Martin Puryear: Reflections in Movement, Music, and Words
- Performance
- Ticket Required
Conceived and Hosted by Terrance McKnight
Suzanne and Paul Westlake Performing Arts Center
Photo © Julie Yarbrough
About The Event
New York classical-radio personality and Cleveland native Terrance McKnight curates an evening of music, dance, and poetry which coincides with the works on display in Martin Puryear: Nexus. McKnight is joined by internationally acclaimed pianist/composer Donal Fox, balafon master Famoro Dioubaté, and others.
McKnight is a commentator, curator, writer, pianist, storyteller, and actor and the weekday afternoon and evening host for WQXR radio station in New York. It is his commitment to music and community building, combined with his respect for his subject matter, that audiences find riveting and memory making.
Recent notable projects include Handel: Made in America, which McKnight cocreated and performed in at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2024; Langston & Beethoven: Black & Proud, a live show he created and performed in 2023, which combined the poetry of Langston Hughes, traditional and contemporary chamber music works, and storytelling, and which toured and presented at Lincoln Center’s Sidewalk Studio; Every Voice, his 2023 podcast series for WQXR that investigated representations of Blackness in opera; and All Ears with Terrance McKnight, which received an ASCAP Deems Taylor Radio Broadcast Award.
McKnight has hosted concerts for the Atlanta Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, New Jersey Symphony, and the New York Philharmonic’s Young People’s Concerts. He has given a keynote address at the 2022 Music Teachers National Association Conference and participated in the Bang on a Can Summer Festival Journalism Symposium in 2022 and 2023. He has curated a series of concerts and audio tours in association with the 2019 exhibition Charles White: A Retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art.
McKnight currently serves on the board of MacDowell, is the artistic advisor to the Harlem Chamber Players, and is a former member of the Artistic Council for the Hermitage Artist Retreat.
The views expressed by performers during this event are their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Cleveland Museum of Art.
Sponsors
This program is presented by Rebecca and Irad Carmi.
The 2025–26 Performing Arts Series is sponsored by the Musart Society. This program is made possible in part by the Ernest L. and Louise M. Gartner Fund, the P. J. McMyler Musical Endowment Fund, and the Anton and Rose Zverina Music Fund.
