Carolina Performing Arts is one of the nation’s premier multidisciplinary arts institutions. For over two decades, global artists have used CPA as the jumping-off point for many of their projects, choosing to premiere musicals, dance performances, operas and more within Memorial Hall’s historic walls.

Through its commissioning and artist residency programs, CPA offers artists the time, resources and space to develop ambitious new works that then travel the world. Combined with access to venues like Memorial Hall and Joan H. Gillings ArtsSpace at CURRENT, collaborations with Carolina students and faculty, and connections to the broader Carolina community, CPA has become a place where groundbreaking performances come to life.

“CPA invests in the process of discovery,” said Amy Kolling, CPA’s senior director of artistic and production. “We give artists time and space to take risks, and we trust them to find answers.”

From immersive digital artworks to string quartets, here are just a handful of works from celebrated artists launched by CPA and then presented across the globe.

CPA’s first public event after the COVID-19 pandemic, this installation from BAFTA Award-winning artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer is an immersive experience that took over Memorial Hall for more than two weeks in December 2021.

Inspired by computing pioneer Charles Babbage’s proposal that the atmosphere is a “vast library” recording everything we say, “Atmospheric Memory” — co-commissioned by CPA, the Manchester International Festival and other international arts organizations — is a multisensory installation that brings Babbage’s philosophy to life. To name just two experiences within the installation, visitors speak their thoughts into existence with “Cloud Display,” a voice-controlled fountain that creates words in midair using cold water vapor, and wander through “Atmosphonia,” a field of thousands of individual sound channels.

“We never could have planned for ‘Atmospheric Memory’ to be our first experience back in Memorial Hall after COVID, but it ended up being just right,” Kolling said. “We were getting to leave a human trace in the room together again. After two years of being so isolated, that felt very differently than it would have in 2019.”

“Atmospheric Memory” premiered at the Manchester International Festival before appearing at CPA and the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, Australia.

This partly autobiographical play by Obie Award-winning stage director Phelim McDermott was co-commissioned by CPA and the Manchester International Festival and other international arts partners.

Featuring music from acclaimed composer and frequent CPA collaborator Philip Glass, “Tao of Glass” explores themes of life and loss by weaving together nonlinear anecdotes, Taoist philosophy, musical meditations and puppetry.

“What’s unique about a residency at Carolina is that the artists don’t just have a studio — they have a university,” Kolling said. “Artists create differently when a university is around them. That’s the exchange we’re after: The campus shapes the work, and the work, in turn, shapes how our students think about what art can do and the way the world thinks about the vibrancy of this place.”

“Tao of Glass” also premiered at the Manchester International Festival. After its 2023 performances at CPA, it next played at New York University’s Skirball Center for the Performing Arts before embarking on an international tour. This summer, it is playing at @sohoplace in London’s West End.

This dance and music project comes from longtime CPA collaborator, inaugural curator-in-residence, MacArthur Fellow and violinist Johnny Gandelsman. Premiering in December 2025, the project was co-commissioned by CPA and the UNC School of the Arts’ Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts.

The title refers to Gandelsman’s reverence for the iconic composer Johann Sebastian Bach. With this project, Gandelsman reinterprets some of Bach’s work through the lens of folk and dance music. Collaborating with choreographers John Heginbotham, Caili Quan, Jamar Roberts and Melissa Toogood, Gandelsman emphasizes the humanity at the center of Bach’s work.

“Johnny’s role as our inaugural curator-in-residence was a launching point for this new work and is an example of the kind of partnership that creates unpredictable artistic outcomes that feel almost magical,” Kolling said. “Watching the show premiere here affirmed Chapel Hill as rich ground for the beginnings of new works that reach far beyond Carolina.”

Following its premiere at CPA in December 2025, Gandelsman took the performance to New York City’s Guggenheim Museum and later to the Joyce Theater, where it played several shows in April. It is set to be performed at the University of Richmond this September.

Having recently staged her magical realist opera, “El Último Sueño de Frida y Diego” (“The Last Dream of Frida and Diego”), at the Metropolitan Opera, Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Gabriela Lena Frank was co-commissioned by Carolina Performing Arts to create her newest string quartet for Brooklyn Rider, featuring Gandelsman, Colin Jacobsen, Nicholas Cords and Michael Nicolas.

This new quartet, “Frida’s Dreams,” adapts music from her opera and will be arriving in Chapel Hill in February 2027 as part of CPA’s inaugural “All. Together. Now.” Festival.

It is yet another example of CPA’s continued legacy as a premier institution for launching significant artistic works that have a global impact and carry Carolina’s name around the world.

“Every one of these works has roots here. It’s thrilling that Carolina’s name travels with these pieces to London, Sydney, the Met and beyond,” Kolling said. “It is especially profound that the artists are changed by their time here, and they carry that with them everywhere they go.”