Schwarzman Centre unveils 2027 season with Shankar, McGregor and Yo-Yo Ma

Oxford’s Stephen A. Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities has announced its second season, a programme running from January to July 2027 that spans music, dance, theatre, visual art, film and literature. Many of the projects have been specially commissioned and developed with Oxford University researchers.

John Fulljames, director of its cultural programme, said:

The Schwarzman Centre is bringing academics, artists and audiences together to open up new ways of seeing the world and imagine together how we navigate what comes next. Great culture and bold new ideas have always gone hand in hand.

New work by the cultural fellows

Three of the centre’s Cultural Fellows will present the fruits of their residencies. On 8 July, choreographer Wayne McGregor will be in conversation with Raphaël Millière of the Institute for Ethics in AI, joined by dancers of Company Wayne McGregor. They will explore the body, physical intelligence, quantum thinking and artificial intelligence.

McGregor has worked with Oxford academics on ways of turning cognitive and interoceptive (inner bodily feeling) signals into choreographic cues, so that, in the programme’s words, “tenderness becomes the instrument, not the dataset”. The research will feed into Tenderness Data, a full-length work for his company that premieres in Hong Kong in May 2028.

Anoushka Shankar performs new material in the Sohmen Concert Hall on 16 and 17 June. It grows from collaborations with Oxford academics on sound, health and wellbeing, and will sit alongside orchestrated works from her tour of Chapter III: We Return to Light.

Marshmallow Laser Feast and spatial sound artist James Bulley present Patterns of Perception: Night Song in the Black Box from 9 to 24 April. The immersive audiovisual installation uses a nightingale’s song to explore how the brain turns sound into perception.

Dance, hip hop and a cello residency

Korean choreographer Lia Kim leads K-FLOW: Riding the Korean Wave on 6 February. The day-long event, curated with Professor Jieun Kiaer and the Oxford Centre for Korean Studies, looks at the global reach of K-pop and K-culture. De La Soul curate a day on hip hop’s history and its links to wellbeing on 27 February.

Yo-Yo Ma takes up a mini-residency from 29 April to 2 May. He joins historian Peter Frankopan for the 2027 Tanner Lecture on human values and the environment, then gives a solo concert on 2 May.

The Quay Brothers join pianist Clare Hammond on 23 February for a new film built around Rachmaninov’s second sonata. Outrage + Optimism, the climate podcast, stages a live edition on 22 April with Christiana Figueres and the Orchestra for the Earth, culminating in Beethoven’s Fifth.

Theatre, exhibitions and chamber music

Vicky Featherstone directs a new play by Chris Thorpe, developed with the producers Fuel and Oxford researchers, from 21 to 24 April. Australian feminist collective Polytoxic bring the cabaret and burlesque show Dangerous Goods to the Theatre from 15 to 20 June.

In the White Box gallery, Precision Planet (8 April to 6 June) features new commissions by Cao Fei, Xin Liu, Abbas Zahedi and Tega Brain with Sam Lavigne. The Manchester Collective, with field recordist Chris Watson and filmmaker Carlos Casas, reimagine Michael Gordon’s Weather on 27 May.

The season also includes Britten Sinfonia with James MacMillan, Brooklyn Rider celebrating Philip Glass’s 90th birthday, Paul Lewis, Angela Hewitt and BBC New Generation Artists. Several concerts mark the 200th anniversary of Beethoven’s death.

Alexandra Vincent, the centre’s chief executive, said it was “creating a new and exciting infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities”. She added that the work explores “some of the pressing challenges facing humanity”, through things that, “in a technological age, only humans can do”.

The Schwarzman Centre is on Woodstock Road in Oxford’s Radcliffe Observatory Quarter. It also houses seven of the university’s humanities faculties and the Bodleian Humanities Library.

January

• 18 January – 11 February: Between Laughter and Tears: The Political Cartoons of Ella Baron (White Box)
• 20 January: Britten Sinfonia and James MacMillan (Sohmen Concert Hall)
• 31 January: Brooklyn Rider, Philip Glass at 90 (Sohmen Concert Hall)

February

• 6 February: K-FLOW: Riding the Korean Wave, with Lia Kim (Great Hall, Black Box, Cinema, Theatre and Sohmen Concert Hall)
• 7 February: Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra, Beethoven Archduke Trio and Septet (Sohmen Concert Hall)
• 11 February: Paul Lewis, Mozart + (Sohmen Concert Hall)
• 15–19 February: Mapping Languages (White Box)
• 21 February: Gildas Quartet, Surround Sound Sessions (Black Box)
• 23 February: ROAM, Clare Hammond and the Quay Brothers (Sohmen Concert Hall)
• 27 February: The Good Health Summit, Global Hip Hop, curated by De La Soul (Black Box, Theatre, Performance Foyer and Sohmen Concert Hall)

March

• 3 March: Hebrides Ensemble, Beethoven / Goya (Sohmen Concert Hall)

April

• 8 April – 6 June: Precision Planet (White Box)
• 9–24 April: Marshmallow Laser Feast, Patterns of Perception: Night Song (Black Box)
• 21–24 April: new play by Chris Thorpe, directed by Vicky Featherstone, with Fuel
• 22 April: Orchestra for the Earth and Outrage + Optimism (Sohmen Concert Hall)
• 29 April: Yo-Yo Ma in conversation with Peter Frankopan, Tanner Lecture (Sohmen Concert Hall)
• 30 April, 1pm: BBC New Generation Artists, Yibai Chen (Sohmen Concert Hall)
• 30 April, 7pm: BBC New Generation Artists, Gugg Piano Duo (Sohmen Concert Hall)

May

• 1 May: BBC New Generation Artists, Schubert Quintet, with Opus13 (Sohmen Concert Hall)
• 2 May: Yo-Yo Ma in concert (Sohmen Concert Hall)
• 8 and 9 May: The Terrestrial Trilogy (Theatre)
• 16 May: Angela Hewitt, Beethoven sonatas (Sohmen Concert Hall)
• 27 May: Manchester Collective, Weather (Sohmen Concert Hall)

June

• 15–20 June: Dangerous Goods, Polytoxic (Theatre)
• 16 and 17 June: Anoushka Shankar (Sohmen Concert Hall in the release’s highlights; no venue in the full listing)
• 20 June: Music from a City of Sanctuary (across the centre)

July

• 8 July: Wayne McGregor in conversation with Raphaël Millière, with Company Wayne McGregor (Sohmen Concert Hall)