Performances

Texas-based songwriter and guitarist James McMurtry is a supremely insightful and inventive storyteller who crafts searingly honest lyrics set against a rock/Americana backdrop. His Ypsilanti Freighthouse debut draws from his 2025 album The Black Dog and the Wandering Boy.

This special interactive performance for families invites you to explore music and dance from the Arab World. Led by Chloé Gray of Ypsilanti’s Fun Girl Dance Company and music educator and oud player Raphique Barakat, the event will focus on the dabke, a traditional line-and-circle folk dance featuring energetic stomping, jumping, and kicking to rhythmic music.

In this collaboration with iFFY, filmmakers who live or work in Washtenaw County will be invited to create a series of short silent films, all of which will be set to live, improvised music.

Known as “Detroit’s Queen of the Blues,” Thornetta Davis has captivated audiences across the United States and abroad for over 30 years, sharing stages with legendary Blues and R&B greats including Ray Charles, Etta James, and Buddy Guy.

The spring concert of the U-M Life Sciences Orchestra will feature the 150-member UMS Choral Union, and special guest solo vocalists, performing a stirring oratorio by English composer Edward Elgar.

Ypsilanti, it’s time to take the stage! Open Mic Night at the Freighthouse is back, and we want to hear from you.

Nidia Góngora brings the soul of Colombia’s Pacific coast to the stage, with a powerful, earthy, and luminous voice that carries centuries of Afro-Colombian tradition in this dance floor-ready event performed with marimba and percussion.

The superlative ensemble returns in a program that includes a UMS co-commission by University of Michigan alumna Clarice Assad, plus works by Franz Joseph Haydn and Claude Debussy.

Program

Franz Joseph Haydn String Quartet No. 59 in g minor, Op. 74, No. 3 (“Rider”)
Clarice Assad NEXUS (UMS co-commission)
Claude Debussy String Quartet in g minor, Op. 10 (L.91)

Joe Reilly is a singer/songwriter, social worker, and Michigan educator who writes songs from his heart. The Italian, Irish, and Native American (Cherokee) singer draws from his children’s albums of environmental and community songs in this concert for families. After the performance, families are invited to stay for a hands-on activity.

In a rare concert performance and evening of master piano works for the 21st century, 10 outstanding pianists will perform all 20 of Philip Glass’s études on the Hill Auditorium stage.

At this free community event, meet the moment through music by composers Jessie Montgomery, Florence Price, Margaret Bonds, and more. Voce Velata — a local youth-led chamber ensemble — joins professional musicians to explore cultural idioms that are in dialogue with both our past and present.

MacArthur Genius Grant recipient and Pulitzer Prize winner Rhiannon Giddens has made a singular, iconic career out of stretching her brand of folk music into just about every field imaginable. Join us as the U-M Arts Initiative’s inaugural artist-in-residence takes the Hill Auditorium stage with her latest musical exploration.

Join us at the Freighthouse for two hours of beginner line dancing with Ashley, set to country hits.

Short in length but limitless in imagination, all 24 of Claude Debussy’s magical Preludes for piano are performed by one of their supreme living interpreters, Jean-Yves Thibaudet.

Detroit’s Ian Fink brings a next-gen jazz combo to the intimate Ypsilanti Freighthouse.

Beyond This Point, composed of Chicago-based collaborative percussion/arts trio Adam Rosenblatt, John Corkill, and AJ Morrissey, straddles the disciplines of music, theater, and science through gesture and ingenuity.

Experience the musical legend’s brilliant piano playing and electrifying, genre-blurring sound that moves effortlessly between rock, jazz, folk, and beyond.

Jazz sensation and six-time Grammy award winner Samara Joy returns to Hill Auditorium after her sold-out 2024 UMS debut.