The Apollo Reveals 2025 Winter/Spring Season

The Apollo announced highlights of its Winter/Spring 2025 season performances, exhibitions, and educational programs across its stages in its historic building and at its new Stages at the Victoria. At the core of this season is the exploration of Black legacy and lineage, celebrating the impact of seminal and pioneering Black artists and thinkers including James Baldwin, Duke Ellington, bell hooks, and the Urban Bush Women.

The Apollo will honor acclaimed writer and civil rights activist James Baldwin through the screening of pioneering documentarian Sir Horace Shango Ové CBE’s film Baldwin’s N*gger, which features Baldwin himself with comedian and activist Dick Gregory; and an evening-length concert by composer Samora Abayomi Pinderhughes’ The James Baldwin Essays: As Much Truth As One Can Bear, which interweaves an instrumental ensemble, choir and spoken word in a timely exploration of James Baldwin’s work. In another legacy commemoration, composer and pianist Jason Moran will illuminate Duke Ellington’s jazz canon, pairing stunning, rarely seen photography of Ellington by legendary photographer Gordon Parks with Moran’s personal narration about the significance of Ellington’s impact.

This season, The Apollo also builds upon key partnerships it has with the community, continuing its annual tradition with a celebration of the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in partnership with WNYC and New York Public Radio. The Apollo will also present Loss, originally produced by The Theatre Centre and part of the twentieth edition of the Under the Radar Festival, supporting its role as an incubator of emerging talent in American theater.

“This coming season, we look forward to celebrating legendary performers and thought leaders of color, while also creating space to uplift the abundance of emergent Black talent,” said Executive Producer Kamilah Forbes. “Through our Apollo Works in Process series, we are investing in the future of the Black artistic canon, providing an incubator for burgeoning talent across music, dance, and theater.”

The legendary Amateur Night at The Apollo returns from February to June, alongside other annual favorites Apollo Comedy Club and Apollo Music Café. Expanding The Apollo’s support of emerging and established artists, The Apollo Works in Process series presents performances by Indigenous activist and artist Martha Redbone and by Tony Award-winning actress and playwright Tonya Pinkins. This season highlights the works of both rising and established Black artists and creatives, including performances of Loss from Toronto-based playwright Ian Kamau, and film screenings of Claudine, a film that showed American audiences a different view of Black culture than what was being presented onscreen in the heyday of blaxploitation, starring Diahann Carroll and the late James Earl Jones.