Pianist Lara Downes' Declaration Project makes its Texas premiere this month at UT Austin's Bates Recital Hall, bringing three newly commissioned orchestral works built around life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to the University of Texas Symphony Orchestra under conductor Farkhad Khudyev. The concert pairs the triptych with Aaron Copland's Lincoln Portrait and John Adams' Short Ride in a Fast Machine, with tickets priced between $5 and $15.
The Austin performance is presented jointly by KMFA Classical 89.5 and the University of Texas Symphony Orchestra, according to CultureMap Austin. The Declaration Project bills itself as a non-partisan national arts and humanities initiative built to promote empathy, community and unity, per the same event listing. That framing matters because the project didn't start in Austin — it made its world premiere on July 1, 2026, at Lincoln Center's David Geffen Hall in New York City as part of the Summer for the City festival, performed by the American Composers Orchestra under conductor Eric Jacobsen, according to 21C Media Group.
A National Commission With Deep Austin Roots
The triptych was co-commissioned on a national scale by Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and the Tejemos Foundation, with KMFA Classical 89.5 joining as a local co-commissioning partner, 21C Media Group reports. That local investment shows up in the roster of composers: Arturo O'Farrill wrote Liberty, Valerie Coleman wrote Life, and Christopher Tin wrote Pursuit of Happiness, with all three works making their Austin debut as part of Downes' multimedia concert.
KMFA's involvement runs deeper than presenting a touring show. The six-time Grammy-winning O'Farrill was named the station's 2025–2026 Draylen Mason Composer-in-Residence, a role built to lead community dialogue and creative programming in Austin around the project, according to KMFA Classical 89.5. The station also spent months building local ties ahead of the concert, hosting a February 2026 Declaration Project Community Showcase at its Draylen Mason Music Studio that featured 13 Austin arts organizations, including Invoke and Conspirare, performing alongside Downes.
Beyond the Concert Hall
The project also runs a national digital archive that solicits public submissions — poetry, dance, music, visual art and spoken word — interpreting the ideals of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, KMFA notes. Those submissions are being gathered into a living collection meant for online display and video installations, though how many Austin-area contributions have made it into that collection remains unclear.
Downes has paired the orchestral project with a companion solo album, Hold These Truths, released on the Pentatone label in mid-2026. The record spans American classical, jazz and folk repertoire from pre-Revolutionary times through modern compositions, according to WXXI Classical.
Copland's Wartime Portrait Meets New Voices
The Austin program's historical anchor is Copland's Lincoln Portrait, narrated at this concert by Grammy-winning bass-baritone Donnie Ray Albert. Copland composed the piece in 1942 during World War II after conductor André Kostelanetz commissioned him to create a musical portrait of an eminent American, drawing spoken text directly from Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and 1860 campaign speeches set alongside Civil War-era folk tunes, according to the Los Angeles Philharmonic. The full concert runs about 75 minutes with a 15-minute intermission, pairing the new triptych with John Adams' 1986 fanfare Short Ride in a Fast Machine and the Copland piece, per the Butler School of Music.
Inside Bates Recital Hall
The concert takes place at Bates Recital Hall, located at 2406 Robert Dedman Drive on the UT Austin campus, according to The Austin Chronicle. The hall also houses a Visser-Rowland organ built in 1983.
KMFA Classical 89.5, the local co-presenter, was founded on January 29, 1967, and now reaches roughly 100,000 weekly listeners across Central Texas, operating from a new East Austin facility completed in 2020. The station's Draylen Mason Music Studio has also hosted other recent classical performances, including a two-night film score tribute pairing violin and guitar presented by the Austin Chamber Music Center.
