Week Six: July 27–August 3, 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 Six’s Theme: Exploring the Transformative Power of Music with Renée Fleming.
Featured Entertainment and Events
Chautauqua Lecture Series
Exploring the Transformative Power of Music with Renée Fleming
Celebrated and beloved the world over, soprano Renée Fleming will join us for part of a special week of lectures and performances dedicated to the force music has in our lives. Research has shown that music and the arts can have significant impacts not just on our happiness, but on our health. Long an advocate of this work, Fleming helps launch an interdisciplinary week of music and science, of art and well-being. And acknowledging there is more than one kind of well-being, we look beyond classical music, to the genres of gospel, folk, hip-hop and pop, to examine the power of music to motivate and carry social movements, and enrich our lives in ways innumerate. Music can do more than inspire, soothe and heal — it can transform.
In a presentation titled “Lessons in Gratitude: Excellence, Representation, and the Transformative Power of the Arts,” Sphinx Organization Founder Aaron Dworkin returns to the Amphitheater stage on Wednesday, July 31, 2024, to discuss the impact of diversity and representation in classical music and the enduring power of empowered artists as leaders in our society. On Thursday, Aug. 1, 2024, David Brown — the founder and creative director of Harmony Project — will explore how Harmony Project has grown into a national model for building community and redefining equity and accessibility through performances, programming and unique community service experiences. Aniruddh “Ani” Patel is a Professor of Psychology at Tufts University, where he studies the cognitive, neural, and evolutionary foundations of musicality, who will close the week on Friday, Aug. 2, 2024, by discussing his work in music cognition: the mental processes involved in making, perceiving, and responding to music.
Confirmed Lectures
Stay tuned for announcements!
Aaron Dworkin
The founder of the Sphinx Organization and the Institute for Poetjournalism, Aaron Dworkin is a social entrepreneur, celebrated author and artist. In a presentation titled “Lessons in Gratitude: Excellence, Representation, and the Transformative Power of the Arts,” Dworkin returns to the Amphitheater stage as part of the Chautauqua Lecture Series’ Week Six to discuss the impact of diversity and representation in classical music and the enduring power of empowered artists as leaders in our society.
Dworkin is former dean and current Professor of Arts Leadership & Entrepreneurship at the University of Michigan’s School of Music, Theatre & Dance. A 2005 MacArthur Fellow and President Barack Obama’s first appointment to the National Council on the Arts, Dworkin is a member of President Joe Biden’s Arts Policy Committee and originated the term “poetjournalism” which is defined as “the research, creation, and distribution of writing that evokes an emotional connection to news related subjects or other relevant ideas utilizing elements of sound, meter, rhythm and/or creative illustration.” He is the author of The Entrepreneurial Artist: Lessons from Highly Successful Creatives, along with two poetry collections, two memoirs, a children’s book, and a science fiction novel.
Dworkin is a member of the Recording Academy, the Academy of American Poets and the American Academy of Arts; among his honors are the National Governors Association Distinguished Service to State Government Award, BET’s History Makers in the Making Award and Detroit Symphony Orchestra’s Lifetime Achievement Award. He is a graduate of the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance, with a Bachelors and Masters of Music in Violin Performance.
David Brown
For nearly 30 years, Harmony Project founder and creative director David Brown has created original programming, concerts and events that unite participants and audiences to give back to their communities. Since 2009, Brown has grown Harmony Project, in Columbus, Ohio, into a national model for building community and redefining equity and accessibility through performances, programming and unique community service experiences. It is this work that will inspire his presentation for the Chautauqua Lecture Series during a week “Exploring the Transformative Power of Music.”
Before Harmony, Brown produced and directed sold-out concerts at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Apollo Theatre and Madison Square Garden, and appeared on NBC’s “The Today Show” and ABC’s “Good Morning America.” He directed choirs supporting pop artists including Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Christina Aguilera and Marc Anthony, and his Metro Mass Choir was chosen to perform for the first gathering of United Nations representatives following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. In New York, Brown was selected as “New Yorker of the Week” for his leadership in uniting people through the arts, and he has also been the recipient of the national Norman Vincent Peale Award for Positive Thinking. In Columbus, Brown received the first-ever Spirit of Columbus Award from The Columbus Foundation.
Under Brown’s direction, Harmony Project was awarded the 2013 Greater Columbus Arts Council Artistic Excellence Award; the 2015 Columbus Performing Arts Prize; and the 2016 Ohio Arts Council’s Governor’s Award for the Arts. Harmony Project has been featured on “CBS News Sunday Morning,” performed backup for John Legend, and was featured in its own prime time special on ABC/Disney and streaming on Hulu.
Aniruddh “Ani” Patel
Aniruddh “Ani” Patel is a Professor of Psychology at Tufts University, where he studies the cognitive, neural, and evolutionary foundations of musicality. He is the author of Music, Language and the Brain, and contributed a chapter on evolution and animal responses to music to Renée Fleming’s Music and the Mind: Harnessing The Arts for Health and Wellness. Patel will close the week for the Chautauqua Lecture Series focusing on “Exploring the Transformative Power of Music” by discussing his work in music cognition: the mental processes involved in making, perceiving, and responding to music.
At Tufts, Patel’s areas of emphasis include music-language relations, rhythmic processing, and cross-species studies of music cognition, with research methods including brain imaging, behavioral experiments, theoretical analyses, acoustic research, and comparative studies with nonhuman animals. In addition to 2008’s Music, Language, and the Brain, which won the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award, Patel presented a 2015 lecture series for The Great Courses, titled “Music and the Brain,” which reached a wide audience.
Patel has served as president of the Society for Music Perception and Cognition, and is a member of the Brain, Mind, and Consciousness program in the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. Prior to joining Tufts he worked at The Neurosciences Institute in San Diego, a research institute led by the Nobel Laureate Gerald M. Edelman, where he was a Senior Fellow from 2005 to 2012. Patel’s evolutionary research has been supported by fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and the Guggenheim Foundation.
Patel received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Virginia and his master’s degree from Harvard University, where he also earned his Ph.D. in Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, working with Edward O. Wilson and Evan Balaban.
Interfaith Lecture Series
The Arts: Expressions from the Soul
From the beginning of recorded history, human beings have expressed their spiritual impulses, myths, and worldview through the arts. Whether in visual representation, poetry, music or dance, the soul is central to art, if not in its creation, then in its reception and interpretation. What is it about art that moves the human heart, and how can we understand the interplay of creativity and devotion? Hear from artists, historians, and faith leaders about the connection between the arts and spirituality, and explore the ways art has mediated spiritual expression along your own path.
Confirmed Lectures
Su’ad Abdul Khabeer
Su’ad Abdul Khabeer is a scholar-artist-activist originally from Brooklyn, NY. She is curator of Umi’s Archive, a multimedia project documenting Black and Muslim histories and co-founder of Sapelo Square, a digital media and education collective on Black Muslims in the US. Trained as an anthropologist, Su’ad’s first book, Muslim Cool: Race, Religion and Hip Hop in the United States, is field-defining study on Islam and hip hop that examines how intersecting ideas of Muslimness and Blackness challenge and reproduce the meanings of race in the United States. Su’ad’s written scholarly work is accompanied by her performance-based work including her one-woman solo show, Sampled: Beats of Muslim Life. She has written broadly for outlets including: The Root, the Washington Post, Vice, and Ebony Magazine, and has appeared on Al Jazeera English. Su’ad is an associate professor of American Culture and Arab and Muslim American Studies at the University of Michigan.
Jolene Rickard
Dr. Jolene Rickard is an enrolled citizen of the Skarù·ręʔ – Tuscarora Nation, Turtle Clan, and associate professor of Indigenous Art in History of Art and Visual Culture at Cornell University where she also holds affiliations with American Studies, American Indian and Indigenous Studies, and Art and Performance and Media Studies. Recent contributions include an essay on Sovereignty and Futurity in The Routledge Companion to Indigenous Art Histories in the United States and Canada, 2023, and a curatorial intervention, Deskaheh à Genève, 1923-2023 : Défendre la souveraineté des Haudenosaunee / Deskaheh in Geneva, 1923-2023 : Defending Haudenosaunee Sovereignity (Geneva, Switzerland, 2023). Jolene is on the editorial board of American Art, a founding board member for the Otsego Institute for Native American Art and an advisor to GRASAC – The Great Lakes Alliance for the Study of Aboriginal Arts and Culture. She received a Ph.D. from the former American Studies Department at SUNY Buffalo.
David Young Kim
Dave Young Kim was born and raised in the city of Los Angeles. His artistic journey began at the University of California, Davis, where he earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Studio Art. He pursued an MFA in Studio Art at Mills College in Oakland, California. During his time at Mills, Dave had the privilege of working closely with renowned painter Hung Liu, whose influence can be seen in his artistic style.
Central to Dave’s work is the intangible quality of home. Through his art, he delves into themes of nostalgia, war, conflict, and displacement, expressing the multifaceted human experience. By skillfully interpolating cultural motifs into personal and larger histories of struggle, Dave explores the unifying search for belonging across disparate conditions. His art transcends personal narratives, offering a profound reflection on the shared human journey.
Presently, Dave is engaged in a project—a landmark mural depicting the rich history of Korean American immigration in Los Angeles Koreatown. In 2020, he co-founded the Korean American Artist Collective (KAAC), an initiative that aims to foster a sense of community among artists whose work is rooted in the Korean American experience. KAAC provides a platform for artists to share their stories, collaborate, and collectively amplify their voices.
Dave has received numerous awards, including the Asian Pacific American Heritage Award and grants such as the California Arts Council, the Abbey Mural Prize, and the City of Oakland. His artwork has graced the walls of galleries and museums, including the Asian Art Museum, Pacific Asia Museum, Berkeley Art Center, Reese Bullen Gallery, LA Municipal Art Gallery, and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.
Weekly Chaplain
Announcement coming soon!
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 Six, 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.