Gateways Music Festival’s rich 2024-25 season presents professional Black classical artists at residencies in Rochester & NYC, where Gateways Festival Orchestra returns to Carnegie Hall, and in Cleveland & Disney World debuts

(September 2024) — Following the success of its landmark 30th anniversary season, Gateways Music Festival in association with Eastman School of Music of the University of Rochester returns with an expansive lineup of music-making by professional Black classical artists in 2024–25. After beginning with a week of events in Rochester, NY (Oct 14–18), followed by debuts at Walt Disney World (Nov 28) and the Cleveland Institute of Music (Feb 3), the Gateways season culminates with a week-long residency in Rochester and New York City (April 21–27), where the all-Black Gateways Festival Orchestra makes its first appearance at Carnegie Hall since its historic, sold-out debut at the venue in 2022. Recently recognized with a million dollar grant from the Mellon Foundation, Gateways’ rich offerings are set to make a profound and lasting impact on the classical music landscape. By providing a supportive community and a joyful home for professional Black artists, whose performances bring together multiracial, multigenerational audiences, Gateways plays a pivotal part in rewriting the classical music narrative.

Recognized with a Sphinx Medal of Excellence and named one of Musical America’s Professionals of the Year, Alexander Laing inaugurated his tenure as Gateways’ new President & Artistic Director at the start of the present year. He says:

“As I begin my first full season as President & Artistic Director of Gateways Music Festival, I am thrilled to continue celebrating the brilliance of Black classical musicians while expanding the festival’s reach through exciting new collaborations. From our work with the Tuskegee University William Levi Dawson Institute for Classical and Folk Music to our partnership with Eastman’s George Walker Center for Equity and Inclusion in Music, this season showcases the depth, diversity, and richness of Black artistry in powerful and transformative ways. Our 2024-25 season is about celebrating the past, pushing boundaries in the present, and bringing people together through Gateways’ music. I couldn’t be more excited for what lies ahead.”

Gateways Fall Festival 2024 (Oct 14–18)

The 2024-25 season launches with Gateways Fall Festival, comprising five days of collaboration, creativity, and live performance at the University of Rochester’s Eastman School of Music. Presented in a new partnership with Eastman’s George Walker Center for Equity and Inclusion in Music, Joshua Mhoon – a top prize-winner at last year’s inaugural Nina Simone Piano Competition – gives a solo recital spanning repertoire from Rachmaninoff and Gershwin to Black composers Joplin and Bonds (Oct 15). Cross-genre violin and viola virtuoso Josh Henderson headlines a performance by Gateways String Artists (Oct 16), and Gateways Brass Collective, the nation’s only all-Black professional brass quintet, draws the festival to a close with a concert in the “Eastman Presents” series (Oct 18).

After an immersive day of music-making and mentorship with Gateways’ Young Musicians Institute, school-aged string players perform their own collaboratively created new compositions (Oct 14). In a special edition of the EarShot CoLABoratory Residency, produced in collaboration with the American Composers Orchestra, members of Gateways String Faculty and Brass Collective help develop and workshop a new piece for orchestra by composer Jordyn Davis, one of the first three New York Community Trust Van Lier Fellows (Oct 16). A screening of The Harlem Hellfighters (2024) – a new History Channel documentary about bandleader James Reese Europe and the pioneering all-Black regiment that brought jazz and ragtime to the battlefields of World War I – will be accompanied by a panel discussion featuring Dr. Isrea Butler – Director of the Music School at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas (UNLV) and trombonist of both Gateways Brass Collective and the Count Basie Band – and Noble Sissle Jr., son of Harlem Hellfighters composer, lyricist, and drum major Noble Sissle. The evening concludes with a musical tribute from Gateways Brass Collective (Oct 17).

Gateways Spring Festival 2025 (April 21–27)

The season continues with Gateways Spring Festival at Eastman and multiple locations across New York. Drawn from leading orchestras and music faculties nationwide, Gateways Festival Orchestra gives two performances under the baton of Anthony Parnther, who previously conducted both its recent Chicago debut and its historic Carnegie Hall one, which showcased a world premiere from Jon Batiste. “A conductor for the future” with “a flourishing career” (New York Times), Parnther leads Gateways Festival Orchestra in a thoughtfully curated program of Antonín Dvořák’s Eighth Symphony, William Levi Dawson’s Negro Folk Symphony, and selected songs and spirituals featuring Grammy-winning mezzo-soprano J’Nai Bridges. These festival finale concerts take place at Eastman (April 24) and on Carnegie Hall’s main stage (April 27), where Dawson’s symphony originally premiered in 1935. Gateways’ Carnegie concert will stream live to home audiences worldwide as part of WQXR’s Live from Carnegie Hall series.

Violinist, composer, and four-time Grammy nominee Curtis Stewart performs Seasons of Change – his re-composition of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons as an Afrofuturist meditation on climate change, class, and the nature of digital memory – at Eastman (April 22) and New York’s Merkin Concert Hall, where, as a 2024-25 Artist-in-Residence, he also premieres selections from his forthcoming American Caprices (April 25). Gateways’ season-long collaboration with the George Walker Center for Equity and Inclusion in Music continues with co-presented piano recitals at Eastman (April 21) and in New York City (April 26), to which Gateways Brass Collective returns for its third appearance (details TBA).

In collaboration with the William Levi Dawson Institute for Classical and Folk Music at Tuskegee University, Gateways presents the 2024 Paul J. Burgett Lecture and Community Conversation. To explore the profound influence of historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) on Black classical artistry and education, this will comprise a documentary screening, lecture, and panel discussion at Eastman (April 23).

Debuts at Disney World (Nov 28) and Cleveland Institute (Feb 3)

Gateways Brass Collective anchors two further events this season. Marking Gateways’ Walt Disney World debut, the ensemble has been selected to lead the Orlando resort’s 14th annual Thanksgiving Parade of Bands. Representing marching bands from around the country, hundreds of high-school students will come together on Thanksgiving Day to follow the Brass Collective’s lead as they march and perform at EPCOT’s Cinderella Castle for an in-person and virtual audience of thousands (Nov 28). Gateways makes a second key debut early next year, when the Brass Collective performs at Ohio’s Cleveland Institute of Music and works with the conservatory’s students in masterclasses and recitals (Feb 3).

Success of 30th anniversary season

These upcoming engagements build on the success of Gateways’ 2023–24 season, which marked the organization’s landmark 30th anniversary. After kicking off in Rochester, the newly expanded festival came to New York City for four days of events, crowned by Gateways Chamber Players’ sold-out Carnegie Hall debut at Zankel Hall. Finding their program “characteristic of a festival that has consistently emphasized the contributions of Black composers,” the New York Times admired the “camaraderie and visibility” Gateways promotes, and praised “the festival’s transformative power.” Next followed major debuts at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., with a chamber program featuring special guest narrator Phylicia Rashad, and in Chicago, where Gateways’ weeklong spring residency culminated with a full orchestral concert. As Splash Magazine reported, this offered “a fully realized ambitious program” of Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, Margaret Allison Bonds, and Edward Elgar, as well as a set by star vocal sextet Take 6. The review continued:

“The Gateways Festival Orchestra inspires through the power of their playing. … The artistry of these musicians, their wonderful performance and joy in that performance, was led with grace, elegance, and strength this evening by Maestro Anthony Parnther.”

The 2023–24 season also brought the launch of Gateways Radio, with an initial season of 13 hour-long episodes featuring Black classical artists. Hosted and produced by Loki Karuna (previously known as Garrett McQueen), this was nationally syndicated by the WFMT Radio Network, reaching more than 42 stations across the country. A second 13-episode season is scheduled to air in 2024–25.

Mellon Foundation grant

To cap its banner anniversary season, earlier this summer Gateways was awarded the sum of one million dollars by the Mellon Foundation. This substantial grant was given to support President & Artistic Director Alex Laing’s vision for the next phase of Gateways Music Festival. The funding will serve to expand and strengthen Gateways’ artistic and educational work, enhancing the organization’s capacity and flexibility, and extending its reach through residencies, tours, partnerships, and major projects such as Gateways Radio. The new grant follows a previous Mellon Foundation award of $800,000 in 2021, which supported Gateways’ Carnegie Hall debut and assisted its ongoing growth and development.

About Gateways Music Festival

The mission of Gateways Music Festival is to connect and support professional classical musicians of African descent and enlighten and inspire communities through the power of performance. Founded in Winston-Salem, North Carolina in 1993 by noted concert pianist Armenta Hummings Dumisani, the festival was brought to Rochester, New York in 1995 when Hummings Dumisani joined the Eastman School of Music faculty. Approximately 125 musicians – comprising players in major symphony orchestras, faculty from renowned music schools and conservatories, and active freelance artists – participate in each festival. In 2016, while remaining an independent non-profit organization, Gateways formalized its longstanding relationship with Eastman and the University of Rochester. Among other mutual benefits, this deepened relationship provided much of the infrastructure and resources necessary for Gateways to increase its programming capacity, appoint its first professional staff position and broaden its impact in and beyond Rochester. In addition to the annual full-orchestra festival held each spring, other Gateways initiatives include a yearly chamber music festival each fall; Gateways Showcase, an initiative designed to shed light on the extraordinary stories, artistic achievements, and indelible impact of present and historic Black classical musicians; Gateways Brass Collective, the only all-Black professional brass quintet in the country; Gateways Residency, by which renowned Gateways artists are presented nationwide throughout the year in recitals, masterclasses and community-based activities; Gateways Chamber Players, an all-star touring ensemble featuring some of the nation’s most renowned classical musicians; and, since January 2023, Gateways Radio, a one-hour syndicated radio program featuring Black classical artists on radio stations across the United States.

Gateways Music Festival: 2024-25 season

Oct 14–18
Rochester, NY
Eastman School of Music
Gateways Fall Festival

Mon, Oct 14 daytime
Young Musicians Institute (not open to public)

Mon, Oct 14 at 6pm
Kodak Hall at Eastman Theatre
Young Musicians Institute Concert
Free with RSVP

Tues, Oct 15 at 7:30pm
Hatch Recital Hall
Recital: Joshua Mhoon, piano
Works by RACHMANINOFF, GERSHWIN, JOPLIN, BONDS, KAPUSTIN, and Eric NATHANIEL
(Presented in collaboration with George Walker Center for Equity and Inclusion)
Tickets: choose what you pay

Wed, Oct 16 daytime
Masterclasses (not open to public)

Wed, Oct 16 at 12 noon
Hatch Recital Hall
EarShot CoLABoratory Residency: Jordyn Davis (not open to public)
Gateways String Faculty & Gateways Brass Collective, with American Composers Orchestra

Wed, Oct 16 at 2 pm
Hatch Recital Hall
EarShot CoLABoratory Residency performance: Jordyn Davis
Gateways String Faculty & Gateways Brass Collective, with American Composers Orchestra
Tickets: choose what you pay

Wed, Oct 16 at 7:30pm
Hatch Recital Hall
Gateways Showcase Concert: Josh Henderson and Friends
Gateways String Faculty, featuring Josh Henderson, violin and viola
Tickets: choose what you pay

Thurs, Oct 17 at 7:30pm
Hatch Recital Hall
Film screening: The Harlem Hellfighters
Panel discussion with Isrea Butler & Noble Sissle, Jr.
Performance: Gateways Brass Collective
Free with RSVP

Fri, Oct 18 at 7:30pm
Kilbourn Hall
Eastman Presents Series: Gateways Brass Collective

Thurs, Nov 28 (Thanksgiving Day)
Orlando, FL
Walt Disney World (debut)
EPCOT
Thanksgiving Parade of Bands: Gateways Brass Collective

Mon, Feb 3
Cleveland, OH
Cleveland Institute of Music (debut)
Masterclasses and recitals with students (not open to public)
Performance: Gateways Brass Collective

April 21–24
Rochester, NY
Eastman School of Music
Gateways Spring Festival

Mon, April 21
Hatch Recital Hall
Recital: pianist TBA
(Presented in collaboration with George Walker Center for Equity and Inclusion)

Tues, April 22
Kilbourn Hall
Recital: Curtis Stewart, violin
VIVALDI / Curtis STEWART: Seasons of Change

Wed, April 23 at 6pm
Burgett Intercultural Center
Paul J. Burgett Lecture and Community Conversation:
Tell Them We Are Rising: The Story of Black Colleges and Universities
Lecture, film screening, & panel discussion
(Presented in collaboration with William Levi Dawson Institute for Classical and Folk Music
at Tuskegee University)

Thurs, April 24
Kodak Hall at Eastman Theatre
Gateways Festival Orchestra / Anthony Parnther
DVOŘÁK: Symphony No. 8
DAWSON: Negro Folk Symphony
Selected songs and spirituals (with J’Nai Bridges, mezzo-soprano)

April 25–27
New York, NY
Gateways Spring Festival

Fri, April 25
Merkin Concert Hall
(Presented with Kaufman Music Center)
Curtis Stewart, violin (2024-25 Kaufman Music Center Artist-in-Residence)
VIVALDI / Curtis STEWART: Seasons of Change
Curtis STEWART: Selections from American Caprices (world premiere)

Sat, April 26
Venue TBA
Recital: pianist TBA

Sun, April 27 at 2:30pm
Carnegie Hall (Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage)
Gateways Festival Orchestra / Anthony Parnther
DVOŘÁK: Symphony No. 8
DAWSON: Negro Folk Symphony
Selected songs and spirituals (with J’Nai Bridges, mezzo-soprano)