Week Nine: August 17–25, 2024
Every summer Chautauqua Institution welcomes over 100,000 visitors, to celebrate community and prioritize personal growth. Many travel here to relax, renew and recharge on the shores of Chautauqua Lake. Join us for our historic 150 anniversary season and see for yourself why Chautauqua was, and continues to be, a cherished destination. Keep scrolling to explore Week Nine’s Theme: Rising Together: Our Century of Creativity and Collaboration with Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra.
Featured Entertainment and Events
Wynton Marsalis’ All Rise
Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with the Music School Festival Orchestra and Buffalo Philharmonic Chorus, Timothy Muffitt, conductor
August 21
Wynton Marsalis’ All Rise
Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with the Music School Festival Orchestra and Buffalo Philharmonic Chorus, Timothy Muffitt, conductor
August 22
Chautauqua Lecture Series
Rising Together: Our Century of Creativity and Collaboration with Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra
“The 20th was the century of communication. The 21st will be the century of integration. Our rapidly developing global community is the most exciting modern reality.” So opens Wynton Marsalis’ notes to “All Rise,” considered the composer’s Symphony No. 1 — a work not just of music, but of life, history, and the joyous power people hold to create art and progress when they work collectively and collaboratively. Where do these moments of translating and transcending difference exist in our society, and what can we learn from them? Where can our journeys, both individual and communal, take us? Backdropped by the annual Chautauqua Food Festival, this week features a keynote address by Wynton Marsalis for the Chautauqua Lecture Series, classes and recitals from the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, and an extraordinary performance on a massive scale of “All Rise” that will see Chautauqua’s very own Music School Festival Orchestra join forces with a full chorus and the legendary JLCO on the Amphitheater stage.
Wynton Marsalis returns to Chautauqua to open the week on Monday, Aug. 19, 2024, with a keynote address titled “Speaking a Common Language Against the Cacophony of Sectarian Opportunism” on the making — and ever-resonating themes — of his epic jazz symphony “All Rise,” a massive composition for big band, gospel choir and symphony orchestra. On Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024, leader in residence at the City University of New York’s Moynihan Center Sayu Bhojawni will lift up the voices and perspectives she has championed her entire career, demonstrating how the contributions of historically marginalized groups help us “rise together” as an American community. President and CEO of the National Constitution Center Jeffrey Rosen also returns to the Chautauqua Lecture Series on Wednesday, Aug. 21, 2024, to discuss his latest book, The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America, as part of the week’s interdisciplinary programming focused on the arts and the American experiment.
Confirmed Lectures
Wynton Marsalis
Wynton Marsalis returns to Chautauqua to open a week on “Rising Together: Our Century of Creativity and Collaboration with Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra” with a keynote address titled “Speaking a Common Language Against the Cacophony of Sectarian Opportunism” on the making — and ever-resonating themes — of his epic jazz symphony All Rise, a massive composition for big band, gospel choir and symphony orchestra.
For his oratorio Blood on the Fields, Marsalis became the first jazz musician ever to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music, and he extended his achievements in that piece with All Rise, which was first performed in 1999. In this week at Chautauqua, All Rise will be performed on the Amphitheater stage with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, the Music School Festival Orchestra, and the Buffalo Philharmonic Chorus under the baton of Timothy Muffitt.
An internationally acclaimed musician, composer, bandleader, educator and a leading advocate of American culture, at 17, Marsalis became the youngest musician ever to be admitted to Tanglewood’s Berkshire Music Center, where he was awarded the school’s prestigious Harvey Shapiro Award for outstanding brass student. Since then, he has produced more than 80 records and won two George Foster Peabody Awards, an Emmy Award, and nine Grammy Awards. In 1983 he became the only artist ever to win Grammy Awards for both jazz and classical records, and repeated the distinction the very next year. Marsalis is the only artist ever to win Grammys in five consecutive years (1983-1987). In 1987, Marsalis co-founded the jazz program at Lincoln Center; today, Jazz at Lincoln Center presents rich and diverse programming that includes concerts, debates, film forums, dances, television and radio broadcasts and educational activities.
For his work, Marsalis has been the recipient of countless honors around the world, including the Netherlands’ Edison Award, the Grand Prix Du Disque of France, and honorary membership to England’s Royal Academy of Music. The French Ministry of Culture appointed Marsalis to the rank of Knight in the Order of Arts and Literature. He also received France’s highest distinction, the insignia Chevalier of the Legion of Honor. In the United States, he has received a National Medal of the Arts, the Louis Armstrong Memorial Medal, the Frederick Douglass Medallion from the New York Urban League and an Arts Education Award from the American Arts Council.
Sayu Bhojwani
For more than three decades, Sayu Bhojwani has activated change in nonprofit and government settings, founding and leading three organizations, speaking across the country and internationally, and writing on how immigrants and women of color can shape the world we want to see. She joins the Chautauqua Lecture Series this week to lift up the voices and perspectives she has championed her entire career, demonstrating how the contributions of historically marginalized groups help us “rise together” as an American community.
Born in India and raised in Belize, Bhojwani is a proud New Yorker who served as the city’s first Commissioner of Immigrant Affairs. She is currently a Leader in Residence at the Moynihan Center at the City University of New York and an Open Society Foundations Equality Fellow. Her career as a social entrepreneur began in the 1990s, when she started South Asian Youth Action, the first organization in the United States specifically focused on supporting youth who trace their ancestry to the Indian subcontinent. In 2010, she founded New American Leaders to support first- and second-generation Americans to run, win and lead in public office. In 2021, she founded Women’s Democracy Lab to support women of color and Indigenous women, post-election.
Bhojwani is the author of People Like Us: The New Wave of Candidates Knocking at Democracy’s Door and has been widely published in national news outlets; she writes frequently on Medium and her Substack, “No. 1 Immigrant Daughter.” She was one of the featured speakers at Chautauqua’s inaugural Forum on Democracy in October 2023. Bhojwani serves on the boards of the Center for Fiction and the North Star Fund and holds a Ph.D. in politics and education from Teachers College, Columbia University.
Jeffrey Rosen
Jeffrey Rosen is president and chief executive officer of the National Constitution Center, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization whose mission is to educate the public about the U.S. Constitution. He last joined the Chautauqua Lecture Series with a virtual program on CHQ Assembly in 2020, and returns to the Amphitheater stage in-person for the first time since 2017 for a week of interdisciplinary programming focused on the arts and the American experiment. For “Rising Together: Our Century of Creativity and Collaboration with Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra,” Rosen will discuss his latest book: The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America.
By reading the classical moral philosophers, in The Pursuit of Happiness, Rosen illustrates how the Founders understood the pursuit of happiness as a quest for being good and the pursuit of lifelong virtue — offering fresh insights into the foundation of our democracy.
In addition to his roles of president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, which he has held since 2013, Rosen is also a professor of law at the George Washington University Law School and a contributing editor of The Atlantic. He was previously the legal affairs editor of The New Republic and a staff writer for The New Yorker. At the National Constitution Center, he is the host of “We the People,” a weekly podcast of constitutional debate.
Rosen is the author of seven other books, including the New York Times bestseller Conversations with RBG: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Life, Love, Liberty, and Law, as well as biographies of Louis Brandeis and William Howard Taft. Rosen is a graduate of Harvard College; Oxford University, where he was a Marshall Scholar; and Yale Law School.
Interfaith Lecture Series
All Rise: Save Us and Look Beyond
Influenced by Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, this week’s Interfaith Lecture Series will address the spiritual themes of Marsalis’ masterpiece “All Rise.” What does it mean to seek salvation? What power is salvific, and who wields it? And then, what does it mean to look beyond — beyond the suffering and limitations of human life on earth, and beyond the horizon of all we can know or understand? These themes shape our lives, individually and in relationships with one another, and this week will allow us to reflect on their power and our own paths to wisdom.
Confirmed Lectures
Miroslav Volf
Miroslav Volf is the Henry B. Wright Professor of Theology at Yale Divinity School and the Founder and Director of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture. Educated in his native Croatia, the United States, and Germany, he regularly lectures around the world, and has been a leader in international interfaith dialogues and a participant in the Global Agenda Council on Values of the World Economic Forum. He has written or edited more than two dozen books, and his work has been featured in The Washington Post, Christian Century, Christianity Today, Sojourners, and many other outlets. His book Exclusion and Embrace was awarded the Grawemeyer Award in Religion and named one of Christianity Today’s 100 most important religious books of the 20th Century. Insights from his popular Yale College course, “Life Worth Living” (which has been taught well beyond Yale, including in a federal prison), are now available in his latest book (co-authored with Matthew Croasmun and Ryan McAnnally-Linz), Life Worth Living: A Guide to What Matters Most.
Sherman A. Jackson
Sherman A. Jackson is the King Faisal Chair of Islamic Thought and Culture, Distinguished Professor of Religion, Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity and Director of the Center for Islamic Thought, Culture and Practice (CITCAP) at the University of Southern California. He is author of Islamic Law and the State: The Constitutional Jurisprudence of Shihāb al-Dīn al-Qarāfī (Brill, 1996), On the Boundaries of Theological Tolerance in Islam: Abū Hāmid al-Ghazālī’s Fayṣal al-Tafriqa (Oxford, 2002), Islam and the Blackamerican: Looking Towards the Third Resurrection (Oxford, 2005), Islam and the Problem of Black Suffering (Oxford, 2009), Sufism for Non-Sufis: Ibn ‘Aṭā’ Allāh al-Sakandarī’s Tāj al-‘Arūs (Oxford 2012), and Initiative to Stop the Violence: Sadat’s Assassins and the Renunciation of Political Violence (Yale, 2015). His latest and most accomplished publication is The Islamic Secular (Oxford, 2024).
He has authored numerous articles on various aspects of Islamic law, theology, history and Islam and Muslims in modern America. He is listed by Religion Newswriters Foundation’s ReligionLink as one of the top ten experts on Islam in America. And he has been named several times, including in 2023, among the top 500 most influential Muslims in the world by the Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Center in Amman, Jordan and the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding. And he is among the founding scholars of the American Learning Institute for Muslims. Among his proudest moments, however, was the eulogy he delivered at the funeral of the legendary American Muslim, Muhammad Ali. His work as a scholar and intellectual is uniquely devoted to placing the classical Islamic intellectual, religious, and spiritual tradition into robust and meaningful conversation with the challenges and opportunities confronting Muslims in the modern world.
Rabbi Mira Rivera
Rabbi Mira Rivera, the first Filipina-American woman, ordained at The Jewish Theological Seminary, holds an M.A. in Jewish Studies and certification as a chaplain with Neshama Association of Jewish Chaplains. She serves as Rabbi-in-Residence nationally with The LUNAR Collective and locally at the Jewish Community Center in Harlem. Rabbi Mira has been recognized for her community upliftment efforts, receiving awards such as The Rabbinical Excellence Award from Harlem’s District 9 and the Rabbinic Human Rights Hero Award from T’ruah. She was also named one of “36 to Watch” by the New York Jewish Week in 2023. She is the 21st female spiritual leader invited to deliver the Pat Reif Memorial Lectureship at Claremont Graduate University. In her spiritual formative years, she studied in Varanasi, India, then taught meditation to women around the world. With professional dance experience under Artistic Director Yuriko of the Martha Graham Dance Company and Ensemble, and a B.F.A. in Film and Television from New York University Tisch School of the Arts, she brings a unique perspective to the rabbinate.
Ken Chitwood
Ken Chitwood is a religion scholar, journalist, and public theologian based between Germany and the U.S. As a scholar, he primarily writes about Muslim communities in the Americas, interreligious engagement, ethnography, humanitarianism, and philanthropy, as well as manifestations of religion-beyond-religion in a global and digital age. His first book, The Muslims of Latin America and the Caribbean won the Religion News Association’s Best Nonfiction Book Award and his second, AmeRícan Muslims: The Everyday Lives of Puerto Rican Converts to Islam, is forthcoming with University of Texas Press. Ken is also working on an anthology (Engaged Spirituality: Stories of Religious Inspiration, Resilience, and Work for the Common Good) and a flâneur’s take on religion in Berlin. An award-winning newswriter, Chitwood is President of the Religion News Association and Editor of ReligionLink, a premier resource for people writing on religion. His work has appeared in The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, BBC Radio, Religion News Service, The Times of India, The Guardian, Christianity Today, New Lines Magazine, The Conversation, & other publications. Described as a “theologian without borders,” Chitwood is a Lutheran involved in interreligious dialogue at the local, national, and intergovernmental level. Ken enjoys ultra-distance running, well-placed sarcasm, hiking with his wife, and rugby. An Angeleno, he misses tortas, tacos, and In N’ Out like crazy.
Kerry Alys Robinson
Kerry Alys Robinson is President and CEO of Catholic Charities USA. She was the founding executive director of Leadership Roundtable and now serves as a member of its Board of Trustees. Leadership Roundtable is dedicated to promoting excellence and best practices in the management, finances, and human resource development of the Catholic Church by harnessing the managerial expertise and financial acumen of senior level lay executives.
A member of the Raskob Foundation for Catholic Activities and FADICA (Foundations and Donors Interested in Catholic Activities), Kerry has been an advisor to and trustee of more than 25 grant-making foundations, charitable nonprofits, and family philanthropies. Kerry served as the executive director of the Opus Prize Foundation which is responsible for an annual international million-dollar prize honoring people of faith whose lives are dedicated to the alleviation of human suffering.
Kerry served as the director of development for Saint Thomas More Catholic Chapel and Center at Yale University and led a successful $75 million dollar fundraising drive to expand and endow the Chapel’s intellectual and spiritual ministry and to construct a Catholic student center, designed by Cesar Pelli, on Yale’s campus.
Kerry is the author of the prize-winning book, Imagining Abundance: Fundraising, Philanthropy, and A Spiritual Call to Service. She and her husband, Dr. Michael Cappello, a professor and chair of the Department of Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases at Yale School of Public Health and a professor of Pediatrics and Microbial Pathogenesis at Yale Medical School, have two children, Christopher and Sophie.
Weekly Chaplain
The Rev. Dr. Otis Moss, III
A third-generation warrior for civil and human rights, The Rev. Dr. Otis Moss, III, has built his ministry on community advancement and racial and social justice activism. As Senior Pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, Ill., since 2008, Dr. Moss routinely preaches and practices a Black theology that unapologetically calls attention to the problems of mass incarceration, environmental justice, and economic inequality.
Explore Performing and Visual Arts
The arts can sometimes bridge differences and illuminate perspectives as no other method can. Artistic expressions at Chautauqua — including professional and pre-professional offerings in classical and contemporary music, theater, opera, dance, visual arts and literary arts — aim to inspire, educate, entertain and engage a diverse and growing audience.
Places to Stay
If you love the events you see in Week Nine, ensure you have accommodations. Space on the ground is limited, and accommodations go fast find reservations at the Hotel or Private Accommodations.
Dining & Shopping
Make your Chautauqua experience memorable! Share a delicious meal at one of our many restaurants. Or take piece of Chautauqua home with you from our unique shops.