Jazz at Symphony Center

Tickets on sale now


Featuring Chick Corea, Madeleine Peyroux, The Dirty Dozen Brass Band, Oleta Adams and more on the stage of the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center.

Dallas, Texas (October 27, 2020) – The Dallas Symphony Orchestra (DSO) and The Black Academy of Arts and Letters (TBAAL) announce a new series entitled Jazz at the Symphony Center. Launching in November 2020, the series will include five concerts throughout the 20/21 DSO season. Featuring the very best jazz artists, Jazz at the Symphony Center will celebrate one of the most collaborative art forms and will spark conversation and community.

“I have had the privilege to get to know Curtis King over the last few years, and we have talked about what a new collaboration can look like,” said Kim Noltemy, Ross Perot President & CEO of the Dallas Symphony.  “Jazz at the Symphony Center utilizes Curtis’s vast knowledge and connections in this field with the incredible venue here at the Meyerson. These concerts will be a welcome addition to the Dallas music scene.”

TBAAL’s President and Founder Curtis King reflects on the importance of this friendship, “Over the last three decades, TBAAL and the DSO have built a wonderful collaborative partnership, and we are excited to see this continue with the Jazz at the Symphony Center series. We look forward to an expanded presence at the Meyerson, and an opportunity to bring our work to a broader community.”

The DSO and TBAAL have partnered on programs and performances since the early 1980s. During one notable collaboration, DSO and TBAAL partnered on a performance called Symphony in Black, which featured artists including The Jon Hendricks Jazz Singers, Phylicia Rashad and William Warfield and was conducted by Paul Freeman. The event led to long-term associations between the two organizations’ board members and patrons, facilitating connections during a particularly difficult time for Dallas.

The Jazz at the Symphony Center 20/21 season will include:

Dirty Dozen Brass Band with special appearance by Donald Orlando Smith | Tuesday, November 24, 2020

A Jazzy Christmas | Tuesday, December 22, 2020

Oleta Adams with special appearance by Rachel Webb | Sunday, March 21, 2021

Madeleine Peyroux | July 13, 2021

Chick Corea | August 13, 2021


ABOUT THE DALLAS SYMPHONY

The Dallas Symphony Orchestra, under the leadership of Music Director Fabio Luisi, presents the finest in orchestral music at the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center, regarded as one of the world’s premier concert halls. As the largest performing arts organization in the Southwest, the DSO is committed to inspiring the broadest possible audience with distinctive classical programs, inventive pops concerts and innovative multi-media presentations. In fulfilling its commitment to the community, the orchestra reaches more than 243,000 adults and children through performances, educational programs and community outreach initiatives annually.

The DSO’s involvement with the City of Dallas and the surrounding region includes an award-winning multi-faceted educational program, community projects, popular parks concerts and youth programming. In June 2019, the DSO launched a Southern Dallas Residency, bringing the orchestra and its musicians to an underserved area of Dallas. Central to that program is Young Musicians, an El Sistema-inspired initiative providing free lessons and free instruments to Dallas children in grades 1-5.

The DSO has a tradition dating back to 1900 and is a cornerstone of the unique, 68-acre Arts District in Downtown Dallas that is home to multiple performing arts venues, museums and parks; the largest district of its kind in the nation. In 2019, the Dallas Symphony assumed the management of its home, the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center, from the City of Dallas.

The DSO is supported, in part, by funds from the Office of Arts & Culture, City of Dallas.

ABOUT THE BLACK ACADEMY OF ARTS LETTERS

The Black Academy of Arts and Letters (TBAAL) is a Dallas, Texas, based multi-discipline cultural arts and educational institution located in the heart of downtown Dallas in The Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center, Theater Complex. Operating two performance theaters (1,750-seat Naomi Bruton Main Stage and 250-seat Clarence Muse Cafe), a Gallery, Gift Shop, rehearsal and administrative office space, TBAAL was founded on July 17, 1977, on Curtis King’s dining room table with a $250 personal investment. Retrieving the institution’s early history from a New York dumpster, King launched out on a single venture to revive and merge the purpose, goals and objectives of the 1897 American Negro Academy and the 1969 New York based Black Academy of Arts and Letters. Formerly called the Junior Black Academy of Arts and Letters (JBA), TBAAL is one of America’s main cultural arts centerpieces to feature renowned African American artists, showcase the budding talents of emerging artists and to serve as an educational laboratory to hone the creative skills of promising young artists. The only one of its kind remaining in the United States, TBAAL presents and produces more than 100 programs and attracts over 250,000 patrons and art enthusiasts, annually. For over four decades, the institution has produced a stellar roster of programs in numerous impressive American city venues: New York City (Apollo Theatre), Los Angeles, CA (Wilshire Ebell Theatre, The Vision Complex), Memphis, TN (Orpheum Theatre) and Washington, DC (The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Howard University Crampton Auditorium, ‘U’ Street Lincoln Theatre, Warner Theatre and National Theatre). Known for its national critically acclaimed “Black Music and the Civil Rights Music” concert held in Dallas’s Meyerson Symphony Center, TBAAL has received three EMMY Awards (Lone Star Region) for this concert. TBAAL trains thousands of youth in its preeminent Summer Youth Arts Enrichment Institute which has produced the likes of Grammy winners Erykah Badu and Roy Hargrove and Skye Turner, who currently stars on Broadway as the young Tina Turner in the “Tina Turner Musical” and is also portraying the young Aretha in the upcoming Aretha Franklin movie starring Oscar winner Jennifer Hudson.

Now approaching its fourth year, the institution created the annual Riverfront Jazz Festival, featuring more than 40 national/international and Dallas based artists; and the festival attracted more than 18,000 visitors and tourists from around the country in its third year. One of the institution’s greatest achievements, to date, is its partnership with the University of North Texas (UNT) which houses and digitizes TBAAL’s permanent collection of ‘original and rare’ archival papers, letters, programs, videos, photographs, etc. TBAAL operates with a nine member Board of Directors and a fifty member national Board of Advisors. For more information, visit www. tbaal.org