January 28, 2026
Jazz drummer Terri Lyne Carrington to perform ‘We Insist! 2025’ on Feb. 5 in Eisenhower Auditorium
Jazz drummer Terri Lyne Carrington will lead a live band and singer Christie Dashiell in a reimagining of songs from the “free” jazz era and “Max Roach’s Freedom Now Suite.”
Credit: Erik BardinUNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. (Thursday, Jan. 22, 2026) — Jazz drummer Terri Lyne Carrington will lead a live band in a reimagining of songs from the “free” jazz era and “Max Roach’s Freedom Now Suite.”
“We Insist! 2025,” starring the four-time Grammy Award-winning musician and featuring vocalist Christie Dashiell, will be at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 5, in Eisenhower Auditorium. Morgan Guerin, Milena Casado and Matt Stevens, all featured on the 2025 recording, also will perform.
Roach’s 1960 release, selected in 2022 by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Recording Registry, is seminal to the social justice movements of the 1960s, Carrington said in a Center for the Performing Arts interview.
“That was always one of my favorite records of his,” she said in a recent online staff visit. “And we had a lot of things to talk about here in 2025, so I thought it would be great to look back and reimagine that album, and also make it, more current, so to say.”
Tickets are $47 for an adult, $14 for a University Park student, and $33 for a person 18 and younger and are available for purchase online. Avoid the $4 fee by purchasing over the phone at 814-863-0255 or in person, weekdays 10 a.m.–4 p.m., at Eisenhower Auditorium.
Visit “We Insist! 2025” online for more information and to purchase tickets.
What to expect from a Terri Lyne Carrington performance
Roach’s recording became avant-garde and protest music of the civil-rights era, the Carrington-Dashielle tribute calls on his legacy while expanding its sonic palette with hints of gospel, neo-soul, funk, Afro-Latin, West African traditions and blues.
“When you play music, your humanity is what touches other people. And it’s stuff that you can't really put into words. Angela Davis, I think, says it best, that music allows us to feel the things that we can’t yet put into words,” Carrington said.
“I was sitting in with the infamous Wayne Shorter Quartet,” she said. “He said, ‘I want us to play in a way that if there’s a woman in the audience that’s in an abusive relationship, that she has the courage to leave.’”
“When you play music, your humanity is what touches other people. And it’s stuff that you can't really put into words. Angela Davis, I think, says it best, that music allows us to feel the things that we can’t yet put into words,” jazz drummer Terri Lyne Carrington said.
Credit: Erik BardinWatch Carrington and Dashiell perform “Freedom Day.”
For fans of
Avant-garde and “free” jazz
Bebop jazz drummers
Musical improvisation
American civil-rights movement
National Recording Registry
Lizz Wright
Penguin Guide to Jazz Core Collection
Acknowledgments
Support provided by
Sandra Zaremba and Richard Robert Brown Program Endowment
Accessibility services supported by
Sidney and Helen S. Friedman Endowment
A grant from the University Park Fee Board makes Penn State student prices possible.
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