(March 26, 2021; New York, NY)— From April 16-30, 2021, Carnegie Hall presents Voices of Hope, an online festival that examines the resilience of artists, exploring works that they felt compelled to create despite—and often because of—appalling circumstances and human tragedy. Over the two weeks, Carnegie Hall’s first-ever digital festival explores this theme through more than 100 events including digital programming presented by Carnegie Hall and more than 40 leading cultural and academic institutions across New York City and beyond.

Anchoring Voices of Hope will be free streamed musical performances presented nightly by Carnegie Hall over the two weeks, ranging from orchestral and chamber works to folk and jazz. The festival line-up will include performances by Rhiannon Giddens and Francesco Turrisi, Magos Herrera and Brooklyn Rider, Jerusalem Quartet, Kinan Azmeh Cityband, Kronos Quartet, Ute Lemper, Jason Moran, Samora Pinderhughes, Jordi Savall, Somi, Third Coast Percussion / Movement Art Is, Davóne Tines and Jennifer Koh, as well as the Boston Symphony Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra, and more.

These festival performances will feature music that inspires change and lifts the human spirit, highlighting how artists have used their creativity to connect with others, helping them to make sense of the world around them. Programs will show how artists have explored themes of war and conflict under oppressive regimes; the Holocaust; pressing social justice issues including systemic racism and police brutality; as well as the COVID-19 pandemic.

Complementing Carnegie Hall’s evening line-up of musical performances, each afternoon, the Hall will stream a curated selection of free documentaries and filmed performances (also available for on-demand viewing via carnegiehall.org/voicesofhope through May 31), further exploring how the arts have been used as a tool for activism, resistance, and solidarity.

In addition, through programs created by the Weill Music Institute—Carnegie Hall’s education and social impact arm—songwriters of all ages from across the US have been invited to explore the Voices of Hope theme, creating new music to empower themselves and their communities in response to the world around them. A selection of more than 20 of their songs will be featured during the festival in a special online presentation, In Response, streamed on Wednesday evening, April 28 as part of the Learn with Carnegie Hall series.

Online and in-person programming created by more than 40 prestigious partner organizations will further expand the scope of Voices of Hope over the two weeks with 60+ events ranging from exhibitions and dance/theater performances to talks and film screenings considering humankind’s capacity for optimism, courage, and strength in the face of the unimaginable.

“With our Voices of Hope festival, we have set out to create a special journey, inviting audiences to explore the inspiring role that artists have played in some of the darkest chapters of our shared history—capturing stories or a moment in time and expressing hope, courage, and resistance,” said Clive Gillinson, Carnegie Hall’s Executive and Artistic Director. “The festival also reflects on the world today, and how, during the global pandemic, we continue to turn to the arts and artists to provide us with the inspiration and resilience we so desperately need.”

Originally scheduled to feature live, in-person performances from March through May 2021, Voices of Hope was re-envisioned as an online festival after Carnegie Hall was forced to close its doors for an extended period due to COVID-19. Since April 2020, the Hall has partnered with major musical artists to produce a range of new original streamed programming to stay connected with audiences as the Hall works toward welcoming audiences back for live music-making in fall 2021.

All Voices of Hope programming presented by Carnegie Hall along with most festival partner events will be offered for free. Carnegie Hall programming will stream on carnegiehall.org/voicesofhope as well as on the Hall’s Facebook and YouTube pages, and will be available for on-demand viewing through May 31, 2021.

Click here for a day-by-day “schedule at a glance” of Voices of Hope festival events.
Click here for a complete festival event schedule by genre.

HIGHLIGHTS OF VOICES OF HOPE FESTIVAL: CARNEGIE HALL STREAMED EVENTS

With 16 free streamed performances presented by Carnegie Hall nightly over the course of two weeks, the Voices of Hope festival’s musical programming includes the world premiere of new works commissioned by Carnegie Hall as well as new projects and music created in response to the world we are living in today. Alongside its musical presentations, the Hall’s line-up will also include the Emmy Award-nominated film A Mother’s Rite, a socially-charged ballet solo set to Stravinsky’s iconic The Rite of Spring, featuring Courtney Celeste Spears from Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, and produced by Jeremy McQueen’s Black Iris Project (April 26 at 7 p.m.).

Carnegie Hall’s streaming line-up will include:

Boston Symphony Orchestra & Andris Nelsons: Shostakovich Symphony No. 4
Friday, April 16 at 8 p.m.

The two-week Voices of Hope festival kicks off on April 16 with a streamed performance of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, led by Andris Nelsons, featuring Shostakovich’s powerful Symphony No. 4. Having been savaged in the Soviet-run press for his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk and warned about composing music in a similar style, the 20th-century symphonic master cancelled the premiere of his fourth symphony in 1936 and placed it in his desk until it was finally performed in 1961. Scored for 125 players, the symphony’s edgy intensity, sardonic humor, and heartbreaking melancholy make for a riveting emotional journey.


Magos Herrera and Brooklyn Rider: Dreamers
Saturday, April 17 at 8 p.m.

The following night, vocalist Magos Herrera and the daring Brooklyn Rider join forces to pay tribute to the “Dreamers,” artists who kept the hopes of the oppressed alive with their music and poetry. The program showcases treasures from the Ibero-American songbook, reimagined in brilliant and uplifting new arrangements, set to texts by such literary giants as Octavio Paz, Federico García Lorca, and others who suffered under repressive regimes.


Ute Lemper: Songs for Eternity
Sunday, April 18 at 8 p.m.

Acclaimed chanteuse and actress Ute Lemper offers a program entitled Songs for Eternity, sung in Yiddish and German, highlighting the inspiring courage of composers and poets who created music despite the horrors of the ghettos and concentration camps during the Holocaust. Accompanied by an instrumental ensemble, Lemper performs songs of rebellion, hope, defiance, and life-affirming resilience, offering stark testimony to the best and worst in humanity.


Jerusalem Quartet
Monday, April 19 at 7 p.m.

Daring music written by two 20th-century composers who created despite war and oppression will be heard when the Jerusalem Quartet performs excerpts from Prokofiev’s String Quartet No. 2—written during his evacuation to a remote Soviet region at the onset of Germany’s 1941 invasion of Russia—paired with Erwin Schulhoff’s Five Pieces for String Quartet from 1923, music with lively rhythmic flair, pungent harmonies, and folk accents from the composer’s Czech homeland. A Jew with a love for jazz and ragtime, Schulhoff perished in a German concentration camp in 1942.


Third Coast Percussion / Movement Art Is: Metamorphosis
Tuesday, April 20 at 8 p.m.

Grammy Award-winning Third Coast Percussion joins forces with the groundbreaking choreography of Lil Buck and Jon Boogz from Movement Art Is for an intimate program, including two works co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall, exploring the duality of human nature. Through Metamorphosis, they collaboratively illustrate universal themes cast through the experiential lens of young Black men growing up in America today. Two disparate styles of street dance blend seamlessly with new music by Jlin and Tyondai Braxton, as well as Third Coast Percussion’s acclaimed arrangements of Philip Glass’s Aguas da Amazonia.


Somi
Wednesday, April 21 at 8 p.m.

Influenced by her Ugandan and Rwandan heritage, vocalist Somi’s elegant amalgam of jazz and African music will move audiences with a short performance recently filmed in Senegal, shown following the premiere of in the absence of things, an experimental short film that blends spoken word, art song, movement, and deconstructed concert recordings. The film is Somi’s meditation on the vacancy that a performer feels in the absence of the living stage and the spiritual consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic on creative practices.


Jason Moran: James Reese Europe and the Harlem Hellfighters: The Absence of Ruin
Thursday, April 22 at 8 p.m.

Jason Moran will perform James Reese Europe and the Harlem Hellfighters: The Absence of Ruin—the celebrated jazz pianist’s acclaimed meditation on the life and legacy of James Reese Europe that tells the extraordinary story of the development of jazz, African American culture, and the role of music in relation to racism and prejudice. During World War I, Europe—an iconic figure in the evolution of African American music—was a member of the 93rd Division’s 369th Infantry Regiment from New York (commonly referred to as “The Harlem Hellfighters”) and bandleader of the regiment’s military ensemble that popularized the new spirit of jazz to a war-torn French nation fascinated with Black culture. This project was co-commissioned by 14-18 NOW: WWI Centenary Art Commissions, Serious, The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and the Berliner Festspiele / Jazzfest Berlin.


Davóne Tines and Jennifer Koh
Friday, April 23 at 7 p.m.

In the premiere of a new music film, dynamic violinist Jennifer Koh and pathbreaking opera singer Davóne Tines collaborate to distill the history of Asian American oppression, and highlight the untold story of solidarity between Asian Americans and the Black community. Images that document violence against Asian Americans are juxtaposed with video of Koh and Tines performing Ken Ueno’s arrangement of “Strange Fruit,” a song that has historically been an unflinching expression of Black oppression. This work is the result of a three-year collaborative journey between Koh, Tines, Ueno, and the dramaturg Kee-Yoon Nahm.


Kronos Quartet
Saturday, April 24 at 8 p.m.

The musically daring and socially conscious Kronos Quartet performs a powerful program that includes arrangements by Jacob Garchik; and selections by Terry Riley and others. The evening’s centerpiece is an excerpt from Mary Kouyoumdjian's Silent Cranes, inspired by an Armenian folk song and depicting the voices of those tragically lost in the Armenian Genocide of 1915. Also included is a selection from Zachary James Watkins’s Peace Be Till, commissioned by Carnegie Hall and featuring the recorded voice of Clarence B. Jones, speechwriter and personal counsel to Martin Luther King Jr.


Jordi Savall: Bal-Kan
Sunday, April 25 at 3 p.m.

Another musical dialogue brought about by conquest, oppression, and conflict—that of the Balkans, and the Roma and Armenian diasporas—is the focus of Bal-Kan: Honey and Blood, Music in the Ottoman Empire, featuring viola da gamba virtuoso, conductor and musicologist Jordi Savall. From the reign of the Ottoman Turks to the political divisions of the 20th century, Savall calls the Balkans “at one and the same time a rich meeting point and the theater of dramatic confrontations.” This program explores the extraordinarily diverse cultural traditions that adapted and flourished during the Ottoman Empire’s regime.


Ute Lemper: Rendezvous with Marlene
Sunday, April 25 at 8 p.m.

Ute Lemper returns to perform Rendezvous with Marlene, based on a three-hour phone exchange in 1987 between Marlene Dietrich and Lemper when the legendary Dietrich was living as a recluse in her Paris apartment. In this one-woman show, Lemper shares Dietrich’s story and celebrates songs that highlight various chapters of her career from the Berlin cabaret years to her later collaboration with Burt Bacharach. In one of the most poignant periods of her life, Dietrich was especially vocal against the Nazis during World War II, renouncing her German citizenship and passionately supporting Jews and other dissidents who—like her—faced discrimination and retribution. Musical selections include “Where Have All the Flowers Gone,” “Falling in Love Again,” and “Lili Marleen.”


National Symphony & Gianandrea Noseda: Casella’s Symphony No. 2
Monday, April 26 at 8 p.m.

The National Symphony Orchestra, led by Gianandrea Noseda, performs Casella’s Symphony No. 2, a highly emotional work filled with surging rhythms and dark orchestral colors. Written by the Italian composer before the start of World War I, it is believed that this rarely heard large-scale symphony might have been victim of cultural bias stoked by nationalist beliefs.


Samora Pinderhughes: Grief
Tuesday, April 27 at 8 p.m.

Carnegie Hall’s programming continues with Grief, a new project of revolutionary songs by pianist-vocalist-composer Samora Pinderhughes that was filmed for Voices of Hope and will receive its premiere screening during the festival. It calls out the sufferings caused by racial capitalism, policing and prison systems, and oppressive ideologies through freedom songs, abolitionist songs, and songs that unpack what so many have experienced this past year, while also suggesting pathways for collective response and resistance. Commissioned by Chamber Music America and New Music USA, Grief was conceived by Pinderhughes and directed by filmmaker Christian Padron with engineering by Jack DeBoe, inspired by the black-and-white photography of the legendary Roy DeCarava.


Rhiannon Giddens & Francesco Turrisi
Wednesday, April 28 at 8 p.m.

Carnegie Hall season Perspectives artist Rhiannon Giddens and Francesco Turrisi will perform excerpts from their forthcoming album, They’re Calling Me Home, written during the pandemic. The multi-instrumentalists take a deep dive into the musical meaning of home, both physically and metaphorically. The music speaks of the longing for the comfort of home as well as the metaphorical “call home” of death, which has been a tragic reality for so many throughout the past year.


Kinan Azmeh Cityband
Thursday, April 29 at 7 p.m.

Kinan Azmeh Cityband creates spellbinding music by blending classical and jazz with the sounds of Azmeh’s Syrian homeland. His dark-hued clarinet will be featured in a special performance of works Azmeh wrote in response to events in Syria, the aftermath of the revolution, and ongoing conflicts in the Middle East. The cornerstone of the program will be the world premiere of On Resilience, commissioned by Carnegie Hall—a new piece in which Azmeh incorporates audio testimonies from Syrians after 10 years of war and conflict. The performance, which was recently filmed at The Greene Space at WNYC/WQXR, will be presented alongside a live interview with Mr. Azmeh.


Carnegie Hall has partnered with London-based producers Serious to highlight select performances throughout Voices of Hope, amplifying and extending the reach of the festival to its audiences in the United Kingdom and beyond. For more info click on www.serious.org.uk/VoicesOfHope.


DOCUMENTARIES AND FILMED PERFORMANCES ON CARNEGIEHALL.ORG/VOICESOFHOPE

Complementing the diverse array of musical performances on offer, Carnegie Hall will also present a series of 16 documentaries and filmed performances throughout the festival for free on-demand viewing on carnegiehall.org/voicesofhope, available through May 31.

Included in the festival line-up are ground-breaking films such as the three-part documentary series Music, War and Revolution (streaming beginning April 21-23 at 3 p.m.) tracing the connections between music, revolution, and war—from the impact of World War I on European composers and the repressive stance on liberty of expression and creative output endured by composers during the Soviet regime, to an exploration of music's ability to both stir political uprising and inspire unity from Germany to Venezuela and the Middle East to Russia. The Singing Revolution (streaming beginning April 27 at 2 p.m.) documents how music became the weapon of choice for Estonians who sought to free themselves from decades of Soviet occupation. Between 1987 and 1991, hundreds of thousands gathered in fields to sing forbidden patriotic songs and rally for independence.

The story of the American civil rights movement and the powerful music that helped to fuel it comes under the spotlight in Soundtrack for a Revolution (streaming beginning April 29 at 3 p.m.). A unique mix of historical documentary and contemporary musical performance, the film takes a closer look at the freedom songs that protesters sang on picket lines, in mass meetings, in police wagons, and in jail cells as they fought for justice and equality.

Following the Ninth: In the Footsteps of Beethoven's Final Symphony (streaming beginning April 24 at 4 p.m.) traces the legacy of Beethoven's Ninth and how the message of unity contained in its final movement has been adopted by various groups, often to very different ends, throughout history.

The Voices of Hope festival is capped by a broadcast of the legendary performance of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9, conducted by Leonard Bernstein (streaming beginning on April 30 at 8 p.m.) performed on Christmas Day 1989 in Berlin, only a few days after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The joy, emotion, and hope of this powerful and stirring performance is palpable as the final chorus is transformed from an ode to joy to an ode to freedom. Joining members of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and Chorus were musicians from the London Symphony Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, the Orchestre de Paris, the Staatskapelle Dresden, and the Orchestra of Leningrad's Kirov Theater—symbolizing a coming together of nations and peoples, and a testament to the power of music to unite and inspire hope.


MUSIC PLAYLISTS

To complement its streamed performances for Voices of Hope, Carnegie Hall has created a special festival music playlist on carnegiehall.org/voicesofhope, inviting further musical exploration. Themed playlists including South Africa Protests, an exploration of the music and performers who used their art to speak out against the injustice of Apartheid; In the Shadow of War, featuring works written in the volatile times before, during, and after World War I; and 20th Century Elegy, a survey of music written in memory of those who faced oppression and conflict during the turbulent century, are also available on Spotify and Apple Music.

HIGHLIGHTS OF VOICES OF HOPE FESTIVAL: PARTNER PROGRAMMING BY GENRE

Voices of Hope festival partner programming features more than 60 events across multiple genres that further explore festival themes, presented by a broad array of cultural and academic institutions from across New York City, ranging from The Africa Center and Centro Primo Levi New York to the Museum of Jewish Heritage—A Living Memorial to the Holocaust and the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center as well as The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New-York Historical Society, The Metropolitan Opera, and Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute, plus several universities. For a full list of 40+ festival partners, please see below.

Click here for a day-by-day “schedule at a glance” of Voices of Hope festival events.
Click here for a complete festival event schedule by genre.

Online programming will stream via each partner’s website or online platform.
Note: Click the date on each event description for additional information on partner websites.