CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Krannert Center for the Performing Arts will feature a wide variety of performers for its 2024-25 season, including jazz and classical artists, a group of boundary-breaking female dancers, Broadway and opera legends, an indie rock band, and a performance that combines genetics with a cocktail party.
“We really focused this year on bringing people together through joyous events,” said Julieanne Ehre, KCPA’s assistant director for programming and engagement.
The season’s opening weekend, titled “A Taste of Krannert,” will kick off Sept. 6 with Squonk, a multimedia troupe whose shows include music, puppetry, theater and spectacle. The troupe will lead a procession from the Quad to KCPA, where it will perform its show “Brouhaha” in the amphitheater with oversized instruments and enormous puppets.
The weekend also will include Brazilian percussionist Cyro Baptista playing various world music styles with his quartet; three hip hop groups: Ladies of Hip Hop, Versa-Style and The Era Footwork Crew; and a cipher dance event for the community with local hip hop artists.
The season includes several jazz events, beginning with Bessie Award-winning dancer and choreographer LaTasha Barnes presenting “The Jazz Continuum” on Sept. 14. The performance showcases the impact of jazz on street and club dance cultures and celebrates the history of Black dance expression from the Lindy Hop to hip hop, connecting past dance forms to present ones.
Saxophonist, jazz flute player and composer Charles Lloyd received a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master award and is the recipient of the prestigious French honor, l’Ordre Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres. Lloyd has been performing and recording since the 1960s. He was voted Down Beat magazine’s Jazzman of the Year in 1967 and its Artist of the Year in 2023, indicating his continuous contribution to his artform. He’ll perform at Krannert Center on Oct. 23.
Zakir Hussain, the preeminent tabla player currently playing the Indian hand drums, returns to Krannert Center on Oct. 29, when he’ll perform with Rahul Sharma, an Indian classical santoor player. Hussain won three Grammy Awards in February, for Best Global Music Album, Best Global Music Performance and Best Contemporary Instrumental Album. He plays classical Indian music and Indian-jazz fusion, and he is considered an architect of world music who collaborates with musicians of other genres.
“Dancing on the Ceiling” on Sept. 20-21 will feature 10 acclaimed female dance artists age 50 and above who defy expectations about aging and artistry. They include Illinois dance department head Sara Hook and dance faculty members Jennifer Monson and Roxane D’Orléans Juste.
Performer and amateur microbiologist Sister Sylvester tells the story of a hat that was a costume piece of German playwright Bertold Brecht, from which she extracts Brecht’s DNA, in an interactive multimedia work “Drinking Brecht.” The audiences perform genetics experiments and participate in a genetically modified cocktail party in the bio-art performances Oct. 10-12.
“The Best of The Second City” will feature members of Chicago’s improv comedy troupe on Oct. 19.
Grammy-nominated singer and pianist Michael Feinstein is an interpreter of the music of the Great American Songbook. He’ll present “Because of You: My Tribute to Tony Bennett,” featuring the Carnegie Hall Big Band, on Nov. 9.
A highlight of the spring semester is a performance by Kennedy Center Honoree, National Medal of Arts recipient and five-time Grammy Award winner, soprano Renée Fleming, on Jan. 25. “Voice of Nature — The Anthropocene Recital” will explore our connection to the natural world, both as inspiration and a casualty of humanity, through music from Romantic era songs to new commissions. The music will be accompanied by projected video from National Geographic.
Bluesman Jontavius Willis, who appeared at ELLNORA: The Guitar Festival in 2017, returns on Jan. 24 to perform Delta, Piedmont, Texas and gospel blues.
Singer-songwriter and bassist Meshell Ndegeocello, who won a 2024 Grammy Award for Best Alternative Jazz Album, uses music to explore the work of James Baldwin on Jan. 28 in “No More Water: The Gospel of James Baldwin.”
Indie rock artists 10,000 Maniacs will perform music from the 1980s to the present on Feb. 11.
Composer and musician Terence Blanchard, a seven-time Grammy Award winner and an Oscar nominee, will perform excerpts from his opera “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” based on the memoir of New York Times columnist Charles Blow, on Feb. 27.
Director and actor Geoff Sobelle returns to Krannert Center March 6-8 for “FOOD,” the third show in a trilogy that explores the deeper meaning in common themes. He presented “HOME” at KCPA in 2019. “FOOD” is a dinner party performance that uses theater, magic and absurdist humor to meditate on the ways in which we eat.
“An Evening with Mandy Patinkin and Nathan Gunn” on April 9 features Broadway star and actor Patinkin and opera star and Illinois Lyric Theatre co-director and voice professor Gunn. The two have frequently collaborated on concerts that include solos and duets of a wide range of music.
Theater artist Taylor Mac — a MacArthur Fellow and a 2017 Pulitzer Prize nominee and the subject of an HBO documentary feature film — will speak at Krannert Center on April 22 about centering queer stories and the future of theater.
The season’s classical music concerts include the London Philharmonic Orchestra performing a new work by its composer-in-residence Tania León, as well as Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich, on Oct. 15; the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on Nov. 7 performing a world premiere of “Megalopolis Suite” by composer Osvaldo Golijov, a CSO commission that features music from the score of the upcoming Francis Ford Coppola film “Megalopolis;” the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra of Moravia performing Czech music on Feb. 16; violist Anne-Sophie Mutter and her accompanist Lambert Orkis performing on April 1; and Jessie Montgomery, a violinist and the composer-in-residence for the CSO, performing with Third Coast Percussion on April 26.
The Krannert Center Youth Series includes performances from the 7 Fingers arts collective of “Duel Reality — All’s Fair in Love and War,” a modern retelling of “Romeo and Juliet” about conflict resolution, told through circus arts on Sept. 26-27; and “Hero: The Boy from Troy,” a musical in which a young man learns about the journey of Civil Rights hero and Congressman John Lewis, on March 1.
Krannert Center also hosts the productions of Illinois’ music, theatre and dance programs throughout the year.
The date for ticket sales at krannertcenter.com will be announced this summer.