Community Calendar

Get in the holiday spirit with a New Orleans twist!

The Preservation Hall Jazz Band brings their beloved Creole Christmas to Bloomington! Join as the band performs New Orleans classics as well as some of our best-loved holiday selections with a twist.

The group derives its name from Preservation Hall, the venerable music venue located in the heart of New Orleans’ French Quarter, founded in 1961 by Allan and Sandra Jaffe. They’ve traveled worldwide spreading their mission to nurture and perpetuate the art form of New Orleans Jazz. Whether performing at Carnegie Hall or Lincoln Center, for British Royalty or the King of Thailand, this music embodies a joyful, timeless spirit. Under the auspices of current director, Ben Jaffe, the son of founders Allan and Sandra, Preservation Hall continues with a deep reverence and consciousness of its greatest attributes in the modern day as a venue, band, and record label.

The PHJB began touring in 1963 and for many years there were several bands successfully touring under the name Preservation Hall. Many of the band’s charter members performed with the pioneers who invented jazz in the early twentieth century including Buddy Bolden, Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Armstrong, and Bunk Johnson. Band leaders over the band’s history include the brothers Willie and Percy Humphrey, husband and wife Billie and De De Pierce, famed pianist Sweet Emma Barrett, and in the modern day Wendall and John Brunious. These founding artists and dozens of others passed on the lessons of their music to a younger generation who now follow in their footsteps like the current lineup.

Jacobs Academy

Jacobs Academy

Jacobs Academy

Jacobs Academy

Marking the fifth production in the Jazz at Lincoln Center PRESENTS series, guest vocalists Kate Kortum and David Marino will debut arrangements of tunes from Broadway’s most beloved productions including Hamilton, Wicked, South Pacific, West Side Story, and more in a special concert event entitled World on a String: Swinging Songs of Broadway.

For over three decades, Jazz at Lincoln Center has been a leading advocate for jazz, culture, and arts education globally. Under the direction of Wynton Marsalis, Jazz at Lincoln Center has brought the art form of jazz from the heart of New York City to over 446 cities in more than 40 countries.

An ensemble of stellar vocalists and instrumentalists come together to share the iconic music of RENT like never before. This symphonic take on the Jonathan Larson’s beloved musical includes the full score of the show, including favorites like “Seasons of Love,” “La Vie Bohème,” and “Take Me or Leave Me.”

Set in the East Village of New York City, RENT is about falling in love, finding your voice, and living for today. Winner of the Tony Award for Best Musical and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, RENT has become a pop cultural phenomenon with songs that rock and a story that resonates with audiences of all ages.

Based loosely on Puccini’s La bohéme, Jonathan Larson’s RENT follows a year in the life of a group of impoverished young artists and musicians struggling to survive and create in New York’s Lower East Side, under the shadow of HIV/AIDS. The physical and emotional complications of the disease pervade the lives of Roger, Mimi, Tom, and Angel. Maureen deals with her chronic infidelity through performance art; her partner, Joanne, wonders if their relationship is worth the trouble. Benny has sold out his Bohemian ideals in exchange for a hefty income and is on the outs with his former friends. Mark, an aspiring filmmaker, feels like an outsider to life in general. How these young bohemians negotiate their dreams, loves, and conflicts provides the narrative thread to this groundbreaking musical.

The Simon & Garfunkel Story is touring North America again this year! Using huge projection photos and original film footage, featuring a full live band performing all the hits including "Mrs. Robinson," "Cecilia," "Bridge Over Troubled Water, "Homeward Bound," and many more.

The immersive concert-style theater show chronicles the amazing journey shared by the folk-rock duo, Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel. It tells the story from their humble beginnings as Tom & Jerry to their incredible success as one of the best-selling music groups of the ‘60’s to their dramatic split in 1970. It culminates with the famous “The Concert in Central Park” reunion in 1981 with more than half a million fans in attendance.

With more than 100 million album sales since 1965, Simon & Garfunkel’s perfect harmonies and songs that poignantly captured the times made them one of the most successful folk-rock duos of all time. Over the years, they've won 10 Grammy Awards and were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990. In 1977, their Bridge Over Troubled Water album was nominated at the Brit Awards for Best International Album. In 2003, Simon and Garfunkel were awarded a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and the following year saw their “The Sound of Silence” awarded a Grammy Hall of Fame Award.

The music of Penguin Cafe Orchestra has permeated popular culture, appearing in films (Napoleon Dynamite, The Founder, Mary and Max), television (The Handmaid’s Tale, Malcolm in the Middle), and countless advertisements. “Music for a Found Harmonium” became a folk-dance staple, having been featured on the original iconic Cafe Del Mar album, and “Perpetuum Mobile” provided the musical foundation for Avicii’s “Fade Into Darkness.”

Penguin Cafe was founded by Arthur Jeffes in 2009, bringing together a talented and disparate group of musicians initially to perform his father Simon Jeffes’ legacy of world-renowned Penguin Cafe Orchestra music, ten years after his untimely death in 1997.

Since that time, Penguin Cafe has continued with Arthur creating new music in the PCO tradition of genre-blending, pastoral soundscapes, combining classical instruments like violins and cellos with unexpected elements like ukuleles and melodicas. The end result is music and performances filled with great joy and beauty that leaves the audience humming the tunes and wanting for more. They are known for a quintessentially English, genre-defying mix of avant-pop, minimalist classical, and folk influences.

Penguin Cafe have released five studio albums of original music, four of which are released on Erased Tapes Records:

A Matter of Life 2008 |The Red Book 2014 |The Imperfect Sea 2017 | Handfuls of Night 2019 | Rain Before Seven 2023

One of the nation’s most distinguished ensembles, the National Symphony Orchestra (NSO) returns to IU Auditorium for the first time in nearly seven decades. The internationally celebrated orchestra performs more than 150 concerts annually and is heard by audiences across the country through high-profile broadcasts and national events.

The performance will be conducted by Gianandrea Noseda, the NSO’s music director and one of the world’s most sought-after conductors. Noseda is currently in his ninth season with the orchestra. The evening also will feature solo violinist Ray Chen, a global phenomenon redefining classical performance for the 21st century.

The Bloomington program will open with Rossini’s sparkling William Tell Overture, followed by Samuel Barber’s lyrical and technically dazzling Violin Concerto featuring Chen. The evening concludes with Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6, the beloved “Pastoral,” a vivid and evocative journey through nature that remains one of the composer’s most cherished works.