The New School's College of Performing Arts Will Celebrate The Holidays

The New School's College of Performing Arts – Mannes, Jazz, Drama will celebrate the holidays on Thursday, December 5, 2024 at 7:30pm, with special performances of Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn’s The Nutcracker Suite and Oliver Nelson’s arrangement of Sergei Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf by the New School Studio Orchestra (NSSO) featuring guest artists including Nick Marchione, led by Keller Coker, Dean, School of Jazz and Contemporary Music. This event is open to the public and free with registration.

Ellington and Strayhorn’s The Nutcracker Suite features jazz interpretations of themes from Tchaikovsky’s beloved 1892 ballet score. The Smithsonian writes, “Ellington and Strayhorn did not simply place jazz rhythms over Tchaikovsky's music. Instead, they picked up the notes, recast the beats, communed with the themes, and recreated the work, turning it into something that was at once completely their own and completely Tchaikovsky's. In doing so, they showed that while music may be the universal language, it is spoken with many accents (and therein lies the fun).”

Of the 1966 Peter and the Wolf recording of Oliver Nelson’s arrangement of Sergei Prokofiev’s iconic work, AllMusic writes “Oliver Nelson arranged a variety of themes from Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolfinto a swinging suite featuring the great organist Jimmy Smith. Although there is no verbal narrative on this LP, Nelson's liner notes tell the story, which can actually be followed through the music, and Smith pays respect to the original melodies while making strong statements of his own. [It’s] a classic of its kind.”

The College of Performing Arts’ newest large ensemble, the New School Studio Orchestra (NSSO), is composed of students from the School of Jazz and Contemporary Music and Mannes School of Music, and performs music from a wide variety of genres including jazz, soul, pop, and improvised music. The NSSO kicked off its three-concert season on October 24, 2024 with an evening dedicated to the compositions and arrangements by the great jazz trombonist and composer Bob Brookmeyer. On May 2, 2025, the U.S. premiere of Carla Bley’s rarely performed but hugely influential Escalator Over the Hill, described by Rolling Stone as “an international musical encounter of the first order,”will be the epic close to this season’s series, led by GRAMMY®-winning composer, pianist, and conductor, Arturo O'Farrill and Keller Coker. 

"This is an exciting season for the School of Jazz and Contemporary Music,” says Keller Coker, Dean, School of Jazz and Contemporary Music and Associate Dean, College of Performing Arts. “The New School Studio Orchestra presents the U.S. premiere of Carla Bley's rarely performed Escalator Over the Hill in May and starts off the fall in a big way with music by Bob Brookmeyer in October and Ellington's beloved Nutcracker Suite in December – I can't wait for people to hear this group. We have a boygenius Ensemble for the first time, and our Fall Ensemble Festival features Reggie Workman's John Coltrane Ensemble, the Carla Bley Ensemble directed by Arturo O'Farrill, and the Waterfalls 90s R&B Ensemble directed by Marlon Saunders, as well as groups helmed by Immanuel Wilkins, Jane Ira Bloom, Joel Ross, Mary Halvorson and more. Folks should come get in the room with these talented musicians."

Performances by students and faculty at the College of Performing Arts break new ground, pushing the boundaries of convention and reinventing traditional forms. Additional highlights for the College this season include (Un)Silent Film series presenting Tod Browning’s classic film Dracula with Philip Glass’s score performed by Orange Road Quartet, the Cuker and Stern Graduate String Quartet-in-Residence, with pianist and guest conductor Michael Riesman on October 25; the Namekawa-Davies Duo (Maki Namekawa and Dennis Russell Davies) in Pianographique featuring music by Philip Glass, Laurie Anderson, and Steve Reich, with real-time visualizations by Cori O’Lan, on October 26; Mannes Opera’s double bill featuring one-act operas by David T. Little and Kamala Sankaram on November 8 and 9; performances by celebrated Mannes/School of Jazz Ensembles-in-Residence The Westerlies, Sandbox Percussion, and JACK Quartet throughout the season, including Sandbox Percussion’s world premiere of Michael Torke’s BLOOM on December 11; the New School Studio Orchestra performing Duke Ellington’s The Nutcracker Suite on December 5; and multiple performances of the Mannes Orchestra at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, including Richard Einhorn’s Voices of Light to the silent film The Passion of Joan of Arc with The New York Choral Society on November 1, the U.S. premiere of Augustus Hailstork’s Ndemera on December 9, and Sandbox Percussion in Viet Cuong’s percussion concerto Re(new)al paired with John Zorn’s violin concerto Contes de Fées performed by Stefan Jackiw on April 11. The New School Studio Orchestra presents the U.S. premiere of jazz great Carla Bley’s rarely heard landmark album Escalator Over the Hill on May 2.  

The College presents approximately 900 performances each year, nearly all of which are free and open to the public, creating an incredible performing arts resource for New Yorkers and visitors alike.