There is a particular kind of songwriter who makes you feel, sitting in the audience, that you are overhearing something — that the song arrived not on a stage but in a moment of private reckoning. Madison Cunningham has always had that quality. What is different now is that she is writing directly through the hardest thing she has lived through, and the result is Ace, a record that tracks heartbreak in real time: the falling out of love, the having your heart broken, and the slow, startling discovery that you might fall in love again.
She brings The Ace Tour to the Hunter Center at MASS MoCA on Friday, September 25, 2026, at 8:00 PM.
About Madison Cunningham
Cunningham is a California-bred, Grammy-winning singer-songwriter whose 2022 album Revealer earned her the Grammy for Best Folk Album. She is self-taught — she learned her craft not in a classroom but by listening and watching, absorbing the work of the artists she admired until their discipline became her own. The collaborators she has drawn in over the years — John Mayer, Robin Pecknold, Lucy Dacus, Andrew Bird, Mumford & Sons — speak to the gravity of her talent.
Ace (Verve Forecast, October 2025) is her third album and a deliberate departure: where Revealer was guitar-forward, this record leads with piano. Written primarily in August 2024 and co-produced with Robbie Lackritz — who called her “an unreal musical talent” — it covers the full arc of a breakup without sentimentality or shorthand. PASTE praised the lead single’s lyrics as “simultaneously sprawling and intimate,” with echoes of “ancient work of poetry.” The album’s standout collaboration, “Wake,” features Robin Pecknold of Fleet Foxes — a pairing that, by Cunningham’s own account, still moves her to tears.
About the Venue
MASS MoCA — the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams — is one of the more distinctive live music destinations within reach of the Hudson Valley. The Hunter Center is a 900-seat room within a sprawling multi-venue complex, and it carries the kind of ambient scale that turns certain performances into genuine events.
Tickets
Tickets are available now starting at $48 advance ($58 week of show, $78 preferred). Show begins at 8:00 PM.