Daily Hampshire Gazette – World premiere to open new season: UMass Fine Arts Center 50th anniversary season includes big names across genres

The University of Massachusetts Amherst Fine Arts Center is celebrating its 50th anniversary season in style with jazz, Broadway hits, sing-alongs and visual art.

The season kicks off on Sept. 17 with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis, who will be performing for the very first time a newly commissioned work by Marsalis, “Afro!,” which explores jazz’s roots in African music. The orchestra will be joined by rising-star vocalist Shenel Johns and Ghanaian djembe virtuoso Weedie Braimah.

“It’s a really huge point of pride for us that we have this premiere event,” Sean Glennon, director of marketing and communications at the Fine Arts Center, said.

Glennon credited the late Dr. Frederick Tillis, who served as the Fine Arts Center director for nearly 20 years, and the late Randolph “Bill” Bromery, UMass chancellor from 1971-1979, for “turning UMass [into] a center for jazz education and jazz performance.”

Glennon said the 50th anniversary season’s theme, “All Together Now,” is an acknowledgement of the power of the arts to bring people and community together in joyful settings.

The season, which runs until May, will have a little bit of something for everyone and Glennon says patrons have a lot to look forward to. Highlights of the season include Lea Salonga’s “Stage, Screen & Everything in Between” on Dec. 4, Cirque Flip Fabrique on Feb. 12, and an event from April 6 to April 10 where Tibetan Buddhist monks from the Drepung Loseling Monastery will be creating and ritually destroying a sand mandala.

The season will close with another premiere, as the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company performs “People, Places and Things” for the first time outside of its New York City home on May 1.

Other than performing arts, Glennon says that the three visual museums within the Fine Arts Center — the Augusta Savage Gallery, Hampden Gallery and University Museum of Contemporary Art — are all hosting special artist residencies to reflect their histories and look to the future. 

For tickets and more information, visit umassfineartscenter.org.