Audiences became active participants in Headlong’s The Quiet Circus, a 15-month-long series of performances and conversations held at sites along the Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers. The project explored the city’s maritime and industrial heritage while considering human interaction with an urban landscape, community, and the contemplative.

Professional, amateur, and student musicians came together to perform the stirring world premiere of Temple Contemporary’s Symphony for a Broken Orchestra, composed by Pulitzer Prize winner David Lang for 400 damaged instruments—soon to be repaired and returned to Philadelphia public schools. “The instruments roared to life with powerful force…the score was playful, even joyous,” wrote The New York Times.

“Pig Iron Theatre is taking an epic step toward exploring one of the most fundamental fears of modern society: mass extinction,” wrote The Philadelphia Inquirer of A Period of Animate Existence, a five-movement, symphonic theater hybrid that featured three generations of choirs, a chamber orchestra, and physical actors in a meditation on life and the future of the planet.

Four artists-in-residence of Arab heritage created new work grappling with notions of displacement in Al-Bustan Seeds of Culture’s (Dis)placed: Expressions of Identity in Transition. Street artist eL Seed installed a colorful mural in West Philadelphia, while composer and Pew Fellow Kinan Abou-afach, poet Nazem El Sayed, and visual artist Buthayna Ali engaged with audiences through public forums, readings, and concerts.

More than 150 collaborators and organizations from across the city contemplated Philadelphia’s changing landscape as part of Philadelphia Assembled—what The New York Times described as “an ambitious attempt to reinvent the [Philadelphia Museum of Art] as a civic community center.” Initiated by artist Jeanne van Heeswijk, the culminating exhibition reflected a collective imagining of a present and future Philadelphia.
 

Poignant, real-life stories touching on immigration, parenting, mental health, gay pride, and more are illuminated in the ongoing, 24-month podcast and live event series Commonspace, combining journalism and storytelling, and presented by WHYY in collaboration with First Person Arts.

A hands-on, artistic approach to interpreting history encouraged audiences to engage with Germantown’s historic sites and sparked dialogue on issues important to the present day community, as part of Historic Germantown’s Elephants on the Avenue. Artists worked with residents to capture untold stories and family histories, and to reframe historical narratives in a series of art installations, workshops, and community events.

Audiences experienced what The Philadelphia Inquirer called the “unfinished genius” of African American composer Julius Eastman, whose compelling collection of scores and recordings was left incomplete after his death in 1990. Bowerbird’s That Which Is Fundamental represented the first-ever retrospective of the composer’s life and body of work. The project will travel to The Kitchen in New York City in early 2018.

Philadelphia Chamber Music Society explored new forms of expression in the late stages of composers’ lives with Departure and Discovery: New Directions at the Apex of Creativity. Conceived by acclaimed pianist Jonathan Biss, the concert series evoked themes of fragility, unconventionality, and playfulness in the work of composers including Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, and Schubert. An accompanying Kindle Single by Biss is available online.