National Sawdust Unveils Plans for 10th Anniversary Season

National Sawdust has revealed its 10th anniversary season, beginning September 2024. In a dynamic season of programming, the organization celebrates a decade of incubating boundary-pushing sound-based artistic work in one of the best-sounding halls in New York City. National Sawdust has, since its inception, dramatically expanded contemporary classical music’s horizons—particularly, in centering artists from historically marginalized communities. Presented in a pivotal moment for both National Sawdust and the performing arts field writ large, Season 10 articulates the institution’s vision for the next decade—and beyond. Tickets go on sale on July 22.
 
When National Sawdust’s founders—composer Paola Prestini and tax attorney and amateur musician/composer Kevin Dolan—opened its doors in 2015, it was a bold experiment in how a new, mission-driven New York cultural institution could function and contribute. Whether it would work—and could last—was an open question. Having now presented over 1,250 performances, 100 premiere commissions, and 30 albums, National Sawdust recently acquired its building, esteemed for its extraordinary architecture and its state-of-the-art Meyer Sound spacial sound system. These milestones have given them a more permanent place in the cultural landscape, and allow them to direct more resources to artists going forward. 
 
Curated by Prestini, Season 10 is woven together by numerous transcendent notions of “beyond”—offering a prismatic view of artistry that considers and moves beyond disciplinary boundaries, beyond tradition, beyond the present, and beyond words.
 
Says Paola Prestini of Season 10, “The season looks forward while looking back, as it engages a group of accomplished artists and advisory board members—many of whom were invited to co-curate programming when National Sawdust opened, and who were instrumental to the organization’s identity. These artists are National Sawdust’s sonic muses, expanding their genres beyond stylistic and thematic limits. In their returns to the venue this season, they offer visions of artistic boundlessness that pave the way for, and provide a glimpse into, our organization’s next 10 years.”
 
Ana De Archuleta, a respected leader in opera and classical music who serves as Managing Director of National Sawdust, said, “For 10 years, National Sawdust has provided one of New York City's most acoustically capable venues, and a singular suite of other resources, for diverse artists to develop their careers and new works, and for audiences to discover music and multidisciplinary experiences that illuminate some of the most urgent issues of our time. In our tenth season, National Sawdust is thinking of itself as a creative greenhouse—one that  champions a model of reciprocal creative nurturing, fostering a collaborative mentorship ecosystem where the exchange of knowledge and expertise is mutual, driving innovation and inclusive growth within the artistic community."
 
The foundational artists returning in Season 10  include David Lang, whose 2010 work darker will be performed by Ensemble Signal alongside a new film National Sawdust has commissioned from director Bill Morrison (October 9, 2024); violinist Miranda Cuckson and pianist/composer Stewart Goodyear performing a new duo (October 26, 2024); Theo Bleckmann, with a project titled 12 Easy Songs celebrating the diversity, absurdity, and poetry embedded in New York’s urban landscape (November 15, 2024); Jeffrey Zeigler's We Were Fridays, a new solo album and performance work created with guest composers Hannah Ishizaki and Etienne Charles, including choreography and filmography by Flexn pioneer Reggie 'Regg Roc' Gray (January 2025); Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Du Yun, with Du Yun & Friends, featuring Yun’s rock band and chamber ensemble Ok Miss, plus an exciting lineup of special guests; a world premiere collaboration between Anthony Roth Costanzo and AMOC* (American Modern Opera Company) exploring synesthesia and interdisciplinary collaboration, directed by Zack Winokur (April 2025); National Sawdust mainstay Magos Herrera, in a concert with leading MPB (Música Popular Brasileira) singer Monica Salmaso, featuring new versions of classics from the Latin American repertoire (February/March 2025); composer Sxip Shirey and choreographer Coco Karol, with a site-specific choral and movement piece, We Don’t Need the Sea to Drown (June 2025); and Paola Prestini, with the first first full-length work by her that National Sawdust has presented.

Since its inception, National Sawdust has been presenting a future-forward vision of opera as a form that has long evolved beyond its perceived rigidity to reflect the contemporary world; this year, it pushes the form even further forward. The institution takes advantage of its intimate space to immerse audiences in opera’s vast spectrum of expression, with experiences in which audiences step into the action. The coming season features vital explorations of personal and collective identity, expressed through language and song. They range from Paola Prestini and Royce Vavrek’s Silent Light, a fraught love story set in a Mennonite community in northern Mexico (based on the acclaimed 2007 film by Carlos Reygadas), which is the first fully-staged opera produced at the venue (September 26–29); to Aaron Davis’s Zombie Blizzard, a classical concert aria and jazz-influenced art song set to the poetry of Margaret Atwood and performed by singer Measha Brueggergosman-Lee (October 28); to Suzanne Farrin and Sergio Chejfec’s electro-sonic operatic experience Macabéa, based on Clarice Lispector’s The Hour of the Star, examining the cultural, psychological, and spiritual manifestations of poverty and power (Spring 2025). Two works in process further showcase visionary artists’ elastic approaches to opera: Helga Davis’s The Messenger: a nativity tale for now, a collaboration with director Kaneza Schaal that fuses classical jazz and new music and follows a community of seekers whose leader has gone missing (January 2025); and Vivian Fung’s Living in the ‘In- Between’, a song cycle that considers Chinese-American identity against the backdrop of escalating societal hostilities during the pandemic, performed by soprano Andrea Núñez (January 2025). Audiences will get to experience the beauty and complexity of acclaimed voices in intimate space, in engagements with artists such as Will Liverman, who presents a 30-minute song cycle of his own compositions (December 8, 2024). 

In Season 10, National Sawdust draws on New York’s internationalism and cultural intersections, bringing in a multitude of perspectives from genre-defying artists working with and beyond musical tradition and demonstrating the way forward. Kronos Quartet and Jeffrey Zeigler offer An Evening on the Future of Music, a musical journey and fusion of talents that includes a world premiere from Niloufar Nourbakhsh, winner of National Sawdust’s Hildegard Commission (May 2025). In November 2024, National Sawdust continues a series of events produced in collaboration with The Plimpton Foundation and conductor/pianist Timothy Long, focusing on the North American Indigenous Songbook.
 
Season 10 also includes several programs in which National Sawdust pushes beyond words, expanding the connection between conversation, language, and music. NationalSawdust+ (NS+), the lively performance and discussion series curated by filmmaker and producer Elena Park, returns with its signature blend of intimate stories and unexpected artmaking that has infused the venue since its opening week in October 2015.
 
In its tenth year, National Sawdust upholds and broadens its commitment to poetics, journalism, and criticism. Events surrounding poetry and the intersection of language and music include Maria Popova's Universe in Verse Book Launch, based on the live show of the same name—a celebration of the wonder of reality through stories of science winged with poetry (October 4, 2024); and a music and comedy variety show hosted by stand-up comedian and classically trained violist Isabel Hagen (October 24, 2024).
 
Additional Season 10 programming schedule will be announced in the months ahead.