Event Schedule

Joye in Aiken is a nonprofit organization dedicated to making the best in the performing arts available to our citizens, and especially our students. Each year its Performing Arts Festival and Outreach Program brings some of the world’s best musicians, dancers, and actors to the charming, historic town of Aiken, South Carolina.

"Joye to the World” Holiday Concert

• Sunday, December 3, 2023
• 3:00 p.m.
• USC Aiken Etherredge Center
• Tickets: $50

Joye in Aiken Artistic Director Riley Mulherkar returns at the helm of the beloved “Red Hot Holidays” tradition he created for Jazz at Lincoln Center, joined by his 2023 pick of NY’s finest jazz vocalists and musicians! This year’s edition features (in addition to Riley himself):

Tahira Clayton, an internationally acclaimed vocalist and bandleader known for her charismatic stage presence; Juilliard-trained pianist Addison Frei, winner of multiple first prizes in prestigious jazz competitions and favorite accompanist of stars including Leslie Odom, Jr.; Vocalist Charles Turner, the ultra-smooth, ultra-polished crooner whose irresistible charm utterly captured audience members at the 2022 Joye of Jazz; Bassist Barry Stephenson, winner of the ASCAP Foundation Louis Armstrong Award and a member of Jon Batiste’s powerhouse band Stay Human; and Gary Kerkezou, one of the most sought-after young drummers in New York, and a nightly performer at famous jazz venues such as Birdland, Smalls, and Jazz at Lincoln Center.

It doesn’t get more festive than this! Join us for the very best in Big Apple-style jazz as we ring in the holidays with favorite old standards and fun surprises.

Sing and Swing: A Jazz at Lincoln Center PRESENTS Production with Benny Benack III and Bria Skonberg

• Friday, March 1, 2024
• 8:00 p.m.
• USC Aiken Etherredge Center

The March Festival week opens in the highest style with the inimitable trumpet talent and vocal charm of Festival favorites Benny Benack III and Bria Skonberg. The duo (backed by pianist Mathis Picard and three other Jazz at Lincoln Center all-stars) will relive classic moments in the work of jazz greats, including Ella Fitzgerald, Judy Garland, Bing Crosby, Peggy Lee, and Dean Martin.

The Joye of Jazz

• Saturday, March 2, 2024
• 12:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.
• The Willcox - 100 Colleton Avenue, SW

Joye in Aiken’s signature event fills the Southeast’s most elegant jazz venue with the prodigious talents of young Juilliard-trained pianist Isaiah J. Thompson (2023 winner of the American Pianists Awards and the Cole Porter Fellowship in Jazz) and the fabulous big-band sound of trumpeter/bandleader Danny Jonokuchi.

Sybarite5

• Sunday, March 3, 2024
• 4:00 p.m.
• First Baptist Church - 120 Chesterfield Street N

The surprise smash hit of the 2022 season, superbly accomplished chamber ensemble Sybarite5 defies categorization as it presents its stunning reinventions of works by composers as disparate as Radiohead, Coltrane, Komitas, Piazzolla, and Pete Seeger. Highlighting the group’s love for innovation and discovery, this year’s program features a choral component in collaboration with local ensemble Belles Canto.

Juilliard Returns! – Erismena and the World of the Baroque

• Tuesday, March 5, 2024
• 7:30 p.m.
• St. John’s United Methodist Church - 104 Newberry Street, NW

Celebrating our unique and close relationship with the world’s most prestigious performing arts conservatory, we once again welcome students from Juilliard’s Historical Performance and Vocal Arts Departments. Join us for a program developed by Juilliard specifically for our audiences, featuring the exciting stars of the school’s 2024 opera season and fascinating performances on period instruments by Juilliard’s exquisitely trained musicians.

Juilliard Returns! – The Sanctuary Concert

• Thursday, March 7, 2024
• 12:00 p.m.
• First Presbyterian Church - 224 Barnwell Avenue, NW

Free to all comers, this noon concert is a perfect showcase for the extraordinary talents of Juilliard’s vocal students. They demonstrate their lighter side, in fun selections from musical theater and the American Songbook.

Sam Reider and the Human Hands

• Thursday, March 7, 2024
• 7:30 p.m.
• USC Aiken Etherredge Center

A 21st-century folk music orchestra featuring a rotating cast of some of the brightest names in jazz, bluegrass, classical, and world music, pianist/accordionist/composer Sam Reider’s genre-bending acoustic ensemble quickly became an audience favorite in its first appearances here. Intensely melodic, often wildly exuberant and always dizzyingly virtuosic, their performances have been called “a mashup of the Klezmatics, Quintette du Hot Club de France, and the Punch Brothers.”

Parsons Dance

• Friday, March 8, 2024
• 8:00 p.m.
• Aiken Community Theater - 126 Newberry Street, SW

Led by Artistic Director David Parsons, “one of the great movers of modern dance” (The New York Times), this company is renowned all over the world for its youthful energy and athleticism. Fittingly for Joye in Aiken, Parsons Dance is all about joy, creating experiences that are charming, uplifting, affirming, and exhilarating.

Festival Finale: Paul Jacobs, Organ

• Saturday, March 9, 2024
• 8:00 p.m.
• St. Thaddeus Episcopal Church - 125 Pendleton Street, SW

Aiken’s favorite GRAMMY-winning organist brings the Festival to a thrilling finish, demonstrating once again why he is considered the world’s greatest living practitioner of the instrument, and why Juilliard selected him as the youngest-ever chair of the school’s Organ Department. Join us as the Festival week comes to an unforgettable conclusion.