SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL
The Music and Vision of Gordon Parks
Something Beautiful
Something Beautiful will partner with local cultural institutions, schools and universities, youth organizations, museums, libraries, and community centers, inviting participants to document their own communities through sound, image and story.
Young people will capture the people and places that define their neighborhoods, including the realities they want others to notice and the possibilities they want others to imagine. Elders will share photographs and first-person narratives that preserve community histories and family legacies. Music students will create sonic responses to Parks’ images. Participants across generations will document changing neighborhoods, home life, urban and rural landscapes, experiences of inequity, acts of resistance, and everyday expressions of dignity, joy and shared humanity.
Like Parks, participants will be encouraged to hold seemingly opposing truths within the same frame: injustice and beauty, struggle and resilience, division and belonging - what America is and what America might become. The goal is to reflect the choice Gordon Parks made: to look directly at the world around him and transform what he saw through his own creative voice.
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The Gordon Parks Sound: Reflections of America
We know Gordon Parks through his images. His photographs have become part of our collective visual memory of twentieth-century America: segregation and the civil rights movement, poverty and inequality, fashion and celebrity, families and neighborhoods, private tenderness and public struggle.
But Gordon Parks the musician is a much less familiar presence. Something Beautiful celebrates Parks’ multifaceted artistry by presenting his Symphonic Set for Piano and Orchestra in partnership with major American orchestras, giving national audiences an opportunity not simply to discover another facet of Parks’ remarkable creativity, but to hear his work within the larger history of Black American music.
I propose to center Parks’ Symphonic Set within concert programs that position him within the proud lineage of Black composers whose music has transformed the American sound. In cities central to Parks’ life and work, I will work with leading institutions to curate programs that place Parks’ music in rightful conversation with that of composers like William Grant Still and Duke Ellington, artists who expanded the possibilities of American music while illuminating the beauty, complexity and dignity of African American life.
This musical lineage reinforces a central idea of Something Beautiful. For these artists, beauty was never disconnected from history. Ellington, Still and Parks created work within a nation shaped by racial exclusion while asserting, through their art, the breadth and complexity of Black experience. Their music could carry sorrow and celebration, protest and pride, memory and aspiration. In different ways, each claimed the freedom to define Black life from within rather than allowing it to be defined from outside.
Every performance will invite collaboration with the Gordon Parks Foundation to feature projections of Parks’ photography as a visual environment for his music. Image and sound together will reveal an artist continually searching for ways to make America visible to itself.
These performances will trace the geography of Parks’ life and creative journey through the following cities, in partnership with leading cultural institutions:
Fort Scott/Kansas City:in partnership with the Kansas City Symphony and the Gordon Parks Museum
The Twin Cities:in partnership with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra
Chicago:in partnership with the Chicago Symphony, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Stony Island Arts Bank
Washington, DC:in partnership with the National Symphony Orchestra and the National Gallery of Art
Harlem/New York:in partnership with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s and the Museum of Modern Art
Birmingham and Mobile:in partnership with the Alabama Symphony Orchestra, the Mobile Symphony Orchestra and the Birmingham Museum of Art
Los Angeles:in partnership with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art
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The Gordon Parks Legacy: A Living Portrait of America
In partnership with the Gordon Parks Foundation, Something Beautiful can become much more than a touring project: it can establish a national Gordon Parks legacy initiative.
As the project moves among American communities, it will build a permanent archive of creative expression across disciplines: a living portrait of America that extends Parks’ artistic vision into the present. The project will yield a national digital archive, local and national exhibitions, a podcast series and a video documentary, preserving the art created during the residencies and the perspectives and experiences behind it.
Crucially, Something Beautiful will work closely with local organizations, responding to specific community needs and priorities and creating lasting resources: continuing curricula, commissioned works, scholarships, mentorship cohorts, oral-history platforms, artistic tools and new partnerships among institutions. The ultimate legacy of Something Beautiful will be a growing network of people and communities empowered to observe more closely, tell their own stories and use creativity to confront the challenges around them.
Something Beautiful will also create dialogue across regions and geographies. A photograph made by a teenager in rural Kansas can inform a composition by a music student in Los Angeles. A grandmother’s memory from Birmingham can inspire a young filmmaker in New York. A photograph of a family kitchen in Minnesota can live beside an image of a Harlem streetscape. Together, individual expressions will accumulate into a complex portrait of contemporary America: its inequities and divisions, but also its creativity, resilience, interconnectedness and capacity for change.
Most importantly, Something Beautiful can amplify the Gordon Parks Foundation’s existing education initiatives and partnerships by serving as an additional national discovery pipeline to identify young artists whose talent and perspective express what Gordon Parks called “the common search for a better life and a better world.”
The Foundation, local partners and participating artists could identify young people in each community whose work demonstrates artistic promise, originality and qualities of observation, empathy and social engagement. These candidates would be invited into a cohort of Gordon Parks Young Artists, receiving ongoing mentorship, portfolio reviews, access to Parks’ archive, introductions to working artists and opportunities to participate in future Foundation programming.
Gordon Parks understood that being seen could change a life. His own trajectory was transformed when others recognized his talent and gave him access, opportunity and support. Something Beautiful carries that principle forward by identifying young artists across America, investing in their creative agency, and giving them platforms through which to show us the world as they see it.
Gordon Parks showed us that art can illuminate what is wrong without surrendering our ability to see what is beautiful; that it can document injustice while asserting dignity; and that it can reveal the world as it is while helping us imagine the world as it could be.
Something Beautiful carries that vision forward, asking a new generation to see America, and to help shape what America becomes.
ABOUT LARA DOWNES
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Recently honored as Classical Woman of the Year by NPR’s Performance Today, American pianist Lara Downes is a visionary trailblazer. She has garnered millions of fans spanning diverse communities from her Billboard Chart-topping recordings, her prestigious tour schedule, and her work as a beloved personality and host.
In addition to being the first ever Creative Partner for the LA Chamber Orchestra, Lara’s recent and upcoming onstage adventures include guest appearances with the orchestras of Philadelphia, Boston, Detroit, Dallas, Louisville, Indianapolis and others, with recitals and residencies at Disney Hall, Ravinia, Tanglewood, the Gilmore Festival, Carolina Performing Arts, Washington Performing Arts, Caramoor, Cal Performances, and Saratoga Performing Arts Center, among others.
Major highlights for the coming year include the world premiere of The Declaration Project, her continued appearance as a featured artist for The Complete Philip Glass Piano Etudes, and the release of her recording of Florence Price Concerto in D minor with Philadelphia Orchestra and Yannick Nézet-Séguin on Deutsche Grammophon in August 2026.
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Recently honored as Classical Woman of the Year by NPR’s Performance Today, American pianist (and NY Times crossword clue) Lara Downes has been called “a musical ray of hope” by NBC News, “a classical music instigator pushing the music forward with great gusto” by the NY Amsterdam News,and “an explorer whose imagination is fired by bringing notice to the underrepresented and forgotten” by The Log Journal.
A visionary trailblazer, Lara occupies a unique position of visibility through her dynamic work as a sought-after soloist, a Billboard Chart-topping recording artist, and a beloved personality and host. She has garnered millions of fans spanning diverse communities: her devoted viewers and listeners from her nationally syndicated radio programs intersect with her live concert audiences and her followers on streaming platforms to form a broad and constantly expanding fan base.
Lara’s musical roadmap seeks inspiration from the legacies of history, family, and collective memory, excavating a broad landscape of music to create a series of acclaimed performance and recording projects that serve as gathering spaces for her listeners to find common ground and shared experience. In the words of the renowned American conductor JoAnn Falletta, “Lara Downes is a perfect artist for our time, a champion of new and neglected music, an extraordinary communicator, a passionate advocate for our art form.”
Lara’s recent and upcoming onstage adventures include guest appearances with the orchestras of Philadelphia, Boston, Detroit, Dallas, Louisville, Indianapolis and others, with recitals and residencies at Lincoln Center, Disney Hall, Ravinia, Tanglewood, the Gilmore Festival, Carolina Performing Arts, Washington Performing Arts, Caramoor, Cal Performances, and Saratoga Performing Arts Center, among others.
Her creative collaborations embrace an eclectic range of artists including the Miró Quartet, musical multi-hyphenate Rhiannon Giddens, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Rita Dove, Broadway legend Brian Stokes Mitchell, author John McWhorter and violinist Daniel Hope. Her close partnerships with prominent composers span genres and generations, with premieres and commissions coming from Billy Childs, Valerie Coleman, Arturo O’Farrill, Teddy Abrams, Clarice Assad, and many others.
A cultural visionary with a firm finger on the pulse of tomorrow, Lara is increasingly active as a curator and creative partner with institutions including Lincoln Center, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, the Brevard Music festival, and as Resident Artist for Classical KDFC in San Francisco and Classical KUSC in Los Angeles.
Her uniquely insightful approach to concept and curation have created an extensive and acclaimed series of chart-topping recordings on the Pentatone, Sony Masterworks and Sono Luminus labels, including her latest release Rhapsody in Blue Reimagined, featured on NPR’s Morning Edition, in the Wall Street Journal and Downbeat Magazine; her 2023 release Love at Last, which was featured as an NPR Tiny Desk Concert, and America Again, selected by NPR as one of "10 Albums that Saved 2016” and called “a balm for a country riven by disunion” by the Boston Globe.
Lara is the former the creator and host of AMPLIFY with Lara Downes, an NPR Music series which published its final episode in October 2025. The series is widely know for featuringintimate, profoundly personal video conversations with visionary artists and cultural leaders who are shaping our creative present and future. Her work has been supported by the Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Sphinx Venture Fund, and the Center for Cultural Innovation, among others.
Lara’s fierce commitment to citizenship and advocacy has led to her role as an Artist Ambassador for Headcount, a non-partisan organization that uses the power of music to register voters and promote participation in democracy.
Lara has recently launched The Declaration Project, a national initiative marking the 250th anniversary of the United States by gathering together American communities to find common ground in exploring the core essence of our founding promise: the unalienable rights of “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.” Engaging with multi-generational communities in the form of round-table conversations, generative writing workshops, and collaborative creative practice, Lara is encouraging reflection and expression that actively reimagines the promise of our future, reflecting on the magic and mystery of life, the ongoing quest for freedom and equality, and the radical power of joy. Submissions to The Declaration Project are being collected as a national digital archive, and will be featured in a video installation.
Major highlights for the coming year: her continued work as the first ever Creative Partner for the LA Chamber Orchestra, the premiere of Lara’s multimedia concert DECLARATION, featuring a triptych of new works by Grammy Award-winning American composers Valerie Coleman, Arturo O’Farrill and Christopher Tin, respectively titled Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in July 2026, and the release of Lara’s Deutsche Grammophon recording of Florence Price Concerto in D minor with Philadelphia Orchestra and Yannick Nézet-Séguin in August 2026.