The 2025 version of Lincoln Center’s long-running American Songbook, titled Singer Outsiders, will bring the musical achievements of women and non-binary artists into focus, showing that their remarkable creations—often relegated to a separate silo—have been innovative and singular in their own right.
“America as a concept is so elastic,” says Shanta Thake, Lincoln Center’s Executive Vice President, Ehrenkranz Chief Artistic Officer, “so to continue expanding what that means for all of us and embracing the idea of what we listen to is very important.” Discussing this season’s Songbook curators, Brooklyn-born and bred composer and performer Tamar-kali and the frontwoman of legendary bands Bikini Kill and Le Tigre Kathleen Hanna, Thake notes that “they are really interested in building community that matches what we are trying to do. It’s all about the connections to what came before and what might be ahead, something that both women do in many beautiful ways.”
Singer Outsiders opens February 11 with History’s Persistent Voice, a multimedia evening at Alice Tully Hall that’s devised and sung by Grammy-winning soprano Julia Bullock, who will sing Cleopatra at the Metropolitan Opera in John Adams’ Antony and Cleopatra later this spring. Bullock’s performance will include new vocal commissions by composers Jessie Montgomery, Tania León, Allison Loggins-Hull, Carolyn Yarnell, and Pamela Z.
“In this piece, Julia is presenting a part of our history that we need to remind ourselves of, along with highlighting several female composers, celebrating their work in a new way,” Thake explains.
Other highlights include the return of singer-songwriter Shaina Taub a decade after her memorable American Songbook debut and fresh off her Tony-winning score and book for the musical Suffs (March 21, Jazz at Lincoln Center’s The Appel Room); eclectic artist Meshell Ndegeocello, whose latest album, No More Water, is a musical tribute to James Baldwin (March 23, The Appel Room); and tribute events at the David Rubenstein Atrium: a screening of Poly Styrene: I Am A Cliché, a new documentary about the first woman of color to front a UK rock band (March 26), a Tribute to Poly Styrene (March 28), and a
Tribute to the Slits, another pioneering UK group (April 4).
If there’s one event that Thake is looking forward to, it’s another tribute concert, this one at David Geffen Hall on April 6, as two seminal groups in their own right, Gossip and ESG, come together to honor the unsung trailblazing rock group, Fanny, which was the first all-female rock band to record a full album for a major record label, in the mid-’70s.
“I am very excited for this one because the artists themselves are so excited to be sharing a stage on a bill that hasn’t happened before,” she says. “That to me is a beautiful articulation of not only celebrating the legacy of artists who have been champions of empowerment for themselves and the community but also being fans and enjoying watch their heroes perform.”
Closing this season’s series, on April 15 at David Geffen Hall, is Latin Grammy winner Ana Tijoux, the French Chilean rapper and songwriter who just released her latest album Vida, which features songs that AllMusic says “weave activism, emotional and spiritual growth ... offered freely and generously.” Tijoux and her band will bring South America to American Songbook.
Each Songbook season is unique, as Singer Outsiders demonstrates, according to Thake. “It feels like this is the time to be elevating female and nonbinary voices, highlighting them as part of who we are as Americans, as people sharing this country together,” she explains. “Artists are always 10 steps ahead of the rest of us—they’re constantly holding up a mirror to what’s happening in our society, through their own lived experience. Artists often lead the conversation since their job is to have their finger on the pulse of what is swirling around us. It’s not surprising that these incredible artists have projects centered around what’s happening in our own time.
"This is what’s happening—we need to pay attention."
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