Venue

: The Great Hall
: 1119 Eighth Avenue (enter on Eighth Avenue)
Seattle, 98101 United States + Google Map

Event Format: In-Person

EVENT NOTES
Doors for this event will open at 6:30 PM.

Headshots of J. Kenji Lopez-Alt and Tessa Lark

Arts & Culture

If nothing is truly new, what is creativity?

In this special live event, New York Times bestselling author and James Beard Award–winning chef J. Kenji López-Alt joins Grammy-nominated violinist and composer Tessa Lark for an evening of cooking, music, and conversation. Moderated by renowned food writer, Serious Eats founder, and Special Sauce host Ed Levine, the program explores how creatives build on tradition, transform influence, and turn identity into expression.

On stage, Kenji brings his signature curiosity to the kitchen, while Lark, a Kentucky-born musician who bridges bluegrass roots with classical virtuosity, reveals how seemingly distant traditions can combine to form brand new sounds. Through live culinary demonstration and musical performance, this special edition of Kenji’s Tasting Notes reflects on how cultures and ideas blend, and how originality is less invention and more a reinterpretation of our shared cultural histories.

Kenji López-Alt is a former restaurant cook, New York Times columnist, and author of the James Beard Award–winning and bestselling books The Food Lab and The Wok, as well as the children’s book Every Night Is Pizza Night.

Violinist Tessa Lark is one of the most captivating artistic voices of our time, consistently praised by critics and audiences for her astounding range of sounds, technical agility, and musical elegance. Increasingly in demand in the classical realm, in 2020 she was nominated for a Grammy in the Best Classical Instrumental Solo category. She is also a highly acclaimed fiddler in the tradition of her native Kentucky.

In addition to her performance schedule, Tessa is the newly minted Artistic Director of the Moab Music Festival. She also continues her work as Artistic Director of Musical Masterworks, a chamber music series in Old Lyme, Connecticut. Tessa’s debut commercial recording was the Grammy-nominated Sky, a bluegrass-inspired violin concerto written for her by Michael Torke and performed with the Albany Symphony Orchestra. Her discography also includes Fantasy on First Hand Records: Fantasias by Schubert, Telemann and Fritz Kreisler; Ravel’s Tzigane; and Lark’s own composition Appalachian Fantasy. Lark is a recipient of the Hunt Family Award, one of the Lincoln Center’s prestigious Emerging Artist Awards, as well as a 2018 Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship and a 2016 Avery Fisher Career Grant.

Presented by Town Hall Seattle.

Events are offered for informational, entertainment, and educational purposes only. Read Town Hall’s Program Content Policy.