Event details

Yiyun Li, Pulitzer Prize winner and Princeton Professor of Creative Writing, launches her new novel, Music Against the Night, a historical saga tracing the life of Irish composer and pianist John Field (1782–1837). Known as the inventor of the nocturne, Field is portrayed from his musical upbringing in Dublin to his success in Russia. The story follows his artistic development, personal struggles, and legacy. Li will read briefly from the novel and be in conversation with Princeton Professor of Music Donnacha M. Dennehy, and pianist Cristina Altamura will play a John Field nocturne and an early Chopin nocturne, composed when Chopin was seventeen and heavily influenced by Field. Cosponsored by Labyrinth Books.

Li’s books will be available to purchase and have signed.

The Fund for Irish Studies Series is co-chaired by Jane Cox, Professor of the Practice in the Program in Theater & Music Theater, and Robert Spoo, Princeton’s Leonard L. Milberg ’53 Professor in Irish Letters.

Tickets

The event is free and open to the public; advance tickets required.

Reserve free tickets through University Ticketing (Tickets go on sale 10/2)

Reach University Ticketing by email at tixhelp@princeton.edu or by phone at 609-258-9220.

Directions

Get directions to Taplin Auditorium, located on the second floor of Fine Hall on the Princeton campus.

Accessibility

Taplin Auditorium is an accessible venue. The Auditorium (room 225) is located on level 2 of Fine Hall. The most accessible route has step-free level access, an elevator and manual doors. There is step-free level access to enter, and designated spaces for wheelchair users with companion seating. View more accessibility details for Taplin Auditorium

Visit our Venues and Studios section for accessibility information at our various locations. Guests in need of access accommodations are invited to contact the Lewis Center at 609-258-5262 or email LewisCenter@princeton.edu at least one week in advance of the event date.

About the Artists

Yiyun Li

Photo credit: Hannah Yoon

Yiyun Li is the author of twelve books, including Things in Nature Merely Grow; Wednesday’s Child; The Book of Goose; Where Reasons End; Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life; and Tolstoy Together, 85 Days of War and Peace with Yiyun Li. Her work has been translated into more than twenty languages. Li’s honors and awards include a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, a Windham Campbell Prize, a 2023 International Writer Award from the Royal Society of Literature, the 2021 Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Benjamin H. Dank Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award, the PEN/Jean Stein Award, the PEN/Malamud Award, the PEN/Hemingway Award, the Guardian First Book Award, the Asian American Literary Award for fiction, and others. She is a member of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, an independent film directed by Wayne Wang and adapted by Li from her short story, was the winner of Golden Shell for best film, 55th San Sebastian International Film Festival.

Donnacha Dennehy

Photo courtesy Donnacha Dennehy

Hailed as “Ireland’s most important living composer” by the New York Times, Donnacha Dennehy’s Grammy Award-winning music has been called “thrilling” (Guardian), “mesmerizing” (New York Times) “arrestingly beautiful” (New Yorker) and “shockingly original, while also being compulsively listenable” (Boston Globe). His music has featured in festivals and venues such as the Berliner Festspiele; Edinburgh International Festival; Carnegie Hall (which has co-commissioned three works); Barbican, London; Muziekgebouw, Amsterdam; Wigmore Hall, London; Royal Opera House, London; Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York; Holland Festival; Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival and the Beethovenfest Bonn, among others. His piece Land of Winter won a Grammy in 2026 for best chamber music/small ensemble performance and made best of the year lists in the New York Times, Boston Globe, Gramophone, and elsewhere. He now lives in America and is a professor of music at Princeton University.

Cristina Altamura

Cristina Altamura. Photo credit: Maria Grazia Facciolá

Pianist, educator, and impresaria Cristina Altamura began her career at 19, when she was presented at Carnegie Hall's 1991 Centennial Year in Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue with the International Chamber Orchestra. She was Principal Soloist of the State Philharmonic of Romania, Bacau, from 1999-2003. Her performances span Canada, the USA, Europe, the Caribbean, and the Middle East. In New York, she has performed as soloist at Carnegie, Lincoln Center, Steinway Hall, Central Park's SummerStage, and on Broadway.

In addition to performing, Altamura collaborates with living composers. She and her husband, Adam Sliwinski (Sō Percussion), collaborated with Princeton University composer Dan Trueman on a multi-album project to demonstrate a cutting-edge instrument Trueman developed, the BitKlavier.

Altamura is the founder of Legacy Arts International and Altamura Legacy Concerts. She lectures, gives master classes, and adjudicates for international and local piano competitions, in addition to running a private teaching practice, Princeton Piano Arts Academy.