NEW YORK – Gateways Music Festival returns to New York City with a celebration of the transformative power of Black classical artistry April 24-27. After launching with a series of concerts and conversations in Rochester, New York, on April 21, Spring Festival 2025 lands in Manhattan for performances, lectures and masterclasses from April 24 to April 27, rounding out the week-long event. At the heart of the festival is the Gateways Festival Orchestra, composed of Black professional classical musicians drawn from the nation’s leading orchestras and music faculties. Gateways’ finale concert at Carnegie Hall (April 27) marks the orchestra’s highly anticipated first return to the venue since its historic, sold-out debut in 2022. Led once again by conductor Anthony Parnther, this season’s finale program complements folk-inspired symphonies by Antonín Dvořák and William Levi Dawson with the New York premiere of a new Gateways commission from Damien Sneed, featuring Grammy-winning mezzo-soprano J’Nai Bridges. Other festival highlights include solo recitals by Grammy-nominated violinist Curtis Stewart and pianist Rochelle Sennet; inspiring talks, discussions, and educational initiatives; and performances by the Gateways Brass Collective. Spring Festival 2025 is presented in association with the University of Rochester’s Eastman School of Music.
Gateways’ rich spring offerings continue to make a profound impact on the classical music landscape. By celebrating and sustaining the tradition of Black classical artistry, providing a home for musicians who carry the tradition forward, and presenting performances that bring together multiracial, multigenerational audiences, Gateways is writing its own classical narrative.
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“Gateways isn’t just a festival—it’s a home. A place where Black classical musicians bring their full selves to the stage, and where audiences can come together to listen, connect, and celebrate” said Gateways Music Festival President & Artistic Director, Alex Laing. “This April, we invite everyone to come out, see world class artists, and be part of a cultural moment. Whether it’s your first festival, or you never miss one, if classical music has been part of your life for decades or you’re experiencing it for the first time, Gateways Spring Festival promises to challenge, inspire, and uplift.”
Fresh off a landmark 30th anniversary season in 2023-2024, which included major debuts in Chicago and Washington, D.C.’s Kennedy Center as well as a $1 million dollar Mellon Foundation award, the Gateways Festival Orchestra heads to New York with a thoughtfully curated program that honors the enduring power of folk traditions, with special focus on Negro spirituals. The finale concert on April 27, at 2 p.m. at Carnegie Hall opens with Antonín Dvořák’s Eighth Symphony, a work inspired by the dances and folk tunes of the composer’s Bohemian homeland. Dvořák believed that “Negro melodies … must be the real foundation of any serious and original school of composition to be developed in the United States.” The program concludes with William Levi Dawson’s Negro Folk Symphony, a towering landmark in American composition, first heard at Carnegie Hall just days after its 1934 world premiere. Rooted in the spiritual tradition and shaped by Dawson’s travels in West Africa, his work represents a resounding declaration of Black cultural pride.
The two symphonies bookend the New York City premiere of Reflections of Resilience: Five Spirituals, a new Gateways Music Festival commission from NAACP Image Award- and Sphinx Medal of Excellence-winning musical polymath Damien Sneed, featuring the Grammy-winning mezzo-soprano J’Nai Bridges. Sneed describes the new work as “five spirituals carefully woven together in a musical tapestry highlighting the tradition of the African American spiritual.”
The Carnegie Hall concert will stream live to home audiences worldwide as part of WQXR’s Live from Carnegie Hall series.
Spring Festival 2025 shines a light on the work of two important Black artists. “Combining omnivory and brilliance” (The New York Times), six-time Grammy nominee Curtis Stewart is a violinist and composer who serves as Artistic Director of the American Composers Orchestra and professor at The Juilliard School. He will be presented in recital at Merkin Hall on Friday, April 25, at 8 p.m., where he is a 2024-25 Artist-in-Residence. Showcased will be Seasons of Change, his re-composition of The Four Seasons as an Afrofuturist meditation on climate change, memory and resilience. This interlayers Vivaldi’s music with Stewart’s digital soundscapes and recordings of the unhoused in Phoenix, whose voices and personal stories form the emotional backbone of his work. Also featured will be his world premiere performance of selections from his ambitious new project, American Caprices, which explores the intersection between classical violin techniques and the diverse musical traditions that shape the American soundscape.
Rochelle Sennet is the inaugural Associate Dean of DEI at the College of Fine and Applied Arts at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where she is Professor of Piano in the School of Music. Albany Records recently released the third volume in her series Bach to Black, Suites for Piano, which juxtaposes the keyboard suites of J.S. Bach with those of Black composers including Margaret Bonds, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, William Grant Still, Adolphus Hailstork, James Lee III, Florence Price, and George Walker. Gateways presents Dr. Sennet in a solo piano recital at Harlem School of the Arts onSaturday, April 26, at 7:30 p.m.
The nation’s only all-Black professional brass quintet, Gateways Brass Collective — comprised of trumpeters Herbert Smith and Courtney Jones, horn player Larry Williams, trombonist Isrea Butler, and tuba player Jerome Stover — will offer an inspiring afternoon of masterclasses, sectionals and performance at Harlem School of the Arts for the educational institution’s young brass players on Thursday, April 24, at 4 p.m.
Members of Gateways Festival Orchestra will also offer an immersive afternoon of master classes and mentorship to aspiring young performers at Gateways’ Spring 2025 Young Musicians Institute, hosted by Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute on Saturday, April 26, at 3 p.m.
Rounding out the Spring Festival will be the William Levi Dawson Symposium: A Paul J. Burgett Lecture and Community Conversation at the Resnick Education Wing of Carnegie Hall on Saturday, April 26, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Presented in collaboration with the William Levi Dawson Institute for Classical and Folk Music at Tuskegee University, the event will mark the legacyofDawson, a pioneering composer, arranger, musicologist and choral director. Lectures by Tuskegee University, professors Dr. Wayne Barr and Dr. Yi Cheng will complement a presentation by University of Michigan’s Dr. Louise Toppin and a recital by soprano Amber Rogers, winner of the 2024 National Association of Negro Musicians (NANM) Competition. The event is free with RSVP.
