We’re not just celebrating the Fine Arts Center’s first fifty years this season. We’re also launching into the next half century.
In this special series, we present a mix of emerging artists we expect to break out in the years ahead and established artists whose vision and work is reimagining their art forms at this very moment.
Hamed Sinno
Thursday, October 9, 7:30 p.m.
Bowker Auditorium
Lebanese-American singer-songwriter Hamed Sinno’s R&B-tinged compositions, lush arrangements, and mellifluous vocals evoke artists ranging from Morcheeba and Massive Attack to Lambchop and Raphael Saadiq. Accompanied by Sinno’s electronic music and a string quartet, their impassioned lyrics speak truth to power and question the foundations of empire. Brilliant multimedia projections complete the experience and drive home the message.
The Brandee Younger Trio
Thursday, November 13, 7:30 p.m.
Bowker Auditorium
Innovative jazz harpist Brandee Younger nods to Dorothy Ashby and Alice Coltrane even while advancing her own expansive vision of jazz, which incorporates sounds from R&B, hip-hop, and other pop forms. Younger’s eighth and latest album, Gadabout Season (Impulse!, 2025), is her most personal to date. The album is gorgeous, rich, and engaging — much like Younger’s live sets.
Sunny Jain
Thursday, February 19, 8 p.m.
The Drake
Wild, Wild East, the latest project from the founder and leader of Brooklyn’s undefinable Red Baraat draws from Sunny Jain’s identity as a first-generation South Asian American and as a global musician. And it finds Jain sourcing musical inspiration from the scores of Bollywood classics and Spaghetti Westerns, Indian folk traditions, jazz improvisation, and rollicking psychedelic and surf guitar styles.
Hiroaki Umeda
Wednesday, March 11, 7:30 p.m.
Frederick C. Tillis Performance Hall
UMass is one of just five stops on Japanese avant-garde dancer/choreographer Hiroaki Umeda’s 2026 U.S. tour. The program includes two brand new works, Moving State 1, which will be performed by dancers from Umeda’s Somatic Field Project; and assimilating, Umeda’s own solo performance.
Hayato Sumino
Thursday, March 26, 7:30 p.m.
Bowker Auditorium
Hayato Sumino almost certainly is the hottest classical pianist on the planet. Sumino has amassed nearly 1.5 million followers on YouTube (where he goes by “Cateen”). Sumino is preternaturally talented. He’s a risk taker and an improviser who brings both charm and humor to his work. And the result is that not only is he huge online, he has live audiences around the world clamoring to see him perform.
Chief Adjuah (formerly Christian Scott)
Saturday, March 28, 8 p.m.
Frederick C. Tillis Performance Hall
Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah (formerly Christian Scott) has never been content to stand still and inhabit only the present. Adjuah has developed custom brass and string instruments as part of an ongoing quest to explore new sounds. His work as a composer and bandleader rejects restrictive ideas of genre, shattering boundaries in pursuit of limitless innovation. And as the bonus material he's released as part of the tenth anniversary special edition of his groundbreaking album, Stretch Music, make clear, even when he reaches back to the past, Adjuah has his eyes on the future. His endless pursuit of innovation has helped deliver awards and critical acclaim for Adjuah's thirteen career albums.
Lucía
Thursday, April 9, 8 p.m.
The Drake
Lucía is a twenty-six-year-old vocalist from Veracruz, México whose singular artistic vision bridges the gaps between jazz, Latin, and pop music. Winner of the 2022 Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Vocal Competition, Lucía is an enchanting live performer whose days of appearing in intimate settings like The Drake won’t last much longer.