From the Director
Last week, I joined a lively group of friends, colleagues, and Dylan-enthusiasts to watch Dylan kick off the newest leg of his tour. It was a beautiful evening here in Tulsa, made all the more welcome by Dylan’s lively, surprising, and often moving performance. He briefly grabbed a guitar, hammered away on the piano with joyful abandon, and offered deeply moving renditions of “Desolation Row” and “All Along the Watchtower” before closing with a meditative version of “Every Grain of Sand” that left the audience stunned.
Dylan’s performance marked a welcome capstone to almost two weeks of steady work here at the Dylan Institute on planning and paper selection for the 2025 World of Dylan. Working with the Bob Dylan Center, we’ve lined up an extraordinary collection of keynote events and performances that will make a trip to Tulsa well worth the summer heat. We have received a record number of paper proposals for the conference that are startling in their breadth, diversity, and originality. In short, it’s going to be a terrific event.
In just over a week we will begin steadily rolling out announcements about the schedule and keynote events. Our custom-designed logo for the event marks the sixtieth anniversary of Dylan’s electric Newport performance and you can expect to see it shortly as well.
As a reminder, the conference runs from July 24-27, 2025 with events kicking off Thursday at 11:00 a.m. and concluding Sunday at 12:30 p.m. Most sessions will be held on the University of Tulsa’s campus, at our downtown location, and in one or two musical venues in the Arts District. We will not use the hotels themselves as venues—a move that allows us to keep registration prices more reasonable and provide an even richer program. Our website includes a list of recommended hotels and we will run shuttles continuously from downtown to the campus and other venues.
Our online store is now open and early-bird pricing is available through April 30. There is only one level of pricing and tickets include access to all World of Dylan events. I want to thank the Neil and Sherry Zimmerman endowment and the D’Arcy Family Endowment for the financial support that makes this event possible.
As always, please feel to reach out to me with any questions or concerns you might have. We cannot promise the wonders of an actual Dylan concert, but we will aim to bring the same energy and excitement to this year’s event that the man himself shared with us here in Tulsa.
Sean Latham
Director