Songs in the Key of Life at 50: Reimagined

A One-Night-Only Concert Experience at USC’s Bovard Auditorium Musical Direction by Greg Phillinganes Directed by Jason King Part of the USC Thornton School of Music Series Stevie Wonder: Beyond Category With Support from USC Visions & Voices and the Recording Academy’s Black Music Collective Marking the 50th anniversary of one of the most ambitious and influential albums in the history of popular music, Songs in the Key of Life at 50: Reimagined brings Stevie Wonder’s landmark 1976 recording to the stage for a one-night-only concert at USC’s Bovard Auditorium. Released in September 1976 at the height of Wonder’s extraordinary creative run, Songs in the Key of Life is at once an epic musical statement and an intimate portrait of human experience. Across its extraordinary range, Wonder moves between love and heartbreak, faith and doubt, childhood and memory, racial injustice and collective possibility—drawing from soul, funk, gospel, jazz, pop, Latin music, and traditions from across the African diaspora while creating a musical language unmistakably his own. Fifty years later, its songs remain startlingly alive: musically adventurous, emotionally direct, socially engaged, and filled with possibility. Rather than simply recreate the album, Songs in the Key of Life at 50: Reimagined approaches this iconic body of work as living music. Featuring USC Thornton students, faculty, alumni, and special guest artists, the concert will move between performances that honor the spir