Lara Downes, featuring Rita Dove

Lara’s recent and upcoming onstage adventures include guest appearances with The Philadelphia Orchestra, the Boston Pops, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Louisville Orchestra, and Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, with recitals and residencies at Ravinia, the Gilmore Festival, Carolina Performing Arts, Washington Performing Arts, Caramoor, Saratoga Performing Arts Center, the Cabrillo Festival, and Oregon Bach Festival, among others.

Lara enjoys creative collaborations with an eclectic range of artists including folk icon Judy Collins, pianist Simone Dinnerstein, musical multi-hyphenate Rhiannon Giddens, former U.S. Poet Laureate Rita Dove, author John McWhorter, Broadway legend Brian Stokes Mitchell, baritone Thomas Hampson, and violinist Daniel Hope. Her close partnerships with prominent composers span genres and generations, with premieres and commissions coming from Adolphus Hailstork, Jennifer Higdon, Billy Childs, Paola Prestini, Arturo O’Farrill, Gerald Clayton, Jimmy Lopez-Bellido, Teddy Abrams, Clarice Assad, and many others.

Lara’s adventurous approach to concept and curation have created a unique series of acclaimed recordings, including her 2023 release Love at Last on the Pentatone label, which reached #1 on the Billboard Classical Chart and was featured as an NPR Tiny Desk Concert. In 2022, Reflections: Scott Joplin Reconsidered, also reached the top of the Billboard chart and was featured in the New York Times and on NPR’s Morning Edition.

Other recent albums include Florence Price: Piano Discoveries, a world-premiere recording of recently discovered piano works by that groundbreaking composer; and Some of These Days, a collection of freedom songs and spirituals reflecting on social justice, progress and equality. In 2019 For Love Of You marked Lara’s concerto recording debut, celebrating the 200th birthday of the great pianist and composer Clara Schumann. In 2017, her Sony Classical release For Lenny was awarded the Classical Recording Foundation Award, and America Again was selected by NPR as one of “10 Albums that Saved 2016.”

Lara is a highly visible media presence in her role as the creator and host of AMPLIFY with Lara Downes, an NPR Music series now in its third season, featuring intimate, profoundly personal video conversations with visionary Black artists and cultural leaders who are shaping our creative present and future. She is a frequent guest on national programs including NPR’s Morning Edition, All Things Considered, City Lights and Performance Today, and she serves as Resident Artist for Classical KDFC in San Francisco and Classical KUSC in Los Angeles. Her work has been supported by the Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Sphinx Venture Fund, and the Center for Cultural Innovation, among others.

Lara is the creator and curator of Rising Sun Music, a recording series that shines light on the music and stories of Black composers over the past 200 years, featuring her collaborations with a wide range of leading instrumentalists and vocalists, including Davóne Tines, Will Liverman, Nicole Cabell and Regina Carter.

Lara’s fierce commitment to activism and advocacy brings her working with organizations including the ACLU, Feeding America, and Headcount, a non-partisan organization that uses the power of music to register voters and promote participation in democracy.

Her drama The Darker Face of the Earth opened at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 1996 and the Kennedy Center in Washington in 1997, followed by its 1999 European début at the Royal National Theatre in London. Seven for Luck, a song cycle with music by John Williams, premiered in 1998, and her 2021 song cycle A Standing Witness, 14 poems with music by Richard Danielpour, was performed by Susan Graham at Tanglewood, the Kennedy Center, and other venues.

The editor of The  Best American Poetry 2000 and The Penguin Anthology of 20th-Century American Poetry (2011), she also served as poetry columnist for The Washington Post and poetry editor for The New York Times Magazine. 

Dove’s most recent accolades include the 2019 Wallace Stevens Award; the American Academy of Arts & Letters’ 2021 Gold Medal in poetry (as the third woman and first African American in the over 110-year history of the Academy’s highest honor); the 2022 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize from the Poetry Foundation; and the Bobbitt Prize for lifetime achievement from the Library of Congress. She is the recipient of a National Humanities Medal from President Clinton and a National Medal of Arts from President Obama, making her the only poet ever to receive both.

To date, 29 honorary doctorates have been bestowed upon Rita Dove. She teaches at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, where she is the Henry Hoyns Professor of Creative Writing.