The program presents a world-premiere evening of groundbreaking new music, uniting pianist Yuja Wang with six members of New York City’s acclaimed Afro-Latin collective People of Earth, under the musical direction of Cuban composer and rising star Ahmed Alom.

At the center of the program stands La Diaspora — a Concerto for Piano and Latin Chamber Ensemble, composed by Ahmed Alom and receiving its world premiere. Written expressly for Yuja Wang and People of Earth, the concerto is a major new work that places the piano in genuine dialogue with the rhythmic and harmonic language of Afro-Cuban tradition — Rumba, Timba, Salsa, and Son — rather than simply borrowing its surface textures. It is a piece built for these specific artists, and it could not exist without them.

The program also features a set of original music performed by People of Earth, solo and four-hand piano works composed and arranged by Alom for Yuja Wang, and a collaborative reimagining of Márquez’s beloved Danzón No. 2 — performed together by Wang and the full ensemble, reconsidering a classic of the Latin concert canon through the lens of this singular partnership.

The result is a program that has never been heard anywhere. Not a fusion project, not a crossover experiment — but a fully realized world-premiere collaboration between two artistic worlds that have always had more to say to each other than the concert stage has permitted.