Resonance, Flow and Surrender in the Creative Process

Barbara Hannigan will deliver the fourth annual Sidney N. Zubrow Lecture. Her presentation, Resonance, Flow and Surrender in the Creative Process, will be followed by a discussion with Nicholas Spice, fiction writer, critic and consulting publisher to the London Review of Books. The Institute is deeply grateful to Betsy, Edward, and Daniel Cohen and the Areté Foundation for making this lecture possible.

Bringing an unparalleled dramatic sensibility to her music making, soprano and conductor has worked with world class musicians, directors, and choreographers. Laureate of the 2025 Polar Prize, the Canadian artist has shown a profound commitment to the music of our time. She has given world premières of nearly 100 new works, collaborating with composers including Boulez, Zorn, Dutilleux, Ligeti, Khayam, Benjamin, and Abrahamsen, and combining repertoires in a dramatic and unconventional manner. The late conductor and pianist Reinbert de Leeuw was a major influence and inspiration.

Having devoted more than half her life to the creation of works for the operatic and concert stages of the world, soprano and conductor Barbara Hannigan has been inspiring composers, directors and choreographers since the age of 18 years old. Her dedication has brought more than 100 world premieres to life. In this Lecture, Barbara Hannigan gives an in-depth view of the creative process, highlighting key moments from important artistic collaborations with colleagues including Hans Abrahamsen, Brett Dean, George Benjamin, Sasha Waltz, John Zorn, and Golfam Khayam. From the initials sparks of an idea, through the behind-the-scenes advocacy , onwards to the pressure and excitement of opening night, Barbara Hannigan will enlighten the audience as to her life-long role as modern muse.

Having begun her career as a soprano with some of the most difficult and virtuoso roles in the repertoire, she made her conducting debut in 2011 at age forty at the théâtre du Châtelet in Paris. She has held the position of Principal Guest Conductor of the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra since 2019 and with the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne since 2024. In 2026 she will begin her tenure as Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the Iceland Symphony Orchestra.

She regularly conducts world class orchestras including the Concertgebouw and Cleveland Orchestras, the London Symphony Orchestra, Rome's Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, and Milan's Filarmonica della Scala, and has had starring soprano roles at opera houses including London's Covent Garden, the Teatro San Carlo in Naples, the Paris Opera, as well as in Amsterdam, Brussels, Berlin, Hamburg, and Munich.

Nicholas Spice has been publisher of the London Review of Books since 1982. Trained as a concert pianist, he is a regular contributor on subjects including music, history, and literature.

Sidney N. Zubrow (1913–2010) was born in Philadelphia, the city that he served for more than sixty years as a physician. He attended the University of Pennsylvania and graduated from the Hahnemann Medical School in 1938. During the Second World War he served as a lieutenant-colonel with the US Army Medical Corps in North Africa. In 1954, Dr. Zubrow joined Pennsylvania Hospital as an admitting physician and spent the next 50 years deeply engaged with patients as a brilliant diagnostician and with young physicians as a mentor and teacher. Known for his generosity, devotion and attentiveness to those who came under his care, he embodied in his life and work a commitment to humanism and social justice, a commitment carried forward by his daughter Betsy Cohen and her family. The Institute is deeply grateful to Edward, Betsy, and Daniel Cohen for making this lecture possible.

This event will take place in Reid Hall’s Grande Salle Ginsberg-LeClerc, built in 1912 and extensively renovated in 2023 thanks to the generous support of Judith Ginsberg and Paul LeClerc.

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Host or Publisher Institute for Ideas and Imagination