Lara Downes announces The Declaration Project, a multimedia performance that premieres in July 2026 at Lincoln Center, celebrating the U.S. at 250
“A musical ray of hope.” – NBC News on Lara Downes
(March 2025) — Recently honored as “Classical Woman of the Year” by NPR’s Performance Today, iconoclastic American pianist Lara Downes has been called “a classical music instigator pushing the music forward with great gusto” by the New York Amsterdam News and “a trailblazing pianist who combines exquisite musicality with an acute awareness of how an artist can make a positive and lasting social impact” by Piano Magazine. Through her groundbreaking initiative titled The Declaration Project, Downes celebrates the 250th anniversary of the U.S. by reflecting on the nation’s founding principles with a mosaic of music, personal narrative, and video, documenting its collective hopes, struggles, and untold histories. The multimedia world premiere performance of The Declaration Project, which will take place at New York’s Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in July 2026, is centered on a triptych of works – respectively titled Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness – that Downes has commissioned from Grammy Award-winning composers Valerie Coleman, Arturo O’Farrill, and Christopher Tin, three leading American voices whose music explores the pure essence of these elusive and vital concepts. Leading up to the premiere of these three works, Downes is engaging in a series of regional residencies across America, involving both community activation and deep listening. To extend the project’s reach even further, through a dedicated website, she is soliciting submissions inspired by the concepts of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness from Americans of all ages and backgrounds in any medium, including prose, poetry, visual art, music, and dance, to be collected as a national digital archive and incorporated into the Lincoln Center performance of The Declaration Project. Following the premiere, Downes will tour The Declaration Project to destinations in both the U.S. and Europe, currently including Los Angeles; Austin, Texas; Knoxville, Tennessee; and Cardiff, Wales, with more dates to be added soon.(March 2025) — Recently honored as “Classical Woman of the Year” by NPR’s Performance Today, iconoclastic American pianist Lara Downes has been called “a classical music instigator pushing the music forward with great gusto” by the New York Amsterdam News and “a trailblazing pianist who combines exquisite musicality with an acute awareness of how an artist can make a positive and lasting social impact” by Piano Magazine. Through her groundbreaking initiative titled The Declaration Project, Downes celebrates the 250th anniversary of the U.S. by reflecting on the nation’s founding principles with a mosaic of music, personal narrative, and video, documenting its collective hopes, struggles, and untold histories. The multimedia world premiere performance of The Declaration Project, which will take place at New York’s Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in July 2026, is centered on a triptych of works – respectively titled Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness – that Downes has commissioned from Grammy Award-winning composers Valerie Coleman, Arturo O’Farrill, and Christopher Tin, three leading American voices whose music explores the pure essence of these elusive and vital concepts. Leading up to the premiere of these three works, Downes is engaging in a series of regional residencies across America, involving both community activation and deep listening. To extend the project’s reach even further, through a dedicated website, she is soliciting submissions inspired by the concepts of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness from Americans of all ages and backgrounds in any medium, including prose, poetry, visual art, music, and dance, to be collected as a national digital archive and incorporated into the Lincoln Center performance of The Declaration Project. Following the premiere, Downes will tour The Declaration Project to destinations in both the U.S. and Europe, currently including Los Angeles; Austin, Texas; Knoxville, Tennessee; and Cardiff, Wales, with more dates to be added soon.
The first part of The Declaration Project features Valerie Coleman’s Life for solo piano, an intimate reflection on the beauty and fragility of life, the shared humanity that connects all people, and the potential of both intention and action as means of protecting and cherishing one another. The second part of the triptych is centered on Arturo O’Farrill’s Liberty, composed for piano, strings, winds, brass and Afro-Caribbean percussion. Both poignant and buoyant, the work is a musical traversal of American history, acknowledging the courageous struggle for freedom and celebrating the progress that has been hard-won across generations. Finally, Christopher Tin’s Pursuit of Happiness for piano and full orchestra – the focus of the third segment of the performance – is an optimistic rhapsody, celebrating an ideal not only cherished by the founders of the United States but one that is pursued and deserved by all human beings.
In the process of creating The Declaration Project, Downes is traveling to urban and rural communities in states including Arizona, Arkansas, California, Kentucky, New Mexico, New York, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, and Washington, collaborating with artists and arts institutions nationwide. A documentary film being made in conjunction with these visits includes a wide cast of characters, from members of the Tennessee Valley Boys & Girls Clubs of America to musical friends and colleagues including Tarriona “Tank” Ball, Judy Collins, and Jon Batiste. Downes engages with multigenerational communities, leading conversations, workshops, and roundtables and documenting the state of the nation through the honesty and immediacy of first-person narrative and creative expression.
On the occasion of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday this year, NPR published an article by Downes titled “Daring to Dream: A reflection on America” that also speaks to the motivations behind The Declaration Project:
“As a musician considering the long arc of history, I realize that now it’s my turn to show up, to be ready and willing to pursue the dream that Dr. King fought for, along with so many of that generation, including my own parents. I don’t know exactly what that will mean — maybe facing my own fears, maybe more. But I do know that it means holding onto what I love about American music, and making good use of its power to unite us when nothing else seems to.”
About Lara Downes
An iconoclast and trailblazer, Lara occupies a unique position of visibility through her dynamic work as a sought-after soloist, a Billboard chart-topping recording artist, and a beloved NPR personality as host of her popular video show, Amplify with Lara Downes. She has garnered millions of fans spanning the globe: her devoted NPR viewers and 100,000+ weekly listeners to her nationally syndicated radio programs intersect with her live concert audiences and her followers on streaming platforms to form a broad and constantly expanding fan base.
Lara’s musical roadmap seeks inspiration from the legacies of history, family, and collective memory, excavating a broad landscape of music to create a series of acclaimed performance and recording projects that serve as gathering spaces for her listeners to find common ground and shared experience. In the words of the renowned American conductor JoAnn Falletta, “Lara Downes is a perfect artist for our time, a champion of new and neglected music, an extraordinary communicator, a passionate advocate for our art form.”
Lara’s recent and upcoming onstage adventures include guest appearances with the orchestras of Philadelphia, Boston, Detroit, Dallas, Louisville, Indianapolis and others, with recitals and residencies at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the Big Ears Festival, Disney Concert Hall, Ravinia, Tanglewood, the Gilmore Piano Festival, Carolina Performing Arts, Washington Performing Arts, Cal Performances, and Mass MoCA, among others. Her creative collaborations embrace an eclectic range of artists including musical multi-hyphenate Rhiannon Giddens, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Rita Dove, Broadway legend Brian Stokes Mitchell, author John McWhorter, the Miró Quartet, and violinists Tessa Lark and Daniel Hope. Her close partnerships with prominent composers span genres and generations, with premieres and commissions coming from Valerie Coleman, Billy Childs, Arturo O’Farrill, Paola Prestini, Adolphus Hailstork, Clarice Assad, and many others.
A cultural visionary with a firm finger on the pulse of tomorrow, Lara is increasingly active as a curator and creative partner with institutions including Lincoln Center, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Cal Performances, and as Resident Artist for Classical California (KDFC/KUSC).
Her uniquely insightful approach to concept and curation have created an extensive and acclaimed series of chart-topping recordings on the Pentatone, Sony Masterworks and Sono Luminus labels, including her latest release, This Land,featured on NPR’s Morning Edition, in The Wall Street Journal and DownBeatmagazine; her 2023 release, Love at Last, which was featured as an NPR Tiny Desk Concert; and America Again, selected by NPR as one of “10 Albums that Saved 2016” and called “a balm for a country riven by disunion” by The Boston Globe.
Lara is the creator and host of Amplify with Lara Downes, an NPR Music series now in its fourth season, featuring intimate, profoundly personal video conversations with visionary artists and cultural leaders who are shaping our creative present and future. Her work has been supported by the Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Center for Cultural Innovation, among others.
Lara’s fierce commitment to activism and advocacy has led to her role as an Artist Ambassador for HeadCount, a non-partisan organization that uses the power of music to register voters and promote participation in democracy.
Lara Downes: Spring 2025 engagements
Mar 30
Knoxville, TN
Big Ears Festival
Knoxville Symphony Orchestra
Apr 6
Sedona, AZ
Sedona Symphony
Apr 8
Seattle, WA
Meany Center for the Performing Arts
“This Land”
Apr 19, 20
Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra
April 19: Glendale, CA
April 20: Beverly Hills, CA
May 23, 24, 29
Philadelphia, PA
The Philadelphia Orchestra