The Vail Series Brings the World to Denison!

After a couple of challenging years, we are thrilled to welcome you to Denison’s campus and bring the world on stage of The Vail Series’ 44th Season. The arts have the power to bring people together, to heal, to soothe, to revive, and to celebrate the world around us. The Vail Series proudly presents a season that brings the world to Granville and are thrilled to have you join us in beautiful Swasey Chapel and our newest state-of-the-art performance venue, the Sharon Martin Hall in the Michael D. Eisner Center for the Performing Arts, as we welcome world-renowned artists and rising stars to Granville.

The Vail Series really is much more than a series of concerts by world-class artists. It’s seeing Yo-Yo Ma or Bobby McFerrin or Yuja Wang or Ladysmith Black Mambazo or Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis. You’ll see them on a small stage, six feet away from your front-row seat, knowing they’ll be spending enough time here to interact with students personally and answer a question if you have one.

What better way to kick off the 2022/2023 season than to celebrate one of the earliest ways we all encountered music: as a vital component to the world of animation? The Queen’s Cartoonists, performing classical and jazz music to cartoons, will give you the opportunity to relive your childhood and will remind all that cartoons are for the young and the young at heart.

One of the greatest artists of our generation, Turkish pianist and composer, Fazil Say, performs with rising star, Turkish cellist Jamal Aliyev, in a limited US tour that will dazzle you with their artistry in a night to remember.

The Lviv National Philharmonic Orchestra of Ukraine, in an international tour that brings them to the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. as well as Lincoln Center in New York City, also includes Denison University. Under the baton of Principal Conductor Theodore Kuchar, the Lviv Philharmonic Orchestra of Ukraine will remind us of how small the world is now, and how music can bridge cultures and bring people together.

For two nights in March, Legendary trumpeter Terence Blanchard featuring the E-Collective, Turtle Island Quartet & Andrew F. Scott celebrates the work of photojournalist, filmmaker, writer, and musician Gordon Parks in a multimedia concert that fuses the arts in Sharon Martin Hall.

Wrapping up the 2022-2023 season, we are proud to present from our friends out west, the Monterey Jazz Festival On Tour. With the all-star line-up of Dee Dee Bridgewater (who gave us a remarkable performance in 2018), Kurt Elling, Lakecia Benjamin, Christian Sands, Yasushi Nakamura, and Clarence Penn, Swasey Chapel will reverberate with energy that will carry us for the rest of the year.

The arts are such an essential element of a liberal arts education at Denison that Vail Series tickets are free for students, faculty and staff.

In addition, The Vail Series joins in bringing the contemporary classical Grammy®-winning string quartet ETHEL, who have been awarded honorary degrees for their impact at Denison, and Grammy®-winning Third Coast Percussion to campus, each for two full weeks a year as Denison’s ensembles-in-residence. They take the arts from the performance stage to classrooms. They play in a variety of surprising locations across campus, and often just grab lunch and chat with students in the student union.

So join us - it’s time to hear live music again!

Yours in the arts,
Ching-chu

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The Vail Series was endowed by a generous gift from the late Mary and Foster McGaw in honor of Jeanne Vail, class of 1946. Just as it was intended to do, the Series enriches the artistic experience of the entire Denison community. Programmed creatively with the mindful pursuit of learning across traditional academic boundaries, the Vail Series was directed by Lorraine Wales from its inception in 1979-2013 and by Michael Morris from 2013-2019. Ching-chu Hu is currently the Director of the Vail Series.

Since 1979, more than 200 individual Vail Series artists have found their way to Denison’s classrooms and stages, but that doesn’t include the dozens of ensembles or full symphony orchestras that have played here over the years. And some stay for a while. Last time he was here, Bobby McFerrin presented two concerts, performing with ten student groups over the two-night engagement. Many artists arrive on campus days ahead of their concert to visit classes and student groups.