Lara Downes marks 250th anniversary of nation with The Declaration Project; timely NPR series; new album, Hold These Truths; much more

“A trailblazing pianist who combines exquisite musicality with an acute awareness of how an artist can make a positive and lasting social impact.” – Piano Magazine

(February 2026) — For more than a year, visionary American pianist Lara Downes has been taking the pulse of the country with her groundbreaking national initiative titled The Declaration Project, co-commissioned by Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, and the Tejemos Foundation. Marking the 250th anniversary of the United States, the project reflects on the nation’s founding principles, confronting the flaws and failures of its history while celebrating the audacious beauty of the American promise and imagining the next chapter of the national story. Through a mosaic of music, personal narrative, and portraiture captured on her travels across the country and encounters with a broad cross-section of Americans, Downes documents the country’s collective hopes, struggles, and untold histories.

See behind-the-scenes video of Downes’s encounters across the U.S.

Musically, this performance has commissioned a triptych of works – respectively titled Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness – from Grammy Award-winning composers Valerie Coleman, Arturo O’Farrill, and Christopher Tin. These will have their world premiere, framed by the collected multimedia documentary materials, when The Declaration Project premieres at New York’s Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts as part of its Summer for the City festival, with Downes as soloist and the American Composers Orchestra conducted by Eric Jacobsen (July 1).

Leading up to the New York premiere, a community video booth will travel to several locations around New York City throughout the spring, allowing visitors of all ages to record their own perspectives, hopes and intentions for the American future. Additionally, Downes is producing and hosting a series of Declaration Project-themed conversations with world-renowned historians, authors, and scholars tracing American dreams through the past 250 years, to be broadcast as part of NPR’s “America in Pursuit” audio series on All Things Considered. Her first conversation, which aired on January 29, features historian Jill Lepore and centers on the 1759 song “My Days Have Been So Wondrous Free” by Founding Father Francis Hopkinson, often called the “first American song.” Audio of that conversation can be streamed here. Her other collaborators on the series include lawyer and justice activist Bryan Stevenson, author and cultural commentator John McWhorter, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Salamishah Tillet, and others.

Downes’s upcoming album on the Pentatone label, titled Hold These Truths, amplifies the efforts embodied by The Declaration Project with music ranging from before the nation’s founding to new works – a soundtrack of journeys though revolution, resistance, and resilience to be released on July 3. The first single, released last month, was “Wondrous Free” by composer Shawn Okpebholo, a reimagining of Francis Hopkinson’s “My Days Have Been So Wondrous Free.”

The Declaration Project

The Declaration Project is a natural outgrowth of some of Downes’s own most cherished principles: engagement with history and the community, conversation with thought leaders, and a passion for using music as a tool to understand and interpret broad cultural questions. She conceived it as an invitation across the nation to explore and express perspectives, hopes and wishes for the next chapter of the American story. Her immersive approach involved gathering together members of representative communities around the country to find common ground in the core essence of the founding promise: the unalienable rights of “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness” which the U.S. Declaration of Independence asserts were granted to all humans by their Creator.

These ongoing gatherings, held in communities from North Adams, MA to Tuskegee, AL, are creating a diverse, multigenerational collective of voices from a broad spectrum of geographical, economic, and cultural perspectives. These are being aggregated into a national digital archive available to all and will be incorporated into the performances of The Declaration Project. The video booth that will rotate to various locations across New York City prior to the Lincoln Center premiere will facilitate the gathering of an even greater variety of perspectives, with participating locations including the David Rubenstein Atrium, David Geffen Hall, the Metropolitan Opera, Film at Lincoln Center, Lincoln Center Theater, David H. Koch Theater, Alice Tully Hall, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, Project Open at Lincoln Towers, and additional locations in the neighboring communities surrounding Lincoln Center. The booths will capture personal responses from passersby: giving personal reactions to the concepts of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; expressing their wishes for the American future; and reflecting on what it means to be an American today.

Downes’s collaborative partners on The Declaration Project include artists and arts institutions nationwide, in urban and rural communities in states including Arizona, Arkansas, California, Kentucky, New Mexico, New York, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, and Washington. A critical facet of the project is the pianist’s engagement 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. One of Downes’s important partners is Massachusetts’s visual and performing arts center MASS MoCA, which hosts a number of upcoming Declaration Project residencies (Feb 16–18; April 12–16; June 12–14). Following the premiere in July of 2026, Downes will tour The Declaration Project to destinations in both the U.S. and Europe, currently including Berkeley, CA; Austin, Texas; London; Hamburg; and Cardiff, Wales; with more dates to be added soon.

Hold These Truths on Pentatone, July 3

Shawn Okpebholo’s “Wondrous Free,” the single from Downes’s upcoming album, Hold These Truths, is inspired in part by a 1759 song written by Francis Hopkinson, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Downes elaborates:

“Hopkinson’s charming, graceful melody is often credited as ‘the first American song.’ … But there were many songs produced on American soil before this one. The songs of the Native American peoples who had lived on this land for more than 20,000 years and were, in 1759, immersed in the conflicts of the French and Indian War as they struggled for control over their lands and way of life. And the songs of work, prayer, and celebration sung by enslaved Africans since 1619 as essential expressions of survival, resistance, faith, communal support and cultural preservation. Those first songs, those long-ago voices and spirits, are reflected here in Wondrous Free, reimagined by the brilliant composer Shawn Okpebholo as an offering to our ancestors, an ode to their suffering and sacrifices, and an open-hearted meditation on the many ‘what ifs’ of our American story.”

The album’s repertoire, like The Declaration Project, contains a broad range of American perspectives, from Oscar Peterson and Charles Ives to Harry T. Burleigh and Ricky Ian Gordon. Downes says:

“This music traces our roots and our journeys, connects us at our crossroads and centers us on common ground, offering a clear and open-hearted reminder that we the people are the holders of our truth, the stewards of our past, builders of our present, and designers of our future.”

Download high-resolution photos here.

Lara Downes: Declaration Project and winter/spring engagements

Feb 14–15
Reston, VA
Reston Community Center (Leila Gordon Theatre)
This Land: An Evening with Lara Downes and Judy Collins
Repertoire to include:
Valerie COLEMAN: Life

Feb 16–20
North Adams, MA
MASS MoCA
Declaration Project residency
Children’s workshops

Feb 22
Austin, TX
KMFA Declaration Project concert

March 28
Los Angeles, CA
Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra (LACO), Current: Inventions Reimagined
Bach’s Sinfonias and Inventions interpreted through jazz
Christian Sands, piano
Marc Bamuthi Joseph, spoken word artist

April 16–19
North Adams, MA
MASS MoCA
Declaration Project residency
MASS MoCA Teen invitational

April 18
Ann Arbor, MI
Universal Musical Society with the Gilmore Piano Festival
Timo Andres, Inon Barnatan, Janice Carissa, Aaron Diehl, Vicky Chow, Lara Downes, Lisa Kaplan, Daniela Liebman, Christian Sands, Justin Snyder, piano
Philip GLASS: Complete piano etudes

April 27
Brooklyn, NY
Brooklyn Music School Gala

May 9
Berkeley, CA
Cal Performances, Lara Downes and Friends, This Land: Reflections on America
Lara Downes, piano
Judy Collins, vocals
Tarriona “Tank” Ball, vocals
Invoke Quartet
Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir

June 12–14
North Adams, MA
MASS MoCA
Declaration Project residency

July 1
New York, NY
Lincoln Center
The Declaration Project (premiere)

July 5
Cardiff, Wales
BBC Hoddinott Hall
BBC National Chorus & Orchestra of Wales and Kellen Gray, conductor
The Declaration Project
Christopher TIN: Piano Concerto, UK premiere

July 18
North Adams, MA
MASS MoCA
The Declaration Project
Guest artists TBA