Spoleto Festival USA Announces 2016 Program

Festival General Director Nigel Redden announces the program for the 40th annual Spoleto Festival USA, taking place May 27 through June 12, 2016 in Charleston, South Carolina. The 2016 Festival features over 150 performances and events held in 13 venues, including the Festival's return to the Charleston Gaillard Center that re-opened in October after an extensive three-year renovation.

"For Spoleto Festival USA's 40th year, we wanted to make the program extraordinary," says Redden. "Producing our first Porgy and Bess-a work based on Charleston-born DuBose Heyward's novel, set in Charleston, and about Charleston's people-was a celebratory choice. It is especially appropriate that this opera will be our first performance in the spectacular new Charleston Gaillard Center. A 1970 production of Porgy and Bess staged in the then-new Gaillard Auditorium is a long-remembered civic event representing unity, pride, and artistic achievement that we hope to emulate. Beyond Porgy and Bess, we celebrate the Festival's anniversary with programming that features the signature Spoleto Festival USA blend of new works and young artists alongside established international visionaries encompassing opera, music, dance, and theater. I hope people will find many reasons to be part of this landmark 40th year."

June 2016 will be a time of celebration for the Festival, and it will also be a time of reflection and remembrance for the city of Charleston. June 17-five days after the Festival ends-will mark the first anniversary of the murder of nine people at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church on Calhoun Street. Several performances will acknowledge the event and commemorate the victims. This includes the world premiere of a multi-media project conceived and directed by acclaimed visual artist Carrie Mae Weems called Grace Notes: Reflections for Now curated by Harvard professor Sarah Lewis. Originally conceived as a gift for President Obama, Grace Notes will be a provocative performance of music, song, text, spoken word, and video projection. The project poses the question "what is the role of grace in the pursuit of democracy?" and was inspired, in part, by President Obama singing "Amazing Grace" during his eulogy for Reverend Clementa Pinckney. Weems's project gathers a stellar group of artists including composers and musicians James Newton, Geri Allen, and Craig Harris, along with poet Aja Monet, writer Carl Hancock Rux, and singers Alicia Hall Moran, Imani Uzuri, and Esai Davis. Grace Notes will be performed Saturday, June 4 and Sunday, June 5 in the College of Charleston Sottile Theatre. A concert by jazz singer René Marie in the Charleston Gaillard Center on Sunday, May 29 will also acknowledge the tragedy featuring a Spoleto Festival USA-commissioned song "Be the Change" inspired by the community's response and show of unity.

"Spoleto Festival USA ends just days before the first anniversary of the Emanuel AME Church murders and several artists felt compelled to reflect upon the event and on the times we live in," says Redden. "As a Festival that has proudly called Charleston home for 40 years, we wanted to provide an outlet for these reactions to demonstrate how art can help people to heal as well as provide an important voice in times when it can be difficult to find words."

Full details of the 2016 program and an event calendar follow. Tickets go on sale to the general public on Tuesday, January 14 at 10:00am by phone 843.579.3100 and online at spoletousa.org. A donor pre-sale begins January 5; details can be found online and in the ticket-purchasing information below.

2016 PROGRAM OVERVIEW

OPERA

Porgy and Bess
Charleston-born writer DuBose Heyward's inspiration for Catfish Row will be brought to life on the new Martha and John M. Rivers Performance Hall stage, just blocks from the historical Cabbage Row in this world premiere production of Porgy and Bess by George Gershwin, DuBose and Dorothy Heyward, and Ira Gershwin. David Herskovits, artistic director of New York's Target Margin Theater, and whose 1998 production of Mamba's Daughters by DuBose and Dorothy Heyward won an OBIE award and sold out at Spoleto Festival USA in 1999, returns to direct this landmark production. Visual Designer Jonathan Green, an internationally acclaimed visual artist, will take audiences on a journey from the streets of the Charleston they know to a Charleston that reveals the roots, strength, and character of South Carolina's Gullah community, a community in which Green himself grew up and one that inspired George Gershwin when he began composing the opera at Folly Beach in 1934. Noted for his "ravishing, rolling baritone with power to spare" (Opera News), Lester Lynch plays Porgy; soprano Alyson Cambridge, whose performances are "radiant, vocally assured, dramatically subtle and compelling, and artistically imaginative" (The Washington Post), makes her role debut as Bess. Conductor Stefan Asbury leads members of the Spoleto Festival USA Orchestra and members of the Charlotte-based Johnson C. Smith University Concert Choir in this celebration of Charleston and its people. There will be six performances of Porgy and Bess on May 27, 30, June 1, 3, 8, and 12.
Presented to the community by Wells Fargo Private Bank.
Additional support for Porgy and Bess is generously provided by The Robert and Janice McNair Foundation, The DuBose and Dorothy Heyward Memorial Fund, The Albert Sottile Foundation, The Samuel Freeman Charitable Trust, and The Brand Foundation of New York, Inc.

During the Festival, Porgy and Bess-themed walking tours of downtown Charleston will be offered daily. Many of the city's arts and historical organizations will present events related to Porgy and Bess including lecture series presented by the College of Charleston Libraries and the College of Charleston Avery Research Center. The Charleston Museum will present special exhibitions and programs, including displaying the piano Gershwin used at Folly Beach when composing the opera. Details of ancillary events can be found at spoletousa.org. Events and additional details will be added as confirmed.

The Little Match Girl
The well-known Hans Christian Andersen tale of the little match girl depicts a poor girl on a snowy street, lighting matches for a few seconds of fleeting warmth in her final hour. In his opera, German composer Helmut Lachenmann explores the girl's last moments as she gazes into the flames. Co-Directed by Phelim McDermott (The Metropolitan Opera's Satyagraha and The Enchanted Island) of award-winning improvised theater makers Improbable, and Mark Down of master-puppeteers Blind Summit Theatre, this US premiere will feature 106 members of the Spoleto Festival USA Orchestra elevated on a platform and encircling the audience to perform the evocative score, full of clicks, crackles, knocks, and hisses, under the baton of Resident Conductor and Director of Orchestral Activities John Kennedy. Featuring sopranos Heather Buck and Yuko Kakuta, The Little Match Girl departs from traditional performance techniques in order to create a frigid atmosphere-a nearly meteorological effect-both animating the match girl's world and contemplating the coldness of a society that would let a child freeze. "The sounds are extraordinary, and the dramatic intensity they generate hard to pin down, yet totally absorbing" (The Guardian).
Helmut Lachenmann, who marked his 80th birthday in 2015, will attend the US premiere performance on May 29, and will speak at a Music In Time concert on Friday, May 27.

La Double Coquette
Spoleto Festival USA will present the US premiere of this revision of Antoine Dauvergne's 1753 opéra comique, La Coquette trompée in which contemporary French composer Gérard Pesson's 32 additions and Pierre Alferi's new libretto seamlessly complement the original score. A story about a good-looking, double-crossing cross-dresser who sets out to win her lover back from a young seductress, La Double Coquette is directed by Fanny de Chaillé with costumes designed by Golden Lion Award-winning French visual artist Annette Messager. Celebrated period musicians Ensemble Amarillis will perform the opera on the Dock Street Theatre stage with sopranos Isabelle Poulenard and Maïlys de Villoutreys, and baritone Robert Getchell.

La Double Coquette is a Spoleto Festival USA co-production with the Festival d'Automne in Paris; the Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles; Festival Le French May / Hong Kong; Festival de Sablé; Metz en Scenes - Arsenal; Théâtre Impérial de Compiègne; KunstFestSpiele Herrenhausen; and Peak Performances @ Montclair State University.

THEATER

Dublin's Gate Theatre makes its 10th appearance at Spoleto Festival USA with a new production of Oscar Wilde's comic masterpiece, The Importance of Being Earnest. Wilde's social satire chronicles the escapades of dashing men-about-town-the irrepressible Algernon Moncrieff and the mannerly John Worthing-and their courtship of the ladies Gwendolen Fairfax and Cecily Cardew. Matters are complicated by the gallants' deceptions and the interference of Gwendolen's formidable mother, Lady Bracknell. Boasting what the company's Artistic Director Michael Colgan calls "a dream cast," this new production is directed by Patrick Mason and will be performed in the Dock Street Theatre.

Hailed as "a Frankenstein for the 21st century" (The Times, London) Golem is the newest creation from innovative UK-based company 1927. Written and directed by Suzanne Andrade, Golem is loosely based on the Jewish folklore myth about a man who fashions a creature out of clay to work for him, but is an original story told via 1927's characteristic blend of live performance and stunning sets brought to life through film, animation, and claymation designed by Paul Barritt. Golem follows the company's successful productions-and sold-out Spoleto Festival USA shows-The Animals and Children Took to the Streets (2012) and Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea (2008).

Two one-man shows that touch upon themes of death and loss while making you laugh come to Spoleto Festival USA following successful runs at the Edinburgh and Edinburgh Fringe Festivals. In Every Brilliant Thing, a man looks back at a list he began as a child to help his depressed mother rediscover joy-a list of "every brilliant thing" worth living for. Performed by Jonny Donahoe and directed by George Perrin as part of the American Express Woolfe Street Series, the play has been described as "a piece that demonstrates why life is worth living-you'll leave feeling elated" (The Scotsman). Meanwhile, in A Gambler's Guide to Dying, writer and performer Gary McNair recounts the story of his garrulous gambling grandfather whose winning bet on the 1966 World Cup final made him his fortune and forged a family legend. When diagnosed with cancer, his grandfather decided to bet all of his accumulated gambling winnings on living to see the year 2000. Awarded The Scotsman's Fringe First award for new writing at the 2015 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, A Gambler's Guide to Dying has been described as ". . . a beautifully written, deceptively simple, warmly comic piece that accumulates layers of meaning through the act of storytelling itself" (The Guardian).

Death also casts a shadow over Ada/Ava by Chicago-based Manual Cinema and directed by Drew Dir. Using shadow puppets, Ada/Ava is the story of twin sisters who have lived their whole lives together until, suddenly, Ava dies. When a traveling carnival comes to town, Ada visits a mirror maze that sends her on a journey across the thresholds of life and death. Featuring three musicians performing an original score live and more than 300 flat paper and acetate puppets manipulated by five puppeteers, and set within a New England gothic landscape, Ada/Ava is described by The New York Times as ". . . an unclassifiable story of spectral beauty. . ."

DANCE

Two contemporary American companies, a rising star of the UK dance scene, an innovative hip-hop collective, and an internationally acclaimed Cuban show from London's Sadler's Wells Theatre make up the 2016 dance series. The performances encompass a "who's who" of contemporary choreography, including two works by award-winning Belgian choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui.

On opening weekend, the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company returns to Spoleto Festival USA with Play and Play: An Evening of Movement and Music featuring an octet of musicians from the Spoleto Festival USA Orchestra performing live music by Mendelssohn, Mozart, and Beethoven. The program features Jones's award-winning "D-Man in the Waters", "Spent Days Out Yonder", and "Continuous Replay", highlighting the exhilaration of musicians and dancers working together. These performances will be held in the College of Charleston Sottile Theatre.

Britain's Aakash Odedra Company makes its Spoleto Festival USA debut with Rising, a program of four solo works performed by Odedra, who is trained in the Indian dance styles of Kathak and Bharata Natyam. A testament to the esteem in which he is held, Rising features works choreographed especially for him by three of the world's finest choreographers-Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Akram Khan, and Russell Maliphant-performed alongside a work of Odedra's own in the intimate Emmett Robinson Theater at the College of Charleston.

L.A. Dance Project makes its Spoleto Festival USA debut in the Charleston Gaillard Center with a program of three works. New York City Ballet soloist and Resident Choreographer Justin Peck's Murder Ballades is based on the American folk tradition of songs about crime. Bright and athletic on the surface, dark undertones slowly creep through, augmented by a score by Bryce Dessner (The National) and visuals by artist Sterling Ruby. In Harbor Me by award-winning Belgian choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, a trio of dancers explores the role of the harbor as a place of shelter, offering protection, but also as a border that can turn you away. Hearts & Arrows by L.A. Dance Project founder, Paris Opera Ballet director of dance, and former New York City Ballet principal Benjamin Millepied, is set to Philip Glass's String Quartet no. 3 and sees eight dancers move through numerous patterns where "everything is unexpected, and everything feels serendipitously right" (The New York Times).

Breakdancing, live beats, and hip hop collide in Opposing Forces created by Seattle-based choreographer, dancer, and educator Amy O'Neal. Five world-class B-Boys-Alfredo "Free" Vergara Jr., Brysen "Just Be" Angeles, Fever One, Michael O'Neal Jr., and Mozes Lateef Saleem-use their distinctive physical language to examine the value systems of race and gender within the environments of battling, commercial dance, contemporary performance, and rap culture performed to an original score by Waylon Dungan, also known as WD4D.

The dance series concludes in the Charleston Gaillard Center with Havana Rakatan, which brings salsa, mambo, jazz, bolero, son, cha-cha-cha, and rumba together for a dazzling display of Cuban passion. Exploring the country's rich history through dance, Cuban choreographer Nilda Guerra's whirlwind of movement is underpinned by the loose, syncopated rhythms of Cuba's well-known eight-piece son band Turquino performing live on stage. Havana Rakatan made its hugely successful debut in London, where Time Out London proclaimed it "rip-roaring entertainment." The show subsequently completed four successful West End runs and has toured the world as one of Sadler's Wells's most successful productions.

The 2016 Dance Series is sponsored by BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina.
Additional support for the 2016 dance series is provide by The Harkness Foundation for Dance.

Master classes will be held during the festival with Aakash Odedra, Amy O'Neal, and Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company's Janet Wong. Information on participating can be found at spoletousa.org.

MUSIC

40th-Season Celebration Concert
The full Spoleto Festival USA Orchestra, the Westminster Choir, musicians from the Bank of America Chamber Music and Wells Fargo Jazz series, as well as other friends-more than 140 strong-come together to celebrate 40 years of music making in the new Martha and John M. Rivers Performance Hall on Saturday, May 28. Opening with the overture to Tchaikovsky's The Queen of Spades-the Festival's inaugural opera in 1977-the program includes works by composer and Festival Founder Gian Carlo Menotti; Haydn's Sinfonia Concertante, performed by Chamber Music Director Geoff Nuttall and series musicians; selections from choral and operatic performances by the Westminster Choir; and the premiere of Blessing the Boats-a new work by Resident Conductor and Director of Orchestral Activities John Kennedy, as well as a few surprises. Former Festival Music Director Steven Sloane conducts, and Mayor emeritus Joseph P. Riley, whose enthusiasm for Spoleto Festival USA helped make it a reality in Charleston, narrates this four-decade celebration.

Choral Fantasy
In another show of musical force, the Westminster Choir, the Charleston Symphony Orchestra Chorus, and the Spoleto Festival USA Orchestra will combine to present Beethoven's Mass in C Major and Choral Fantasy, as well as Olivier Messiaen's Couleurs de la Cité Celeste for piano, winds, and percussion in the Charleston Gaillard Center on Tuesday, June 4, showcasing the acoustics of the renovated hall. Pianist Lori Sims will be featured in the latter two works. The Beethoven works emerged from his "heroic" period, a time when he strayed from classical convention, heading instead toward the lows and highs of struggle and celebration. In the Choral Fantasy, many hear early sketches of the melody made famous in Beethoven's ninth symphony-full of hope, fraternity, and joy. This concert will be conducted by Director for Choral Activities Joe Miller.

Always in great demand, the Westminster Choir Concerts in the Cathedral Church of St. Luke and St. Paul's feature a program titled Angel Band. The choir will perform Poulenc's Messe en Sol Majeur; Debussy's Trois chansons de Charles d'Orléans; and Brahms's colorful vocal quartet An Die Heimat, along with traditional favorites conducted by Joe Miller, the Festival's director for choral activities.

The Spoleto Festival USA Orchestra is comprised of young professional musicians selected anew each year through national auditions and led by the Festival's Resident Conductor and Director of Orchestral Activities John Kennedy. The orchestra performs in many capacities, including opera, symphonic, choral, chamber, and contemporary concerts. In addition to the 40th-Season Celebration Concert and Choral Fantasy concerts in the Charleston Gaillard Center, members of the orchestra will perform two programs. The first celebrates the 40th anniversary of Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians in Memminger Auditorium on Friday, June 3. A landmark work of the 20th century, this work helped to define the minimalist movement with its revolutionary style. The second concert will feature a chamber orchestra ensemble conducted by Norman Huynh, assistant conductor for the Portland Symphony Orchestra, to demonstrate the youthful virtuosity of the Spoleto Festival USA Orchestra members and featuring Alberto Ginastera's Variaciones concertantes-an expressive work with improvisatory character that features every instrument as a soloist. This concert will be performed in St. Matthew's Lutheran Church on Monday, June 6.

Ninety years after the composer's untimely death, Spoleto Festival USA proudly presents the world premiere of "African romance" Afram ou La Belle Swita by Charleston-born Edmund Thornton Jenkins. Edmund was the seventh son of Reverend Daniel Jenkins, who, born a slave, founded the Jenkins Orphanage on King Street; the world-renowned Jenkins Orphanage Band accompanied every Broadway performance of Dorothy and DuBose Heyward's Porgy, the play on which Porgy and Bess was based. Edmund was the Ross Scholar at London's Royal Academy of Music, winning awards in performance and composition before his premature death in Paris at age 32. Jenkins's last composition, Afram ou La Belle Swita travels from Africa to the American South, encountering a prince and princess, a lounge lizard, banjos under the moonlight, and possum hunts; he intended this work to be performed by the likes of Florence Mills, the winsome "Queen of Happiness" from the Harlem Renaissance and a member of his coterie of friends. Reconstructed in what is believed to be its first performance, Afram is a cabaret revue with songs, fox trots, and such evocations of Charleston as "Underneath the Palmettos and Pines." It will be performed as part of the American Express Woolfe Street Series by cast members of Porgy and Bess and special guest performer pianist Tuffus Zimbabwe with stage direction by David Herskovits.

John Kennedy's Music in Time series features five concerts that explore contemporary music. Helmut Lachenmann in Conversation on Friday, May 27 at the Simons Center Recital Hall gives people the opportunity to hear German composer Helmut Lachenmann, whose opera The Little Match Girl receives its US premiere at the Festival, talk about his philosophies of musical and social engagement. Also on the program will be Lachenmann's 2008 song cycle Got Lost-a deconstruction of text and sound in which music reflects upon itself in, as he says, "a constantly changing field of sound, reverberation, and movement." Got Lost will be performed by soprano Yuko Kakuta and pianist Stephen Drury. Ein Kinderspiel and Spoletudes on Saturday, June 4 is a playful program featuring Lachenmann's Ein Kinderspiel (Child's Play) for solo piano, played by Renate Rohlfing. Virtuosic musical portraits for musicians who have had a long association with Spoleto Festival USA will be revealed in the premiere of John Kennedy's Spoletudes. And with his new Verplichtet II, Gleb Kanasevich-a young composer and member of the Spoleto Festival USA Orchestra-creates a tapestry of chamber orchestra dialogue, complete with abstract references to Kanye West and an amplified milkshake. The third Music In Time concert in the Simons Center Serynade With An Automated Sunrise on Tuesday, June 7 continues the celebration of Helmut Lachenmann featuring his piano solo Serynade played by Stephen Drury and closes with Oscar Bettison's 2014 work for small ensemble, An Automated Sunrise (for Joseph Cornell). The Music In Times series also includes two evening concerts presented as part of the American Express Woolfe Street Series. Ancient Voices of Children on Wednesday, June 1 is named for George Crumb's song cycle on texts by Federico García Lorca, considered a contemporary-music classic. The performance features soprano Heather Buck with pianist Stephen Drury and members of the Spoleto Festival USA Orchestra. Sharing the program is Pierre Boulez's haunting Dialogue de l'ombre double (Dialogue of the Double Shadow) for clarinet and spatial electronics, performed by Gleb Kanasevich. A second Woolfe Street Playhouse concert on Thursday, June 2 called A Maze (With Grace) is named for Thomas Albert's ode to memory in which the hymn "Amazing Grace" is unfolded note by note. Other new works on the program include Hong-Da Chin's ...the clock is ticking... and Richard Reed Parry's Music for Heart and Breath performed by members of the Spoleto Festival USA Orchestra.

Outside the classical realm, the Festival offers special Festival-eve and opening-night performances by energetic six-piece bluegrass band Old Crow Medicine Show in the College of Charleston Cistern Yard May 26 and 27. Inducted as members of the Grand Ole Opry in 2013 and two-time Grammy-Award winners, Old Crow Medicine Show has won the enthusiastic support of every kind of bluegrass lover since its discovery by folk icon Doc Watson 15 years ago; members Ketch & Critter and friends performed an exciting show at the Festival in 2012.

BANK OF AMERICA CHAMBER MUSIC
Under the direction of violinist Geoff Nuttall, The Charles E. and Andrea L. Volpe Director for Chamber Music, the Bank of America Chamber Music series features 33 concerts of 11 programs performed twice daily in the historic Dock Street Theatre. To celebrate Spoleto Festival USA's 40th season, the St. Lawrence String Quartet will be in residence for the duration of the Festival, also joined by pianists Stephen Prutsman and Inon Barnatan, cellist Alisa Weilerstein, violinist Benjamin Beilman, oboist James Austin Smith, baritone Tyler Duncan, and many others. Violinist Pamela Frank will make her Festival debut, and Osvaldo Golijov returns to the series as composer in residence. The full program will be announced in April. Known for its party-like atmosphere and ingenious programming, the series is heard beyond Dock Street Theatre, being broadcast nationally and internationally via the popular Chamber Music from Spoleto Festival USA radio series produced by South Carolina Public Radio.

WELLS FARGO JAZZ
The 2016 program for the Wells Fargo Jazz series illustrates the Festival's mission to present acclaimed masters alongside rising stars with a stellar array of artists encompassing the rich history of American jazz and, this season, exploring the Afro-Cuban music tradition.

Over opening weekend, May 27 and 28, Arturo O'Farrill and the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra will bring their eclectic sound to the College of Charleston Cistern Yard. The winner of multiple Grammy awards, pianist and composer Arturo O'Farrill inherited a powerful legacy from his father, the legendary Cuban composer and bandleader Chico O'Farrill. Born in Mexico and raised in New York City, he was also deeply influenced by experimental jazz. O'Farrill's 18-piece Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra embodies the promise of a lasting bond between Cuba and the United States, invigorated this year by a changed political context-a decision affirmed in O'Farrill's latest CD title, Cuba: The Conversation Continues that has been nominated for a Grammy Award.

Equally drawn to the idea that a blend of traditions would speak to the true voice of the Americas, Cuban musician Yosvany Terry (saxophone and chékere), and his musical friends Orlando Alonso (piano) and Yves Dharamraj (cello) formed the Bohemian Trio in 2013. Together, they intertwine earthy, Afro-Cuban rhythms with sweeping classical melodies, jazz improvisation, and the celebration of Latin dance. The trio will perform six concerts in the Simons Center Recital Hall May 28, May 30, and May 31.

Audiences are invited to find out more about Cuban music and the historic bond between the US and Cuba at a special conversation called "The Conversation Continues: The US, Cuba, and Jazz" with musicians Arturo O'Farrill and Yosvany Terry, and The Wall Street Journal jazz critic Larry Blumenfeld on May 29.

The Wells Fargo Jazz series continues with two stellar performers and their esteemed ensembles in the new Martha and John M. Rivers Performance Hall in the Charleston Gaillard Center. On Sunday, May 29 Festival favorite René Marie, known for her vocal vibrancy and self-possessed boldness, presents her signature blend of jazz, soul, blues, folk, and gospel with her five-piece band featuring Charleston's own Quentin Baxter on percussion. On Thursday, June 2 it will be Randy Weston African Rhythms Sextet's turn to take to the Gaillard stage, showcasing the mastery of a pianist and composer who, at almost 90-years old, has lived through much of the music's history and helped author jazz's story. Named a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master in 2001, Weston is credited with exemplifying a uniquely American art form. Throughout his career, in formats ranging from solo piano to jazz orchestra, Weston has delved more deeply and with more profound insight than any other musician into jazz's African roots.

Cécile McLorin Salvant returns to the Festival on Friday, June 3 for the first time since her exceptional 2012 debut performing in the Cistern Yard. An artist who has been turning heads since she won the Thelonious Monk International Vocal Jazz Competition in 2010, Salvant brings to the Festival the fruits and success of the last several years, marked by theatrical portrayals, fresh interpretations, and a handful of original compositions-heard on her 2015 Grammy Award-nominated album, For One to Love.

Pianist Jason Moran has made a career-and earned a MacArthur "genius" fellowship-out of digging into storied histories and breaking new ground, whether performing with one of his acclaimed ensembles, leading The Kennedy Center's jazz program as artistic director, or crafting ingenious new projects. With his Fats Waller Dance Party that takes over the Cistern Yard on Saturday, June 4, Moran-who has lived in Harlem for 20 years-celebrates a sound forged in that neighborhood nearly a century ago. Performing in a spectacular papier-mâché mask of Waller's head and fronting a raucous band, Moran deconstructs and reimagines Waller's swinging songbook.

The Wells Fargo Jazz series concludes with a series of intimate performances by The Freddy Cole Quartet, June 8 ? 11. One of the most respected lyrical storytellers in jazz today, Cole was raised in an exceptionally musical family in Chicago, growing up in a home that saw visitors like Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and Lionel Hampton. He and his three older brothers-Nat King Cole among them-were all musicians taught by their mother; Freddy continued his music education at The Juilliard School and the New England Conservatory of Music before developing a vast repertoire and flourishing career in Manhattan bistros. Cole now performs with a quartet including bassist Elias Bailey, percussionist Quentin Baxter, and featuring guitarist Randy Napoleon, and has moved into the front ranks of America's homegrown art form.

The popular Wells Fargo Festival Finale brings the 40th season to a close at Middleton Place, a historic plantation and gardens located 14 miles from downtown Charleston. The day includes gourmet picnic fare, a beer garden, and regional bands playing throughout the afternoon. The Festival will conclude with a concert by eight-piece band Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats that blends soul and rock and roll and has been hailed as "one of rock's best new acts" by Rolling Stone. The Festival will conclude-as it has done for 40 years-with a spectacular fireworks display.

HOW TO PURCHASE TICKETS
Tickets will go on sale to the general public on Thursday, January 14 at 10:00am online and by phone 843.579.3100.

For contributors of $100 or more, Spoleto Festival USA is offering a donor pre-sale January 5 ? 13, providing exclusive access to tickets and premium seating for the 2016 season. Access is based on giving levels; more information on the donor pre-sale and how to donate can be found at spoletousa.org.

On-site box office operations will again be located at the Charleston Visitor Center at 375 Meeting Street beginning Monday, March 14. Additionally, Spoleto Festival USA tickets will be available from the Charleston Gaillard Center beginning Monday, May 2.

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