This story was originally published by ArtsATL.
Atlanta’s music scene in 2024 included everything from hip-hop to Handel and heavy metal, jazz, blues and indie-punk.
Classical music lovers attended concerts at Symphony Hall, the Schwartz Center for Performing Arts, Spivey Hall, Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre, Pullman Yards, Piedmont Park, Sandy Springs’ Byers Theatre, the Carlos Museum and sacred spaces such as First Presbyterian Church in Midtown and Ahavath Achim synagogue in Buckhead. Even Eddie’s Attic, Decatur’s legendary singer-songwriter hub, went classical with a one-night only concert by the Georgia Chamber Players.
Nathalie Stutzmann, now in the third year of her four-year contract with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, conducted 19 of the orchestra’s 35 programs in 2024, but the Symphony’s big splash will kick off in January with the Beethoven Project: Audiences will hear all nine of his symphonies in 2025.
The Atlanta Opera generated excitement with news that it is renovating the historic Bobby Jones Clubhouse in Buckhead and will open a small recital hall there. In its mission to reach new audiences, the Opera’s winning 96-Hour Opera Festival work played at Morehouse College and its ambitious “Bohème” and “Rent” experiment took place at Pullman Yards. Sadly, strong casts in those two operas sang to a lot of empty seats.
Credit: Photo courtesy of The Breman
Credit: Photo courtesy of The Breman
The jazz scene was a mixed bag. The Breman Museum included jazz in its expanded arts and culture offerings, but the Velvet Note jazz club in Alpharetta hit hard times. Some artists who performed there this year were not paid, according to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution story in August. In an online video interview, owner Tamara Fuller admitted she is struggling financially but has resolved to stay open. The club’s thinly populated website isn’t promising.
There’s good news elsewhere, however. A group of investors and musicians, led by Atlanta saxophonist Will Scruggs, announced plans to open the Phoenix City Jazz Club in Decatur’s old post office building, and All Saints’ Episcopal Church in Midtown launched a jazz series in the summer featuring popular Atlanta artists including Joe Alterman. The series continues in 2025.
ArtsATL music writer Lindsay Thomaston tracked Atlanta bands such as indie-punk Lesibu Grand, the Marias and the glam pop duo Coco & Clair Clair, all of which made waves in town this year.
Sifting through all of that, ArtsATL music writers came up with the nine performances that resonated with them the most this year.
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Sondra Radvanovsky, Spivey Hall, January 2024
Music writer Pierre Ruhe was ecstatic about this superstar soprano’s performance. Not only was she “electrifying,” Ruhe wrote, but her subject matter — her mother’s dementia and eventual death — was both daring and honest.
“Dido and Aeneas,” Atlanta Baroque Orchestra and staibdance, Emory’s Glenn Memorial Church, February 2024
This music and dance collaboration blossomed in a bright and enchanting performance of the Henry Purcell opera. The audience sight lines weren’t ideal, but experiencing goth drag queen Michael Galvin as the Sorceress was just one of the evening’s many delights.
“Die Walküre,” Atlanta Opera, Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre, April 2024
For any opera company to embark on all four of Wagner’s “Ring Cycle” operas is daunting. But the Atlanta Opera’s artistic director, Tomer Zvulun, loves a good challenge, and this year’s “Ring” opera, “Die Walküre” was all fire, fury and magnificence, another illustration that the Atlanta Opera is a world-class institution.
“The Sacrifice of Isaac,” Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, May 2024
The ASO’s Music Director Laureate Robert Spano conducted the world premiere of this deeply moving oratorio. Composer Jonathan Leshnoff gave the Chamber Chorus powerful sections of sung and spoken word, some in Hebrew, and, in an eerily effective, counterintuitive move, wrote the role of God for a countertenor.
André 3000, Atlanta Jazz Festival, May 2024
The Grammy-winning hip-hop artist and greatest rapper of all time showed up with his flute at the Atlanta Jazz Festival — always a summer highlight in part because it’s free — and in November he and his crew played a mainly improvised concert at the Fox Theatre, the last stop on his New Blue Sun album tour.
Credit: John Stephens
Credit: John Stephens
”Ashes and Leviathan” Tour, Mastodon and Lamb of God, Ameris Bank Amphitheatre, June 2024
These heavy metal titans brought bestial abandon to Herman Melville’s Moby Dick and delved into the post 9/11 Iraq War. ArtsATL’s Jordan Owen found the performance by the decades-old bands to be as relevant and real as ever.
The New American Sinfonietta, First Presbyterian Church of Atlanta, June 2024
The orchestra’s debut concert in Atlanta was a solidly Mozart, Beethoven and Haydn affair, led by conductors Michael Palmer, who in the 1960s was Robert Shaw’s assistant at the ASO, Logan Souther and Alexander Wilkerson. What made the concert so special was the intimacy of the venue and the exquisite sound quality.
“American Railroad,” Silkroad Ensemble, Schwartz Center for Performing Arts, December 2024
This deeply moving concert told stories of the immigrant and Black laborers who built the railroad under horrendous conditions. Founded in 1998 by cellist Yo-Yo Ma and now led by Grammy- and Pulitzer-winning musician Rhiannon Giddens, the ensemble threaded together history, compassion and stellar, multicultural musicianship.
Yo-Yo Ma, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Symphony Hall, December 2024
Ma is no longer involved with Silkroad, but he appeared with the ASO for a single, booked-solid-since-July concert. It was a thrilling night that revealed not only Ma’s magnificent musicianship but also his generosity. For the Villa-Lobos work “Bachianas Brasileiras,” he sat with the cello section — just another musician making music. Yeah, right.
Credit: ArtsATL
Credit: ArtsATL
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