Public Programs
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The New School is a place where education has always been interwoven with public life. Since our founding, our university has served as a meeting place where influential people and ideas intersect, where issues are debated the moment they surface, and where leaders break new ground on a diverse set of topics.
Each year, The New School hosts more than 1,000 public events with some of the most famous and engaged people, organizations, and institutions around the world. These events range from interviews to readings, performances to screenings, connecting what students learn in the classroom with what’s happening in the world.
New School public programs and events, both in person and online, offer viewers a chance to ask questions, discover new ideas, make connections, and find a community of people ready to engage. Unmatched in quality and quantity, public programs are a hallmark of the New School experience.
I saw a public program with Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart my freshman year—it was great! I learned that you really have to be thoughtful about what you want to do as an artist."
—Rafah Mahmud, BFA Dramatic Arts, School of Drama
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To learn about upcoming events, visit our Events Calendar or sign up for our monthly newsletters.
View past events on our YouTube channel.
Events

Roger Kellaway, John Goldsby & Terry Clarke Autumn Reunion Concert
Join us for a special evening of jazz as we welcome the esteemed trio of Roger Kellaway, John Goldsby, and Terry Clarke to The New School.The program is dedicated to jazz and will include historical and newer compositions by Roger Kellaway and John Goldsby. Kellaway, Goldsby, and Clarke will also reprise a number of selections from their Live at Tokyo album, recorded 40 years ago.Kicking off the month of October, this special Autumn Reunion brings together three musicians with a shared history and decades of experience. It’s an evening of music and connection you won’t want to miss.The concert is being produced by Samuel Turvey, a founder of the Charlie Parker Jazz Festival and its producer from 1993 to 2002. New School faculty member and alto saxophone player David Glasser is serving as the Assistant Producer. Pam Shaw and Victor Talbot are serving as the Creative Producers for this event.About Roger Kellaway: Roger is a Grammy Award winner and Academy Award nominated Pianist/Composer and has written in the fields of jazz, classical, and pop, also composing and scoring for films and television. He has worked with everyone from Ellington to Elvis, Joni Mitchell to Barbara Streisand, and Quincy Jones to Yo-Yo Ma. Roger’s commissions range from a ballet for George Ballachine and the New York Ballet to his most prized television credit, “Remembering You,” the closing theme for the groundbreaking “All in the Family” television series. In addition to leading many jazz recordings and accomplishments, he has appeared and recorded with Sonny Rollins, Wes Montgomery, Oliver Nelson, Ben Webster, Clark Terry and Bob Brookmeyer. Roger resides in Los Angeles.About John Goldsby:John is bass player and musician of extraordinary talents including his accomplishments in jazz education. He has led numerous successful recording sessions of his own and has performed with many legends including Scott Hamilton, Jay McShann, Barney Kessel, Michael Brecker, Mel Lewis, and John Lewis. During his 30-year tenure with the Westdeutscher Rundfunk Big Band (WDR Big Band) he performed and recorded with McCoy Tyner, John Scofield, Joshua Redman, Ambrose Akinmusire, Roy Hargrove, Knower, Nduduzo Makhathini, and many others. John’s current album—Big Band Bass—features Bob Mintzer and WDR Big Band. The Jazz Bass Book is Mr. Goldsby’s classic work documenting jazz bass players and their techniques from a historical perspective. John resides in Germany, near Cologne.About Terry Clarke:Terry is a Canadian jazz drummer who worked in the mid 60’s with the legendary saxophonist, John Handy III and is featured on the recording, Live at The Monterey Jazz Festival. Clarke then joined the GRAMMY-winning group, “The Fifth Dimension”, and appears with the group in the OSCAR WINNING Summer of Soul documentary. He later relocated to Toronto and played with luminaries such as Frank Rossolino, Lenny Breau, jazz guitar legend Jim Hall and piano icon Oscar Peterson. During this period Clarke played for 25 years with the GRAMMY and JUNO-winning jazz big-band, “Rob McConnell and the Boss Brass”. Clarke later worked in New York City with The Toshiko Akiyoshi Jazz Orchestra, Helen Merrill, Toots Theilmans, Red Mitchell and Roger Kellaway. Clarke is the only living drummer to be a Member of the Order of Canada (Canada’s highest civilian honour). His recording, It’s About Time, was the winner of “The Best Traditional Jazz Recording” at the 2010 JUNO Awards (Canadian GRAMMY).

Mannes Sounds Masterclass: Michal Tal
Dr. Michal Tal is one of Israel’s most distinguished and influential musicians. She is the recipient of the Frank Pelleg Lifetime Achievement Award for sustained artistic contribution at the highest level, presented by the Ministry of Culture (2024)Her multifaceted career spans three continents and includes numerous performances and recordings as both soloist and chamber musician. She is regularly invited to festivals, masterclasses, and teaching residencies, and serves as adjudicator at competitions at leading festivals and conservatories worldwide.Dr. Tal educates the next generation of piano teachers at the Buchmann-Mehta School of Music (Tel Aviv University).She initiated and directed the “Young Piano” program at the Jerusalem Music Centre. She is the Founder and Artistic Director of PianoWebFest, the international online piano festival, PianoFest Arad, and the “Tav HaNegev” association.
Philosophy Colloquium| Linda Martín Alcoff "Decolonizing the Philosophy of Race"
Respondent: Vanessa Guaraca GonzalezAbstract: This talk will argue that, far from peripheral issues concerning only civic equality, race and racism are fundamental aspects of current forms of social and economic organization, globally. My contribution is an interpretive framework that understands race as a historical formation, not simply a social construction. I will also argue that cultural racism needs to be brought to the fore as the principal way in which the control of global migration is justified.Bio: Linda Martín Alcoff is Professor of Philosophy at the City University ofNew York, former President of the American Philosophical Associationand Co-Director of the Society for Phenomenology and ExistentialPhilosophy and was recently inducted into the American Academy ofArts and Sciences. She has written 5 books, edited 11, and has over 100articles that address issues in epistemology, feminism, Foucault, racetheory, and Latin American philosophy. Her most recent book is Raceand Racism: A Decolonial Approach (Oxford UP 2025); her next book ison what she calls “Extractivist Epistemology.” In 2021, she was listed asthe third most influential philosopher by Academic Influence. Alcoff isoriginally from Panama, immigrated to the United States as a child, andlives today happily in Brooklyn. For more info go to www.alcoff.com

GIDEST Seminar with Katherine Wolkoff
Please join us for a seminar with Katherine Wolkoff, 2026-27 GIDEST Faculty Fellow and Associate Professor of Photography at Parsons School of Design. Katherine will share large-format pinhole photographs and cut-paper collages from Another Day Without Birds, her search for migrating birds on Block Island as their numbers decline.Katherine Wolkoff is a photographer whose work explores absence, crisis, and the unseen in the natural world. Her current project, Night Migrations, documents six critical stopover sites along the Atlantic Flyway—from Nova Scotia to Cuba—investigating environmental disruption through photographic traces rather than direct representation. Central to this work are collaborations with two female ornithologists—one historical, one contemporary—whose methods of meticulous observation and data collection inform her practice.Katherine’s work has been exhibited at Benrubi Gallery, Sasha Wolf Gallery, and Danziger Projects, and is held in public collections including Yale University Library, the RISD Museum, and the Norton Museum of Art. Her photographs have been featured in Artforum, The New Yorker, and Aperture. She received her MFA from Yale School of Art. GIDEST seminars are devoted to discussion of pre-circulated materials. The materials for this event can be found here on the GIDEST site for attendees to read in advance. This event is part of the bi-weekly GIDEST Seminars presented by the Graduate Institute for Design, Ethnography & Social Thought.

BERLIN EXILE(S) WORKSHOP PERFORMANCE
Berlin Exile(s) traces a century of upheaval, reimagining the darkest chapters of modern German history as both lens and mirror. Written by Drew Lichtenberg (Artistic Producer of the Shakespeare Theater in DC) and directed by Cecilia Rubino, with a media design by Ulrich Lehman, this cabaret-style performance follows artists, writers, and thinkers whose lives were transformed by exile. Drawing on writings by Hannah Arendt, Bertolt Brecht, and Walter Benjamin, alongside cabaret songs, poetry, and political music by Hugo Ball, Friedrich Holländer, Kurt Weill, and Hanns Eisler, the evening brings the experience of displacement vividly to life.Workshop Performances: Free and open to the publicFriday, October 16 at 6:30 pm, at The New School, Wollman Hall, 5th Floor, 65 West 11th StreetSaturday, October 17 at 6:30 pm, St Paul’s Lutheran Church in the Village, West 22nd Street

(Un)Silent Film: THE GENERAL in Concert
Experience Buster Keaton’s beloved silent-film classic The General on the big screen, with Carl Davis’s celebrated score, performed live by the (Un)Silent Film Orchestra.Set during the American Civil War, The General follows railroad engineer Johnnie Gray as he sets out on an extraordinary mission to rescue his beloved locomotive, and the woman he loves. Widely regarded as one of the greatest silent comedies ever made, the film combines Keaton’s signature physical comedy, daring stunts, and inventive visual storytelling. ABOUT THE (UN)SILENT FILM SERIES The (Un)Silent Film series has been critical in advancing the resurgence of film screenings with live music and has been hosted by Matthew Broderick, Bill Irwin, Rob Bartlett, Ed Rothstein, and Michael Bacon. (Un)Silent Film nights have presented world premieres of works composed for The Birds and The Immigrant (by Nathan Kamal and Alexis Cuadrado, respectively), a New York premiere of a score by Hollywood composer Craig Marks for Sherlock, Jr., and Charlie Chaplin’s original scores for The Gold Rush and other Chaplin classics. In Spring 2024, (Un)Silent presented the world premiere of a new score for the iconic film Metropolis, composed by Mannes student Amir Sanjari. In Fall 2024, the acclaimed Philip Glass score for Tod Browning’s 1931 classic Dracula, originally composed for the Kronos Quartet, was performed live to film by the Orange Road Quartet. The 2025–26 season continued the series’ tradition of pairing classic cinema with live music. (Un)Silent Film presented F.W. Murnau’s 1927 classic Sunrise with a modern score by Joe Kraemer, composer of film scores for The Way of the Gun, Jack Reacher, and Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation. The season also featured The Phantom Carriage (1921), directed by and starring Victor Sjöström, with a world-premiere score by Mannes student Amir Sanjari, performed live to film by the Orange Road Quartet.(Un)Silent Film Orchestra features students from the Mannes School of Music and the School of Jazz and Contemporary Music at The New School.

