A Season of Wonder: 2026-27 Preview of Programming at Carolina Performing Arts

ARTS & CULTURE

By Pamir Kiciman
Correspondent

CHAPEL HILL — The 2026-2027 season of performances from Carolina Performing Arts (CPA) is themed around wonder. Across genres, traditions and disciplines, each event helps audiences experience wonder in different ways.

In addition to the annual programming, CPA will launch its inaugural All.Together.Now Festival in February.

This season, all events will be either at Memorial Hall or Moeser Auditorium on the UNC-Chapell Hill campus. Ticketing information is available at each link below and will be updated by CPA as event dates approach.

Here’s a breakdown of the season and more about the new festival.

OCTOBER 2026

Oct. 13 Memorial Hall: Renée Fleming in Recital – Voice of Nature: the Anthropocene
Performed by acclaimed soprano Renée Fleming, the program explores one of the defining issues of our time—environmental change—through music and imagery.

Oct. 14 Memorial Hall: Renée Fleming – Music & Mind

Fleming and UNC neuroscientists and practitioners explore how the arts are informing cutting-edge developments and reshaping clinical practice.

Oct. 21 Moeser Auditorium: Alexi Kenney (Violin) – Shifting Ground

A time-traveling musical journey with works by J.S. Bach and contemporary composers, such as Rafiq Bhatia, Kaija Saariaho, Paul Wiancko, Salina Fisher and Angélica Negrón, accompanied by Xuan’s projection art.

Oct. 22 Moeser Auditorium: Alexi Kenney (Violin) & Janice Carrissa (Piano)

At the center of the program is The Wild Yes by composer and violinist Michi Wiancko, surrounded by music that spans geography, time, and tradition.

Oct. 30 Memorial Hall: BLACK LODGE and BARDO

On the night before Halloween, audiences are invited to enter BARDO, a haunting, liminal place between death and rebirth. The journey culminates with BLACK LODGE, a dark Lynchian goth-rock opera about a tormented writer trapped in the nightmarish Bardo, where he is forced to confront the darkest moment of his life.

NOVEMBER 2026

Nov. 7 Memorial Hall: Toshi Regan – Ecotones

Inspired by the ecological concept of an ecotone (the place where ecosystems overlap and create the conditions for new life), Ecotones explores the intersections that shape our lives, communities, and futures.

Nov. 12 Memorial Hall: Sankai Juku – TOTEM: Void and Height

Practicing the Japanese dance tradition of Butoh, the company’s performances exist somewhere between stillness and action, between gravity and transcendence

Nov. 18 Memorial Hall: Ballet BC

The triple bill explores what it means to be human in relationship to one another, moving from the vulnerable to the virtuosic, exploring deeply personal stories and moments of quiet intimacy to the exhilaration of masses of bodies moving together as one.

DECEMBER 2026

Dec. 5 and 6 Memorial Hall: Dorrance Dance’s The Nutcracker Suite

Part seasonal concert, part tap ballet, the production is set to Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn’s extraordinary 1960 reinterpretation of the Tchaikovsky score.

FEBRUARY 2027 FESTIVAL – All.Together.Now. is a new multi-day arts festival taking place February 18–21. The festival marks the launch of a new long-term initiative for CPA and the first event of its kind at UNC–Chapel Hill, with plans to grow and evolve across the Triangle in future years. Each year, the festival will be shaped by a curatorial focus. For its inaugural year, that focus is love and hope: a theme that reflects the festival’s belief in art as a force for connection, possibility, and collective discovery.

MARCH 2027

Mar. 4 Memorial Hall: The Surge: An Ode to Sinéad O’Connor

Inspired by the music, words, and enduring spirit of Sinéad O’Connor, director and choreographer Sonya Tayeh creates a powerful dance experience performed by ten women over the age of 40.

Mar. 19 Memorial Hall: The Vijay Iyer Quartet

Voted DownBeat‘s Jazz Artist of the Year four times and a MacArthur Fellow, Iyer has spent decades expanding the possibilities of the jazz quartet.

Mar. 31 Moeser Auditorium: Che Apalache

A blend of Appalachian bluegrass and old-time music with Latin American folk traditions including flamenco, murga, and candombe.

APRIL 2027

Apr. 20 Memorial Hall: Emanuel Ax (Piano) & Yo-Yo Ma (Cello)

Ax has described their collaboration as one in which the music leads and the musicians follow. What makes this collaboration remarkable is not simply technical mastery. It is the sense of connection that runs through every note.

Apr. 23 Memorial Hall: STREB EXTREME ACTION – DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME

Performers dive, fling, flip, and fall off of massive moving structures with split-second timing and fearless precision.

Pamir Kiciman is an artist who writes about a range of the arts and the creative process. This reporter can be reached at: Information@TheLocalReporter.press.