At 10:45 a.m. today in the Amphitheater, three beloved and well-known figures at Chautauqua — Wynton Marsalis, Kate Hamill and the Rev. Otis Moss III — will take the stage together for the final lecture in the 2024 Chautauqua Lecture Series.
The lecture concludes the Week Nine theme of “Rising Together: Our Century of Creativity and Collaboration with Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra.”
On Monday, Marsalis delivered the opening morning lecture of the week, followed by two evening entertainment performances of his composition “All Rise” in collaboration with the JLCO, Buffalo Philharmonic Chorus and the Music Festival Symphony Orchestra on Wednesday and Thursday evening — all part of an ongoing documentary project by PBS, titled “Chautauqua At 150: Wynton Marsalis’ All Rise,” produced by Black Robin Media and executive producer Lynne Robinson.
Marsalis is an internationally-acclaimed composer, musician and music educator. In 1987, he co-founded Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, which has since grown to present expansive, diverse programming across media.
Hamill returned to the Institution this summer after her adaptation of Pride and Prejudice graced the stage last season as the opening Chautauqua Theater Company mainstage production of 2023. This season, her play The Light and The Dark had its world premiere in Bratton Theater. She’s one of the most prolific contemporary playwrights and in 2017, The Wall Street Journal named her Playwright of the Year.
“She is deeply passionate about creating new feminist, female-centered classics, both in new plays and in adaptation — stories that center around complicated women,” according to her website biography.
Moss is chaplain-in-residence for Week Nine at the Institution, preaching every morning in the Amp. Since 2008, he’s served as senior pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, preaching “theology of liberation rooted in a Black Spirituality of love and justice,” according to Trinity’s website, and uses the scholarship of Martin Luther King Jr. and Howard Thurman alongside Biblical texts, a bevy of religious traditions, Black culture and his own personal experiences to offer a methodology on “performing spiritual resistance by uniting two pillars of his ministry: love and justice.”
In the theme of “Rising Together,” the three Chautauquans will focus on themes of the week like diversity, unity, community and resilience. Through interdisciplinary art and faith, they will engage in conversation about these important, evolving ideas and how communities might move forward together.
