January & February Digital Events

By UMS

All of our digital presentations are free-of-charge to audiences everywhere, and we hope that you will share them with friends and family near and far. Please join us for these upcoming programs, and sign up to receive email notifications of new presentations and live streams.

Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Swing University

Four-session course on Wednesdays, Jan 6 – 27 (currently waitlisted)

This January, UMS will join forces with Jazz at Lincoln Center (JALC) to offer Swing University: Jazz as a Tool for Liberation for the Michigan community. This four-session online course invites participants to explore jazz through a social justice lens and understand its historic role as a liberation tool in the United States.

Sheku Kanneh-Mason & Isata Kanneh-Mason

Limited availability! Fri-Sun Jan 8-10

A reprise of Sheku and Isata Kanneh-Mason’s UMS Digital Presentation, including a new bonus feature, House of Music: Raising the Kanneh-Masons. Helga Davis Interviews Stuart and Kadiatu Kanneh-Mason, parents of Sheku and Isata, about raising their family of seven musicians, issues of race within classical music, and more.

This Digital Arts Adventure is brought to you in part by

Patron Sponsor: Braylon Edwards

Some Old Black Man

Launch Party: Fri Jan 15 at 7 pm; pre-show begins at 6:40 pm

For three weeks in Fall 2020, the creative team for this digital theater production quarantined in Ann Arbor, rehearsing and putting together this production under strict coronavirus safety protocols. In Some Old Black Man, Calvin Jones (Wendell Pierce), a hip, coolly intellectual African-American college professor moves his 82-year-old ailing but doggedly independent father, Donald Jones (Charlie Robinson), from Greenwald, Mississippi into his Harlem penthouse. Father-son strife escalates when their generational conflict is lensed through civil rights. Some Old Black Man frames racial prejudice with a bold probity rarely confronted and dramatized.

Lead Presenting Sponsor:
Tim and Sally Petersen

Presenting Sponsor:

Newmarket LLC

Funded in part by:
UMS Sustaining Directors

Sphinx Virtuosi Digital Presentation: This is America

Fri Jan 29 – Mon Feb 8

The Sphinx Virtuosi draws inspiration from the most promising voices of today, seeking to lift the many voices within our communities. This program includes works by Michael Abels, a versatile composer of both cinema scores and symphonies; Jessie Montgomery, whose Source Code redefines the classical music canon; and a new work by Xavier Foley. These works, both archival and newly recorded, lift the voices of black and brown communities through the lens of the Sphinx Virtuosi, composed of black and brown musicians.

Exclusive Presenting Sponsor: Helmet F. and Candice J. Stern Endowment Fund

Cleo Parker Robinson In Conversation

Tue Feb 10 at 5:30 pm

Choreographer, dance pioneer and visionary Cleo Parker Robinson joins her friend Neil Barclay, President and CEO of the Charles H. Wright Museum, for a wide-ranging conversation about Black identity in dance. UMS is partnering with the Wright Museum and the International Association of Blacks in Dance to host this discussion. This event is part of Cleo Parker Robinson’s Digital Artist Residency with UMS.

Lead Presenting Sponsor: Linh and Dug Song

Funded in part by:
UMS Sustaining Directors

James Ehnes, violin and Orion Weiss, piano

Sun Feb 14 – Wed Feb 24

Two of the most sought-after recitalists on the international stage join forces in this special concert, filmed from James Ehnes’s home specifically for UMS audiences.

Presenting Sponsors: Gil Omenn and Martha Darling

Patron Sponsor: Joel Howell and Linda Samuelson