Master and legendary bandleader returns to Spoleto at the helm of a remarkable ensemble, including pianist and Kennedy Center Artistic Director for Jazz, Jason Moran, bassist Larry Grenadier, and drummer Brian Blade.

Charles Lloyd Sky Quartet

In June 2023, Yo-Yo Ma played the final notes of Bach’s Cello Suites in Nairobi. They marked the end of a five-year, six-continent journey, a search for answers to the questions that have in many ways defined his career: What is culture’s role in society? How can culture help us imagine and build a better future?

Now, in a special program combining music and conversation, Yo-Yo will be joined by two friends he met along the way, Angélique Kidjo and Jeremy Dutcher, visionary artists whose generosity and perspective have guided him toward hope. Performing together for the first time, Ma, Kidjo, and Dutcher call on us to contemplate the great questions of life and art: What has brought us here? And where will we choose to go next?

An Evening with Yo-Yo Ma

Two iconic Baroque works frame this heavenly program, featuring 24 musicians from the Spoleto Festival USA Orchestra with the full Festival Chorus. George Frideric Handel’s monumental Dixit Dominus pairs with Henry Purcell’s Te Deum Laudamus and Jubilate, one of his final religious works, a revelation in its time for the scoring of hymn to orchestral accompaniment.

Spoleto Festival USA Chorus + Orchestra: Handel’s Dixit Dominus

Emmy Award-winning CBS News correspondent Martha Teichner hosts riveting, intimate conversations with the artists and companies of Spoleto Festival USA, illuminating the creative process and delving into the stories that form the 2022 productions. These discussions are free (tickets required).

Conversations With

Music in Time

Praised by NPR for his “soulful voice and evocative lyrics,” singer-songwriter Amos Lee plumbs a deep wellspring of personal experiences to craft profoundly universal songs. Lee’s evocative albums—which include his Gold-certified debut and the Billboard 200-topping Mission Bell—explore hope, loss, morality, connection, and renewal amidst a rich sonic mélange of folk, rock, and soul influences. Lee steps into the spotlight for a solo acoustic show featuring hits such as “Windows are Rolled Down,” “Worry No More,” and “Sweet Pea.”

Amos Lee

Spoleto Festival USA’s Jazz Curator Larry Blumenfeld speaks with artists from the 2024 Wells Fargo Jazz Series at the Emmett Robinson Theatre. These discussions are free (tickets required).

Charleston County Public Library

 The Riviera Theater

Rising operatic superstar Nicole Heaston takes on the titular role in this powerful existential drama, set to one of the most beautiful scores of the 20th century. Tucked away in a countryside mansion, Vanessa has waited 20 years for the return of her lover, Anatol. When his deadringer son arrives instead, a love triangle ensues between the conniving young suitor, Vanessa, and her impressionable niece.

American composer Samuel Barber won the Pulitzer Prize for Vanessa’s sweepingly lyrical score, which explores the full depths of the characters’ psyches in what librettist and Spoleto’s founder Gian Carlo Menotti characterized as a universal human dilemma.

Vanessa

Her feet are just that fast. Described by The New York Times as “a wonder, as humanly appealing as she is superhumanly skilled,” choreographer and performer Ayodele Casel returns to Spoleto with her latest work, Chasing Magic. Onstage with six tap dancers and a group of live musicians including jazz virtuoso and 2023 Grammy Award-winner Arturo O’Farrill, Casel explores the magic of tap dance and daily life, capturing that spark of connection and creation. A celebration of gratitude, friendship, and trust, Chasing Magic is a joyous feast for the eyes, ears, and soul.

Ayodele Casel: Chasing Magic

Born in Paris and raised in Lebanon, composer and violinist Layale Chaker has been speaking multiple languages–linguistically and musically–since her youth. The 2020-22 Jerome Hill Fellow challenges stereotypes about Arabic music with her unique sonic style: a beguiling blend of classical contemporary music, jazz, Arabic maqam scales, and improvisation. The composer of the opera Ruinous Gods—which makes its world premiere at Spoleto this season—Chaker and her ensemble, Sarafand, take center stage for four performances of two different programs.

Layale Chaker + Sarafand

Multi-instrumentalist, band leader, author, philanthropist, and international icon Trombone Shorty preserves and propels the musical traditions of Tremé as “the face of New Orleans music” (The Washington Post). The Grammy Award winner’s extensive list of accomplishments includes touring with Lenny Kravitz; sharing the stage with a diverse array of talents from the Foo Fighters, to Bruno Mars, to Ringo Starr, to Green Day; and performing at vaunted venues such as the White House and blockbuster events including the NBA All-Star Game and Coachella. The seven-time OffBeat Artist of the Year leads his legendary ensemble, Orleans Avenue, in a high-octane performance that blends New Orleans jazz with rock, funk, and hip-hop influences.

Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue

Can music inform our sense of place? Time? Experience? And do those elements inform music in turn? Four Spoleto Festival USA Orchestra members seek to answer these questions with members of the Charleston community. Pairing emerging composers with entrepreneurs, artists, and activists, the “Tell Your Story” project creates powerful sonic collages and aural memoirs—“mechanisms for professional artists to lift up voices that otherwise go unheard” (The Post and Courier).

Tell Your Story

Loosely based on the Greek myth of Demeter and Persephone, Ruinous Gods explores the psychological toll experienced by displaced refugee children. This vital world premiere opera follows a desperate mother’s attempts to revive her 12-year- old daughter who has fallen into a non-responsive sleep triggered by trauma. The child’s journey through an underworld-inspired dreamscape forms the backdrop for a groundbreaking score that weaves Arabic maqam and Western classical music traditions with diverse Middle Eastern influences, jazz, and improvisation. At turns painful, humorous, and hopeful, Ruinous Gods urges crucial conversations about how governments and societies treat migrant families.

Ruinous Gods

Among the most romantic and tragic compositions, Robert Schumann’s Dichterliebe portrays one man’s phantasmic pursuit of the woman he loves. Tenor Jamez McCorkle, who dazzled in the title role of Omar last Festival, both sings and accompanies himself on piano in this brand-new, multilayered production featuring stunning stagecraft and projections by award-winning artist Miwa Matreyek.

A Poet’s Love

Overflowing with ebullient musicianship and camaraderie, 11 programs feature a showstopping mix of canonic gems and bright contemporary compositions. This season, hear revered returning players and welcome new faces as they perform a compendium spanning pre-17th-century pieces to 21st- century triumphs. In celebration of Spoleto’s late Director of Chamber Music Geoff Nuttall, preeminent artists, including Alisa Weilerstein, Inon Barnatan, and Alexi Kenney, will honor their friend in the best way possible: with groundbreaking performances in a program both informed and inspired by Geoff.

Bank of America Chamber Music

With his characteristic humor, swagger, and irreverence, Geoff Nuttall transformed Spoleto’s Bank of America Chamber Music series into something akin to rock-and-roll rather than buttoned-down classical. To honor Nuttall’s curatorial genius and infectious enthusiasm, some of his closest musical colleagues and special guest stars perform a concert of virtuosic debauchery—a brilliant tribute to a singular artist.

Celebrating Geoff Nuttall

New Orleans-based singer and multi-instrumentalist Leyla McCalla mines her Haitian American heritage for a sound at once earthy, elegant, and soulful—vibrating with Creole, Cajun, and American jazz and folk influences. Formerly a cellist with the Grammy-winning string band Carolina Chocolate Drops and part of the ensemble Our Native Daughters with Festival-favorite Rhiannon Giddens, the “liquid-voiced” McCalla topped NPR’s “Best Roots Music of 2022” with her latest solo project, Breaking the Thermometer, which the outlet deemed one of the year’s “most compelling.”

Leyla McCalla

Renowned drummer Terri Lyne Carrington and acclaimed vocalist Dianne Reeves unite. Inspired by Carrington’s Grammy Award-winning 2022 album New Standards, Carrington and Reeves perform a rich selection of works by female jazz composers that span eras, geographical borders, and genres — from blues to bebop and beyond. Energized by the remarkable talents of multiple Grammy winners and NEA Jazz Masters Carrington and Reeves, New Standards is a sensational celebration of the accomplishments of women in jazz.

Terri Lyne Carrington New Standards with Special Guest Dianne Reeves

In a radical retelling of Homer’s epic poem, acclaimed director Lisa Peterson and Tony Award-winning actor Denis O’Hare (Take Me Out) craft a work of “pure theater: shocking, glorious, primal, and deeply satisfying” (Time Out New York). O’Hare, who has brought powerful performances to numerous films and featured roles on TV’s The Good Wife and American Horror Story, shapes this breathtaking tour de force into a sweeping account of humanity’s unshakable attraction to violence, destruction, and chaos.

An Iliad

“Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it,” but who is allowed to tell the story? And what motivates the narrative? In a companion piece to their acclaimed play An Iliad (presented at last year’s Festival to wildly enthusiastic response), co-creators Denis O’Hare and Lisa Peterson now delve into Virgil’s Aeneid to explore the fall of the democratic republic in ancient Rome. In modern language, the play toggles between past and present, illuminating power dynamics that feel as real and resonant today as two millenniums ago. What truths do the classics hold, and what has been obscured?

The Song of Rome

From acclaimed choreographer Benjamin Millepied comes a bold, multidisciplinary reenvisioning of Shakespeare’s tragedy with Prokofiev’s lush score. Set in a modern metropolis, the titular duo are recast as diverse young adults: rotating between male/female, male/male, and female/female pairings. The fast-paced drama unfolds both on and beyond the Gaillard stage through live video, a state-of-the-art projection system, and accompaniment by the Spoleto Festival USA Orchestra under the baton of Orchestra Music Director Timothy Myers. Hailed by The New Yorker as “startling, dazzling, and wrenching in equal measure,” Romeo and Juliet Suite offers a riveting treatise on the recklessness of young love.

L.A. Dance Project: Romeo and Juliet Suite

Tony Award-winner John Cameron Mitchell and internationally renowned cabaret star Amber Martin share the stage in a capricious showcase of songs, stories, and characters. Guided by audience-spun roulette wheels, Mitchell and Martin perform an eclectic selection of musical numbers that span David Bowie, Reba McEntire, and Fleetwood Mac to original songs by Martin and tunes from Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Featuring live projections, pitch-perfect vocals, and a house band led by Grammy Award-nominated music director Justin Craig, Cassette Roulette is “unscripted, genuine, and pure genius” (Broadway World).

Cassette Roulette: John Cameron Mitchell and Amber Martin

With repertoire spanning the canon to contemporary works, this beloved series is unparalleled in ambition and depth. Under the inspired curation of new Director of Chamber Music Paul Wiancko, globally renowned chamber musicians present 11 ingenious programs rich in revelry and fellowship. Paul’s inaugural season welcomes composer-in-residence Reena Esmail, along with an array of talented first-timers and Festival favorites ready to rock the Dock.

Beloved for their old-time string sound and “raucous, warm-hearted performances” (The New York Times), Old Crow Medicine Show is universally acknowledged as one of the pioneers and preeminent voices of the American roots revival. The six-piece band earned the 2013 Trailblazer Award from the Americana Music Association, won two Grammy Awards, and introduced the world to “Wagon Wheel”—one of the top-five country singles of all time. The Grand Ole Opry inductees are celebrating their 25th anniversary with the release of their Grammy Award-nominated album, Jubilee.

Old Crow Medicine Show

Spoleto and the Charleston community unite to open the 48th Spoleto Festival USA at this free event. Celebrating the enchantment of the Festival season, this event includes speeches by civic and Spoleto leaders, as well as surprise performances to welcome artists from around the world to Charleston for the Festival.

Opening Ceremony

Charleston City Hall

Hosted by the highly acclaimed and award-winning actor and playwright, Denis O’Hare, the Gala kicked off the 48th Festival with great fanfare and excitement. The event raised critical funds that will support Spoleto’s mission to produce and present work of the highest artistic caliber, foster a culture of belonging, and engage and deepen the public’s appreciation for the arts in building a better world.

Thank you to our attendees and supporters for a night to remember!

Opening Gala

Hotel Bennett

A 2022 Grammy nominee for Best New Artist and the 2017 NPR Tiny Desk Contest winner, Tank and the Bangas is widely considered one of the most exciting, sonically diverse bands to crash the music scene in years. A perfect ensemble to close the Festival with a bang, their sound sits at the crossroads of jazz, hip hop, soul, and rock—with funk serving as the conduit.

Wells Fargo Festival Finale featuring Tank and the Bangas

Firefly Distillery

Salem is on the brink. Its people fear the shadows in the forest, but the real monsters are much closer to home. Returning to Spoleto after its lauded 2015 rendition of A Streetcar Named Desire, Scottish Ballet unleashes the emotional force of Arthur Miller’s masterpiece in this “blazing interpretation” (The Observer), choreographed by Helen Pickett and accompanied by members of the Spoleto Festival USA Orchestra.

Scottish Ballet: The Crucible

In a rollicking homecoming concert, Quentin Baxter electrifies the Cistern Yard— where, as a child, he heard evening concerts from outside its wrought-iron gates. While the Grammy-winning drummer—a Spoleto veteran—has anchored other ensembles, this evening puts Baxter front and center, leading a phenomenal band through time-honored classics and his own compositions that infuse modern jazz with the Gullah and church traditions of his Charleston roots.

Spoleto Festival USA

Jun 9, 2024

Symphonie Fantastique

8 - 9 Jun, 2024

Jason Isbell

Spoleto Festival USA