The voice that won a Tony, a Grammy, a Drama Desk, an Outer Critics Circle and a Lucille Lortel Award — all for a single role — comes to The Huntington on Tuesday and Wednesday nights. Kecia Lewis, the Broadway veteran who swept those honors as Miss Liza Jane in Alicia Keys’s “Hell’s Kitchen,” headlines “The Sun Rises in Harlem,” the season opener for MUSE/IQUE, the Pasadena-based nonprofit performing arts organization now in its 15th year.
Led by founder and conductor Rachael Worby, the program traces how Black artists in 1920s and 1930s Harlem — Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, Bessie Smith and the writers and thinkers around them — forged an artistic identity that reshaped American culture. The two-night run at The Huntington opens MUSE/IQUE’s 2026 “Where the Heart Is” season, which the organization describes as “a musical exploration of the American heart.”
Lewis is joined by vocalist Sy Smith, dancer Leo Manzari, the DC6 Singers Collective and the MUSE/IQUE Orchestra. The program also examines the broader legacy of the Harlem Renaissance, including the Great Migration and the work of writers and thinkers such as Langston Hughes and Alain Locke. MUSE/IQUE’s signature staging — concert-with-narration in unconventional cultural venues — has been Worby’s calling card since she founded the organization in 2011 after a decade leading the Pasadena Pops. Earlier in her career, Worby served as an assistant conductor for youth concerts at the Los Angeles Philharmonic and spent 12 years as music director of Carnegie Hall’s Young People’s Concerts.
Doors open at 6 p.m. Single-event admission is $75; the show runs approximately one hour and 45 minutes.
MUSE/IQUE presents “The Sun Rises in Harlem” Tuesday, June 2 and Wednesday, June 3 at 7:30 p.m. at The Huntington, 1151 Oxford Road, in San Marino. Tickets: $75. For more information and to purchase tickets, call (626) 844-7701 or visit muse-ique.com.
