Superb, wide-ranging lineup on tap for 2024-25 Performing Arts Series at Lawrence

Lawrence University’s 2024-25 Performing Arts Series will feature music ranging from chamber music to jazz and will include a return performance from the two-time Grammy Award-winning Roomful of Teeth, which features Lawrence voice professor Estelí Gomez.

Season tickets go on sale July 1; single tickets go on sale Sept. 23. Tickets for Memorial Chapel performances are $30/adults, $25/seniors; tickets for Harper Hall performances are $15/adults, $10/seniors; all are free for students with a school ID. Season tickets are "create your own" series of four or more concerts, with a 15% discount. All performances are open to the public. Lawrence’s box office is reachable at 920-832-6749 or by email at boxoffice@lawrence.edu.

The lineup includes:

Sō Percussion with Caroline Shaw, Friday, October 18, 2024, 7:30 p.m., Lawrence Memorial Chapel

The performance features Eric Cha-Beach, Josh Quillen, Adam Sliwinski, and Jason Treuting with composer Caroline Shaw. Sō Percussion has redefined chamber music for the 21st century over the past two decades. The ensemble brings to life a vibrant percussion repertoire; for an extravagant array of collaborations in classical music, pop, indie rock, contemporary dance, and theater; and for their work in education and community, creating opportunities and platforms for music and artists that explore the possibilities of art. Sō continues its collaboration with Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Caroline Shaw with a new collection of songs. The new songs will be featured alongside music from 2020’s Grammy Award-winning song cycle Narrow Sea, and the co-composed album of songs Let the Soil Play its Simple Part.

Grupo Bella, Monday, October 28, 2024, 8 p.m., Harper Hall

Formed in the summer of 2011, Grupo Bella is a multi-faceted ensemble from the Los Angeles area. Grupo Bella is known for their musicianship and diverse repertoire. With their use of traditional Mariachi instrumentation, they have their roots in the Mariachi genre, while also spanning the music of many different cultures, decades, and various Latin American and American styles. The group founder and musical director, Vanessa Ramirez, is an accomplished singer, Grammy-award winning vocalist, and Grammy-nominated composer. 

Rene Marie Quartet, Friday, November 8, 2024, 7:30 p.m. Lawrence Memorial Chapel

In a span of two decades, 11 recordings and countless stage performances, vocalist René Marie has cemented her reputation as not only a singer but also a composer, arranger, theatrical performer, and teacher. Guided and tempered by powerful life lessons and rooted in jazz traditions laid down by Ella Fitzgerald, Dinah Washington, and other leading ladies of past generations, she borrows various elements of folk, R&B and even classical and country to create a captivating hybrid style.

Sean Jones Quartet, Saturday, November 9, 2024, 7:30 p.m., Lawrence Memorial Chapel

Music and spirituality have always been fully intertwined in the artistic vision of trumpeter, bandleader, composer, educator, and activist Sean Jones. Singing and performing as a child with the church choir in his hometown of Warren, Ohio, Jones switched from the drums to the trumpet at the age of 10. He turned a 6-month stint with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra into an offer from Wynton Marsalis for a permanent position as lead trumpeter, a post he held from 2004 until 2010. In 2015, Jones was tapped to become a member of the SFJAZZ Collective. He has kept a core group of talented musicians together, producing and releasing eight recordings on the Mack Avenue Records; the latest is his 2017 release, Sean Jones: Live from the Jazz Bistro.

Larry & Joe, Wednesday, January 29, 2025, 8 p.m., Harper Hall

This dynamic duo is composed of Larry Bellorín of Monagas, Venezuela, a legend of Llanera music, and Joe Troop, a Grammy-nominated bluegrass musician from North Carolina. The two fell into step together when the pandemic sent Troop home to North Carolina after 10 years in South America, the same state where Bellorin happened to end up as an asylum seeker. Their blend of Venezuelan and Appalachian folk on the harp, banjo, cuatro, fiddle, guitar, maracas, and whatever else fits in the van, unites their cultures and traditions while bringing music to the forefront of social movements. 

Isidore String Quartet, Friday, February 7, 2025, 7:30 p.m., Lawrence Memorial Chapel

The quartet features Adrian Steele and Phoenix Avalon on violin, Devin Moore on viola, and Joshua McClendon on cello. Formed in 2019 in New York City, they were winners of a 2023 Avery Fisher Career Grant and the 14th Banff International String Quartet Competition in 2022. The quartet is heavily influenced by the Juilliard String Quartet and the idea of “approaching the established as if it were brand new, and the new as if it were firmly established.”

Matt Wilson Good Trouble Quintet, Saturday, February 22, 2025, 7:30 p.m., Lawrence Memorial Chapel

The quintet features Matt Wilson on drums, Tia Fuller on alto saxophone, Dawn Clement on piano and vocals, Jeff Lederer on tenor saxophone and clarinet, and Ben Allison on bass. Wilson has released 13 albums as a leader, appeared on more than 400 others as a sideman, and has played with an impressive array of some of the most legendary names in jazz. He was named 2018 Musician of the Year by the Jazz Journalists Association and his album, Honey And Salt (Music Inspired by the Poetry of Carl Sandburg), won the JJA’s Album of the Year Award. That recording and his previous, Beginning of a Memory, received consecutive 5-star (masterpiece) reviews from Downbeat magazine. 

Yumi Kurosawa Trio, Wednesday, April 2, 2025, 8 p.m., Harper Hall

Yumi Kurosawa was born and raised in a traditional Japanese music environment, taking up the Koto from a young age and rising fast to the upper echelons of her craft. Ever since she was a teenager, however, she constantly surrounded herself with contemporary music by Western music composers, integrating their melodies and phrasings into her solo Koto. As her career expanded, she carried these interests into ensembles featuring Western musical instruments, especially strings. For this trio, Yumi is joined by violinist Naho Parrini and percussionist Yousif Sheronick.

Roomful of Teeth, Friday, April 4, 2025, 7:30 p.m., Lawrence Memorial Chapel

Roomful of Teeth is a two-time Grammy Award-winning ensemble dedicated to the performance of new works for eight amplified voices. Through collaboration, commissioning, and new technologies, they seek to reimagine the expressive potential of the human voice. Their latest album, Rough Magic (New Amsterdam Records, 2023) was captured using groundbreaking recording techniques and innovative spatial technology. Roomful of Teeth was recognized at the 66th Grammy Awards in 2024, winning Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance for Rough Magic; and composer William Brittelle’s work, Psychedelics, which appears on the album, was nominated for Best Contemporary Classical Composition. The group includes Gomez, a professor in the Lawrence Conservatory since 2019.

Michelle Cann, piano, Friday, April 18, 2025, 7:30 p.m., Lawrence Memorial Chapel

Michelle Cann has become one of the most sought-after pianists of her generation. She made her debut with The Philadelphia Orchestra in 2021 and has recently performed concertos with The Cleveland Orchestra, the National Symphony Orchestra, the Orquestra Sinfônica Municipal de São Paulo, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the symphony orchestras of Atlanta, Baltimore, and Cincinnati. Highlights of Cann’s 2023-24 season include appearances with the Charlotte, Hawaii, Indianapolis, Québec, Sarasota, and Winnipeg symphony orchestras, and recitals in New York City, Portland, Berkeley, Beverly Hills, and Denver.

Kneebody, Friday, May 2, 2025, 7:30 p.m., Lawrence Memorial Chapel

In their almost two-decade history, the Grammy-nominated band Kneebody has created a genre and style all its own. Their sound is explosive rock energy and high-level nuanced chamber ensemble-playing set within the frames of highly wrought compositions that are balanced with adventurous improvising. Kneebody is keyboardist Adam Benjamin, trumpeter Shane Endsley, saxophonist Ben Wendel, and drummer/bassist Nate Wood.