Happy 2025! How did you celebrate the beginning of the new year: with a polar plunge, a first-day hike, or something else altogether? We’re celebrating with the first Culture Picks post of the year! January is the traditional month to look back and look ahead, so here goes…
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Garrick Ohlsson opened the PAC’s 2024-2025 season on September 27, joining the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra as the piano soloist. Ohlsson is a White Plains, NY, native who began his piano studies at the Music Conservatory of Westchester. In 2025, he will be the Chairman of the Jury for the XIX Chopin Piano Competition, which he won in 1970. He was the first and remains the only American to have won this prestigious prize.
Enjoy this YouTube video of Ohlsson talking about his role as Chairman of the Jury
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On November 9, Grammy-winning alum Samara Joy returned to Purchase College. NPR was there to record her sold-out concert and on December 30 included a set in its broadcast “Toast of the Nation 2025.”
Listen to Samara Joy on NPR’s Toast of the Nation
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On February 14, 2025, the Paul Taylor Dance Company will bring a special Valentine’s Day performance of classic Taylor works to The Purchase PAC.
The PTDC has a long history with Purchase College and The PAC, some of which is reflected in the documentary Dancemaker (1998). Watch “Dancemaker” on YouTube
An esplanade is an outdoor place to walk; in 1975 Paul Taylor, inspired by the sight of a girl running to catch a bus, created a masterwork based on pedestrian movement. At its Lyceum Theatre premiere, the New Yorker magazine hailed Esplanade as bestowing “a mythic dimension on ordinary aspects of our daily lives.” Taylor’s Esplanade turns 50 this year and remains peerless in its power, athleticism, exuberance, and mystery. It will be on the program at The Purchase PAC on February 14; view a few excerpts below.
Watch an excerpt of “Esplanade,” performed during PTDC’s “Modern is Now” benefit
Watch the Fifth Movement of Paul Taylor’s Esplanade, recorded in 1977
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2024 Kennedy Center Honors
Premiered on Sunday, December 22, 2024, available on-demand
The Kennedy Center Honors is an annual honor given to those in the performing arts for their lifetime of contributions to American culture. The 2024 class includes: acclaimed director and filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola; legendary American rock band Grateful Dead (Mickey Hart, Bill Kreutzmann, Bobby Weir); blues rock singer-songwriter and guitarist Bonnie Raitt; jazz trumpeter, pianist, and composer Arturo Sandoval; and The Apollo, receiving a special Honors as an iconic American institution. Watch highlights of the 2024 ceremony:
Watch the Kennedy Center Honors highlights
2011 Kennedy Center Honoree Yo-Yo Ma Performs at the Re-opening of Notre-Dame de Paris
Recorded December 9, 2024, available on-demand
“I was so moved to witness the reopening of Notre-Dame de Paris. It’s an example of what the combined generosity, skill, and will of a people can accomplish, of humans choosing collaboration and creativity instead of division and destruction. I’m reminded that we always have that choice, that it’s a choice that has been with us since the beginning, a fundamental paradox of the human experiment.” Yo-Yo Ma
Watch Yo-Yo Ma at Notre Dame on YouTube
A New Year’s Eve Concert that spotlights American music, past and present:
Premiered on December 31, 2024, in Cologne, Germany.
Works by American composers performed by the WDR Sinfonieorchester and WDR Rundfunkchor, featuring American artists: Leonard Bernstein: Divertimento; Jessie Montgomery: Five Freedom Songs; George Gershwin: Suite from Porgy and Bess. Soloists: Julia Bullock, soprano, and Alfred Walker, baritone.
Watch the New Year’s Eve Concert on YouTube
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Now a plug for your local library, that amazing community hub. Check out all they have to offer! This month, these libraries are presenting some great films:
The Greenwich Library presents Friday Films
Fridays at 7pm
101 West Putnam Avenue, Greenwich, CT 06830
These events are free but an RSVP is required. Click on each title to reserve your tickets.
Twisters: Friday, January 3
Paddington 2: Friday, January 10
Will & Harper: Friday, January 17
Ghostlight: Friday, January 24
Fly Me to the Moon: Friday, January 31
For the complete winter schedule, view the Greenwich Library Friends Friday Films brochure.
The Bronxville Public Library presents Matinee Movies
1:30pm in the Yeager Community Room at
201 Pondfield Road, Bronxville, NY 10708
Twisters: Wednesday, January 8
Cabrini: Wednesday, January 15
The Scarsdale Public Library presents
Japanese Movie Matinee: The Cats of Mirikitani (2006)
Saturday, January 11, at 2pm
54 Olmsted Road, Scarsdale, NY 10583
Register for the Scarsdale Library’s Japanese Movie Matinee
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Culture Picks celebrates the performing arts. In each post, PAC staff member Coni Guhl shines the spotlight on work by artists that you know and love from their appearances at The Purchase PAC, and offers recommendations about other performing arts events that you really should not miss. Experience them all!
All times are EDT unless otherwise noted.
Pictured: Paul Taylor Dance Company in Esplanade (c) Paul B. Goode
