At the high point of our festival, on the evening of Friday, May 29, Comment and the Washington National Cathedral will co-host a special public event: the Understory Uprising. It’s an invitation to a broader community to experience the culture and spirit at the heart of this year’s festival.

This special evening is designed as a journey of a variety show, with beauty giving way to testimony, testimony to silence, and silence to joy. Emceed by composer Stephen Michael Newby, the night will open with singer-songwriters Over the Rhine and close with folk duo Johnnyswim. In between, you’ll be swept up in music that crosses jazz, classical, and the otherworldly sounds of tuned glass; testimony from lives given to the work of love in the ashes of its opposite; moments of dramatic performance and contemplation; and a dialogue on faith, suffering, and the search for language adequate to our days.