In response to overwhelming demand, Spoleto Festival USA will present a free simulcast of the sold-out program An Evening with Ken Burns, Presented by Bank of America.

Presented as part of the nationwide America 250 commemoration and in partnership with SC250 and SC250 Charleston, this simulcast expands access to one of the Festival’s most in-demand events. Audiences are invited to experience the program in a shared, public setting—extending the reach of the live performance beyond the theater and into the broader community.

An Evening with Ken Burns, Presented by Bank of America

A luminous celebration of America’s 250th year, this special evening with acclaimed filmmaker Ken Burns—creator of The Civil War, Jazz, and The Vietnam War—reflects on the struggles and ideals that shaped a nation and transformed the world.

Through sweeping music, vivid imagery, and Burns’s signature storytelling, The American Revolution reveals a war for independence and a revolution of ideas—an upheaval whose promises and contradictions continue to resonate today. Part conversation, part concert, this narrative and musical meditation honors the spirit of independence and the enduring pursuit of the principles on which America was founded.

Ken Burns has spent fifty years crafting landmark documentary films that have reshaped how audiences understand history. Since his Academy Award–nominated debut Brooklyn Bridge (1981), his body of work has included Baseball, Jazz, The War, The National Parks: America’s Best Idea, The Roosevelts: An Intimate History, Country Music, The U.S. and the Holocaust, The American Buffalo, Leonardo da Vinci, and most recently, The American Revolution. His films have received numerous honors, including seventeen Emmy Awards, two Grammy Awards, and two Academy Award nominations, and he was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 2022.

Attendance at all events is subject to the Festival security policy.