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Performance series is packed with old favorites and new artists
The Williams Center for the Arts will celebrate a quarter of a century as a major cultural center for the region with its 25th anniversary season.
The focal point for cultural programming at Lafayette, the Williams Center has provided instructional space for thousands of students in the art and music departments and the theater program, and hosted world class performers in classical and world music, jazz, dance, and theater.
The center has received national acclaim with a William Dawson Award for Programming Excellence in 2001 and the NAPAMA Award in 2006, presented by the North American Performing Arts Managers and Agents for sustained accomplishment in artistry.
The schedule for the 25th anniversary season performance series will feature more than 20 concerts and performances, including some returning favorites and some acts that are new to the center.
The Guarneri String Quartet, which performed the center’s dedication concert in 1983, will return to perform as part of its “farewell” tour. The Orpheus Chamber Orchestra will mark its 22nd year of concerts at Lafayette with three performances with their Carnegie Hall soloists Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, Susan Graham, and Anouska Shankar. Orpheus will also perform a special Williams Center 25th anniversary commission by the legendary Ravi Shankar.
Some highlights from the Jazz Masters series will be the Dizzy Gillespie All-Star Big Band, artist-in-residence Mulgrew Miller with Wingspan, and celebrated jazz vocalist Dianne Reeves. Returning as part of the Sound Alternatives series will be a cappella ensemble Sweet Honey in the Rock, the Kronos Quartet, and drummer Obo Addy and his Okropong ensemble.
The Reduced Shakespeare Company will perform again as part of the Footlights series, as will the Merce Cunningham Dance Company and modern dancers Eiko & Koma. Newcomers to the Williams Center, the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange and Ballet Hispanico, round out the series.
The 2008–2009 Performance Series at Lafayette College is supported in part by gifts from Friends of the Williams Center for the Arts; by provisions of the Josephine Chidey Williams Endowment, the J. Mahlon and Grace Buck Fund, the Croasdale Fund, the Class of ’73 Fund, the Alan and Wendy Pesky Artist-in-Residence Program, the James Bradley Fund, and the Ed Brunswick Jazz Fund; and by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, the Dexter and Dorothy Baker Foundation, and New England Foundation for the Arts. Special thanks to the F.M. Kirby Foundation for extraordinary support of the 25th anniversary season, and to Joan Moran and the Amaranth Foundation for support of the Ravi Shankar commission.