Spivey Hall’s 2023-24 season continues its high quality musical blend

This story was originally published by ArtsATL.

Spivey Hall’s 33rd season continues the jewel-box recital hall’s reputation for hosting top international musicians in classical, jazz and world music.

The season opens in the fall with pianist Inon Barnatan (Sept. 24) and a female vocal group from Zimbabwe called Nobuntu (Oct. 13). It reaches a winter midpoint with star soprano Sondra Radvanovsky (Jan. 14). The conclusion comes in the spring of 2024 with the Isidore String Quartet (May 4) and a concert by Spivey organist Alan Morrison and Friends (May 12). In all, there are some 25 main concerts, mixed in with assorted special events plus youth and educational shows.

Nobuntu, a vocal group from Zimbabwe, will play Spivey Hall Oct. 13.

Subscribers get dibs on the best seats. Single tickets go on sale Aug. 1. The season’s complete calendar is now on the Spivey Hall website.

The upcoming season will be the first season programmed by Spivey’s executive and artistic director, Katie Lehman, the third leader in its history. She officially started the job in January 2022, following Sam Dixon’s 17-year tenure. Given that classical performers are sometimes booked two or more years in advance, the current season is the tail end of Dixon’s artistic vision. Meanwhile, Lehman had time to learn about Spivey’s internal culture and the politics and priorities of Clayton State University, in Morrow, about 12 miles south of Atlanta.

Lehman seems a good fit for Spivey, a high-end venue on a college campus. She had served, most recently, as an interim artistic planner with the Atlanta Symphony as the orchestra was returning to live concerts after pandemic lockdowns and the programming chaos caused by ongoing COVID-19 cancellations and unpredictable international travel. Before her stint with the ASO, among other activities, she was the boss of the Boulder Philharmonic and a faculty member at The University of the South, teaching and performing as a violinist, and concurrently directing the Sewanee Summer Music Festival and the Sewanee Performing Arts Series.

“I think about Spivey Hall’s role in Atlanta’s ecosystem,” Lehman says. “We have a unique place, an acoustically perfect space, but also its size, at 400 seats. It’s a truly intimate space unlike any other in the region. We have a devoted community here. You’re within a few feet of the artist, you’re in a space where everyone enjoys the music together.”

This physical and acoustical reality has always helped steer programing. You’ll rarely see the glitziest names on the Spivey boards, in part because those musicians command an outrageous fee (think Yuja Wang or Yo-Yo Ma) and also because audiences have so many other opportunities to hear them perform, usually on much grander stages. Their ubiquity, in effect, makes them less appealing in this smaller space.

“It’s as close as a salon experience that you can get,” Lehman says of the hall. “Our artists love performing here and tell us they have a personal experience at Spivey that no place else offers.”

At first glance, Lehman’s first season might be called conservative or, perhaps, akin to comfort food: loaded with offerings that are high-calorie and predictably satisfying. More than a few of the coming artists already boast established Atlanta reputations, having performed recently with the ASO, or on Emory’s Candler Concert Series, or even at Spivey itself.

On the piano series, for example, of the five pianists, just one is making an Atlanta-area debut: Alexander Malofeev, a Russian pianist who won the Tchaikovsky Piano Competition in Moscow when he was, gulp, 13 years old. (Van Cliburn was a youngster of 23 when he won the inaugural Tchaikovsky Competition, which was front-page news at the height of the Cold War.) Malofeev, almost a decade since his win, continues to earn wild praise as a flamboyant virtuoso and a substantive artist. His Spivey performance (March 17) is centered on Russian composers — Scriabin, Medtner, Rachmaninoff — and looks to be a season highlight.

But no less compelling are upcoming Spivey recitals by the brilliant, comprehensive pianist Barnatan (who played with the ASO earlier this season), or French pianist Hélène Grimaud (who played at Emory’s Schwartz Center earlier this season), or the elegant and persuasive Emanuel Ax (who played with the ASO earlier this season).

The aim, says Lehman, “is to bring emerging artists when they’re ready and when it’s the right moment.” It’s all about balances, she continues, “finding the right timing and with the other artists on the season and with their repertoire. For younger artists it’s a real achievement to play at Spivey Hall. We’re trying to balance freshness while not having our audience feel that the Spivey world has been turned upside down.”

Star soprano Sondra Radvanovsky comes to Spivey Hall Jan. 14.

Beyond the high artistic caliber of the musician, Lehman says she’s attracted to “programs that are more than a collection of great pieces. Programs with a narrative arc, and that involve commissions and a sense of a personal journey, are especially appealing and work really well here.”

She cites a recital soprano Radvanovsky performed last fall at Carnegie Hall, “From Loss to Love.” Her starring roles in Verdi operas at the Met have made her one of the most acclaimed sopranos of our time. The online opera fanzine parterre.com reviewed the “Loss and Love” performance: “Genuine warmth flooded across the footlights in both directions. Radvanovsky eschewed the customary stuffiness of the recital format, often speaking directly to the audience and putting her selections in a highly personal context.” That she’s “frank and filterless” was part of the show’s success. Lehman asked the singer to bring the same program to Spivey.

Another draw on the vocal series will be baritone Justin Austin (Feb. 18) a promising talent on the rise. After stepping in for a sick colleague at the Met’s hit opera “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” he’s set for important roles in big productions. Lehman calls him “an incredible find with huge news on the horizon.”

As Lehman works her way through 33 years of past Spivey programming, she spotted gaps needing to be filled. The celebrated Ying Quartet has never played the venue. The decision to bring them now was easy: Next season they’ll be on tour with double bass super-virtuoso, composer, and Marietta native Xavier Foley (who performed with the ASO last season). As one perceptive critic noted, “Foley the composer is clearly on his way. As a performer, he’s already sensational.” For this April 22 performance, Spivey co-commissions a new work from Foley for string quintet, to be paired with Dvorak’s earthy and charming String Quintet, Op. 77. It’s another highly anticipated event.

Since the Isadore String Quartet took home first prize at a major competition in 2022, they’ve been almost impossible to get — indeed, they’re already booked solid for the next several seasons. They visit the Morrow stage, an ideal space for the string quartet genre next May.

The jazz series is headlined by pianist Christian Sands (Oct. 21) and jazz vocalist Cécile McLoran Salvant (Feb. 17), a winner of Grammy awards and a MacArthur “genius” award, and fast-rising Atlanta pianist Joe Alterman (Dec. 1).

As ever, Spivey’s 2023-24 season looks to extend the hall’s history of bringing top talent to the Atlanta area — in a space where you can actually hear them beautifully and clearly — while offering more than a few surprises.

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Pierre Ruhe was the founding executive director and editor of ArtsATL. He’s been a critic and cultural reporter for the Washington Post, London’s Financial Times and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and was director of artistic planning for the Alabama Symphony Orchestra. He is publications director of Early Music America.

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