Visiting Presenters

Signs of Life: The Concept Album in Concert is an evening featuring a star-studded cast based on the original new musical (music and lyrics by Christopher DeLair) where healing becomes a hero’s journey and the key to growing up lies within one’s younger self. The concert features Shoshana Bean, Jenn Colella, Charity Angel Dawson, Amber Iman, Tiffany Mann, Rob Moose (Violin), Chris Ranney (Music Director) and many more. Signs of Life celebrates both the stars and what makes us all divinely human.

The Walter W. Naumburg Foundation celebrates its 100th year as the world's oldest music competition with this extraordinary event featuring a remarkable gathering of alumni whose artistry has defined the Foundation’s first century: Carol Wincenc, Colin Carr, Charles Neidich, Anton Nel, Leonidas Kavakos, Awadagin Pratt, Frank Huang, Erin Wagner, Andreas Mader, Valentin Kovalev, Jack Gao, Lucy Shelton, Seth Knopp, the Terra String Quartet, the Emerson String Quartet, the Brentano String Quartet and more.

The evening will include all-time legends and unknown gems from the worlds of jazz, blues, rock and R&B. The star-filled and soulful program includes 10-time Grammy winner Norah Jones, (JFA 2026 Dr. Billy Taylor Humanitarian Award honoree); living legends Buster Williams and Gary Bartz, (recipients of a 2026 Jazz Legacies Fellowship), and JFA Artistic Director Steve Jordan, with many more to be announced. Together, we will raise awareness and funds to provide compassionate support for musicians in need. Proceeds benefit JFA’s lifesaving programs which include housing assistance, pro bono medical care, disaster relief, dignified employment, and direct financial support to musicians nationwide.

Teatro Nuovo presents Bel Canto classics and rarities with a period-instrument orchestra and a performing style the Wall Street Journal calls “transformative.” 

Mozart’s Don Giovanni was the first opera ever to become a permanent part of the international repertory, from its premiere in 1787 to the present day. It was also the earliest work included in North America’s first season of Italian opera two hundred years ago–a production personally supervised and edited by Lorenzo da Ponte, the original author of the text. Teatro Nuovo is restoring the form of the title he and Mozart used, Il Don Giovanni, and is taking the anniversary occasion to restore as well everything we can learn about the performance style of the work’s early life. It presents the famous drama in a streamlined, brilliantly vivacious guise. Ricardo José Rivera, the baritone star of Teatro Nuovo’s last three seasons and more recently of the Metropolitan Opera’s I Puritani, returns in his first-ever portrayal of the Don; Geoffrey Loff leads the company’s celebrated original-instrument orchestra. The projected English titles come to us from Da Ponte’s son Luigi, created for the printed 1826 libretto. Expect the unexpected! 

For more details, visit TeatroNuovo.org

Pre-opera Serenade at 6pm: The Great Garcías (I).  Music by three members of the amazing family that brought Bel Canto opera to the New World: Manuel García and his daughters Maria Malibran and Pauline Viardot. Presented by Teatro Nuovo’s Resident Artist Program (Timothy Cheung, Director). 

Pre-opera Lecture at 6:30pm: Will Crutchfield introduces Il Don Giovanni

PHOTO CREDIT Ricardo José Rivera in Anna di Resburgo (Steven Pisano) 

Graphic from the handwriting of Lorenzo da Ponte

Teatro Nuovo presents Bel Canto classics and rarities with a period-instrument orchestra and a performing style the Wall Street Journal calls “transformative.” 

Rossini’s Il Turco in Italia is a madcap comedy with a touch of the surreal. A poet needs a story, fast, for the opera he must write, and manipulates a colorful cast of characters to make it happen: a flirtatious heroine who has a husband, a lover-boy, and a visiting Turkish Bey all wrapped around her little finger (until she doesn’t). Teatro Nuovo favorites Vincent Graña and Mattia Venni return, joined by debut artists Kresley Figueroa and Max Alexander Cook; Elisa Citterio and Derrick Goff lead the band on violin and cembalo. 

For more details, visit TeatroNuovo.org 

Pre-opera Serenade at 6:00pm: The Great Garcías (II): The adventure of bringing opera to the New World was bold and sometimes dangerous (think bandits in a remote Mexican mountain pass). Teatro Nuovo’s Resident Artists tell the story in music, letters, memoirs, and reviews. 

Pre-opera Lecture at 6:30pm: Will Crutchfield introduces Il Turco in Italia 

PHOTO CREDIT 

Vincent Graña and Mattia Venni in Crispino e la Comare (Steven Pisano) 

Graphic from the handwriting of Gioachino Rossini