A Rare Return: Culture Mill’s Eclipse Back at Carolina Performing Arts

by Lauren Wingenroth

This blog is part three of our Southern Futures series. Read part one here and part two here.

Four years ago, Eclipse premiered at Carolina Performing Arts, the first in a series of many performances resulting from CPA’s Southern Futures residencies.  

The work, which was created by artists collaborating through Saxapahaw-based performing arts laboratory Culture Mill and inspired by Geeta N. Kapur’s To Drink From the Well: The Struggle for Racial Equality at the Nation’s Oldest Public University, explored the history of the land it took place on and the ways we experience that history in our bodies.  

Eclipse was something of a catalyst, sparking a series of multidisciplinary spin-offs, like a geography class co-taught by Culture Mill artists, a poetry collection, and another performance installation, Bloc, which applied a similar lens to Chapel Hill’s historically Black Midway district. It also came to represent something foundational about what Southern Futures at CPA was and could be, acting as a prototype for future residencies, which Culture Mill co-directors Tommy Noonan and Murielle Elizéon also contributed to. 

So it only feels right that, after four years of both Southern Futures and Eclipse deepening and expanding, the piece is returning to CPA, a rare opportunity for audiences to engage with a work for a second time.  

“We rarely have a chance to present something twice, so we’re really excited about that opportunity,” says CPA’s senior director of artistic and production Amy Kolling. “Eclipse is created and performed by artists who have built creative practice based in restorative justice – that felt new and inspiring to us and informed the way we designed all of CPA’s Southern Futures residencies.”  

It is both the way Eclipse was created and the questions it asks that so vividly exemplify Southern Futures, an initiative at CPA and across UNC that seeks to reimagine the South and the stories we tell about it through research and interdisciplinary collaborations. Rather than prescribing deadlines or expectations about what artists should produce, Southern Futures residencies allow artists the freedom and flexibility to follow where their artistic and research interests lead them. That “allowed us a lot of leeway to develop this,” says Noonan.  

For Noonan and Elizéon, “working in emergence” looked like prioritizing embodied knowledge as they investigated the land that would both host Eclipse and act as its subject matter: the Joan H. Gillings ArtSpace at CURRENT and the surrounding courtyard.

“Instead of starting with content and theme, we started with the practice of standing with our two different bodies in different places and noticing everything.” – Tommy Noonan

They also employed restorative practices, consulted archival materials and land records, and collaborated with a large interdisciplinary team including dancers, sound artists, poets, and restorative practitioners.  

Eclipse’s content, too, speaks directly to the mission of Southern Futures, as it probes what the history of the literal ground both audiences and performers walk on can tell us about UNC, the South, and ourselves. “It’s a catalyst for reckoning with our past and understanding where this all came from and considering how that makes us feel,” says Kolling. “It’s very in-your-body, with your feet on the ground.” 

As much as Eclipse engages with the past, it is equally concerned with the “future” part of Southern Futures, as it questions whether it would be possible to build an imaginary alternative monument, a representation of “an impossible idea of a Southern future,” says Noonan.  

The cohort of artists imagining this possible Southern future—which in addition to Noonan and Elizéon includes poets Cortland Gilliam and CJ Suitt, sound artist Caitlyn Swett, dancers Anthony ‘Otto’ Nelson Jr. and Jasmine Powell, and many others—are all locally based. 

The four performances of Eclipse on March 30 and 31 and April 10 and 11 will be accompanied by several weeks of free events comprising the Southern Futures Assembly, which will include restorative listening circles, a lecture, and Well Practice, a listening and walking practice at UNC’s Old Well.  

Eclipse will look different than it did four years ago. “This journey has deepened all of our experiences of the interrelationship between race, wealth, and power, and how they land on our different bodies differently,” says Noonan.  

Talking about the history of UNC’s campus also feels different now, and is perhaps all the more imperative. “There’s a sense of risk to talking about history,” says Noonan. “That’s something to move towards, and engage with.” 

Conductors and Coaches: Five Takeaways on Leadership from Yannick Nézet-Séguin and Jenny Levy

by Lauren Wingenroth

Spend a few minutes listening to Philadelphia Orchestra music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin and University of North Carolina women’s lacrosse coach Jenny Levy speak about their work, and you’ll start to notice just how often the same themes emerge. Both leaders, each at the very top of their field, wax poetic about teamwork, creativity, and conviction. It’s clear that they have much more in common than just their commitment to excellence.

The many shared qualities that unite Nézet-Séguin and Levy—and conductors and coaches more generally—inspired Conductors and Coaches, the latest in Carolina Performing Arts’ Artists Are Athletes / Athletes Are Artists™ series. In previous videos, we saw how explosive power and dynamic jumps united a basketball player and an Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater performer, and how fast footwork and improvisation are shared between soccer and tap dance. While Nézet-Séguin and Levy may not be in the spotlight as much as the athletes and musicians they lead, the video strikingly highlights the parallels between them, from their visionary leadership to the way they inspire their teams to the discipline and focus they embody.

Nézet-Séguin, who is one of the most in-demand and exciting conductors in the world, and Levy, who built the women’s lacrosse program at UNC from the ground up to become one of the most successful programs in the country (they are currently the reigning NCAA champions), each spoke to CPA about their approach to leadership, the connections between the arts and athletics, and how they foster excellence.

On the parallels between coaching and conducting:

YNS: “A conductor doesn’t make sound, the orchestra does, so in that sense I’m very close to a coach. My role is to help people listen to one another and believe in a shared idea. When musicians feel ownership, the music starts to breathe differently. An orchestra is the ultimate team: everyone has a solo responsibility and a collective responsibility at the same time.”

JL: “It’s such a no-brainer parallel to me. You’re trying to get a group of people on the same page to show up time and time again, day in and day out, with enthusiasm, passion, love, and performance. All of it is dependent on other people—it’s not an individual performance. So as the leader, you’re trying to get everyone to understand the same language.”

On the value of drawing connections between the arts and athletics:

JL: “I think excellence—regardless of the arena—is appreciated by excellence. Marrying the arts and athletics together, especially at the University of North Carolina, where both programs are premiere, is a really cool concept.”

YNS: “Both are really about human potential. We prepare, we doubt, we fail, we try again, and then suddenly everything aligns for a moment. Audiences see the performance, but the real story is the process. The amount of practice, repetition, and patience behind what audiences see on stage or on the field is almost unimaginable. Recognizing that shared dedication helps people understand both worlds more deeply, and it creates respect across disciplines.”

How Nézet-Séguin is inspired by sports:

YNS: “I am a sports fan, especially tennis—my cat Rafa (Nadal) can tell you all about it! I’m actively inspired by commitment. Great players don’t choose when to care; they care all the time. In music it’s the same: every detail and nuance matters. Sports, like the performing arts, teaches acceptance. Conditions change, nerves appear, things are imperfect, but the best performers adapt rather than fight reality. It’s about trusting in the work we’ve done.”

How Levy incorporates music:

JL: “We use music every day in practice. It’s part of who we are. It brings another element of fun, of curiosity, of inspiration, of motivation. We use music to connect us to a specific moment, or to bring about an emotion. The best teams have a universal feeling together in a moment, and that’s how we use music.”

On the preparation required for their roles:

JL: “Preparation is key. When we’re in our season, preparation looks different than when we’re in our off-season, when we’re trying to acquire new skills, which is also different from the summer, when players aren’t here and we’re doing a lot of reflection and evaluation. It’s cyclical. There’s a lot of room to pivot. If something’s not working, we just move on. For me, I don’t work out with the team anymore, and I’m not as fit as them, but I think fitness is mental and physical. I do a lot of yoga. I work out six days a week. I recently bought a sauna and red light therapy. I really prioritize sleep, especially in season. I want to feel good and sharp, so I limit distractions.”

YNS: “My preparation starts away from the podium. I study the score deeply almost every morning while also staying physically grounded and rested. Conducting requires stamina and efficiency, like a long-distance athlete: you need to release energy at the right moment, not all the time. I also train regularly in order to stay resilient, flexible, and loose in my body and mind.”

On how they foster excellence:

JL: “Athletes are always so serious and they want to be perfect. We try not to be perfect. We try to be excellent, and that’s where creativity comes in—when you ask them to be messy and fail. I put them in a lot of situations that don’t even involve having a lacrosse stick in their hand; that make them be playful and goofy and vulnerable. Those pieces are equally important.” 

YNS: “I believe excellence comes from joy, kindness, and trust. When people are curious, feel safe, and share a common purpose, they naturally give their best. My goal is to create an environment where musicians want to give more than what’s written on the page, because they care about the music and each other. That’s when an ensemble shines and the music soars.”

The TEAM’s Reconstructing: How Do We Walk Through Our Histories Together—And Should We?

by Lauren Wingenroth

This blog is part two of our Southern Futures series. Read part one here and part three here.

Early on in the TEAM’s Reconstructing, there’s a scene that takes place in a former plantation house located on a college campus. In it, two academics collaborate on a project that, on its surface, concerns itself with polyrhythmic music, but on a deeper level seems to interrogate their own professional relationship as a Black woman and a white man. Throughout the scene, the house—and the histories and memories contained within it—makes itself known, a presence that’s felt differently by the two characters.

The scene captures many of the themes that Reconstructing will return to again and again: if and how intimacy can exist between Black and white people; how we relate to our histories; the vulnerability inherent in undertaking a collaborative process; how the enduring legacy of slavery lives within both places and people. But it also speaks to just how resonant the play, which came to Carolina Performing Arts on February 21, feels on this campus.

“It has a particular resonance in a place like North Carolina, in a place that is probably aware of its history and aware of the buildings that were built by enslaved people,” says Eric Berryman, one of Reconstructing’s co-authors and performers. “I’m very excited to do the piece at CPA for what it will bring up for audiences that are familiar with that history, and hopefully for audiences who aren’t. Hopefully it makes them look around at their surroundings a bit differently.”

Reconstructing is the product of eight years of research and conversations by the TEAM, a Brooklyn-based experimental theater collective that makes work “about the foundational aspects of America,” says Berryman. In addition to Berryman, the work’s collaborators include artists like Ato Blankson-Wood, who originated a role in Jeremy O. Harris’ Slave Play, and Rachel Chavkin, director of Broadway hits Natasha, Pierre, & The Great Comet of 1812 and Hadestown.

The TEAM works nonhierarchically, and makes work through a yearslong devising process. In other words, instead of one playwright who crafts the script for the actors to memorize, the TEAM, “writes as we go, as we explore,” says Berryman. The resulting script is based on research, improvisation and text transcribed directly from conversations between collaborators.

Some of this process happened in Chapel Hill, through a yearslong Southern Futures residency. It’s hard to imagine a project better-suited to the mission of Southern Futures, an initiative within CPA and across UNC that seeks to reimagine the South and the stories we tell about it. “I believe that the piece itself is reshaping Southern stories,” says Berryman. “Some people think ‘must we keep talking about this?’ But many of us feel that yes, we should keep talking about it. So how do we keep talking about it so that it feels new? How do we engage with it?”

The TEAM’s research-based process involved collaborators investigating their own family histories and connections to slavery, whiteness and the South. “Sometimes the research doesn’t make its way into the play in a seen or heard way, but it all shows up in a spiritual way,” says Berryman.

This investment in research aligns with a key tenant of Southern Futures and CPA, which see artists as researchers and scholars. “Artists are constantly in a research mode as they create new work,” says Amy Kolling, CPA’s senior director of artistic and production.

“Our commitment to offering research residencies to artists acknowledges that and invites them into the university context with all of the resources it holds.” – Amy Kolling

Indeed, works like Reconstructing that involve many years of deep consideration and investigation can only exist with the space and time that comes with a program such as Southern Futures. “A piece like this requires time, it requires long-term funding,” says Berryman. “You can’t quickly reshape history. You can’t quickly reshape the way theater is done. Time and funding allowed us to make something that is challenging, and that requires further engagement. The piece exists beyond the ninety minutes that you paid for.”

Challenging as it may be, Reconstructing is also a riveting and dynamic piece of theater with a powerful original score, played live, as well as moments of humor, dance, and deep humanity. The highly metatheatrical piece is a kind of biography of the show itself, mirroring both the challenges and the transformation the creators experienced in making it.

“They really made room for each artist to bring their own unique practice and curiosity and history into the piece,” says Kolling. “It seems like a restorative practice – both personal and transformative.”

Carolina Performing Arts Launches Third Chapter of Award-Winning “Artists Are Athletes / Athletes Are Artists™” Series, Exploring Leadership Across Music and Sport 

Conductors and Coaches featuring Yannick Nézet-Séguin and Jenny Levy explores leadership, collective performance, and the power of shared intention 

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – February 24, 2026 – Carolina Performing Arts, the performing arts presenter at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has released the third chapter of its ongoing storytelling series Artists Are Athletes / Athletes Are Artists™, continuing its exploration of the shared qualities that define excellence across disciplines. 

Titled Conductors and Coaches, the new video brings together two visionary leaders: Yannick Nézet-Séguin, music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Metropolitan Opera, and the Orchestre Métropolitain de Montréal, and Jenny Levy, head coach of UNC Women’s Lacrosse and four-time NCAA national champion. The video illuminates the symmetry of elite leadership, revealing how focus, collaboration, resilience, and vision transform individual talent into something greater than the sum of its parts. 

“Yannick and Jenny are both extraordinary at what they do. Each of them understands how to shape a culture, how to bring individual talent into alignment, and how to create the conditions for collective excellence,” says Alison Friedman, the James and Susan Moeser Executive and Artistic Director of CPA. “At Carolina, where the arts and athletics coexist at the highest level, it felt natural to bring those two worlds into conversation through leaders who embody that standard.” 

Leadership Across Music and Sport

Since its launch in 2023, Artists Are Athletes / Athletes Are Artists™ has paired world-class artists and elite student-athletes to illuminate the grit, focus, and creativity that define excellence across disciplines. The series debuted with UNC Men’s Basketball and Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, followed by a collaboration between UNC Women’s Soccer and tap dance company Dorrance Dance.  

For the next chapter, Friedman set out to explore another powerful throughline connecting the arts and athletics: leadership. To bring that idea to life, she brought together two figures whose impact extends far beyond their respective arenas—Nézet-Séguin, one of the world’s most dynamic conductors and a longtime CPA collaborator, and Levy, one of the most accomplished coaches in collegiate athletics.  

“At Carolina, the culture we’ve built drives everything—trust, accountability, and a shared commitment to excellence,” says Levy. “I loved being part of this series with Carolina Performing Arts because it highlights leadership in an unexpected way; not coach to coach, but leader to leader. It reinforces something we believe deeply in our program: the principles that drive championship performance are universal.” 

Nézet-Séguin echoes that sentiment, finding those same principles at the heart of orchestral performance.  

“In an orchestra, every musician brings a distinct sound, and my role is to support and help that individuality flourish while allowing everyone to breathe and move as one,” he says. “I’m grateful to Carolina Performing Arts for creating space where the worlds of arts and athletics can meet and reflect each other in such a powerful way. When those boundaries soften, we can see how deeply connected our pursuits truly are and how much we can learn from one another through that exchange.” 

Shaping the Next Chapter of Artists and Athletes

Produced by CPA in collaboration with Raleigh-based creative agency Myriad, filming for Conductors and Coaches took place in November 2025, timed to coincide with Nézet-Séguin’s November 4–5 visit to Memorial Hall with The Philadelphia Orchestra. Production continued with Levy and the women’s lacrosse team during practice on the fields outside the Bill Koman Practice Complex.  

Previous chapters in the series received top honors at the American Advertising Awards for excellence in cinematography, editing, and original music, underscoring the project’s commitment to powerful, visually compelling storytelling. Conductors and Coaches now joins the full Artists Are Athletes / Athletes Are Artists™ collection online, where viewers can explore all three chapters, behind-the-scenes footage, a Q&A with Levy, and additional companion content at carolinaperformingarts.org and across CPA’s digital platforms. 

“What excites me about this chapter is the way it creates a point of entry. When someone sees a shared quality—in this case, leadership—reflected in an unexpected place, it can dissolve distance and make the experience feel more accessible,” Friedman says. “The arts are such a powerful tool for that. They allow us to break down silos without forcing the conversation, simply by letting people see, feel, and recognize something familiar in a new context. That moment of recognition matters, because it expands how we understand the world, and how we understand each other.” 

About Carolina Performing Arts 

Founded in 2005, Carolina Performing Arts is one of the nation’s leading multi-arts presenters and producers, housed at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. We collaborate with artists from Carolina’s campus and across the world to spark discovery, foster belonging, and bring people together on stage, in classrooms, and across communities. We invest in research and development of new creative work, including commissioning 80 productions in our first 20 years. We work to expand access, including offering $11 tickets to every K–graduate student statewide. Together, we’re building communities where live performance—and a sense of belonging—thrives, cultivating a North Carolina that is healthier, more joyful, and better connected. 

About Yannick Nézet-Séguin

One of the world’s most sought-after conductors, Yannick Nézet-Séguin leads some of the most prestigious musical institutions globally. Known for his physical energy, emotional connection, and long-term artistic relationships, he brings a distinctive presence to the podium—guiding hundreds of artists toward a shared vision in real time. 

About Jenny Levy

A Hall of Fame coach and one of the most accomplished leaders in collegiate athletics, Jenny Levy has built one of the nation’s premier programs through preparation, trust, and collective purpose. Her teams consistently compete at the highest level, reflecting a leadership style grounded in clarity, accountability, and belief in the group. 

Learn more about the video here.

Southern Futures: Tracing the South Through Art and History

by Lauren Wingenroth

This blog is part one of our Southern Futures series. Read part two here and part three here.

Looking at an archive of Carolina Performing Arts projects is like looking at a map to a better understanding of the culture, history, and complexity of the American South.

There was Omar, Rhiannon Giddens’ acclaimed opera based on the story of Omar ibn Said, a West African scholar who was enslaved in the Carolinas; and Eclipse, a participatory, site-specific work by local artists from Culture Mill that explored the history of the land on and around campus through somatic practice and restorative justice. In Rimini Protokoll’s 100% The Triangle, 100 local non-actor participants shared their stories and perspectives to illuminate truths about the region we call home. And during a residency for Night Sky with Exit Wounds, collaborators Kaneza Schaal and Bryce Dessner engaged with how themes from their forthcoming opera resonate with the histories and experiences of Southeast Asian communities in North Carolina.

Each of these projects—plus the extensive research, cross-disciplinary collaborations and community engagement surrounding them—reveals something crucial and distinct about the South through artistry, embodiment, and storytelling. Each of them, too, exemplifies the work of Southern Futures, an initiative at Carolina Performing Arts and across UNC to reimagine the South and the stories we tell about it.

Southern Futures was born out of conversations across campus institutions—including CPA, UNC’s Center for the Study of the American South, The College of Arts and Sciences, and the UNC Libraries—about “what it means to be a big public university in the American South,” says CPA’s’ senior director of artistic and production Amy Kolling.

“What is our responsibility, and the possibilities for research and creativity in addressing that?” – Amy Kolling

At CPA, Southern Futures has taken the shape of a sweeping, multi-year residency program, in which artists can research, engage with communities, and make work. Those residencies, and the performances that have emerged from many of them, are documented on the Southern Futures website, which serves as an archive of the questions Southern Futures artists have probed about the South, and the fascinating, imaginative ways they have sought to answer those questions.

Check out the Southern Futures Website

Though these residencies have often resulted in performances, having an end product isn’t a requirement. “When we invite someone into an artist residency, we don’t necessarily dictate the outcomes,” says Kolling. “We offer them access to a powerful toolkit, and then we follow their investigations as a partner.” For instance, theater collective Advanced Beginner Group completed a restorative justice training, taught by Culture Mill artists, as part of their multi-year residency. And though Giddens has long been engaging in her own research methodologies, she spent her Southern Futures residency conducting primary source research within the special collections at UNC’s Wilson Library and collaborating with research professionals on campus on her investigations into the South’s socio-racial origins.

Giddens’ residency in particular demonstrates a concept that is key to Southern Futures: the artist as researcher. “Some of the artists we are most inspired by at CPA are consistently working in a research practice, although they don’t necessarily see themselves in that context,” says Kolling.

“But they often launch from a big question and investigate it, they create knowledge in the process, and they communicate it brilliantly to the public in an immediate, live, accessible way. Being a performing arts presenter on a big public research campus, we’re in a unique position to highlight that and share it with people.” – Amy Kolling

Eclipse is another living example of the idea that artistic process is research. Originally presented in 2022 as one of CPA’s very first Southern Futures projects, the piece returns this March, a rare opportunity for CPA audiences to engage with a work for a second time (though Kolling says it’s evolved since the first iteration). Informed by Geeta N. Kapur’s To Drink From the Well: The Struggle for Racial Equality at the Nation’s Oldest Public University, Eclipse “is foundational to Southern Futures,” says Kolling. “It’s about the history of the ground we walk on when we are in the theater. It’s a moment for truth-telling, and reckoning with our past, and making sure that we understand where this all came from.”

In February, another Southern Futures project comes to life on the Memorial Hall stage: Reconstructing, by theater collective the TEAM, who has been a resident artist at CPA since 2023. An examination of not just the historical era of Reconstruction but the idea that our relationships to history and each other might be reconstructed, the piece is the product of years spent “doing the very personal, very challenging work of exploring the notion of intimacy across Black and white-identifying people, and working together to create something and wrestling with what they discovered,” says Kolling.

Looking ahead, two artists with deep roots in Chapel Hill will continue the work of Southern Futures into the 26/27 season. Longtime CPA resident artist Toshi Reagon will premiere a new commission, Ecotones, made in collaboration with UNC faculty members and local artists and scholars. And in her role as CPA’s Wyndham Robertson Artist in Residence, tap dancer and choreographer Michelle Dorrance, who grew up in Chapel Hill, will continue her investigations into tap dance’s less often told origins in the American South—and in North Carolina in particular.

When Violin Dances: Johnny Loves Johann World Premiere

by Lauren Wingenroth

If you were lucky enough to have been present for acclaimed violinist Johnny Gandelsman’s performances of the Bach Cello Suites at Carolina Performing Arts in 2020, you may remember the way his interpretation of the classic work—joyful, folksy and free—seems to dance.

That’s partially a result of playing the suites on a smaller, brighter instrument. But it’s mostly Gandelsman, who has worked extensively with dancers and has a sharp eye—and ear—for movement.

“One of the qualities I started exploring when I was learning the suites was the dance form that’s embedded in the music,” he says. “A suite is a collection of dances. So the qualities of dance started coming to the surface more. They’re always there, but on the violin, they become more apparent. The cello has this grandeur that the violin doesn’t have. But the violin can do other things—it can be nimble, it can be light-footed.”

Gandelsman, who has the distinction of being CPA’s most frequent performer, released a critically-acclaimed album of the suites in 2020, and they have since become a calling card for the violinist. But this month, for the first time, Gandlesman’s interpretation of the Cello Suites will actually dance. “At some point I started thinking, I’m playing these dances, but I’m just there by myself,” says Gandelsman.

“I wondered what it would be like if all these dances actually had movement.”

Johnny Loves Johann, co-commissioned by CPA and the Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, and a collaboration between Gandelsman and four choreographers, premieres at CPA from December 10 through 13. The four dancemakers—John Heginbotham, director of Dance Heginbotham and choreographer of the recent Broadway revival of Oklahoma! and of Netflix’s The Umbrella Academy; Caili Quan, former BalletX dancer and in-demand contemporary ballet choreographer; Jamar Roberts, former Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater star and resident choreographer; and Melissa Toogood, dean and director of Juilliard’s Dance Division and lauded interpreter of the works of Merce Cunningham and Pam Tanowitz—will each bring their distinctive visions to this uniquely collaborative work.

A Collaborative Process

Gandelsman can’t quite remember how or why he landed on the idea of working with four choreographers rather than just one. But knowing Gandelsman, the “more the merrier” philosophy towards collaboration makes sense: The list of artists he’s worked with at CPA alone (his string quartet Brooklyn Rider, Memphis Jookin dancer Lil Buck, banjo player Abigail Washburn, tap dancer Michelle Dorrance, the Yo-Yo Ma-founded Silkroad Ensemble and many more) paints a picture of just how much he thrives when sharing ideas with other artists.

Between the four Johnny Loves Johann choreographers, there are few dance world stages they haven’t performed or choreographed on or accolades they haven’t earned. But a collaboration of this kind was a new experience for all of them. “It can be tricky for choreographers to work with other choreographers, because most choreographers are really invested in making their own work,” says Toogood.

“I think we’ve all been really surprised at how not-tricky this has been. It’s been really fun to be in each other’s creative practice. It’s been easier than we expected.”

In the work, each choreographer has their own suite, which they dance as a solo. The third and sixth suites were created collaboratively, and will be performed by all four choreographers. “I’ve really enjoyed seeing everyone else’s interpretations of the music,” says Roberts. “I’m not in the room with multiple choreographers at the same time regularly, so that’s been cool. It makes you feel a little less alone in your work. It’s not very often that I get to bounce ideas off of other makers. It’s great to not hold all the responsibility.”

Heginbotham says the experience has been artistically freeing. “I have my habits as a choreographer that I return to,” he says. “To have other choreographers and their ideas of what is valuable reminds me in a visceral way that there is more than one way of doing something.”

“The Soul of the Music in the Room”

Of course, there haven’t just been four choreographers in the room creating Johnny Loves Johann. There’s also been one extremely accomplished violinist, who also happens to have some excellent choreographic instincts. “He has led choreographic impulses in the moment, and his impulses are so good,” says Quan.

“I know he doesn’t consider himself a dancer, but he takes on this physicality and feels the music inside of his body.”

“He has strong images that he sees, and strong choreographic ideas,” Heginbotham agrees. “He has a good creative sense of what needs to happen. He’s as much of a collaborator in terms of what the show is going to look like as any of the choreographers in the room.”

Gandelsman may not consider himself a dancer, but in addition to contributing choreographically on the piece, he’ll also be dancing in it. “I get a couple of steps, which is a first for me,” he says. Heginbotham says that Gandelsman has been remarkably game for anything —being lifted, going to the floor, being partnered. “He’s not squeamish or shy about it,” Heginbotham says. “He’s a very sensitive performer in ways that are beyond musicianship.”

Having his own choreography means that Gandelsman is often physically interacting with the dancers, which is also new for him. “Someone will put their hand on my shoulder—it’s really incredible, because as a musician, that never happens,” says Gandelsman.

For Quan, the experience has been equally meaningful from the other side. “To hear a violinist breathe, and to be so close to the instrument? I can’t get enough of it,” she says.

“Everyone should experience being so close to music in that way.”

In addition to Gandelsman’s movement contributions, having him in the studio as a musical resource has been a unique and enlightening experience for the dance artists, who typically only get to work with live musicians at the very end of a creative process.

“Having the soul of the music in the room from the beginning is life-changing,” says Quan. “I got his first-hand knowledge of what it feels like to play this music. I’ve always avoided Bach as a choreographer. It’s daunting music—it’s incredibly layered, and everything is so nuanced. He’s inside of this music that I’m scared to digest—he’s already experienced it over and over again. So that made it less scary for me.”

Bach, Like You Haven’t Heard Him Before

If, like Quan, you find Bach intimidating, you’re not alone. “People often hear the name Johann Sebastian Bach and have some preconceptions about what that means,” says Gandelsman. “I’m pretty sure that whatever preconceptions people have about this music, this show is going to turn them on their head, or at least open a window or a door into completely new possibilities of what this music can make you think and feel.”

Roberts agrees. “It’s very joyful,” he says. “And I say that because I think there’s this connotation that it’s serious music. Classical music has been put on this pedestal, but this piece does a really good job of bringing back the joy of the dance, and of the dance and music coming together.”

Johnny Loves Johann audiences will get to experience the distinct ways that five artists respond to and interpret Bach’s celebrated suites. For Gandelsman, that’s what makes this project so rewarding. “What I love most is seeing what this music can mean through the movement everyone is creating,” he says. “I’m learning a lot.”

Johnny Loves Johann world premiere with Carolina Performing Arts will be at the Joan H. Gillings ArtSpace at CURRENT December 10-13. To learn more and to buy tickets, please visit here.

Photos by Kent Corley were taken during a one-week residency hosted by the Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, December 1–5, 2025, where Johnny Loves Johann’s developmental process included educational engagement with students from the Schools of Dance and Music.

Johnny Loves Johann is co-commissioned by Carolina Performing Arts and the Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts at UNCSA, who serve as lead co-commissioners of this world premiere. UNCSA will present the work May 1–3, 2026. To learn more, please visit here.

Michelle Robinson: 2025 William & Sara McCoy Performing Arts Leadership Award Recipient

by Lauren Wingenroth

Michelle Robinson’s American Studies syllabi tend to be alive and embodied.

There was the time that Martha Graham Dance Company artistic director, Janet Eilber, helped students explore fragility in the body as they studied the AIDS epidemic. Or, when a gospel choir visiting with jazz trumpeter, Wynton Marsalis, came to talk to students in Robinson’s class on radical religious communities and gave an impromptu performance.

Robinson’s expansive engagement with the performing arts and her innovative, energetic collaborations with CPA staff and artists have earned her this year’s prestigious William & Sara McCoy Performing Arts Leadership Award, given annually to a UNC-Chapel Hill employee who embodies the values of artistic excellence, educational innovation, and community engagement. The award is named in memory of the McCoys, who embodied these values deeply: William (Bill), former Vice Chancellor of Finance for the UNC System and the Interim Chancellor at UNC-Chapel Hill, helped shape the university’s strategic direction, and Sara was a dedicated steward of the arts at Carolina, serving on nine campus boards and committees.

Robinson’s own research bridges literature, pop culture, and religion: Her first book explored detective fiction, and her current project is on the evangelist Billy Graham. But in the classroom, you’ll find her teaching on everything from stand-up comedy to LGBTQ fiction to American cinema. Whatever the subject matter, Robinson is always eager to find ways that the performing arts can deepen her students’ engagement—and sometimes even push her syllabi in new directions.

“When I find out what’s going to be on the CPA program for the year, I really let my imagination go,” she says. “What do I want to experiment with? What am I willing to try? What will be most transformative for my students?”

As a result of Robinson’s bold, creative approach to integrating the performing arts into her teaching, her classroom has become a regular stop for some of our country’s most influential and celebrated artists as they visit CPA, from renowned postmodern choreographer, Lucinda Childs, to visionary musician and composer, Toshi Reagon. Robinson’s students often attend CPA shows as part of a class or on their own. “I went to Boston University, and I could never afford to go to shows,” she says. When she arrived in Chapel Hill, former chair of the American Studies department Joy Kasson introduced her to CPA and showed her the possibilities for getting involved. “To come to a place where it’s affordable? I tell students about it all the time—just go try something,” says Robinson.

Robinson’s open-minded, energetic attitude towards the arts seems to be contagious. When artists from experimental German theater group Rimini Protokoll visited her class, several students were so enthralled that they were recruited to perform in the troupe’s 100% The Triangle at CPA, which had an all-local cast. Inspired by the show, which used demographic statistics to explore questions around community and place, Robinson also had her class perform their own investigations into the demographics of their social circles. “Students asked each other really interesting questions, about who is afraid to walk on campus at night, or how much student debt they have,” says Robinson.

“It reframed their networks and helped them understand who they were building a community with and who they were not building a community with.”

Robinson is already dreaming about next semester’s CPA lineup, and the connections she’ll make in her classes. One performance she’s particularly excited about: the return of Culture Mill’s Eclipse, a participatory work about power and public space. She hopes she can get the entirety of her 150-person lecture class to experience the performance-based social practice at the Old Well accompanying the work*. “That’s my dream, to have 150 people out there, having a super sensory, full-body experience of a space they walk through every day and don’t think about,” she says. It won’t be her first time engaging with Eclipse. In her role on the Graduate Studies Committee, she organized an orientation for Teaching Assistants in which they used Eclipse as a framework to talk about the complex histories of many spaces on campus and what that means for undergraduates trying to make a home and a community.

Receiving the William & Sara McCoy Performing Arts Leadership Award has only deepened Robinson’s already-staunch commitment to sharing the performing arts with her students. “It feels like an aspirational award,” she says. “It makes me want to do so much more.”

*More information about free events associated with Culture Mill’s Eclipse performances will be available in January on the Free Events page at www.carolinaperformingarts.org.

Inside Lost Lear: Reflections on Storytelling, Memory, and Hope

Carolina Performing Arts will present Lost Lear by Dan Colley on November 19 and 20—a moving and darkly comic remix of Shakespeare’s King Lear, told through the perspective of Joy, a woman living with dementia who finds herself inside an old memory of rehearsing the play. Blending puppetry, projection, and live video, Lost Lear immerses audiences in Joy’s shifting world, where memory, imagination, and reality overlap in poignant and surprising ways.

Before the production arrives in Chapel Hill, Amy Kolling, Senior Director of Artistic and Production at Carolina Performing Arts, had the opportunity to see Lost Lear at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. We sat down with her to hear her reflections on the performance—what stood out, what surprised her, and why she believes it’s such a powerful fit for Carolina Performing Arts’ season.

Q&A with Amy Kolling

Was there a particular moment or performance that really stood out to you?

It’s really fascinating—not just because of the story, but because of how the piece is built. From the moment you walk in, there’s this stunning projection of the main actress’s face as she puts on her makeup to become Joy. You’re not sure if it’s live or recorded, but it’s so intimate—it feels like she’s looking right at you.

Throughout the show, you see the projections being created live onstage, and that sense of process—of watching art being made—continues with the puppetry and video work. There are so many ways to experience the story beyond just the text or the acting. It’s such a rich, layered approach that gives audiences many ways to connect from a very personal place, whether or not they have a theater background. 

What surprised you most about the experience of watching Lost Lear?

I knew it would be visually and technically exciting, but what surprised me most was the character of Joy’s son. He’s the newest visitor to the imaginative world Joy has built around her—a world shaped by her artistry and her dementia. 

Her caretakers have learned and decided to play along in her daily “play”, but her son doesn’t know how to enter it. That tension becomes really moving. Later, we find out more about their story before she entered care, and the piece becomes this layered metaphor about reconnection—about trying to find each other again through both memory and imagination. 

Why do you think this show is a good fit for our season?

It’s such a natural fit for Carolina Performing Arts. For one, it’s extraordinary international work that we discovered at a major festival—exactly the kind of cross-cultural exchange we love to bring to our audiences. But beyond that, this season we’ve been thinking a lot about well-being and how our work contributes to community care.

Lost Lear does that beautifully. It offers multiple entry points—emotional, visual, intellectual—and invites people to respond from an authentic, personal place. So often, traditional performance settings can make audiences feel like they need expertise to engage, but this piece does the opposite. It welcomes everyone in.

Without giving too much away, what do you think audiences will be talking about after the show ends?

I think people will talk about how Lost Lear transforms something as difficult as dementia into something unexpectedly hopeful. It reframes caretaking and long illness in a really uplifting way. The caretakers in the play choose to honor Joy’s imagination—they meet her where she is, in her world of creativity.

That’s such a powerful act of love. It reminds us that even in the hardest circumstances, there’s room for art, play, and connection. I think audiences will leave feeling moved—but also inspired to see those experiences in a new light.

If you had to describe Lost Lear in just five words, what would they be?

Well-crafted. Moving. Creative. Layered. Surprising.

Lost Lear by Dan Colley is supported by Culture Ireland and produced by Riverbank Arts Centre and Mermaid Arts Centre. Described as “brilliantly conceived and executed” (The Examiner) and “a theatrical tour de force” (The Arts Review), it has earned multiple nominations at the Irish Times Theatre Awards, including Best New Play and Audience Choice.

Join us for this unforgettable performance on November 19 and 20 at 7:30 PM. To learn more about Lost Lear, click here.

Join the Conversation Before the Show

On November 17, Carolina Performing Arts and the Carolina Aging Network will host a free, 60-minute conversation about Lost Lear. Hear from writer/director Dan Colley about creating the show, explore how the cast approached portraying memory and identity, and engage in a thoughtful Q&A on art, dementia, and community care. Register here.

A Conversation with Composer Jennifer Higdon

by Lauren Wingenroth

Composer Jennifer Higdon is no stranger to Carolina Performing Arts. In 2017, her Cold Mountain opera, a collaboration with librettist Gene Scheer, was a sold-out hit.

But when the Philadelphia Orchestra brings Higdon’s Concerto for Orchestra on November 5, it’ll be a particularly special visit to Memorial Hall: It will be Higdon’s first time experiencing her own work at CPA as a Chapel Hill local.

“I’d been to this area for various concerts over the past two decades,” says Higdon, who is one of the most in-demand composers in the United States. “Every time I came here, I remember thinking, wow, this area is so nice.”

After nearly four decades in Philadelphia, Higdon relocated to Chapel Hill last year. Living here, “I hear music clearer in my head—it’s easier to compose,” she says. She’s also a fan of the easy airport access to get to her many concerts across the country and abroad, and of course, “the amount of art in this area—it’s absolutely huge,” she says. “I have all these friends coming through on tour. I’ve only been here two years and I’ve had six different groups doing pieces of mine. It just feels inspiring—the energy here is very good.” Naturally, Higdon has become a regular CPA attendee: Recent favorites include Johnny Gandelsman’s residency last season, and Paola Prestini’s The Old Man and the Sea in 2024.

In many ways, the Philadelphia Orchestra performance feels written in the stars. For one, Higdon has a long and storied history with the Orchestra, where she formerly served as composer in residence and where many musicians are friends or former students. And Concerto for Orchestra, which the Philadelphia Orchestra commissioned in 2002, was the work that launched her career. Back then, Higdon was fresh out of graduate school, and had never written a full-length orchestra piece. “I was a complete unknown,” she says. “I thought, this will be the only orchestra commission I ever get, so I’m gonna put everything in it.”

Thankfully, Higdon was very wrong—but her bold approach to the work paid off. Not only was it an immediate hit, but it happened to premiere at the League of American Orchestras conference, in front of an audience full of orchestra managers from across the country.

“My life changed overnight,” she says. “My career shot off like a rocket—people started calling me for commissions; people started programming the piece. That was in June of 2002, and it literally has not slowed.”

Since then, Concerto for Orchestra has been recorded by three major orchestras, and is performed all over the world every season. “For a living composer to have a piece of this size recorded with three orchestras, it’s unheard of,” says Higdon.

Also unusual—and, at first glance, contradictory—is the piece’s premise. “Normally with a concerto, you have a soloist standing out front,” says Higdon. “This was a chance to hear the entire orchestra in that manner.” Though concertos for orchestra exist (most famously Béla Bartók’s 1943 work of that name), they are uncommon. “It’s a harder piece, more virtuosic than a normal orchestra piece,” says Higdon. “There’s a lot more energy, because you’re basically showing off the skill of all the players individually, but also as a unit.”

Writing Concerto for Orchestra was a challenge—and a thrill—for Higdon. “When I was in school, I used to buy really cheap seats in the nosebleeds at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia, and listen to these solos,” she says. “I thought, I’m going to get to write for all of these people. Everyone is going to get solos, absolutely everyone.” Higdon worked closely with orchestra members—and took requests. “There’s one movement that’s just percussion,” she says. “The timpani player asked if I could write them a really cool part. I tailor-made it for the musicians, like making a really good suit of clothes that fits well.”

The piece “taught me to really think about the fact that an orchestra is a collection of skilled musicians,” she says. “You could pluck anyone out of the Philadelphia Orchestra, no matter where they are, and put them in front, and they’d sound great playing a concerto. It’s a recognition of the incredible skill level that is uniformly fantastic across the entire ensemble.”

“I go back and I hear it now and I’m like, I can’t believe I wrote that,” says Higdon. “It’s been amazing to watch the piece transform. But there’s something magical about having the orchestra you wrote it for touring to the place where you live, doing the very piece that launched your career.”

Also on the November 5 program will be Brahms’ Fourth Symphony, and on November 4, the Orchestra will perform William Grant Still’s Wood Notes, Brahms’ Third Symphony, and Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto, featuring acclaimed pianist Emanuel Ax. On both programs, the Orchestra will bring their signature expressiveness and passion. “There’s a lot of soul in their playing,” says Higdon. “They aren’t just running through the motions—it actually feels personal, like it means the world to them, like they must do this or they won’t exist.”

The same could be said for the Orchestra’s leader, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, whose bold, energetic approach has made him one of the most exciting conductors in the United States. “The first time he conducted my work, I remember thinking, Holy cow, this guy is bringing out things in the texture that I didn’t realize were there,” says Higdon. “That’s a composer’s dream, because he’s giving me a revelation of a piece that came out of my head. I still pinch myself that I get to work with him.”

“It’s a joy to be able to share the Philadelphia Orchestra sound and some of the work we’ve done together,” says Higdon.

If you spot her at the show, don’t hesitate to say hello. “I’m honored to now be a part of this community,” she says. “It feels like I’ve stepped into a really comfortable pair of shoes.”

Don’t miss this extraordinary homecoming performance with this special offer: Use code PHILLYX2 for 50% off tickets to the November 5 performance only. Enter the code before choosing your seats to unlock your savings.

Long Live the Arts: Carolina Performing Arts Announces 2025–2026 Season

A Bold Celebration of Joy, Connection, and the Public Good

Chapel Hill, NC — Carolina Performing Arts (CPA) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill today announces its 2025–2026 season, inviting audiences to experience the transformative power of live performance. Guided by the rallying cry Long Live the Arts, this season affirms CPA’s belief that performance is not a luxury—it’s a vital force for joy, health, and human connection.

“Long Live the Arts is more than a slogan. It’s our promise to this campus, this community, and this moment,” says Alison Friedman, the James and Susan Moeser executive and artistic director of CPA. “Audiences are seeking experiences that are joyful, meaningful, and real— this season meets them with open arms.”

The 2025–2026 season brings together global icons, daring premieres, and returning favorites in a dynamic lineup of music, dance, and theater. Highlights include:

• Chris Thile, GRAMMY® Award-winning mandolinist and MacArthur “genius” recipient, opens the season with an evening of virtuosic music, razor-sharp wit, and spontaneous brilliance (October 10).
  
  
• Renée Fleming makes her CPA debut with Music and Mind, a discussion with UNC neuroscientists exploring the intersection of the arts, health, and brain science (January 23), followed by Voice of Nature: the Anthropocene, a concert blending classical music and film in a meditation on the environment (January 24).
  
  
• Pony Cam’s Burnout Paradise pushes physical and theatrical boundaries with a hilarious and poignant performance—staged entirely on treadmills—that explores exhaustion, overwork, and modern life (October 28–29).
  
  
• Aakash Odedra Company’s Samsara fuses kathak, ballet, and Chinese folk dance with innovative design to explore transformation and spiritual journey (December 6).

“When we curated this season, we leaned into what people told us they’re hungry for—experiences that are joyful, thought-provoking, and restorative,” says Amy Kolling, senior director of artistic and production. “We see CPA as a partner in public well-being and believe we can help cultivate that kind of nourishment.”

Beloved CPA mainstays also return: The Philadelphia Orchestra performs two evenings led by Yannick Nézet-Séguin (November 4–5), with acclaimed pianist Emanuel Ax joining for the November 4 performance only; Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater brings its signature blend of grace and power (February 24–25); Martha Graham Dance Company celebrates its centennial with Graham at 100 (March 25); and Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis returns with their iconic sound (April 24).

Access and Connection
CPA continues to prioritize access, belonging, and community connection across the season, with initiatives designed to welcome more audiences into the arts, including:

• $11 tickets for UNC-Chapel Hill students and all K-college students statewide for all CPA season performances
• Choose-Your-Price tickets, available 24 hours before each show
• Ongoing partnerships with campus and community organizations, including the Chapel of the Cross, the North Carolina Symphony, and Chamber Orchestra of the Triangle

“The arts are essential to the university’s mission,” says Friedman. “Through community partnerships, academic collaborations, and initiatives like Choose-Your-Price tickets, we’re committed to making the arts more accessible and more connected to the lives of those we serve—on campus and beyond. By placing the arts alongside academics and athletics, CPA is proud to help UNC earn its well-deserved ‘Triple A’ reputation.”

Ticket Information

• Donor presale begins August 5 at 12 p.m. (in person or online)
• General public on-sale begins August 12 at 12 p.m. (in person or online)

Tickets are available through the CPA Box Office, located at 140 East Cameron Avenue (Memorial Hall). Box office hours beginning August 5 are Monday–Friday, 11:30 a.m. to –3:30 p.m., and one hour prior to performances.

Caption information, from left to right: Chris Thile, photo courtesy of artist; Pony Cam Burnout Paradise, photo by Cameron Grant; Aakash Odedra Company Samsara, photo by Nirvair Singh Rai; Martha Graham Dance Company Graham at 100, photo by M. Sherwood; and The Philadelphia Orchestra with Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Music and Artistic Director, photo by Jeff Fusco

Inside Johnny Gandelsman’s First Season as Curator-in-Residence at CPA

This is the third in a three-part conversation with Johnny Gandelsman.

by Lauren Wingenroth

The Curator

Acclaimed violinist Johnny Gandelsman’s role as the curator-in-residence for Carolina Performing Arts’ 2024-25 season marked a first for both parties: CPA had never had a curator-in-residence before, and Gandelsman had technically never curated before.

But that doesn’t mean the work of curating—bringing artists together; imagining engaging programming; making connections between people, places, and genres—was new to Gandelsman. In fact, his propensity for doing just those things during his many visits to CPA over the past 20 years was what sparked the idea to bring him in as a curator.

“He’s always bringing people together,” says Amy Russell, CPA’s senior director of artistic and production. “It’s so special how he does that; there’s so much joy and enthusiasm from those collaborators, and such a strong desire to make new things together. We thought, how do we crack open the impact of why these people want to work with you? We came up with the curatorial idea. If you look at the way he works, he’s doing it all the time, but no one has ever given him that title before.”

The fruit of Gandelsman’s curatorial position—the five-part CPA This is America series based on his anthology of the same name—wraps up this month with performances on April 23 and 24, featuring both Gandelsman’s longtime collaborators as well as student and faculty musicians from UNC. We spoke to Gandelsman about what it feels like to officially take on the title of curator, the joys and challenges of curating, and what he’s most looking forward to as he concludes his CPA series.

Q&A with Johnny Gandelsman

We spoke with Gandelsman ahead of this month’s final two performances in the This is America series, asking about his inspiration for the anthology, what he’s learned from performing these works, and why they continue to resonate today.

This is your first time officially being curator, but it seems like you’ve been unofficially curating for most of your career.

The title sounds grand. But yes, in our work with Brooklyn Rider, we curate when we make decisions about commissioning new work. Over the last few years, I’ve been producing music for Ken Burns documentaries, and one of my roles is to match music and musicians to what the film is trying to achieve, and I guess that is also curation. And then, of course, I listen to music a lot, and I always share it. I think if you make a playlist and you give it to a friend, you’re a curator.

What’s it been like to curate this series? What was your approach?

I’m not thinking of it as curating. I’m thinking of it as getting to bring some friends and artists who I’ve admired for years to this place that has been dear to me for decades, and to either introduce or reintroduce them to Chapel Hill audiences. Some of these people I’ve been to Chapel Hill with before, like Kinan Azmeh, who was a longtime Silk Road Ensemble member; and Carla Kihlstedt [of Rabbit Rabbit Radio], who was a member of Two Foot Yard, who we played with the first time Brooklyn Rider came to town; and Gabe Kahane, who was part of the 100th anniversary Rite of Spring commission we had from CPA. But I’m really excited that audiences will get to see other, even more personal, sides of them. Every band is bringing their projects, and it’s who they are. So my friend Christina Courtin, who has been a friend for over 20 years, is one of the musicians and people I admire most, and she came with her band. There are no words to describe how amazing she is as a singer-songwriter; as a musician. I get to sit in the audience and just enjoy it. So, yeah, sign me up to be a curator anytime.

Were there any learning curves or challenges throughout the process of curating this series?

The challenges were, how do you make choices? Because there’s so many people and so many musicians I would love to introduce to people. That’s the hardest thing. Other than that, it’s all beautiful gravy. I love it.

Anything you’re especially looking forward to in the series?

We’re going to do a concert with students in April, and possibly some faculty and some local musicians. I think that’s going to be really fun. It will be a broader representation of what American music is, and I’m really excited about that.

Johnny Gandelsman on Music, Memory, and the Making of ‘This is America’

This is the second in a three-part conversation with Johnny Gandelsman.

by Lauren Wingenroth

The Anthology

In 2020, when the acclaimed violinist Johnny Gandelsman was commissioning music for what would become This is America, he gave the 22 composers he chose a seemingly straightforward task: To write a piece for solo violin that somehow responded to the moment in time they were living in.

The diversity of the anthology of music that resulted from those instructions, and the breadth of feelings and experiences it captured, speak to both Gandelsman’s gift as a curator and the rich diversity of American contemporary classical music. This year, in his role as Carolina Performing Arts’ first-ever curator-in-residence, Gandelsman has brought many of those complex and riveting pieces to Chapel Hill, through a series of five concerts—many of which have featured the composers themselves as guest musicians.

Though over four years have passed since the highly specific moment in time that inspired This is America, the anthology’s works remain prescient, illuminating and urgent.

“I invite you to stop listening to pundits, extend your ears, open up your imagination, and trust the music to guide you into a challenging, complicated and thrilling sound world,” Gandelsman wrote in the introduction to the anthology.

Q&A with Johnny Gandelsman

We spoke with Gandelsman ahead of this month’s final two performances in the This is America series, asking about his inspiration for the anthology, what he’s learned from performing these works, and why they continue to resonate today.

Tell me about the impetus for This is America. I know it came out of 2020—what was it about that moment that made you want to do a project like this?

It was a moment of serious disconnection. My family and I spent about six months of the pandemic away from our home in Brooklyn in a remote part of New Hampshire, so we were literally physically disconnected from our communities and our friends. And, of course, as performers, there were no shows. There was no way to be together. At the same time, all these things were happening—COVID and police brutality and the fires in California and the election. The discourse was a lot to experience while being in lockdown, away from people. So I was just trying to figure out what to do, because usually, in moments of crisis, artists think about ways to address things. I thought, what if I could commission new works from composers who are in need of work, and ask them to somehow reflect on that period of time? I didn’t know where it was going to go. I didn’t know how many pieces were going to be commissioned. I didn’t know it was going to end up being an anthology.

How did you go about choosing the composers you wanted to commission? What were you looking for?

I keep a lot of long lists of people I’ve been curious about or wanted to work with, and then, of course, friends who I love who I also wanted to commission. I did want it to be representative of this country, so people with different backgrounds, different ages, different musical styles and genres. I guess what I discovered is that there’s so much more out there. Since then, the list just exploded, which is exciting. I’m thinking about ways to start addressing that.

Given that the music really speaks to that moment in 2020, what do you think it has to say about this new moment we’re living in now, in 2025?

While it may feel like we’ve moved on, the truth is that many of the challenges we faced in 2020 remain unresolved. But I think the music resonates with audiences because it is directly tied to a period of time which is pretty fresh, and everyone has their own very unique and yet also universal memories of what was happening then. In a concert setting, when I’m presenting a selection of the works, I don’t think everybody loves everything, because the styles are very different, but I do think that people somehow connect to what the composer was experiencing. Each of these works is a small window into the person’s thought process, experiences, heart and soul. With what’s happening now, it’s just proof that there’s so much more work to be done. We can’t stop. Everything is so acute and so many communities that are part of this country and are also represented in this anthology are being targeted. So I don’t know what we can do, except represent those voices and lift them up somehow.

How has your own personal relationship to the music deepened over the past several years that you’ve been playing it?

When I was first receiving these works, in many cases, I was asked to do things that I was either unfamiliar with or uncomfortable with. So I definitely had that moment of fear before getting to the point where I could perform the works in front of audiences. That was a big learning experience for me. Now I feel like a proud Grandpa. I love these works. I love that they exist. Recently I saw an Instagram post of a violinist in San Francisco performing one of these works, and I just felt like a proud grandparent. They’re out in the world doing their thing, and I’m really happy about that.

As This is America continues to find new audiences, Gandelsman’s vision—to capture a country’s complexities through music—feels more vital than ever.

Johnny Gandelsman on 20 Years with Carolina Performing Arts, Collaboration, and Curating ‘This Is America’

This is the first in a three-part conversation with Johnny Gandelsman.

by Lauren Wingenroth

Setting the stage

When the Carolina Performing Arts staff was planning for the organization’s 20th anniversary this season, they took a look back at the past twenty years. “We reflected on the long-term partnerships we’ve had with artists over the years, to see what we’ve done and what’s really important to us,” says Amy Russell, CPA’s senior director of artistic and production. “We added up the visits by artists who have held a lot of meaning for us, and who’ve collaborated with us in the most compelling ways.”

One artist stood out: The acclaimed violinist Johnny Gandelsman, who took the title of being CPA’s most-frequent guest over the past twenty years. It’s not just the volume of Gandelsman’s visits to CPA that’s remarkable, but the diversity of them. He’s come many times with his string quartet, Brooklyn Rider, as well as with the Yo-Yo Ma-founded Silkroad Ensemble. He’s worked at CPA with collaborators from Memphis Jookin dancer Lil Buck to banjo player Abigail Washburn to tap dancer Michelle Dorrance. And of course, he’s come as a soloist, including with his performance of Bach’s Cello Suites in 2020.

“I love that I’ve gotten to be myself in slightly different situations,” he says. “Every project brings out something different, and that’s a nice feeling.”

Over the years, he’s also brought nearly as much to the Carolina community offstage as he has onstage—from working with students in the music department to teaching business school students about collaboration to playing for patients at the hospital.

For this 20th anniversary season, Gandelsman has returned to Chapel Hill in a new role, as CPA’s first-ever curator-in-residence. As curator, he’s programmed a five-part series featuring music and collaborators from his This is America anthology, which includes 22 commissions from 22 distinct composers, each responding to their experience of the early days of the COVID pandemic.

Offstage, he’s been spending time with Dr. Flavio Frohlich and his Carolina Center for Neurostimulation looking at music’s effect on the brain. “The healing power of music is something people have studied and believed in for centuries, from the Greeks to Beethoven,” Gandelsman said at a recent event, where attendees could observe the brain waves of one of Dr. Frohlich’s team members as she listened to Gandelsman play Bach. “I find the work that they’re doing so inspiring.”

Q&A with Johnny Gandelsman

We spoke to Gandelsman in the midst of his This is America series (two performances remain of the five-part CPA series) about why CPA is such a special place for him, his favorite memories in Chapel Hill, and why he loves collaborating.

When you first started coming to CPA, what struck you about it? What made it feel like a place you’d want to come back to?

I’ve been coming to CPA since 2007, but I think it was maybe a year later that I got invited to come to campus with Brooklyn Rider and a band called Two Foot Yard. We were invited to create a piece, and that was just so unusual, because we were very young, and not an established string quartet at all. The fact that CPA put this trust in us and in the process and valued that as much as the end result—maybe even more—was really cool. From that point on, it was like, this place is special. And now, it’s kind of funny because Brooklyn Rider is also celebrating our 20th anniversary. So, our little organization has been growing parallel to CPA. Now it’s been 20 years of going to all sorts of different presenters in this country and other countries, and still, what CPA does is incredibly unusual, and I think that’s why artists love coming to Chapel Hill.

What have been some of your favorite offstage memories with CPA over the years?

As a musician, we’re often on the road, going to places we haven’t been to before. You fly in, you take a train, you play a show, you leave, and you just repeat and repeat and repeat. When we come to CPA, we know we’re going to be there for a few days, and that just immediately means there’s a deeper engagement. This past time, we got to go to the Children’s Hospital and play there, and that felt really nice. I remember when we were in town with Lil Buck and Cristina Pato, the awesome Galician bagpiper, we did an event outside on campus. That was really funny, because the bagpipes are unbelievably loud. Nobody knew what was going to happen, but once they heard the bagpipes, the students just started gathering. That very impromptu moment of connection to the arts was kind of magical. You can see on students’ faces that there’s still a sense of wonder, and moments like that stick with you for a long time.

You’ve collaborated with so many different artists at CPA. What’s your philosophy around collaboration?

There’s always something unexpected that will happen. Going into something, it’s hard to know what you’re putting yourself into, so there’s a sense of discovery. There’s sometimes a sense of fear, because you’re walking into something unknown. When you get through to the other side of that fear or hesitation, you get to know not just the art of your collaborator—whether it’s dance, or a different genre of music that you’re not familiar with—but also the person, because you’re interacting with something that person cares about super deeply, so they’re usually very generous about sharing their knowledge. It’s a really good exercise in saying yes, in not rejecting something, but trying to figure out, what is the best way to achieve this thing?

Is there something about CPA that makes it an especially generative space for those collaborations?

The depth of CPA’s commitment to commissioning is really unusual. When you commission a new piece, that’s already putting an amazing amount of trust into the people who are going to create the work, because you don’t know what the end result will be. Very often, there’s nothing to share—there’s no video, no photos. It’s just, I’m thinking about this thing. The fact that that then resonates; the fact that CPA can take that and say, Oh yeah, I see value in this, and we’re going to put support behind you to make sure that you get from the seed of an idea to actually making it work. Artists often doubt themselves and we are very used to hearing no or not hearing anything at all. Most of the time, that’s what we hear. So when somebody says yes—and not just yes, but yes, and we will give you all this other stuff to make sure that you’re really fulfilling your vision—that’s priceless, and it’s rare.

Tell me about your latest engagement project with CPA: working with Dr. Flavio Frohlich and his Carolina Center for Neurostimulation on music and the brain.

It was really cool to play a little bit and then see the waves and how a person responds. Of course, I can’t read it—I don’t know what it means—but it’s really cool to see what happens to a person when they’re experiencing music. I know how it feels when I’m in a good space if I’m playing. I also know how it feels when it’s bad. If the brain mapping went not on the person listening, but on the person who was performing and could track when you’re nervous or when you’re calm, that would be interesting to see.

Dr. Elizabeth Olson: 2024 William & Sara McCoy Performing Arts Leadership Award Recipient

Honoring the Legacy of William and Sara McCoy: A Dedication to Arts Leadership and Education

The William & Sara McCoy Performing Arts Leadership Award celebrates the enduring legacy of William (Bill) and Sara McCoy, whose leadership, vision, and generosity have had a profound impact on Carolina Performing Arts at UNC-Chapel Hill. Bill McCoy, former Vice Chancellor of Finance for the UNC System and Interim Chancellor at UNC-Chapel Hill, helped shape the university’s strategic direction, while Sara McCoy’s steadfast dedication to the arts, through her involvement on nine campus boards and committees, amplified the cultural richness of the Carolina community.

This prestigious award honors the McCoys’ commitment to the intersection of education, research, and the performing arts. Each year, the McCoy Award recognizes a UNC-Chapel Hill employee who, like the McCoys, embodies the values of artistic excellence, educational innovation, and community engagement.

Meet the Inaugural McCoy Award Winner: Dr. Elizabeth Olson

The inaugural recipient of the William & Sara McCoy Performing Arts Leadership Award, Dr. Elizabeth Olson, is a professor of Geography and the Environment and Global Studies at UNC-Chapel Hill. Dr. Olson’s groundbreaking work in integrating the arts with education and social impact sets her apart as a true visionary in both the academic and artistic community.

Through her collaboration with Carolina Performing Arts and resident artist Culture Mill, Dr. Olson has redefined the role of art in academic engagement, creating a new framework for interdisciplinary collaboration that bridges the worlds of art, geography, and social justice.

Transforming Education Through Art and Geography

Dr. Olson’s work challenges traditional boundaries by combining geography with the arts, creating innovative ways to understand landscapes, histories, and cultural narratives. She is passionate about using art as a tool for social change and community healing, especially in partnership with local artists and organizations. Reflecting on her work, Dr. Olson asks, “How can art and geography combine to invite new understandings of our everyday landscapes? How might this fusion empower us to address the urgent, ongoing needs for justice, care, and repair?”

Her interdisciplinary approach has inspired countless students, artists, and community members to engage with their surroundings in profound, meaningful ways.

“As a geographer deeply committed to building and teaching transformative scholarship through collaboration, Carolina Performing Arts offers the substrate for cultivating relationships that make our imagined practices materialize,” she says.

By fusing arts education with geography, Dr. Olson fosters transformative learning experiences that encourage students to critically examine the world around them and their roles in shaping its future.

A Collaborative Process of Discovery

Dr. Olson’s partnership with Carolina Performing Arts and Culture Mill has brought together a diverse group of artists, scholars, and community members to create impactful, interdisciplinary projects. “With Carolina Performing Arts’ support, we had the time and resources to forge an ongoing partnership with Culture Mill, local artists, The Marian Cheek Jackson Center, and Carolina students,” she says. These collaborations have allowed students to engage directly with artists, bridging the gap between academic learning and real-world social issues.

In their first collaborative project, Well, Dr. Olson’s social geography students worked alongside artists through Carolina Performing Arts at Southern Futures to support the Jackson Center’s oral history archiving project.

“While supporting the Jackson Center’s oral history archiving process, we brought the voices of generations of the town’s Black builders to the center of campus through a sound and movement intervention,” she says.

Dr. Olson further acknowledges the vital role Carolina Performing Arts played. “From hosting a website to help us disseminate the project, to providing space and equipment, to directly supporting artists for their work, Carolina Performing Arts made the project possible,” she says.

This arts-based co-teaching model exemplifies the transformative potential of collaboration, where academic learning is brought to life through the contributions of local artists and community partners.

A Vision for the Future of Arts Education and Social Impact

As Dr. Olson looks ahead, she is filled with gratitude for the continued opportunity to collaborate and create.

“I am constantly reflecting on my gratitude to have the space to dream with others. Carolina Performing Arts continues to be a powerful partner in making these interdisciplinary and community-centered projects possible,” she says.

“It is truly an honor to receive [the William & Sara McCoy Performing Arts Leadership Award] from an organization that has already given me so much,” she adds.

Dr. Olson’s work exemplifies how integrating arts education and community engagement can create a more just, compassionate, and thoughtful world. Through her continued efforts, she exemplifies the legacy of leadership, generosity, and passion for the arts that the McCoys embodied.

Join Us in Celebrating Dr. Olson’s Achievement

We invite you to join us in congratulating Dr. Olson on receiving the William & Sara McCoy Performing Arts Leadership Award. Her work serves as a beacon for the future of interdisciplinary arts education, where academic inquiry and social impact intersect to drive meaningful change.

The Power of Giving: Stories Behind Carolina Performing Arts’ Success

By Lauren Wingenroth

Rachel Baum can’t exactly remember what was on the program the first time she attended a Carolina Performing Arts show as an undergraduate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill over a decade ago. It may have been the acclaimed banjo player Béla Fleck, or possibly Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. What she is sure of: After that night, she was hooked.

Baum spent the rest of her undergraduate career attending as many shows as she could, and when she stuck around to earn her PhD in Environmental Sciences and Engineering, she brought her grad school friends to Memorial Hall, too. “It was so fun to bring people in and see them get excited about it, especially their first time,” she says. “They’d be like, ‘I can’t believe this is so accessible to me as a student.’”

After a detour to the Bay Area for several years (she credits CPA with her interest in seeking out out-of-the-box performances while in San Francisco), Baum’s life recently came full-circle: She’s back in Chapel Hill, working at UNC’s Institute for Risk Management and Insurance Innovation, and continuing to see as many CPA shows as she can—but this time, as a donor.

For Baum, giving to CPA is about recognizing the impact that those performances—which were made possible by CPA’s $11 student ticket program—had on her life, and wanting all students to be able to have those same transformative experiences with the performing arts.

“I want students to be able to take advantage of this, and to help them blossom,” she says. “I want every single student to know about these tickets. If you just try it once, you’ll get hooked. And you’ll be like, ‘I need to go to every single one of these.’”

CPA celebrates its 20th anniversary this season, and throughout those past twenty years, donors like Baum—each with their own distinct relationship to the arts and reason for giving—have shaped the organization into what it is today, and helped secure its future for the twenty years to come.

“Every single time I see a show, there’s always something I get out of it,” says Baum. “As a donor, you’re opening that opportunity up to somebody, or you’re bringing a new performer into the light. You’re really opening up people’s perspectives, which I think is needed now more than ever.”

CPA “Continues to Feed My Soul”

Having grown up watching avant garde performances in New York City’s Greenwich Village, David Roth prides himself on his penchant for boundary-pushing contemporary performing arts. That’s part of why Roth and his wife, Adele, created CPA’s Creative Collisions for Artistic Innovation Endowment, aimed at “giving a platform for diverse views, opinions and expressions, so that people can deeply appreciate the multitude of ways in which human beings can express their desire for common ends,” he says.

The first performance supported by the Endowment took place in October: Martha Redbone Roots Project and American Patchwork Quartet in This Land is Our Land, a stirring, soulful evening of music with eclectic influences from folk to gospel to jazz to West African. “She was just glorious,” says Roth of Redbone.

Supporting CPA has allowed Roth to see firsthand just how powerful the performing arts can be, both on a personal and community level. “What I’ve gotten from giving to CPA is the reward of knowing that the organization continues to feed my soul, and feed my heart, and feed the community,” he says. “When I see audiences let go of whatever defense they have and give themselves over to something, I think those moments are of extreme value, and contribute to creating a world of loving kindness and awareness.”

Julie Daniels, an alum who recently moved back to Chapel Hill and joined CPA’s board, agrees. “There’s nothing like sitting in a dark theater with a community of people and experiencing the same thing together,” she says. “It brings people together, and we need that now more than ever.”

A Sense of Belonging

Anyone can tap into the community atmosphere one often feels at a CPA performance. But those who are involved in the organization—whether through monthly or annual giving, or board service—often feel a deeper sense of belonging, which makes those performances all the more fulfilling.

“I know the behind-the-scenes,” says Jerri Bland, a CPA board member and founder of the Dr. Jerri Bland Fund for Student Access. “When you’re in the seat watching things you heard about six months ago, it’s a different feeling.”

It’s also special to chat with fellow patrons, and hear their perspective on CPA performances, says Bland. “You’re like, ‘I’m a part of that. I’m a part of helping to make this happen.’”

Ken Broun, who with his wife Margie has supported CPA since its founding, agrees. “You feel a sense of belonging,” he says. “Of, ‘this is our organization.’ It enhances the experience.”

The Brouns feel so connected to CPA that several years ago they moved to downtown Chapel Hill, partially to be closer to Memorial Hall. (Ken jokes that “as we get older, we feel that they’re moving it further away every year.”)

After twenty years of patronizing CPA and even longer supporting the arts in Chapel Hill, they appreciate that Memorial Hall is often full of friends and familiar faces.

But they also “find it delightful when we notice a whole different mix of audiences,” says Margie. “Sometimes when we know less people, we enjoy it—I enjoy seeing the different groups that different performances attract, and how even the type of dress people wear depends on the performance. It’s fun to see the diversity. I really like that CPA has widened so that there are different performances that appeal to people other than people like us.”

For the Roths, CPA helped them find belonging in Chapel Hill. “We moved here in 1997 from New York, and it took us a while to acclimate to the community,” he says. “A turning point was in 2004,” when CPA was founded. “Everything just seemed to align—something clicked for us,” he says.

Opening Doors to the Arts

The fact that finding that sense of belonging at CPA isn’t conditioned upon being a certain demographic, or having a certain taste in the performing arts, is at least partially made possible by the diverse breadth of CPA’s programming. But it’s also a product of CPA’s relative affordability, including the $11 tickets that are available to UNC students as well as local students of all kinds.

Those $11 tickets are supported by donors like Bland. “As an alum, I’m interested in making sure that the doors of CPA are open for everyone,” she says of her Fund for Student Access. “I want students to have the opportunity to see world class theater and world class music. I don’t want money to be a barrier for anyone; that’s why I created the Fund. It will be after I’m gone that students really have access to it, but I want to make sure that ability never goes away.”

It’s not just getting students in the doors of Memorial Hall that donors like Bland enable, but making connections from the stage back to the classroom. “I think that’s an important thing for us as board members to think about,” she says. “We are art lovers, yes, but our need to go to performances is secondary to our need to educate about the arts. It’s easy to get wrapped up in, ‘Alvin Ailey is coming!,’ but we should think about what the impact is to the academics. How do we get the University as a whole engaged in this art?”

“I think that bringing high-quality art to this community enhances the attractiveness of the University overall,” says Ken. “And encouraging students to partake in it increases the educational experience.” He remembers observing a master class for UNC students taught by a musician from an orchestra in town with CPA. “I thought it was remarkable,” he says.

Daniels agrees, and believes that making connections between academics and the arts, “creates a well-rounded student,” she says. “We want people who are critical thinkers and who are exposed to a lot of different things, and the arts are a great way to do that. It’s a safe space; it’s a way for people to examine complex topics in a meaningful way with other people. It exposes students to something that will be a part of their life for the rest of their life.”

“Opportunities like these really solidify your relationship to the arts,” says Baum. “They’re a bridge to somewhere. I love it for students, because they’re young. Their minds are malleable, and they’re exploring things—it’s really powerful for them.”

Donors and board members have had their own artistic doors opened by CPA’s programming. For instance, the Brouns discovered Samara Joy, who has since become one of their favorite singers, and Daniels realized her love for dance after attending Hong Kong Ballet’s Romeo + Juliet last year. “I’ve started going to Carolina Ballet—I’m seeking out dance performances,” she says. “I told my daughter who lives in New York that I want to go to American Ballet Theater. Dance is really phenomenal, I just wasn’t exposed to it much.”

For Baum, seeing something new at CPA, “feels like a dopamine hit to your brain,” she says. “There’s this novelty, this excitement, that really grabs you.” One young potential patron she’s particularly interested in exposing to the arts? Her infant daughter (who has already attended one CPA event!). “I want her to grow up seeing the arts and being engrossed in them,” Baum says.

“I’m Hoping to Share it With As Many People As I Know”

Bland sees serving on CPA’s board as a chance to shape the organization’s future for generations of audiences to come. “It’s a huge opportunity to not only benefit personally from supporting the arts, but to share that love with other people,” she says. “Giving CPA—the staff, the student volunteers—that support, and letting them know we’re here and available to give feedback. We can shape what this organization looks like. In five or ten years, the things we’re doing today are going to be taking fruition and having an impact on what students and audiences are experiencing. It’s an opportunity to have a voice in what’s happening in our community.”

Of course, financial gifts are also key to sustaining CPA programming—and anyone can contribute. “All contributions are important, at any level,” says Daniels. “You can contribute what you can afford—everything makes a difference, and that support is something CPA counts on. If we want to see this level of programming continue, we have to be willing to make those donations so the organization can thrive.”

“There are so many ways to contribute value,” says Roth. “One is financially. Another is to participate in some way; to make your voice heard. Nothing’s too small.”

Roth recognizes that while he has a taste for new, groundbreaking performances, others in his demographic feel more comfortable with the familiar. And while there’s nothing wrong with that, Roth sees an opportunity to “be a liaison, as a senior, between CPA and that community,” he says. “I’m committed to supporting how CPA is approaching their future with the hope that they can bridge that gap and encourage people to go along for the ride, take the risk, and enjoy the risk.”

In this way, supporting CPA doesn’t have to look like giving money or even time or resources—it can be about ambassadorship, and advocacy. “I’m really excited to let more people know about CPA,” says Daniels. “That’s one of the things I can do, expose people who may not know about it to how great it is, get them to come to a show. Because if they come, they’ll come back. I’m hoping to share it with as many people as I know in the community.”