Oct 10: ECM New Series Releases Meredith Monk's Cellular Songs - First Single Out Today

ECM New Series Releases

Meredith Monk: Cellular Songs

First Single Lullaby for Lise Out Now
Listen: https://ecm.lnk.to/CellularSongs

Meredith Monk and Vocal Ensemble

Meredith Monk, Ellen Fisher, Katie Geissinger, Joanna Lynn-Jacobs, Allison Sniffin, voices; John Hollenbeck, vibraphone, percussion, crotales; Allison Sniffin, piano, violin 

ECM New Series 2751
Release Date: October 10, 2025

Press downloads available upon request.

“As artists, we're all contending with what to do at a time like this. I wanted to make a piece that can be experienced as an alternative possibility of human behavior, where the values are cooperation, interdependence, and kindness, as an antidote to the values that are being propagated right now." – Meredith Monk

Cellular Songs is the first Meredith Monk release with ECM since the extensive box-set Meredith Monk: The Recordings in 2022 and the first recording of new music since 2016’s On Behalf of Nature. It is also the second part of an interdisciplinary trilogy of performance works by Meredith Monk that began with On Behalf of Nature, a meditation on the precarious state of our global ecology. Cellular Songs turns attention to the very fabric of life itself, and evokes such biological processes as layering, replication, division and mutation. Monk drew inspiration, she has noted, from reading The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by physician and Pulitzer Prizewinning author Siddhartha Mukherjee, struck by the notion that “a cell is like a miraculous prototype of cooperation, offering an alternative culture or template of human behavior to one of competition and destruction.”

Cellular Songs features the women of the acclaimed Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble (Monk, Ellen Fisher, Katie Geissinger, Joanna Lynn-Jacobs and Allison Sniffin), and some of Monk’s most adventurous and daring writing for voice. The work, at once playful and contemplative, conjures cycles of birth and death throughout. “Some of the pieces have much more dissonance and chromatic harmonies, and the forms are almost like three-dimensional sculptures,” Monk notes. “Earlier, my music had much more to do with layering. Now you can almost see or hear the piece rotating as if it were a sculpture in space, though it's a musical form."

With voices and body percussion among the primary resources, Monk underlines her aim to “boil down what I am doing to its essence”. Songs are wordless, with the exception of “Happy Woman”, which also incorporates piano, violin and vibraphone by Allison Sniffin and John Hollenbeck.

Cellular Songs was premiered at the BAM Harvey Theater, Brooklyn, New York in March 2018. The Financial Times hailed the work as a “deeply affecting meditation on the nature of the biological cell as a metaphor for human society” and “an antidote to the troubled times we live in.”

In the album’s liner notes, writer Bonnie Marranca takes up this theme: “Art takes many forms to address global crises as a way of comprehending reality. Monk’s work has chosen a path different than the response that is a direct statement of conditions, following instead her Buddhist grounding in art as spiritual practice (…) Her work honors the human need for the feelings of love and joy and beauty. In the integrity of its regard, Cellular Songs is of this world but also beyond this world, like all poetic works of the imagination.”

Meredith Monk has been an ECM recording artist since 1981. In 2022, Meredith Monk: The Recordings, a box set of her New Series albums from Dolmen Music to On Behalf of Nature was issued in celebration of her 80th birthday, in an edition incorporating texts, photos, scores and more. In 2023 the full scope of Monk’s interdisciplinary work was the subject of major exhibitions at Munich’s Haus der Kunst and Oude Kerk Amsterdam.

Cellular Songs was recorded at New York’s Power Station in 2022 and 2024.

In 2024-2025 Meredith Monk celebrated her 60th Performance Season with a host of events centered in New York City, including the North American premiere of Indra’s Net, the third part of the trilogy of works exploring our relationship with the natural world. This fall she will receive the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in Music at the Venice Biennale.

CD booklet includes performance photography by notes by Julieta Cervantes and liner notes by Bonnie Marranca, whose previous publications include the book Conversations with Meredith Monk (New York 2014, revised 2020).

Further information: www.meredithmonk.org

Oct 17: ECM New Series Releases Zehetmair Quartett's Recording of Johannes Brahms' String Quartets, Op. 51

ECM New Series Releases

Zehetmair Quartett
Johannes Brahms: String Quartets, Op. 51

Thomas Zehetmair, violin; Jakub Jakowicz, violin; Ruth Killius, viola; Christian Elliott, violoncello

ECM New Series 2765
Release Date: October 17, 2025

Press downloads available upon request.

A central fixture in the world of string quartets for the past thirty years, the Zehetmair Quartett’s ECM recordings of Schumann, Hindemith, Bartók and Hartmann have received luminous praise—Gramophone lauded their Schumann as “Record of the Year”, while The Sunday Times described their Hindemith and Bartók performances as “playing of huge finesse in both pieces,” calling them “a real benchmark”. For this newest entry into their New Series catalogue, the ensemble turns to Johannes Brahms’s first two string quartets, Op. 51 Nos. 1 and 2 – works of mature reflection and dramatic urgency that reveal Brahms’s mastery of form. Recorded with the Zehetmair Quartett’s characteristic intensity and richly expressive depth, the performances capture fresh and deeply felt readings of these cornerstone chamber works.

On paper, the two quartets appear to be the very first ones Johannes Brahms ever wrote. In reality however, the composer had actually come up with roughly 20 quartets prior to these two, or so he confided to a close friend. Brahms ended up torching all initial drafts, making Op. 51 his first two of a total three published quartets – all works, which challenge the previously established compositional practices in the genre. In his liner essay, Wolfgang Stähr observes their progressive quality closely, noting how especially in the first of the two – the C minor quartet – „Brahms blurs the boundaries between movements by continually developing already familiar material… He does not think in terms of traditional, defined themes; rather, he reveals musical aspects such as the dotted rhythm, which takes on a life of its own and asserts itself prominently throughout the entire quartet, driving melodies upward, plunging them into the abyss, or holding them captive in endless repetitions.”

The Zehetmair Quartett has consistently explored both the core Romantic repertoire and more contemporary composers throughout its New Series tenure; in the present context though, their 2003 performance of Schumann’s first and third quartets (ECM 1793) offers a striking analogue (celebrated by the Financial Times as a “reference recording”). Here once again Thomas Zehetmair and Ruth Killius, in this incarnation of the quartet joined by violinist Jakub Jakowicz and violoncellist Christian Elliott, prove a rare mastery of two cornerstone 19th century works.

In reference to Beethoven, Brahms famously said: "You can't have any idea what it's like always to hear such a giant marching behind you!" In casting both his first string quartet and symphony in C minor, the key so indelibly marked by Beethoven’s most towering creations, Brahms may have sought both to honour the master and to wrest himself free from his shadow. With their powerful approach, full of sparkling dynamics, the Zehetmair Quartett here reveals the full potential of how profoundly Brahms succeeded at both.

Regrettably, it is the last of the quartet’s recordings to feature cellist Christian Elliott (1984-2025). “It was a joy to work with him on the ever-changing character of the voices, to sense the meaning of every phrase and bring it to life. The void he leaves behind is painful – Christian, we miss you.”

Recorded at Konzerthaus Blaibach in 2021, the album was produced by Manfred Eicher. The booklet includes a liner essay by Wolfgang Stähr in German and English.

*

Founded in 1994 by the Austrian conductor and violinist Thomas Zehetmair, the Zehetmair Quartett counts among the most esteemed string quartets worldwide. Highly regarded for its thoughtful, distinctive interpretations, the quartet perform with great expressive intensity. Alongside the standard repertoire, the foursome is equally compelling in its profound understanding of contemporary music.

First introduced to ECM’s New Series through the Lockenhaus Edition in 1985, the quartet has since gone from strength to strength: Its New Series recordings of Bartók’s Fourth and Hartmann’s First String Quartet, as well as Schumann’s First and Third, have received prestigious awards including the Diapason d’Or de l’Année, the Gramophone Award (Record of the Year), the Edison Award, and the Klara Award for Best International Production of the Year.

The quartet’s recording of Hindemith’s String Quartet No. 4 and Bartók’s No. 5 again won the Diapason d’Or de l’Année, while The Guardian said “in the Hindemith the Zehetmair Quartet really have set a new benchmark.” In November 2014, the quartet was honoured with the Paul Hindemith Prize of the City of Hanau in recognition of its outstanding musical achievements and contributions to the composer’s legacy. In 2013, a recording with works by Beethoven, Bruckner, Hartmann, and Holliger followed (“an amazing variety of sonorities” – BBC Music Magazine).

Anthony Cheung Featured in Miller Theatre Composer Portrait Concert on Nov 13; New Album Featuring Orchestral Piece Volta Out Nov 14

Photo by Jodi Hilton for Miller Theatre, available in high resolution upon request.

Anthony Cheung Featured in Miller Theatre Composer Portrait Concert at Columbia University

 Performances by Yarn/Wire, Claire Chase, JACK Quartet, and Anthony Cheung

Thursday, November 13, 2025 at 7:30pm
Miller Theatre at Columbia University
2960 Broadway (at 116th Street) | New York, NY
Tickets & Information 

New Album on New Focus Recordings Features Cheung’s Volta
Recorded by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project Conducted by Gil Rose
Release Date: November 14, 2025

“intensely colourful, exquisitely wrought ensemble-writing” – Gramophone

“[Anthony Cheung] is an alert, cool pianist, and played with focus and clarity” – The New York Times

Anthony Cheung’s Performance Schedule: www.acheungmusic.com/schedule

New York, NY – On Thursday, November 13, 2025 at 7:30pm, composer and pianist Anthony Cheung will be featured on a Composer Portrait Concert at Miller Theatre at Columbia University, with performances of his music by Yarn/Wire, Claire Chase, JACK Quartet, and Cheung at the piano. The program includes an Improvised Intro on keyboards performed by Cheung, Twice Removed performed by JACK Quartet, Tactile Values performed by Yarn/Wire, and The Real Book of Fake Tunes performed by flutist Claire Chase and JACK Quartet.

Twice Removed, a piece the JACK Quartet commissioned and premiered in fall 2024 in celebration of its 20th anniversary, is a set of reflections on artworks that are themselves responses to other works. Each movement draws inspiration from a different artistic dialogue: “Stretto House” responds to Steven Holl's architecture inspired by Bartók's music; “830 Fireplace Road” engages with John Yau's poetic variations on Jackson Pollock’s words; “Meditation on Motion” reflects on Dean Rader’s poems about Cy Twombly's visual art; and “Journey to Mount Tamalpais” contemplates Etel Adnan's written and visual meditations on the iconic Marin Hills peak. A recording by JACK will follow in 2026.

Tactile Values for two pianos/keyboards and two percussionists is dedicated to the musicians of Yarn/Wire, and explores concepts of dimensionality and sensory translation, drawing inspiration from Bernard Berenson's writings on how painters construct third dimensions through “tactile values” and Carolee Schneemann's ideas about transforming bodily experiences into “painterly, tactile translation edited as a music of frames.” Watch a video from the 2023 TIME:SPANS Festival of Yarn/Wire’s performance of the work.

Cheung composed The Real Book of Fake Tunes for Claire Chase and the Spektral Quartet in 2015. He writes that the title references, “the infamous Real Book that has served as a gateway anthology and/or gig enabler for so many aspiring jazz musicians since the 70s [but] belies a formal architecture of five movements with distinctive characteristics.” The piece was recorded by Chase and the Spektral Quartet for their 2020 Experiments in Living album, and Alex Ross, writing in The New Yorker, described it as, “akin to the contrapuntal games of the Schoenberg,” while Jed Distler in Classics Today characterized it as, “a textural tour-de-force, where flutist Claire Chase’s amazing command of extended techniques assiduously integrate within the composer’s boundless gestural arsenal.”

Also this fall, Anthony Cheung’s recent orchestral piece Volta will be included on a new album featuring Brown University faculty, to be released on November 14, 2025 on the New Focus Recordings label, recorded by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP) conducted by Gil Rose. Cheung writes of Volta:

“I sketched this piece unprompted and uncommissioned over a two-week burst during the fall of 2022, turning away from other projects at hand and eschewing rationality and practicality. Over the next two summers, and following two nine-month stretches of inactivity, I finally completed the orchestration in July 2024. The first half of the piece is characterized by dramatic and volatile events, including melodies that are spun out of turbulence, dance-like passages, and dense columns of chords. While there is indeed a dramatic shift toward an interior, private world about halfway through the piece, the ending was left open until the last stage of writing. It took another turn, affected by personal and world events, an inexorable accumulation recalling the opening that threatens to come full circle, but swiftly swerves away once more.”

For more information, and to preview the recording, visit New Focus Recordings on Bandcamp.

Anthony Cheung writes music that explores the senses, a wide palette of instrumental play and affect, improvisational traditions, and multiple layers of textural meaning. Praised for “instrumental sensuality” (Chicago Tribune), Cheung’s work reveals an interest in the ambiguity of sound sources and constantly shifting transformations of tuning and timbre. Critic Paul Griffiths writes that his music’s precision “is responsible for a wealth of sonic magic.” Cheung is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Rome Prize, and First Prize at the Dutilleux Competition, among other awards and honors. He served as the Daniel R. Lewis Composer Fellow with the Cleveland Orchestra from 2015-17, and was a co-founder, pianist, and artistic director of New York’s Talea Ensemble.

Anthony Cheung’s 2025-2026 concert season features milestone performances and premieres by world-class musicians and leading venues including Lincoln Center, the New York Philharmonic conducted by Gustavo Dudamel, Los Angeles Philharmonic conducted by Elim Chan, New York’s Miller Theatre at Columbia University, Berkeley’s Cal Performances, American Modern Opera Company, Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, JACK Quartet, Yarn/Wire, flutist Claire Chase, pianist Gloria Cheng, tenor Paul Appleby, violinist Miranda Cuckson, and more.

Anthony Cheung’s music has been commissioned by leading groups such as Ensemble Modern, Ensemble Intercontemporain, the Los Angeles and New York Philharmonics, Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, Ensemble Musikfabrik, ICE, Yarn/Wire, Atlas Ensemble, and American Modern Opera Company (AMOC), and performed by the Scharoun Ensemble Berlin, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, the Chicago Symphony’s MusicNOW, and more. His recent projects have included Well with New Chamber Ballet, the field remembers with the Parker Quartet and Fleur Barron, and premieres with JACK Quartet and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project. Cheung has also written for flutists Claire Chase and Denis Bouriakov, the Escher and Spektral Quartets, violinists Miranda Cuckson and Jennifer Koh, and pianists Gilles Vonsattel, David Kaplan, Shai Wosner, and Joel Fan.

Cheung’s recordings include five portrait discs: All Roads (New Focus, 2022), Music for Film, Sculpture, and Captions (Kairos, 2022), Cycles and Arrows (New Focus, 2018), Dystemporal (Wergo, 2016), and Roundabouts (Ensemble Modern Medien 2014). His music and performances have also appeared on Warner Classics (performed by Bertrand Chamayou), Tzadik, and Mode.

Anthony Cheung received a BA in Music and History from Harvard and a doctorate from Columbia University, and was a Junior Fellow at Harvard. He previously taught at the University of Chicago and is an Associate Professor of Music at Brown University, where he teaches courses on topics ranging from theory and composition to the jazz orchestra and Asian musical modernisms.

About Anthony Cheung: www.acheungmusic.com/about
Anthony Cheung’s Schedule of Performances: www.acheungmusic.com/schedule 

Composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s 2025-2026 Season Highlights

Photo by Anna Maggy. High resolution photos available here.

Composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s 2025-2026 Season Highlights

2025-2026 Composer-in-Residence with the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra

Iceland Symphony Orchestra European Tour Featuring ARCHORA
Conducted by Eva Ollikainen

Continued Country and Local Premieres of Major Orchestral Works
Before we fall, METACOSMOS, AIŌN, CATAMORPHOSIS, ARCHORA

“[Thorvaldsdottir] has carved her own corner in contemporary music by creating symphonic works of sustained brilliance.” – The Times

Schedule: www.annathorvalds.com/performances 

Composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s “seemingly boundless textural imagination” (The New York Times) and striking sound world has made her “one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary music” (NPR). Her music is composed as much by sounds and nuances as by harmonies and lyrical material – it is written as an ecosystem of sounds, where materials continuously grow in and out of each other, often inspired in an important way by nature and its many qualities, in particular structural ones, like proportion and flow.

Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s 2025-2026 season (September 2025 to June 2026) features performances of her music in more than 13 countries including Australia, Canada, Denmark, England, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Spain, Switzerland, and the United States. This season, Thorvaldsdottir’s works will be performed by 16 orchestras in 11 countries, with several of them – including the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Iceland Symphony Orchestra – performing multiple works. Her current schedule is available on her website and will be updated with additional performances throughout the year.

Following her appointment as the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich’s Creative Chair last season, Thorvaldsdottir has been appointed Composer-in-Residence with the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra (HPO) for the 2025-2026 season. From September 2025 to June 2026, the orchestra presents a number of her large orchestral pieces. The season began on 5 September with the Finnish premiere of Thorvaldsdottir’s Aeriality (2010) conducted by HPO Chief Conductor and Artistic Director Jukka-Pekka Saraste. On 16 January 2026, the HPO will give the Finnish premiere of Thorvaldsdottir’s cello concerto, Before we fall, which the orchestra co-commissioned. Johannes Moser will be the cello soloist, and Sarasate will lead the performance. On 4-5 February, the HPO, conducted by Pekka Kuusisto, will perform CATAMORPHOSIS and on 27 February 2026, the HPO conducted by Eva Ollikainen performs Thorvaldsdottir’s AIŌN paired with Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring.

Of her role with the HPO, Anna Thorvaldsdottir says, “It is such a pleasure to be Composer-in-Residence with the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra and to be a part of the orchestra’s devotion to bringing the audience a carefully curated combination of new and recent music along with the older repertoire. Writing for the orchestra is a deep passion of mine, organically reflecting how I hear music and work with combinations of materials.”

Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s "volcanic" (The Times) cello concerto Before we fall (2025) is her latest large-scale orchestral work. Written for cellist Johannes Moser, the concerto is co-commissioned by the San Francisco Symphony, BBC Proms, Iceland Symphony Orchestra, Helsinki Philharmonic, and Odense Symphony Orchestra. Of its world premiere by the San Francisco Symphony led by Dalia Stasevska in May 2025, the San Francisco Chronicle raved, “Thorvaldsdottir’s new cello concerto, Before We Fall, is a banger, sonically and intellectually. . . Moser played throughout with both thrilling splendor and fierce intimacy. . .Thorvaldsdottir’s sound world, both delicate and massive, is like no other. . . in [Dalia] Stasevska’s hands, [it] induced a trancelike sense of being outside of time.” The UK premiere at the BBC Proms by the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Ollikainen was similarly praised, with The Guardian reporting that “the concerto has an elemental, immersive quality, its symphonic textures seeming at times to breath as if a living organism.”

Anna’s other large orchestral works Dreaming (2008), Aeriality (2010), METACOSMOS (2017), AIŌN (2018), CATAMORPHOSIS (2020), and ARCHORA (2022) continue to receive country and local premieres as well as repeat performances throughout the world:

ARCHORA will have at least nineteen performances this season, with its premiere in The Netherlands performed by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra conducted by Klaus Mäkelä, at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam (17-18 September). The BBC Symphony Orchestra will perform ARCHORA, conducted by Dalia Stasevska, at the Barbican in London (8 October); the Orchestre national de Metz Grand Est, conducted by Léo Warynski, will perform at Arsenal de Metz in Metz, France (14-15 November); the Frankfurt Radio Symphony performs the piece, conducted by Tabita Berglund, at the hr-Sendesaal in Frankfurt, Germany (20-22 November); Tabitha Berglund also conducts the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in two performances at Music Hall in Cincinnati, OH (6-7 February); and The Trondheim Symphony Orchestra will perform the work, conducted by Berglund at Olavshallen in Trondheim, Norway (5 March). The Iceland Symphony Orchestra will perform ARCHORA on its upcoming European tour conducted by Eva Ollikainen, with concerts at Palau de la Música in Barcelona, Spain (18 March); Victoria Hall in Geneva, Switzerland (20 March); Casino Bern in Bern, Switzerland (21 March); the Tonhalle Zürich in Zürich, Switzerland (22 March); in Heidelberg, Germany (24 March); and at the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, Germany (26 March). There will be two spring performances in Switzerland performed by the Basel Sinfonietta conducted by Titus Engel, at Stadtcasino Basel in Basel (3 May) and at the Kölner Philharmonie (10 May). Of the world premiere of ARCHORA, The Guardian reported, “Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s music is about mass and density, how different planes of sounds collide and combine, and how intricately detailed textures evolve over time. Those qualities make the orchestra the obvious medium for her work, and it has largely been through her sequence of strikingly effective orchestral scores that the Iceland-born composer has become recognised as one of the most distinctive voices in European music today." ARCHORA was commissioned by the BBC Proms and co-commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Munich Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris, Iceland Symphony Orchestra, and Klangspuren Schwaz, and was premiered in August 2022 at the BBC Proms by the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and Ollikainen in a concert selected as among The Guardian’s Classical Highlights of 2022.

METACOSMOS will be performed at least ten times this season, with six of those performances (18, 22, 28, 30 April; and 1, 6 May) as part of choreographer Wayne McGregor’s work Untitled featuring Thorvaldsdottir’s orchestral works METACOSMOS and CATAMORPHOSIS, performed by the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, conducted by Koen Kessels. Other performances will include the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin conducted by Tabita Berglund at the Berlin Philharmonie (12 October) and Gürzenich-Orchester Köln conducted by Andrés Orozco-Estrada at the Kölner Philharmonie (10-12 May). METACOSMOS was premiered by the New York Philharmonic conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen in 2018 and in Europe by the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Alan Gilbert in January 2019. The Boston Globe reported, “There is possibly no other composer working today who is so adept at channeling the massive forces of nature, and given a full orchestral sound palette to play with, [Thorvaldsdottir] goes wild. Writing lines that ride the knife edge of order and chaos and giving poetic but direct suggestions to the musicians, she immerses listeners in eerie, irresistible landscapes of sound.”

AIŌN was commissioned by Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra and Iceland Symphony Orchestra. Of the piece, The New York Times wrote, “Among the many wonders of Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s music – exquisitely honed timbres, an intricate play of shadow and light – perhaps the most mysterious is the way it can sound so static yet be in a state of constant (if sometimes glacial) change … This craftsmanship – a meticulous fusion of pacing, structure and coloring – is also at work in the three-movement AIŌN … Thorvaldsdottir is incapable of writing music that doesn’t immediately transfix an open-eared listener.” In addition to the HPO’s performance in February, the Aarhus Symphony Orchestra conducted by Christian Øland will perform AIŌN at Musikhuset in Aarhus, Denmark (23 April).

CATAMORPHOSIS will be performed at least nine times throughout the 2025-2026 season, as part of Thorvaldsdottir’s HPO residency (4-5 February), by the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Kirill Karabits at Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall in London (8 April), and alongside ARCHORA with choreography by Wayne McGregor at the Royal Opera House in London (18, 22, 28, 30 April; and 1, 6 May). CATAMORPHOSIS, premiered in 2021, was commissioned by the Berlin Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Iceland Symphony Orchestra. Of the piece The Guardian reported, “Thorvaldsdottir’s impressive new work was detailed and powerful ... Lasting around 20 minutes, it’s a single movement of restrained power, a continuum of shifting, colliding layers of sound, which are minutely detailed in the score yet manage to seem simultaneously massive and delicate as they move from dense chromaticism to moments of almost lucid tonality ... this scrupulously prepared and wonderfully performed premiere showed that it’s a piece that stands entirely on its own feet, creating an utterly convincing musical world.”

Thorvaldsdottir’s orchestral work Dreaming will be performed by the Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Matthew Halls, at Tampere Hall in Tampere, Finland (13 February). The 2008 work was premiered by the Iceland Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Bernharður Wilkins in 2010. Gramophone writes of the piece, “Dreaming is an imposing monolith that emerges from silence and recedes back into it, speaking of natural desolation, severe beauty and precarious tectonics in between.” The work was recorded and released on Rhízōma, Thorvaldsdottir’s debut portrait album, in 2011 on Innova Recordings.

In addition, Thorvaldsdottir’s large ensemble piece Aequilibria will be performed by the Australian National Academy of Music conducted by Steven Schick at the Abbotsford Convent in Abbotsford, Australia on 20 September and on 3 October by Juilliard’s Axiom ensemble, conducted by Jeffrey Milarsky in New York City. Aequilibria was commissioned by BIT20 Ensemble and recorded by International Contemporary Ensemble on Sono Luminus. The Wall Street Journal writes of the piece, “A cello drone gives way to busy, distant-sounding string and wind passages; brass writing moves between ominous, sustained tone, textured buzzing and Wagnerian heft, and a mournful alto flute line hovers briefly over a bleak ensemble texture. Shortly before the piece ends, unexpected percussion bursts and delicate piano tracery push the music toward an eerie landscape – a musical equivalent of magical realism.”

Another of Thorvalsdottir’s large ensemble pieces, Hrím, will be performed by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic’s Ensemble 10:10 conducted by Geoffrey Paterson at the Tung Auditorium in Liverpool on 8 October. Hrím was premiered by CAPUT Ensemble at the National Gallery of Iceland in 2010. The piece is inspired by the notion of dispersion, represented as release and echoing in the sense that single elements in the music are released and spread through the ensemble in various ways throughout the process of the piece. The music is in one short movement. Of Hrím, the New York Times writes, “[Hrím] perfectly encapsulates her uncanny knack for conjuring the natural world. … Not through quaint, picturesque mimicry, but with potent evocations of elemental power, flux and potential.”

Thorvaldsdottir’s chamber ensemble music will also be performed throughout the world during the 2025-2026 season. Shades of Silence (2013) will be performed by Nordic Affect – for whom the work was written – at Mengi in Reykjavik, Iceland on 18 September and at the NOSPR Concert Hall in Katowice, Poland on 21 September. Ensemble Jackalope will also perform the work at the Leeds Conservatory on 10 February. Members of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic – pianist Junyan Chen, violinist Thelma Handy, violist Nadia Debono, and cellist Alexander Holladay – will perform the work at the Tung Auditorium in Liverpool on 3 June 2026. Additional chamber ensemble works performed this season include Ró, performed by Broken Frames Syndicate at Produktionshaus NAXOS in Frankfurt (5 September) and at Konzerthaus Blaibach in Blaibach, Germany (14 September); Entropic Arrows performed by Athelas Sinfonietta, conducted by Bjarni Frímann, at Nordatlantens Brygge in Copenhagen (25 October); Illumine performed by the Jakobstad Sinfonietta at Schaumansalen in Jakobstad, Finland (19 November); Fields performed by TM+ ensemble, conducted by Pascal Adoumbou, at Opéra de Massy in Paris (25 November); Ad Genua, performed by the Phoenix Chorale, conducted by Christopher Gabbitas, at the Scottsdale Center for Performing Arts in Scottsdale, AZ (24-25 January 2026); and Spectra performed by the Winter Quartet at Symphony Center in Chicago as part of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s chamber music series (24 March 2026). In addition to these performances, Thorvaldsdottir’s choral works continue to be performed by choirs, professional and amateur alike, all over the world.

Also this season, Thorvaldsdottir concludes her two-year period as one of ten CHANEL Next Prize winners. The biennial prize is awarded to ten international contemporary artists who are redefining their chosen discipline. Each artist embodies CHANEL’s mission to advance the new and the next and receives €100,000 in funding, allowing them to fully realize their most ambitious artistic projects. The NEXT Prize was established in 2021 as part of the CHANEL Culture Fund, CHANEL’s global initiative to accelerate the ideas that advance culture, extending the House’s century-long legacy of cultural patronage.

For Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s complete performance calendar, visit www.annathorvalds.com/performances.

All of Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s orchestral music and many of her other works are recorded on the Sono Luminus label, and featured on Apple Music’s Anna Thorvaldsdottir Essentials Playlist.

Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s music is frequently performed internationally and has been commissioned by many of the world’s leading orchestras, ensembles, and arts organizations, including the Berlin Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, Munich Philharmonic, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Danish String Quartet, International Contemporary Ensemble, BBC Proms, and Carnegie Hall. Her “detailed and powerful” (The Guardian) orchestral writing has garnered her awards from the New York Philharmonic, Lincoln Center, the Nordic Council, and the UK’s Ivors Academy. Anna was Composer-in-Residence with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra from 2018-2023, and was in 2023 also in residence at the Aldeburgh Festival and the Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music. She holds a PhD from the University of California in San Diego, and is currently based in the London area.

The music of Anna Thorvaldsdottir is published by Chester Music, part of Wise Music Group.

For more information about Anna Thorvaldsdottir: www.annathorvalds.com/bio

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s Weekend Concert Series in October - Sphinx Virtuosi with Sterling Elliott, Miranda Cuckson and Blair McMillen, Rachel Barton Pine

Clockwise from top left: Sphinx Virtuosi, Sterling Elliott, Blair McMillen, Miranda Cuckson, Rachel Barton Pine.
Press photos available here.

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s Weekend Concert Series
October Performances

October 5: Sphinx Virtuosi with Sterling Elliott
October 19: Miranda Cuckson and Blair McMillen
October 26: Rachel Barton Pine

“The museum’s handsome Calderwood Hall remains one of the city’s most uniquely intimate and acoustically stunning venues." – A.Z. Madonna, The Boston Globe

Information & Tickets: gardnermuseum.org/about/music

For press tickets, please contact Christina Jensen at christina@jensenartists.com

BOSTON, MA – The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum continues its Fall 2025 Weekend Concert Series with three performances in October. This eleven-concert autumn season curated by Abrams Curator of Music George Steel runs from September 13 through November 23, 2025, and features world-class artists in the Museum’s extraordinary Calderwood Hall—a 300-seat “sonic cube” with three levels of balconies designed so that 80% of seats are front row, creating a uniquely intense and intentional listening experience.

On Sunday, October 5 at 1:30 pm, the blazing 22-member Sphinx Virtuosi, praised for its “elegant ascent into the upper ranks of string orchestras” by The Strad, returns to the Gardner Museum for a performance featuring cellist Sterling Elliott in a program spanning the Americas—from biracial Cuban composer and violinist José White Lafitte, to Argentine Alberto Ginastera, to the Mexican composer Manuel Ponce. The concert will include two Boston premieres of newly commissioned works by Quenton Blache and Jessie Montgomery. Sphinx Virtuosi is a dynamic, self-conducted chamber orchestra and the flagship performing ensemble of the Sphinx Organization, the nation’s leading nonprofit dedicated to transforming the arts. Comprising 18 of the nation’s most accomplished professional string players, Sphinx Virtuosi is redefining classical music through artistic excellence, pioneering programming, and cultural leadership. Cellist Sterling Elliott is a 2021 Avery Fisher Career Grant recipient and the winner of the Senior Division of the 2019 National Sphinx Competition. Throughout his young career, he has already appeared with major orchestras such as the Philadelphia Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Detroit Symphony, the Dallas Symphony, and more.

A musician’s musician, violinist Miranda Cuckson comes to the Gardner Museum with pianist Blair McMillen on Sunday, October 19 at 1:30 pm to present a program comprising nearly 200 years of violin music—from Beethoven’s Sonata in G, Op. 30, No. 3 (1802) to Lili Boulanger’s D'un matin de printemps (1918) to Jamaican-British composer Eleanor Alberga’s The Wild Blue Yonder (1995). The centerpiece of the concert is Prokofiev’s Violin Sonata No. 1 in F minor, Op. 80 (1946), an ideal showcase for Cuckson’s virtuosity and range of expressive colors. In the past few years, Miranda Cuckson has given celebrated concerto debuts at the Vienna Musikverein (playing Georg Friedrich Haas’ Violin Concerto No. 2, which she premiered in four countries), and with John Adams at the Ojai Music Festival. She has been a featured performer internationally at Wien Modern, Grafenegg, Lincoln Center, St. Paul’s Liquid Music, Tokyo’s Suntory Hall, Mexico City’s Palacio de Bellas Artes, the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, and more.

Rachel Barton Pine, praised for her “bravura technique and soulful musicianship” by the New York Times, returns to the Gardner Museum on Sunday, October 26 at 1:30pm for a special recital on her own violin and viola d’amore. She will also perform on the Gardner Museum’s extraordinary 18th century viola d’amore (on display in the Yellow Room), which she tested at the Museum last fall. The instrument, which was last played in concert in the 1980s, was crafted in the 1770s and given to Isabella Stewart Gardner in 1903 by composer Charles Martin Loeffler, who was her close friend and central to music programming at the Museum. Pine will perform selections by Vivaldi, Telemann, and Haydn for viola d’amore, as well as two works composed by Loeffler—his Mescolanza “Olla Podrida” and Norske Land. On violin, she will perform Brahms’ Violin Sonata and Sarasate’s Introduction and Tarantella. With an infectious joy in music-making and a passion for connecting historical research to performance, Rachel Barton Pine transforms audiences’ experiences of classical music. Her discography consists of over 40 recordings, including 25 for Cedille Records, and her many recital appearances have included Davos, the Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, Marlboro, Ravinia, Salzburg, Bravo! Vail, and Wolf Trap.

George Steel’s programming for the Fall 2025 Weekend Concert Series continues founder and legendary arts patron Isabella Stewart Gardner’s vision of bringing together musicians and audiences for inspiring gatherings. Dating to 1927, the Gardner’s Weekend Concert Series is the longest running museum music program in the country. Much like Isabella Stewart Gardner did in her time, Steel champions unknown repertoire and embraces new works, creates connections and builds community among musicians, and supports them by presenting them in new endeavors and collaborations. His programming also frequently draws on the history of the Gardner Museum, featuring instruments from the Museum’s collection and music by composers who were associated with its founder. In honoring Isabella Stewart Gardner’s musical legacy, Music at the Gardner remains strongly committed to broadening the repertoire of music presented to include previously overlooked and marginalized composers as well as performers of all backgrounds.

Fall 2025 At-a-Glance Concert Schedule 

September 13-14: ACRONYM - The Complete Brandenburg Concertos by J.S. Bach
September 21: Junction Trio Plays John Zorn
September 28: Catalyst String Quartet
October 5: Sphinx Virtuosi with Sterling Elliott, cello
October 19: Miranda Cuckson, violin, and Blair McMillen, piano
October 26: Rachel Barton Pine, violin and viola d'amore
November 2: Claire Chase, flutes, with Aisslinn Nosky, violin, Katinka Kleijn, cello, and Alex Peh, piano and harpsichord
This performance is made possible by the Anne Hawley Fund for Programs.
November 9: Clayton Stephenson, piano
This program is performed in memory of Willona Sinclair.
November 16: Sasha Cooke, mezzo-soprano with Myra Huang, piano
This concert is made possible by the generous support of David Scudder in memory of his wife, Marie Louise Scudder.
November 23: Michelle Cann, piano 

All concerts take place on Sundays at 1:30 pm (except ACRONYM, which performs on both Saturday and Sunday at 1:30 pm) in Calderwood Hall at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (25 Evans Way, Boston, MA).

Ticketing Information

Tickets ($20-$85) are available at gardnermuseum.org/about/music or by calling the Box Office at 617 278 5156. All concert tickets include Museum admission.

About the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum invites you to escape the ordinary in a magical setting where art and community come together to inspire new ways of envisioning our world. Embodying the fearless legacy of its founder, the Museum offers a singular invitation to explore the past through a contemporary lens, creating meaningful encounters with art and joyful connections for all. Modeled after a Venetian palazzo, unforgettable galleries surround a luminous Courtyard and are home to masters such as Rembrandt, Raphael, Titian, Michelangelo, Whistler, and Sargent. The Renzo Piano Wing provides a platform for contemporary artists, musicians, and scholars and serves as an innovative venue where creativity is celebrated in all of its forms.

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum • 25 Evans Way, Boston, MA 02115 • Hours: Open Weekends from 10 am to 5 pm, Weekdays from 11am to 5 pm and Thursdays until 9 pm, Closed Tuesdays. • Admission: Adults $22; Seniors $20; Students $15; Free for members, children 17 and under, everyone on their birthday, and all named “Isabella” • $2 off admission with a same-day Museum of Fine Arts, Boston ticket • For information 617 566 1401 • Box Office 617 278 5156 • www.gardnermuseum.org 

Music at the Gardner is supported by Nora McNeely Hurley / Manitou Fund. The Museum thanks its generous concert donors: The Coogan Concert in memory of Peter Weston Coogan; Fitzpatrick Family Concert; James Lawrence Memorial Concert; Alford P. Rudnick Memorial Concert; David Scudder in memory of his wife, Marie Louise Scudder; Wendy Shattuck Young Artist Concert; and Willona Sinclair Memorial Concert. The piano is dedicated as the Alex d’Arbeloff Steinway. The harpsichord was generously donated by Dr. Robert Barstow in memory of Marion Huse, and its care is endowed in memory of Dr. Barstow by The Barstow Fund. Music at the Gardner is also supported in part by Barbara and Amos Hostetter, Nicie and Jay Panetta, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council, which is supported by the state of Massachusetts and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Newport Classical Continues Chamber Series with Two October Concerts - Violinist Blake Pouliot with Pianist Henry Kramer and Trio Zimbalist

L-R: Blake Pouliot, Henry Kramer, Trio Zimbalist. Photos available in high resolution here.

Newport Classical Continues 2025-2026 Chamber Series

Violinist Blake Pouliot & Pianist Henry Kramer perform Schumann and Dvořák
Friday, October 3, 2025 at 7:30pm

Trio Zimbalist performs Beethoven
Friday, October 17, 2025 7:30pm

Information & Tickets: www.newportclassical.org

Newport, RI – Newport Classical continues its fifth full-season Chamber Series, which features twelve concerts held on select Fridays between September 2025 and June 2026 at the organization’s home venue, the Newport Classical Recital Hall (42 Dearborn St.), with the two concerts in October. Violinist Blake Pouliot and pianist Henry Kramer perform on Friday, October 3, 2025 at 7:30pm and Trio Zimbalist performs on Friday, October 17, 2025 at 7:30pm.

Celebrated for his “radiant sound and high-powered virtuosity” (Los Angeles Times), violinist Blake Pouliot brings his expressive and assured style to Newport on October 3. Joining Pouliot, and making a welcome return to Newport Classical, is acclaimed pianist Henry Kramer, praised by The New York Times for his “astonishingly confident technique.” Together, they deliver a Romantic program featuring Schumann’s stormy Violin Sonata No. 1, Dvořák’s spirited Zigeunerlieder, and the sweeping drama of Chausson’s Poème, promising an evening of captivating contrasts. The duo made their Carnegie Hall debut together this past May, and Pouliot has also recently made debuts with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, London Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, and more. He first performed as a soloist with orchestra at age eleven, and the Toronto Star describes him as “one of those special talents that comes along once in a lifetime.”

Watch Violinist Blake Pouliot:

Newport Classical welcomes Trio Zimbalist to Rhode Island in their Newport Classical debut on October 17. Trio Zimbalist has won over audiences and critics alike with what EfSyn (Greece) calls “precision and feverish intensity.” Praised for the “liveliness and vigor” of their playing and performances that are simply “pure enjoyment!” (Athinorama), the trio brings vibrant energy and deep musical expression to every note. They present a program that begins with George Xiaoyuan Fu’s Piano Trio, followed by two iconic works: Smetana’s deeply emotional Piano Trio in G minor, Op. 15, a powerful reflection on love and loss, and Beethoven’s Piano Trio in B-flat Major, Op. 97, the beloved “Archduke,” full of warmth, grace, and grandeur. The members of the trio – violinist Josef Špaček, cellist Timotheos Gavriilidis-Petrin, and pianist George Xiaoyuan Fu – are all distinguished alumni of the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. In demand across Europe and the U.S. as soloists, chamber musicians, and recitalists, they form an inimitable ensemble with repertoire spanning Romantic masterworks to today’s most lauded composers. The trio takes its name from famed violin virtuoso Efrem Zimbalist, a towering presence at the Curtis Institute of Music as faculty and director for a combined forty years. Trio Zimbalist carries on the violinist’s storied legacy through its commitment to artistic excellence.

Watch Trio Zimbalist:

Newport Classical's Chamber Series takes place at Newport Classical Recital Hall in downtown Newport, known for its striking architecture and excellent acoustics. Audiences are invited to enjoy performances by world-class classical musicians in a relaxed setting, with complimentary wine generously provided by Gold's Wine and Spirits served when the doors open at 7:00pm and again during intermission. Both performers and audience members alike have described these concerts as some of their favorites. “Beautiful concert, high artistry and exciting programming . . . a deeply moving and soulful experience, with a rousing and brilliant virtuosity that kept you on the edge of your seat,” raved one attendee.

As part of Newport Classical's desire to create connections between classical music, the artists who perform it, and the Newport community, all musicians performing on the Chamber Series will also visit a local school or organization to present their talents and meaningfully engage with students and community members of all ages through Newport Classical's Music Enrichment and Engagement Initiative.

Up next, Newport Classical presents a free Community Concert, designed especially for families – classical guitarist Aaron Larget-Caplan presents his New Lullaby Project (comfy PJs and stuffed animals welcome) on October 12 at Emmanuel Church. The Chamber Series continues on November 7, with Taiwanese American pianist Charlotte Hu, celebrated as a "first-class talent" (The Philadelphia Inquirer) with "superstar quality" (Jerusalem Post), embarking on a compelling journey through Chopin's expressive world. Saxophonist Valentin Kovalev, Gold Medal winner at the Jean-Marie Londeix International Saxophone Competition, brings his electrifying technique and soulful depth to his Newport Classical debut on November 21 with a program culminating in Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition. 

The Chamber Series begins in 2026 with cellist Jonathan Swensen making his highly anticipated return on January 23 following his memorable 2024 debut as a Festival Artist. Honored with the 2022 Avery Fisher Career Grant and joint First Prize at the 2024 Naumburg International Cello Competition, Swensen is described as "a musician of charisma and thrilling physicality" (BBC Music Magazine). The Verona Quartet, celebrated by The New York Times as an "outstanding ensemble... cohesive yet full of temperament," makes their Newport Classical debut on February 20 with a program tracing a vivid stylistic arc from Scarlatti to Beethoven. On March 13, baritone Benjamin Appl, whose voice “belongs to the last of the old great masters of song” (Süddeutsche Zeitung) and whose artistry has been described as “unbearably moving” (The Times), presents Schubert's hauntingly beautiful Die Winterreise with his frequent collaborator, pianist James Baillieu. Ars Poetica, an ensemble of acclaimed instrumentalists and vocalists with a passion for historical music, explores "Dance and Transfiguration" on March 27 with their colorful array of Baroque instruments. Violinist Yevgeny Kutik, praised for his "dark-hued and razor-sharp technique" (The New York Times), makes his Newport Classical debut on April 10 alongside returning pianist Llewellyn Sanchez-Werner in works by Debussy, Prokofiev, and Grieg. Rising-star pianist James Zijian Wei, first-prize winner at the 2024 Cleveland International Piano Competition, makes his highly anticipated Newport debut on May 8 with a program featuring Ravel, Liszt, and more. The Chamber Series concludes on June 5 with flutist Amir Hoshang Farsi and pianist Chelsea Wang, both Carnegie Hall Ensemble Connect alumni, presenting a program of sparkling impressionism featuring works by Fauré, Lili Boulanger, and contemporary composers Reena Esmail, Ian Clarke, and Yuko Uebayashi.

The 2026 Newport Classical Music Festival will take place from July 2-19, 2026.

About Newport Classical 

Newport Classical is a premier performing arts organization that welcomes people of every age, culture, and background to intimate, immersive musical experiences. The organization presents world-renowned and up-and-coming artistic talents at stunning, storied venues across Newport – an internationally sought-after cultural and recreational destination.

Originally founded in 1969 as Rhode Island Arts Foundation at Newport, Inc., Newport Classical has a rich legacy of musical curiosity having presented the American debuts of hundreds of international artists and is most well-known for hosting three weeks of concerts in the summer in the historic mansions throughout Newport and Aquidneck Island. In the 56 years since, Newport Classical has become the most active year-round presenter of live performing arts on Aquidneck Island, and an essential pillar of Rhode Island’s cultural landscape, welcoming thousands of patrons all year long.

Newport Classical invests in the future of classical music as a diverse, relevant, and ever-evolving art form through its four core programs – the one-of-a-kind Music Festival; the Chamber Series in the Newport Classical Recital Hall; the free, family-friendly Community Concerts Series; and the Music Education and Engagement Initiative that inspires students in local schools to become the arts advocates and music lovers of tomorrow. These programs illustrate the organization’s ongoing commitment to presenting “timeless music for today.”

In 2021, the organization launched a new commissioning initiative – each year, Newport Classical will commission a new work by a Black, Indigenous, person of color, or woman composer as a commitment to the future of classical music. To date, Newport Classical has commissioned and presented the world premiere of works by Stacy Garrop, Shawn Okpebholo, Curtis Stewart, Clarice Assad, and Cris Derksen.

Pianist Charlotte Hu Announces 2025-2026 Season Highlights

Photo by Dario Acosta available in high resolution here.

Pianist Charlotte Hu Announces 2025-2026 Season Highlights

Recitals Presented by The Gilmore, Newport Classical, Strathmore, Music on Madison in NYC, Boston Conservatory at Berklee,Taipei Concert Hall, & more

New PENTATONE Album Featuring the Complete Goyescas by Enrique Granados Coming June 5, 2026

Charlotte Hu’s 2025-2026 Programming Showcases Four Major Focuses:
Spanish Repertoire, the Music of Chopin, Pioneering Women Composers, and the Music of Pauline Viardot

“praises follow her all around the world” – International Piano
“a superb pianist” – Philadelphia Inquirer

Complete Schedule: charlottehu.com/calendar

Taiwanese-American pianist Charlotte Hu (formerly known as Ching-Yun Hu) has been praised by audiences and critics across the globe for her dazzling virtuosity, riveting musicianship, and magnetic stage presence. Germany’s Süddeutsche Zeitung describes Hu’s playing as “extremely confident and physically strong.” She possesses, writes the Jerusalem Post, “superstar quality – musical, energetic and full of flair.”

With a vast repertoire encompassing the works of composers from the 18th Century to the modern era, Charlotte Hu presents compelling programs that juxtapose audience favorites with underperformed treasures and new commissions. As a soloist, Hu has captivated audiences across the U.S., Europe, and Asia, performing sold-out concerts at many of the world’s most prestigious venues including Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, Wigmore Hall, the Concertgebouw, Taipei National Concert Hall, National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing, Hong Kong Cultural Center, the Taichung Opera House, and Osaka’s Symphony Hall. She is a frequent guest at music festivals such as the Aspen Music Festival, Ruhr-Klavier Festival, and Oregon Bach Festival. Concerto engagements have included performances with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Taiwan Philharmonic, Evergreen Symphony Orchestra, Orquesta Filarmónica de Bogotá, and National Taiwan Symphony Orchestra.

Charlotte Hu's 2025-2026 season showcases four major focuses – Spanish repertoire, the music of Chopin, works by pioneering women composers, and a new project for The Gilmore featuring the music of Chopin paired with the music of French composer and mezzo-soprano Pauline Viardot. She performs in recitals presented by The Gilmore, Newport Classical, Music on Madison in New York City, Strathmore, Boston Conservatory at Berklee, and the Taipei Concert Hall, among others.

In October 2025, Hu will record her next album – her second for the PENTATONE label – with producer Everett Porter of Polyhymnia at Muziekcentrum van de Omroep (MCO) in Hilversum, The Netherlands. The new album, which will feature Enrique Granados’ Goyescas suite in its entirety, will be released on June 5, 2026. It follows Hu’s PENTATONE debut recording, Liszt: Metamorphosis, which was released July 2024. International Piano wrote that Metamorphosis “showcases some truly beautiful piano playing, while BBC Music Magazine describes the album as “a splendid introduction to a talented pianist.” Hu will be performing music from her forthcoming Goyescas recording throughout the upcoming season, including presented by the Puffin Cultural Forum (Teaneck, NJ; October 9, 2025); Music on Madison (New York, NY; October 26, 2025); Lynn University (Boca Raton, FL; December 6, 2025); Hemet Concert Association (Hemet, CA; April 12, 2026); Cheboygan Chamberfest (Cheboygan, MI; May 23, 2026); and Taipei National Concert Hall (Taipei, Taiwan; June 24, 2026).

During the 2025-2026 season, Charlotte Hu will work with The Gilmore, serving as an Artist Teacher for The Gilmore International Piano Festival and collaborating on a new program with soprano Raquel Gonzalez. Hu’s concert with Gonzalez (Kalamazoo, MI; May 6, 2026) will showcase the music of French composer and mezzo-soprano Pauline Viardot paired with music by Viardot’s close friend, Frédéric Chopin. It features a selection of Viardot’s solo piano works and her songs for soprano and piano, as well as her arrangements of Chopin’s Mazurkas for voice and piano.

Also this season, returning to the repertoire of her 2011 debut solo album, Chopin, Hu celebrates the music of the beloved Polish composer and virtuoso pianist Frédéric Chopin by performing selections from his Mazurkas and Nocturnes; Sonata No. 3 in B minor, Op. 58; Variations on “Là ci darem la mano,” Op. 2; Berceuse in D-flat major, Op. 57; Barcarolle in F-sharp major, Op. 60; and Polonaise “Heroic,” Op. 53. Hu performs music by Chopin presented by Music on Madison (New York, NY; October 26, 2025); Newport Classical (Newport, RI; November 7, 2025); The Gilmore (Kalamazoo, MI; November 19, 2025); Lynn University (Boca Raton, FL; December 6, 2025); and the Jamestown Community Piano Concert Series (Jamestown, RI; January 18, 2026); Hemet Concert Association (Hemet, CA; April 12, 2026); and Cheboygan Chamberfest (Cheboygan, MI; May 23, 2026).

In spring 2026, Charlotte Hu brings her artistry and versatility to Women Pioneers – a program highlighting the significant legacy of women composers from the early 19th century to today, from important historical women composers including Lili Boulanger, Fanny Mendelssohn, Pauline Viardot, and Margaret Bonds to some of today’s most in-demand composers such as Jennifer Higdon, Lera Auerbach, and Unsuk Chin. Featuring music of contrasting forms, styles, and influences, Women Pioneers offers fascinating connections and fresh perspectives on the role of women in Western music history. Hu will perform the program at Boston Conservatory at Berklee (Boston, MA; March 26, 2026) and Strathmore’s Music at the Mansion (North Bethesda, MD; April 2, 2026).

A Steinway Artist, Charlotte Hu serves as an associate professor at Boston Conservatory at Berklee and as an artist in residence at Temple University in Philadelphia. She is also the founder and artistic director of the Yun-Hsiang International Music Festival in Taipei and the Philadelphia Young Pianists' Academy (PYPA). Now in its 13th year, PYPA provides concert opportunities for young pianists while serving as an important cultural bridge between East and West.

In addition to her recordings for PENTATONE, Hu’s debut album, Chopin, was released on ArchiMusic in April 2011 and was named Best Classical Album of the Year by Taiwan's prestigious Golden Melody Award. Her recordings released on CAG/Naxos and BMOP/sound have received overwhelming critical acclaim. Her Rachmaninoff album on Centaur/Naxos received a five-star review by the U.K.'s Pianist magazine, which called the album “essential listening for Rachmaninoff admirers.”

Concert details are available on Charlotte Hu’s performance calendar: charlottehu.com/calendar

For more information about Charlotte Hu: charlottehu.com/biography

Oct. 13: Telegraph Quartet Presented by Chamber Music Tuscaloosa – Performing Haydn and All That Jazz

Available in high resolution at: www.jensenartists.com/artists-profiles/telegraph-quartet

Telegraph Quartet Performs Haydn and All That Jazz
Presented by Chamber Music Tuscaloosa

Featuring the Music of Franz Joseph Haydn, Wynton Marsalis,
Jerome Kern, and Claude Debussy

Monday, October 13, 2025 at 7:30pm
Grace Presbyterian Church
113 Hargrove Rd | Tuscaloosa, AL 35401
Tickets and More Information

Telegraph Quartet’s New Album
20th Century Vantage Points Vol. 2: Edge of the Storm
Out Now

"precise tuning, textural variety and impassioned communication" – The Strad

www.TelegraphQuartet.com

Tuscaloosa, AL – On Monday, October 13, 2025 at 7:30pm, the Telegraph Quartet (Eric Chin and Joseph Maile, violins; Pei-Ling Lin, viola; Jeremiah Shaw, cello), a group The New York Times describes as “full of elegance and pinpoint control,” is presented in concert by Chamber Music Tuscaloosa. The concert will take place in Grace Presbyterian Church (113 Hargrove Rd.). Known for their technical prowess and appreciation for the history behind music, the Telegraph Quartet bring their fluid synchronicity and refined artistry to Haydn and All That Jazz – a concert program that celebrates the interconnection between the two worlds of Classical and Jazz music. The program includes Franz Joseph Haydn’s String Quartet in C Major, Op. 54 No. 2; selections from At the Octoroon Balls by Wynton Marsalis; The Way You Look Tonight by Jerome Kern and Claude Debussy’s String Quartet.

While improvisation is a building block of jazz, it was an equally critical element in the Classical era. In Haydn’s brilliant quartet in C Major, improvisation pervades the rhapsodic episodes of the second movement, poignantly blurring the usual pristine classical sentences. Conversely, renowned Jazz composer and trumpeter Wynton Marsalis channels the whimsicality and harmonies of his genre into the rigorous strictures of the string quartet idiom. Following Marsalis’s work, the Telegraphs perform a Great American Songbook transcription of Jerome Kern’s The Way You Look Tonight. The program’s finale is Debussy’s only string quartet, whose Impressionist style paved the way to influence many great artists of the Jazz Age.

The Telegraph Quartet formed in 2013 with an equal passion for standard and contemporary chamber music repertoire. Described by the San Francisco Chronicle as “an incredibly valuable addition to the cultural landscape” and “powerfully adept… with a combination of brilliance and subtlety,” the Telegraph Quartet was awarded the prestigious 2016 Walter W. Naumburg Chamber Music Award and the Grand Prize at the 2014 Fischoff Chamber Music Competition.

Of this vibrant program the Telegraph Quartet says:

“We’re excited to share this unique program that juxtaposes the Classical Era improv of Haydn, turn-of-the-century modality of Debussy with the traditions of Jazz and American Standards. While very different repertoire abound on this program, we find each of these works reflects the other in some way, whether it is the gypsy rhapsody of Haydn’s second movement, Debussy’s drawing on non-European inspiration in his own musical vocabulary, or Marsalis and Kern infusion of the string quartet - a very European invention - with Creole, African-American and Broadway flavors. ”

In August 2023, the Telegraph Quartet released 20th Century Vantage Points: Divergent Paths, the first in a trilogy of recordings on Azica Records exploring the string quartets of the first half of the 20th century – an era of music that the group has felt especially called to perform since its formation. Divergent Paths features two works that (to the best of the Quartet’s knowledge) have never been recorded on the same album before: Maurice Ravel’s String Quartet in F Major and Arnold Schoenberg’s String Quartet No. 1 in D minor, Op. 7. The Quartet’s new album, 20th Century Vantage Points: Edge of the Storm is out now on Azica Records. Read the press release online here. This second volume of the trilogy examines music from the turbulent war years of 1941-1951 and features a thoughtfully curated program of works by Grażyna Bacewicz, Benjamin Britten, and Mieczysław Weinberg.

More about Telegraph Quartet: The Quartet has performed in concert halls, music festivals, and academic institutions across the United States and abroad, including New York City’s Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, San Francisco’s Herbst Theatre, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music’s Chamber Masters Series, and at festivals including the Chautauqua Institute, Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Festival, and the Emilia Romagna Festival. The Quartet is currently the Quartet-in-Residence at the University of Michigan.

Notable collaborations include projects with pianists Leon Fleisher and Simone Dinnerstein; cellists Norman Fischer and Bonnie Hampton; violinist Ian Swensen; and the St. Lawrence Quartet and Henschel Quartett. A fervent champion of 20th- and 21st-century repertoire, the Telegraph Quartet has premiered works by Osvaldo Golijov, John Harbison, Robert Sirota, and Richard Festinger.

Beyond the concert stage, the Telegraph Quartet seeks to spread its music through education and audience engagement. The Quartet has given master classes at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music Collegiate and Pre-College Divisions, through the Morrison Artist Series at San Francisco State University, and abroad at the Taipei National University of the Arts, National Taiwan Normal University, and in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Telegraph has also served as artists-in-residence at the Interlochen Adult Chamber Music Camp, SoCal Chamber Music Workshop, and Crowden Music Center Chamber Music Workshop. In November 2020, the Telegraph Quartet launched ChamberFEAST!, a chamber music workshop in Taiwan. In fall 2020, Telegraph launched an online video project called TeleLab, in which the ensemble collectively breaks down the components of a movement from various works for quartet. In the summers of 2022 and 2024, the Telegraph Quartet traveled to Vienna to work with Schoenberg expert Henk Guittart in conjunction with the Arnold Schoenberg Center, researching all of Schoenberg's string quartets.

For more information, visit www.telegraphquartet.com.

For Calendar Editors:

Concert details:

Who: Telegraph Quartet in Haydn and All That Jazz
Presented by Chamber Music Tuscaloosa
What: Music by Franz Joseph Haydn, Wynton Marsalis, Jerome Kern, and Claude Debussy
When: Monday, October 13, 2025 at 7:30pm
Where: Moody Concert Hall at University of Alabama, 810 2nd Ave. Tuscaloosa, AL 35401
Tickets and information: https://www.chambermusictuscaloosa.com/events

Description: The award-winning Telegraph Quartet, a group “full of elegance and pinpoint control” (The New York Times), is presented in concert by Chamber Music Tuscaloosa. The ensemble will perform a lively concert program titled Haydn and All That Jazz, featuring Franz Joseph Haydn’s String Quartet in C Major, Op. 54 No. 2, selections from At the Octoroon Balls by Wynton Marsalis, The Way You Look Tonight by Jerome Kern, and Claude Debussy’s String Quartet.

Oct. 12: Violinist Kristin Lee is Featured Soloist with the Eugene Symphony Conducted by Music Director Alex Prior

Photo by Lauren Desberg available in hi-resolution at www.jensenartists.com/artists-profiles/kristin-lee

Violinist Kristin Lee is Featured Soloist with the
Eugene Symphony on October 12

Performing Vivian Fung’s Violin Concerto No. 1
Conducted by Music Director Alex Prior

Sunday, October 12, 2025 at 2pm
The Hult Center | 1 Eugene Center | Eugene, OR
Tickets & Information

Kristin Lee: www.violinistkristinlee.com

Eugene, OR – Violinist Kristin Lee – praised in The Strad for her “elegance” and “vivacity and electric energy” – joins the Eugene Symphony and Music Director Alex Prior as the featured soloist in Vivian Fung’s Balinese Gamelan-inspired Violin Concerto No. 1, on Saturday, October 12, 2025 at 2pm in The Hult Center (1 Eugene Center). The concert, titled Fate & Fire, also includes West Side Story Overture by Leonard Bernstein, and Symphony No. 5 by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. This is Alex Prior’s first performance with the Eugene Symphony as its new Music Director.

A violinist of remarkable versatility and impeccable technique, Kristin Lee enjoys a vibrant career as a soloist, chamber musician, educator, and artistic director. “Her technique is flawless, and she has a sense of melodic shaping that reflects an artistic maturity,” writes the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and The Strad reports, “She seems entirely comfortable with stylistic diversity, which is one criterion that separates the run-of-the-mill instrumentalists from true artists.”

Kristin Lee and composer Vivian Fung have enjoyed a long musical friendship, even traveling to Bali together when doing research for this concerto. Lee says, “I’m thrilled to be making my debut with the Eugene Symphony and to share Vivian’s music in this new collaboration. This concerto holds so many memories, especially since it was the first time I’ve worked so closely with a composer. It's been incredibly rewarding to watch the piece evolve through the years and to watch it take on its own journey! Vivian’s voice is so distinct, and it’s remarkable to see how strongly it resonates with everyone who hears it.”

“My Violin Concerto brings together my influence by non-Western traditional music, especially Balinese gamelan music, and my friendship with violinist Kristin Lee,“ says Fung. “The gamelan sonorities ringing through my head were a natural inspiration for me, but just as meaningful was Kristin’s desire to come with me for part of the Bali tour. She wanted to witness first-hand the sounds that have moved me, and wanted to understand where my ideas came from. The concerto draws on the sights, sounds, and memories of Bali that have remained in my heart from the tour, as well as my getting to know Kristin, her firebrand style of playing, and, complementing that, the intense lyricism that she expresses as well.”

Performing on a violin crafted in Italy in 1759 by Gennaro Gagliano, in addition to her solo appearances, Kristin Lee tours throughout the world as a member of New York’s Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, including in Italy, Croatia, Germany, Taiwan, and across the U.S. Always up for adventure, at the Moab Music Festival in Utah, Lee has performed in such unexpected places as rafting down the Colorado River, in a natural rock grotto, and in the magical landscape of the red rock canyons of the area.

Kristin Lee’s debut solo album, American Sketches – released in summer 2024 on the First Hand Records – embraces the beauty of cultural diversity in the U.S. The album has a personal resonance for Lee. A native of Seoul, Korea, she emigrated to the U.S. at the age of seven. During her childhood, playing the violin was a refuge from bullying and racism for Kristin – she moved to the U.S. not speaking any English, and felt the violin became her voice. As a foreign-born citizen of the U.S., Lee was compelled to select repertoire for the album that would express her pride in the country she now calls her own. She has recorded works by American composers including Amy Beach, George Gershwin, Theolonius Monk, Scott Joplin, and more, that have a distinct and recognizable sound of American music and its rich history.

As a soloist, Kristin Lee has appeared with leading orchestras including The Philadelphia Orchestra, St. Louis Symphony, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, New Jersey Symphony, Hawai’i Symphony, Hong Kong Philharmonic, Ural Philharmonic of Russia, Korean Broadcasting Symphony, Guiyang Symphony Orchestra of China, and Orquesta Sinfonica Nacional of Dominican Republic. She has performed on the world’s finest concert stages, including Carnegie Hall, Avery Fisher Hall, the Kennedy Center, Kimmel Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Ravinia Festival, the Louvre Museum, the Phillips Collection, and Korea’s Kumho Art Gallery. In 2026, she makes her solo recital debut at Carnegie Hall performing her program American Sketches with pianist John Novacek. An accomplished chamber musician, Kristin Lee is a member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, performing regularly in New York at Lincoln Center and on tour. In addition to her prolific performance career, Lee is a devoted educator. She has served on the faculty of the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music and she has also been in residence with the Singapore National Youth Orchestra, the El Sistema Chamber Music Festival of Venezuela, and is a summer faculty member at Music@Menlo’s Chamber Music Institute. Lee is also the founding artistic director of Emerald City Music (ECM), a chamber music series that presents authentically unique concert experiences and bridges the divide between the highest caliber classical music and the many diverse communities of the Puget Sound region of Washington State.

Kristin Lee’s honors include an Avery Fisher Career Grant, top prizes in the Walter W. Naumburg Competition and the Astral Artists National Auditions, and awards from the Trondheim Chamber Music Competition, Trio di Trieste Premio International Competition, the SYLFF Fellowship, Dorothy DeLay Scholarship, the Aspen Music Festival’s Violin Competition, the New Jersey Young Artists’ Competition, and the Salon de Virtuosi Scholarship Foundation.

Born in Seoul, Lee moved to the United States and studied under prestigious teachers including Sonja Foster, Catherine Cho, Dorothy DeLay, Donald Weilerstein, and Itzhak Perlman. Lee holds a Master’s degree from The Juilliard School. Lee’s violin was crafted in Naples, Italy in 1759 by Gennaro Gagliano and is generously loaned to her by Paul & Linda Gridley.

For more information, visit www.violinistkristinlee.com.

For Calendar Editors:

Description: Violinist Kristin Lee, praised in The Strad for her “elegance” and “vivacity and electric energy,” will be the featured soloist with the Eugene Symphony Orchestra, led by Music Director Alex Prior, in Vivian Fung’s Balinese Gamelan-inspired Violin Concerto No. 1, which turns to the sonorities of the Balinese gamelan, as well as the natural sights, sounds and Fung’s memories of Bali for inspiration. The concert, titled Fate & Fire, also includes West Side Story Overture by Leonard Bernstein, and Symphony No. 5 by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.

Concert details:

Who: Violinist Kristin Lee
Soloist with Eugene Symphony in Violin Concerto No. 1 by Vivian Fung
Conducted by Music Director Alex Prior
What: Fate & Fire - Featuring Music by Leonard Bernstein, Vivian Fung, and Pyotr Tchaikovsky
When: Sunday, October 12, 2025 at 2pm
Where: The Hult Center, 1 Eugene Center, Eugene, OR 97401
Tickets and information: www.eugenesymphony.org/events/fate-and-fire-oct12-2025

Oct. 4: Announcing The Birch Festival 2025 Fall Edition Featuring Pianist Simone Dinnerstein, Cellist Alexis Pia Gerlach, and Violinist Yevgeny Kutik

Clockwise: Simone Dinnerstein, Alexis Pia Gerlach, and Yevgeny Kutik

The Birch Festival: Fall Edition 2025
Bach, Mozart, and More
October 4, 2025

Yevgeny Kutik, Artistic Director & Rachel Barker, Executive Director

Featured Performance:
Pianist Simone Dinnerstein, Cellist Alexis Pia Gerlach, and Violinist Yevgeny Kutik

Saturday, October 4, 2025 at 3pm
First Congregational Church Stockbridge | 4 Main Street | Stockbridge, MA

Tickets and Registration Information: www.thebirchfestival.org

Stockbridge, MA — The Birch Festival welcomes the fall season in the Berkshires with a wonderful day of camaraderie and music in Stockbridge, MA on Saturday, October 4, 2025. Kicking off its third season, The Birch Festival presents a thrilling performance featuring guest artist and GRAMMY®-nominated pianist Simone Dinnerstein and acclaimed cellist Alexis Pia Gerlach, performing with The Birch Festival Artistic Director and Co-Founder violinist Yevgeny Kutik, on Saturday, October 4, 2025 at 3pm at First Congregational Church Stockbridge (4 Main Street). Berkshire County Students and a guardian may attend the concert for free. Also on October 4 at 10am, audiences are invited to the “Don’t Tap on the Glass” open rehearsal, which offers a free, behind-the-scenes look at the finer work that goes into preparing for the afternoon’s main event.

Dinnerstein, Gerlach, and Kutik’s featured concert on October 4 spotlights three composers who have each made substantial marks in the classical canon – J.S. Bach, W.A. Mozart, and Philip Glass. Simone Dinnerstein and Alexis Pia Gerlach will give a rare performance of all three of J.S. Bach’s Viola da Gamba Sonatas, to be performed on cello and piano.. Written in the 1740s, these works are gems of the chamber repertoire and it is uncommon to hear them presented together as part of a single concert program. Yevgeny Kutik will join Dinnerstein for W.A. Mozart’s Sonata in E minor for Violin and Piano, K. 304. Written in Paris in 1778 shortly after the death of Mozart’s mother, the Sonata is an introspective and vulnerably beautiful work. Dinnerstein closes the program with a solo performance of Mad Rush by the iconic Philip Glass. Mad Rush was composed in 1978, originally on and for the organ at New York City’s Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Dinnerstein recorded Mad Rush as part of her 2022 album Undersong, which San Francisco Classical Voice praised for its “dreamy musing on the spatial quality of Glass’ music.”

Birch Festival Artistic Director Yevgeny Kutik says, “We are thrilled to launch the third season of The Birch Festival with a program that reflects what we strive to share with our community: beauty, dialogue, and discovery. To bring Simone Dinnerstein – one of today’s most imaginative interpreters – together with the wonderful Alexia Pia Gerlach for all three of Bach’s Viola da Gamba Sonatas is a rare and awesome occasion. With the addition of Mozart’s profoundly personal E minor Sonata this program celebrates how far we’ve come in three years while offering audiences a richly soulful and inspiring program.”

The Birch Festival was founded in 2022 by Lenox-based husband-and-wife team Yevgeny Kutik, an internationally renowned violinist who serves as Artistic Director, and Rachel Barker, who is the non-profit organization’s Executive Director. The Birch Festival promotes and propels distinct voices in music, whether through new composition or creative interpretation of old favorites. It offers leading musicians a chance to play and establish relationships in the Berkshires, while recognizing the importance of their work by offering compensation that sustains and values their efforts in this industry. The Birch Festival’s mission is to bring world-leading musicians for artist residencies in Berkshire County schools, and work in tandem with local business and cultural partnerships. Kutik, a Belarusian-Jewish refugee resettled in Pittsfield by the Jewish Federation in the 1990s, named the festival for his grandmother Sima Berezkina, whose last name means “birch tree.” With significance in many global cultures, birch trees symbolize growth, resilience, and adaptability – qualities that Sima embodied.

The Birch Festival’s Fall 2025 Schedule:

“Don’t Tap on the Glass” Open Rehearsal

Saturday, October 4, 2025 at 10am
First Congregational Church Stockbridge (4 Main Street; Stockbridge, MA 01262)
Free and open to the public, registration required. (Tickets limited)

The Birch Festival welcomes the community of the Berkshires to enjoy a morning preview of the festival’s featured concert at its “Don’t Tap on the Glass” open rehearsal at First Congregational Church Stockbridge. Registration required.

The Birch Festival Featured Performance: Bach, Mozart, and Philip Glass

Sunday, October 4, 2025 at 3pm
First Congregational Church Stockbridge (4 Main Street; Stockbridge, MA 01262)
Tickets: www.thebirchfestival.org

Pianist Simone Dinnerstein and cellist Alexis Pia Gerlach, along with violinist and Birch Festival Artistic Director and Co-Founder Yevgeny Kutik, will perform a concert showcasing the music of classical icons, J.S. Bach, W.A. Mozart, and Philip Glass. Berkshire County Students and a guardian may attend for free.

About the Artists & Festival Directors:

About Yevgeny Kutik: With a “dark-hued tone and razor-sharp technique” (The New York Times), violinist Yevgeny Kutik has captivated audiences worldwide with an old-world sound that communicates a modern intellect. Praised for his technical precision and virtuosity, he is lauded for his poetic and imaginative interpretations of both standard works and newly composed repertoire. A native of Minsk, Belarus, Kutik began violin studies with his mother, Alla Zernitskaya, and immigrated to the U.S. with his family at the age of five. An advocate for the Jewish Federations of North America, the organization that assisted his family in coming to the US, he regularly speaks and performs across the country to promote the assistance of refugees from around the world. Kutik’s discography, all on Marquis Classics, includes The Death of Juliet and Other Tales (2021), Meditations on Family (Marquis Classics 2019), Words Fail (2016), Music from the Suitcase (2014), and Sounds of Defiance (2012). Committed to the music of our time, Kutik regularly gives premiere and repeat performances of major works by today’s most celebrated composers.  For more information, please visit www.yevgenykutik.com. 

About Rachel Barker: Rachel Barker is an educator and writer. Barker has been awarded spots in writers workshops for both nonfiction and fiction, including the Key West Literary Seminar, the Aspen Institute's Aspen Summer Words, and multiple residencies with Write On, Door County. She has consulted and presented for a number of organizations throughout the country, including the Yale Council for African Studies, Flint Institute of Music, Boston University's African Studies Center, Primary Source, and the Wayland/Weston Interfaith Council on Teaching Religion in Schools. Rachel Barker’s MEd. is from Boston College, where she graduated with a focus on social justice and teaching English language learners. Her undergraduate degree in Anthropology is from Boston University, and she currently studies Religion at Harvard University.

About Simone Dinnerstein: American pianist Simone Dinnerstein has played with orchestras ranging from the New York Philharmonic and Montreal Symphony Orchestra to the London Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale Rai. She has performed in venues from Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center to the Berlin Philharmonie, the Vienna Konzerthaus, Seoul Arts Center and Sydney Opera House. She has made fifteen albums, all of which have topped the Billboard classical charts. Her first fourteen albums were recorded with Grammy Award-winning producer Adam Abeshouse. During the pandemic she recorded three albums which form a trilogy: A Character of Quiet, An American Mosaic, and Undersong. An American Mosaic was nominated for a Grammy. Her most recent recording Complicité (Supertrain Records, 2025), is her first all-Bach album in over ten years and features Jennifer Johnson Cano, mezzo-soprano and Peggy Pearson, oboe d’amore along with the string ensemble Simone founded and directs, Baroklyn. Recorded with producer Silas Brown, the album also includes composer Philip Lasser’s continuo realizations and recomposition of Bach’s Air on the G String. The Washington Post comments, “it is Dinnerstein’s unreserved identification with every note she plays that makes her performance so spellbinding.” In a world where music is everywhere, she hopes that it can still be transformative. For more information, please visit www.simonedinnerstein.com.

About Alexis Pia Gerlach: Cellist Alexis Pia Gerlach has been lauded by the press for the "gripping emotion" and "powerful artistry" of her interpretations; qualities which have led to a career striking for its wide range of artistic collaborations. She has appeared extensively in recitals and as a soloist with orchestras across the United States, as well as in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and South America, with such conductors as Mstislav Rostropovich, James DePreist and Peter Oundjian. Her recording with pianist Fabio Bidini of the Franck and Rachmaninoff Sonatas is released on the Encore Performance label. As a sought-after chamber musician she performs at major festivals including Marlboro, Aspen, Bridgehampton, La Musica di Asolo and Caramoor, where she is a Texaco Rising Star, and as a guest artist with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. She has played extensively with Musicians from Marlboro, on both national and international tours. As a founding member of Concertante, a string sextet based in New York City, Gerlach performs on major concert series throughout North America, and has toured Asia and the Middle East. Concertante’s recordings of the string sextet repertoire have been met with critical acclaim.

Follow The Birch Festival on Social Media

Instagram: www.instagram.com/thebirchfestival
Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/company/the-birch-festival/

Sept 26: ECM New Series Releases Dobrinka Tabakova's Sun Triptych

ECM New Series Releases

Dobrinka Tabakova
Sun Triptych

Whispered Lullaby; Suite in Jazz Style; Fantasy Homage to Schubert; Organum Light; Spinning a Yarn; Sun Triptych

Maxim Rysanov, viola; Dasol Kim, piano; Roman Mints, violin, hurdy-gurdy; Kristina Blaumane, violoncello; BBC Concert Orchestra, conducted by Dobrinka Tabakova

Release Date: September 26, 2025
ECM New Series 2670

Downloads and CDs available upon request.

Dobrinka Tabakova’s ECM New Series debut, String Paths, made an immediate impact on its release in 2013. The Washington Times hailed it as an “exciting, deeply moving, original and triumphant” recording, while The Strad praised its “glowing tonal harmonies and grand, sweeping gestures.” Music from String Paths was incorporated in Jean-Luc Godard’s films Adieu au langage (Goodbye to Language) and Le livre d’image (The Image Book), and the album received a Grammy nomination.

The British-Bulgarian composer’s new album, again produced by Manfred Eicher, brings back some of the String Paths cast, including close associates violist Maxim Rysanov, violinist Roman Mints and cellist Kristine Blaumane.  Friends and colleagues since conservatory days at the Guildhall School, all now leading soloists in their own right, they have grown up with the expressive language and colours of Tabakova’s music and are among its ideal interpreters.

In addition, the BBC Concert Orchestra, with whom she held the position of Composer-in- Residence from 2017 to 2022, presents her works Sun Triptych and Fantasy Homage to Schubert. In the album’s musical constellation, these works have a central role, with the more chamber-like pieces – including Whispered Lullaby, the Suite in Jazz Style and Spinning a Yarn – surrounding or connecting them, “growing out of this nebulous, still world, and melting back into it,” as Tabakova says.

Two pieces for viola and piano open the album: Whispered Lullaby is a gentle, yearning song, originally composed for a children’s opera, Midsummer Magic. The Suite in Jazz Style, an imaginative chamber meditation on jazz gestures, atmospheres and textures, is a successor to the Suite in Old Style on String Paths, also written for the wide ranging skills of violist Maxim Rysakov.

Spinning a Yarn, a piece with a touching, archaic folk-like quality, features Roman Mints on both violin and hurdy-gurdy, “a beautiful, interesting - and capricious! - instrument. To have that link to a folkloric past is also very important to me.” As the Washington Times remarked: “Tabakova may be using the musical materials of tradition, but through them she has broken new paths.”

The Fantasy Homage to Schubert recontextualizes Schubert’s Fantasy in C Major, originally for violin and piano, resetting its opening melody “in a completely transfigured environment,” and directing it heavenward. Conjuring images of slowly turning planets, Tabakova paints a picture of “floating in space, free of gravity – comets and celestial bodies passing by. And, as the Schubert melody is heard for the first time, we catch a first glimpse of Planet Earth.”

The radiant Sun Triptych evokes the changing play of light on the natural world over the course of the day. Dobrinka Tabakova: “The solace I find in nature permeates this work. The first movement builds up gently, ascending lines in the solos, increasingly denser and richer chords in the strings...The sustained textures of the first movement become hazy tremolos in the second movement, ‘Day’, as the shimmering of the strings suggest the buzzing of insects and the heat haze when the sun is at its strongest. In the final movement, a retrograde of some of the gestures in the first movement is applied to bring the close of the journey with ‘Dusk.’”

Organum Light was written in response to a commission from vocal group Opus Anglicanum; since the piece drew inspiration from the polyphonic viol consort works of Gibbons and Purcell, transferring the music to a string ensemble was, Tabakova notes, a very natural step.

*

Dobrinka Tabakova was born in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, in 1980 and moved with her family to the UK in 1991; she has lived in London since then.  She studied piano and composition at the Royal Academy of Music Junior Department and at the age of 14 won the Jean-Frédéric Perrenoud composition prize at the Vienna International Music Competition. Tabakova graduated from the Guildhall School of Music & Drama and King’s College London, and also participated in master classes with composers including Iannis Xenakis, John Adams and Louis Andriessen.

A meeting with Manfred Eicher at the Lockenhaus Festival – where her Suite In Old Style was performed in 2007 – led subsequently to the recording of String Paths, the first album devoted entirely to Tabakova’s music.

For five years from 2017, Tabakova was Composer-in-Residence for the BBC Concert Orchestra, also taking over the role of conductor at the end of this period.

Whispered Lullaby, Suite in Jazz Style and Spinning a Yarn were recorded at Berlin’s Meistersaal in August 2020. Fantasy Homage to Schubert, Organum Light and Sun Triptych were recorded at Watford Colosseum in July 2021. The album was completed and mixed at Bavaria Musikstudios in Munich in January 2025 by Manfred Eicher and Dobrinka Tabakova with Michael Hinreiner (engineer).

CD Booklet includes a liner note by Dobrinka Tabakova and recording session photos.

Further information: https://www.dobrinka.com/ and www.ecmrecords.com

California Symphony Accepting Applications for 2026-2029 Composer-in-Residence Program

L-R, Composers Viet Cuong and Saad Haddad with Donato Cabrera and the California Symphony.
Photos by Kristen Loken available in high resolution here.

California Symphony Accepting Applications for 2026-2029 Composer-in-Residence Program

Unique opportunity to compose, rehearse, premiere, and record multiple orchestral compositions over three years

Donato Cabrera, Artistic & Music Director

Information & Online Application: www.californiasymphony.org/composerinresidence
Deadline: October 31, 2025 (11:59pm PT)

WALNUT CREEK, CA – California Symphony is now accepting applications for its unique three-year Composer-in-Residence Program, now in its 34th year. Applications through the online portal will be accepted until October 31, 2025 at 11:59pm PT.  The residency runs from August 1, 2026 through July 31, 2029, and the selected composer will be notified no later than February 1, 2026.

California Symphony’s Composer-in-Residence Program is unusual in that it gives early-career professional composers or graduate students in composition the opportunity to work with a professional orchestra over an extended period, composing a new orchestral work each season and visiting the orchestra and community multiple times in order to build experience and relationships. The program has become one of the most sought-after in the country, with past participants going on to win major honors and awards, including GRAMMY Awards, the Rome Prize, the Barlow Prize, Guggenheim Fellowships, and more. 

Writing for symphony orchestra is a major challenge for many early-career composers. Creating balance among the different sections of an orchestra, exploring the nuances of tone color between instruments, and learning how to communicate effectively with the conductor and orchestra members during rehearsals are important skills best gained in the hands-on environment of real-time work with a professional orchestra. California Symphony recognized this need early on and founded its Composer-in-Residence program in 1991. Opportunities for composers to collaborate with professional orchestras in a three-year, immersive setting like this remain few and far between.

California Symphony’s Composer-in-Residence will work closely with Artistic and Music Director Donato Cabrera and the musicians of the orchestra throughout the residency. California Symphony will commission three new orchestral pieces from the composer, with each being premiered on one of the orchestra’s subscription concerts at the Lesher Center for the Arts during the 2026-27, 2027-28, and 2028-29 seasons. Additionally, each season Cabrera and the full orchestra will record 30-minute reading workshops for the new pieces, from which study recordings will be provided to the composer.

California Symphony’s Composer-in-Residence Program also provides early-career composers with experience in the full ecosystem of the orchestra. The composer will engage with the community through participating in California Symphony’s education work in local schools; interacting with audiences at concerts and during pre-concert discussions; attending special events and other fundraising activities; and supporting promotion of performances by writing guest blog entries, providing social media content, and giving interviews to the press.

“There is no greater joy for me than helping to bring a new piece of music into this world, and our composer-in-residence program facilitates this process like no other that I’m aware. The challenge for composers, like conductors, is that there is no way to hone one’s craft except in real time, with the orchestra responding to everything you have prepared for them in advance,” says Cabrera. “In providing 30-minute reading workshops for composers to actually hear their ideas before they are committed to a printed and published piece of music, introducing them to our community through donor events and community partnerships, and having them interact with student musicians and composers, the California Symphony’s Composer-in-Residence Program is unique and essential.”

In addition to commission fees for the three new orchestral works composed during the residency, California Symphony provides travel expenses and accommodations for two residency weeks for the composer, for each of the three concert seasons. Early-career professional composers or graduate students in composition who are U.S. citizens or permanent residents are eligible to apply. The three-round application process is blind. Applicants’ identities are not disclosed to the selection panel, which includes Artistic and Music Director Donato Cabrera, the current Composer-in-Residence, and other professionals in the field.

Previous Composer-in-Residence Mason Bates says, “The California Symphony has one of the most outstanding composer-in-residence programs in the country. They have this orchestra-as-laboratory idea, and they let the composer work in ways that almost never happen anywhere else.”

California Symphony’s current and previous composers in residence are Saad Haddad (2023-2026), Viet Cuong (2020-2023), Katherine Balch (2017-2020), Dan Visconti (2014-2027), D.J. Sparr (2011-2014), Mason Bates (2007-2010), Kevin Beavers (2002-2005), Pierre Jalbert (1999-2002), Kevin Puts (1996-1999), Christopher Theofanidis (1994-1996), Kamran Ince (1991-1994).

ABOUT THE CALIFORNIA SYMPHONY:

Founded in 1986, California Symphony has been led by Artistic and Music Director Donato Cabrera since 2013. It is distinguished by its vibrant concert programs that span the breadth of orchestral repertoire, including works by American composers and by living composers. Its concert season at the Lesher Center for the Arts in Walnut Creek, California serves a growing number of music lovers from across the Bay Area.

California Symphony believes that the concert experience should be fun and inviting, and its mission is to create a welcoming, engaging, and inclusive environment for the entire community. Through this commitment to community, imaginative programming, and its support of emerging composers, California Symphony is a leader among orchestras in California and a model for regional orchestras everywhere.

Since 1991, California Symphony's three-year Young American Composer-in-Residence program has provided a composer with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to collaborate with the orchestra over three consecutive years to create, rehearse, premiere, and record three major orchestra compositions, one each season. Every Composer-in-Residence has gone on to win top honors and accolades in the field, including the Rome Prize, Pulitzer Prize, Grammy Awards, and more.

The orchestra's nationally recognized educational initiative Sound Minds impacts students' trajectories by providing instruction for violin or cello and musicianship skills. Sound Minds has proven to contribute directly to improved reading and math proficiencies and character development, as students set and achieve goals, learn communication and problem-solving skills, and gain self-confidence. Inspired by the El Sistema program of Venezuela, the program is offered completely free of charge to the students and families of Downer Elementary School in San Pablo, California.

Through its innovative adult education program Fresh Look: The Symphony Exposed, California Symphony provides lifelong learners a fun-filled introduction to the orchestra and classical music. Led by celebrated educator and California Symphony program annotator Scott Foglesong, these live classes are held over four weeks in the summer annually.

In 2017, California Symphony became the first orchestra with a public statement of a commitment to diversity. Its website is available in both Spanish and English.

Reaching far beyond the performance hall, since 2020 the orchestra's concerts have been broadcast nationally on multiple radio series through Classical California (KUSC/KDFC) and the WFMT Radio Network, reaching over 1.5 million listeners across the country. 

California Symphony’s 2025-26 season is sponsored by the Lesher Foundation.

Composer Sarah Kirkland Snider's Season Highlights - World Premiere of HILDEGARD with LA Opera & PROTOTYPE; New Orchestral Album; New Dance Work for Miami City Ballet; and more

Photo by Anja Schutz available in high resolution here.

Composer Sarah Kirkland Snider’s 2025-2026 Season Highlights

Rolling World Premiere Performances of First Opera HILDEGARD
Los Angeles Opera November 5-9, 2025 & PROTOTYPE in NYC January 9-17, 2026
Plus Aspen Music Festival Summer 2026
Co-commissioned by Beth Morrison Projects & the Aspen Music Festival and School 

 Release of New Orchestral Album
Forward Into Light with Andrew Cyr & Metropolis Ensemble in January 2026 

World Premiere of a New Work for the
New World Symphony and Miami City Ballet
April 17-19, 2026 

Professional World Premiere of Marmoris by the Monterey Symphony
May 16-17, 2026

Continued Performances of Major Works The Blue Hour, Penelope, Mass for the Endangered, Something for the Dark, Marmoris, Scenes from Unremembered

“Expressive, evocative, and personal, Sarah Kirkland Snider’s music explores emotional landscapes through vivid, compelling narratives in a unique sound world that she has made identifiably her own – familiar, yet at the same time strange and unsettling.” – Gramophone

 “Her music can sound ageless and contemporary at once, with an emotional impact that's direct and immediate.” – Gothamist 

Schedule: www.sarahkirklandsnider.com/events

Composer Sarah Kirkland Snider, deemed “one of new music’s leading names” (Gramophone), writes music of direct expression and dramatic narrative that has been hailed as “rapturous” (The New York Times), “groundbreaking” (The Boston Globe), and “ravishingly beautiful” (NPR). With an attention to detail that is “as intricate and exquisite as a spider’s web” (BBC Music Magazine), Snider’s music synthesizes diverse influences to render a nuanced command of immersive storytelling. Snider’s music will be performed around the world this season in cities including Paris, France; Offenbach, Germany; Toronto and Kitchener, Ontario, Canada; Abbotsford, Victoria, Australia; and Antwerp, Belgium; as well as across the United States from Brooklyn, New York and Baltimore, Maryland to Wheeling, West Virginia; Ann Arbor, Michigan; and Berkeley, California.

Highlights of Sarah Kirkland Snider’s 2025-2026 concert season include the milestone premieres of three major new works – her first opera, HILDEGARD, for which she also wrote the libretto, co-commissioned by Beth Morrison Projects and the Aspen Music Festival and School and presented in rolling world premieres by Los Angeles Opera (November 5-9, 2025) and PROTOTYPE Festival in New York (January 9-17, 2026), with subsequent performances at the Aspen Music Festival and School (Summer 2026); a new work for dance for the New World Symphony and Miami City Ballet (April 17-19, 2026); and the professional world premiere performances of Snider’s latest orchestral work Marmoris by the Monterey Symphony (May 16-17, 2026).

In addition, in January 2026 Sarah Kirkland Snider will release her fifth full-length LP, a new, all-orchestral album titled Forward Into Light produced by multi-Grammy-winning producer Silas Brown and recorded by Andrew Cyr and the Metropolis Ensemble, which features her work Forward Into Light, an orchestral commission for the New York Philharmonic inspired by the American women’s suffrage movement; the string orchestra version of Drink the Wild Ayre, a reimagining of the string quartet Snider was commissioned to write for the Emerson String Quartet for the ensemble’s farewell tour; Eye of Mnemosyne, commissioned by the Rochester Philharmonic; and Something for the Dark, commissioned by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. The album will be released by the label that Snider co-founded, New Amsterdam Records.

Co-commissioned by Beth Morrison Projects and the Aspen Music Festival and School, Sarah Kirkland Snider’s opera HILDEGARD (2025) is about twelfth-century German Benedictine abbess/polymath/composer St. Hildegard von Bingen. HILDEGARD will have its rolling world premiere at Los Angeles Opera (November 5-9, 2025) and New York’s PROTOTYPE Festival (January 9-17, 2026), followed by performances by the Aspen Music Festival and School in summer 2026. Works & Process at the Guggenheim Museum will present a discussion on the creation of HILDEGARD, along with performances of excerpts from the new work, on September 15, 2025, at the Guggenheim Museum. 

Set in 1147, the opera follows Hildegard as she begins transcribing her visions of God to obtain Papal approval, at grave risk of excommunication. She enlists a young convalescent, Richardis von Stade, to help illustrate her visions, and the two women quickly develop a transformative partnership that awakens them creatively, spiritually, and – much to the internal conflict of both women – romantically. Immersive and intimate, HILDEGARD is a tale of two gifted women struggling to find their voices in a time and place where female voices were not meant to be heard. More broadly, the opera is about the desire for connection – to divinity, humanity, and our deepest sense of self – and the conflicts that compete therein. 

Snider has both composed the opera and written the libretto. Beth Morrison is the creative producer. HILDEGARD is directed by Elkhanah Pulitzer with music director Gabriel Crouch, and stars Nola Richardson (Hildegard von Bingen), Mikaela Bennett (Richards von Stade), Raha Mirzadegan (Angel), Blythe Gaissert (Margravine von Stade), Roy Hage (Volmar), Patrick Bessenbacher (Mechthild), David Adam Moore (Abbot Cuno), and Paul Chwe MinChul An (Otto). With two grants from Opera America, Hildegard has been workshopped at Princeton University Lewis Center for the Arts Atelier program (2023), Opera Fusion: New Works at Cincinnati Opera (2024), and Mannes College of Music (2025).

Snider's new work for dance will premiere April 17-19, 2026 presented by two of Miami's cornerstone cultural institutions, New World Symphony and Miami City Ballet. The new work is a choreographic concerto, bringing together music by Snider and four other leading musical voices – Michael Abels, Jennifer Higdon, Kevin Puts, and Carlos Simon – paired with new work by visionary choreographers.

Snider’s newest orchestral work, Marmoris (2025), will receive its professional premiere by the Monterey Symphony under conductor Jayce Ogren at the Sunset Center in Carmel, CA (May 16-17, 2026), following performances at the University of Michigan in March 2025 and January 2026. Snider composed Marmoris in the months prior to the 2024 U.S. election, and the title is an ancient Latin word that means “the shimmering surface of the sea.” Snider writes, “Orchestras bring together musicians from all different backgrounds and perspectives to listen to each other, empathize, and cooperate in the creation of a shared human experience that transcends cultural and ideological differences. The orchestra has often reminded me of an ocean in this way – a seemingly living, breathing thing consisting of myriad unique lifeforms churning in concert. This piece reflects upon the forces in life that hold and enclose us, those vast similitudes that remind us we are a part of something much larger than our daily human struggles might allow us to perceive.”

Sarah Kirkland Snider’s existing works for orchestra will also be performed widely this season:

The Blue Hour (2017), an ambitious 70-minute song cycle for mezzo-soprano and string orchestra composed by Rachel Grimes, Sarah Kirkland Snider, Angélica Negrón, Shara Nova, and Caroline Shaw, will be performed this season by Orchestra National Avignon with Shara Nova at the Philharmonie de Paris (October 17, 2025), by the Wheeling Symphony and Shara Nova in Wheeling, WV (March 20, 2026), the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra and Bella Adamova at Queen Elizabeth Hall (March 28, 2026), and The National Philharmonic and Shara Nova at the Music Centre at Strathmore (May 9, 2026). The Blue Hour uses as its text Carolyn Forché’s poem, “On Earth,” which catalogs the scattered thoughts, visions, and imagery of a life passing ever closer to death, organized through the objective but arbitrary tool of alphabetization. The recording by Shara Nova and A Far Cry was co-released in 2022 by Nonesuch Records and New Amsterdam Records and was nominated for a 2023 GRAMMY Award. 

Snider’s work Penelope (2007/2009), a meditation on memory, identity, and what it means to come home inspired by Homer’s epic poem the Odyssey with lyrics by playwright Ellen McLaughlin, will be performed this season by the Alta Collective at Abbotsford Convent in Victoria, Australia (October 25-26, 2025); the Metropolis Ensemble presented by Emerald City Music in Seattle, WA (February 6, 2026) and Olympia, WA (February 7, 2026); and the Wheeling Symphony in Wheeling, WV (March 17, 2026). Penelope was released on New Amsterdam Records in 2010, recorded by Shara Nova and Signal.

Also this season, Snider’s Something for the Dark (2015) will be performed by the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra conducted by David Robertson (March 6-7, 2026). Snider writes of the genesis of the piece, “Something for the Dark was commissioned by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra as a result of my receiving the DSO Elaine Lebenbom Award for Female Composers in 2014. Thinking about Detroit led me to think about resilience, and what it means to endure. . . The title of the piece comes from ‘For Fran,’ a poem by Philip Levine, the Detroit-born-and-raised, former U.S. Poet Laureate who was best known for his poems about Detroit’s working class.”

Also this season, Sarah Kirkland Snider’s monumental choral work Mass for the Endangered (2018) will continue to be performed throughout North America, including by The Emmanuel Choir in Baltimore (November 2, 2025), Soundstreams Choir in Toronto, ON (November 22, 2025), Park Slope Singers in Brooklyn, NY (January 31-February 1, 2026), Elora Singers at St. Matthew’s Centre in Kitchener, ON (March 29, 2026), and Borealis Chamber Artists in Duluth, MN (May 23, 2026). Commissioned by Trinity Wall Street in 2018, Mass for the Endangered is a hymn for the voiceless and discounted. Snider writes that the piece, “appeals for parity, compassion, and protection, from a mindset – a malignance or apathy – that threatens to destroy the planet we all are meant to share.” David Patrick Stearns reports in Arts Journal, “Snider’s Mass for the Endangered warrants all of the success that it has had…It’s frankly beautiful. Snider consistently delivers music you want to hear…the music has a keen sense of collage – with thoughtfully chosen musical objects co-existing in the same sound canvas…” Mass for the Endangered was released on Nonesuch/New Amsterdam Records in 2020.

In addition, Scenes from Unremembered (2011), Snider’s five-song version for choir and piano of her larger song cycle Unremembered, will be performed by Volti in Berkeley, CA (Spring 2026). Unremembered is inspired by the poems and illustrations of writer and artist Nathaniel Bellows. The complete song cycle was released on New Amsterdam Records in 2015, and named to dozens of best-of lists that year.

Snider’s chamber music and solo works will also be featured in several performances throughout the season including by pianist Adam Tendler in the plum tree I planted still there (2022) as part of his Inheritances project at Barre Opera House in Barre, VT (November 16, 2025); O Sweet and Beloved Mother (2023), a study for Snider’s opera HILDEGARD, by the Capitol Symphony Orchestra in Offenbach, Germany (March 15, 2026); Shiner (2006) for trombone, harp, viola, and marimba by Art of Elan at ICA in San Diego, CA (April 12, 2026); and You Are Free (2015), inspired by a field recording of Arvo Pärt’s interview with Björk from the 1990s, by Third Angle at Miller Hall World Forestry Center in Portland, OR (May 15, 2026).

Sarah Kirkland Snider’s music has been commissioned and/or performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra; Chicago Symphony Orchestra; Cleveland Orchestra; Detroit Symphony Orchestra; National Symphony Orchestra; New York Philharmonic; San Francisco Symphony; Philharmonia Orchestra; Melbourne Symphony Orchestra; Toronto Symphony Orchestra; Residentie Orkest; Birmingham Royal Ballet; Emerson String Quartet; Renée Fleming and Will Liverman; Deutsche Grammophon for mezzo Emily D’Angelo; percussionist Colin Currie; eighth blackbird; A Far Cry; and Roomful of Teeth, among many others. The winner of the 2014 Detroit Symphony Orchestra Lebenbom Competition, Snider’s recent works include Forward Into Light, an orchestral commission for the New York Philharmonic inspired by American women suffragists; Drink the Wild Ayre, the final commission by the legendary Emerson String Quartet; Mass for the Endangered, a Trinity Wall Street-commissioned prayer for the environment for choir and ensemble, programmed by dozens of choirs the world over; and Embrace, an orchestral ballet for the Birmingham Royal Ballet.

Her four full-length LPs – The Blue Hour (Nonesuch/NewAmsterdam, 2022), Mass for the Endangered (Nonesuch/NewAmsterdam, 2020), Unremembered (New Amsterdam, 2015), and Penelope (New Amsterdam, 2010) – have garnered year-end nods and critical acclaim from The New York Times, NPR, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Gramophone Magazine, Pitchfork, BBC Music Magazine, The Nation, and many others. A founding Co-Artistic Director of Brooklyn-based non-profit New Amsterdam Records, Snider has an M.M.and Artist’s Diploma from the Yale School of Music, and a B.A. from Wesleyan University. She was a Visiting Lecturer at Princeton University in fall 2023. Her music is published by G. Schirmer. 

For more information about Sarah Kirkland Snider: www.sarahkirklandsnider.com/bio

Oct. 21: Pianist Simone Dinnerstein and Baroklyn Perform Music from New Album Complicité – Presented by Kaufman Music Center

Photo of Simone Dinnerstein and Baroklyn by Grayson Dantzic available in high resolution here.

GRAMMY®-Nominated Pianist Simone Dinnerstein 
and Baroklyn with Mezzo-Soprano Jennifer Johnson Cano and Oboist Katherine Needleman

Performing the Music of New Bach Album Complicité
Presented by Kaufman Music Center

Tuesday, October 21, 2025 at 7:30pm
Merkin Hall at Kaufman Music Center | 129 West 67th Street | New York, NY
Tickets & Information

Complicité is Out Now on Supertrain Records

Listen to Simone Dinnerstein on NPR’s Morning Edition

Simone Dinnerstein: www.simonedinnerstein.com

New York, NY – On Tuesday, October 21, 2025 at 7:30pm, GRAMMY®-nominated pianist Simone Dinnerstein – described by The New York Times as “colorful and idiosyncratic” – performs with Baroklyn, the string ensemble she founded and directs, the music of their recent album Complicité, presented by Kaufman Music Center (KMC) at Merkin Hall (129 W. 67th St.) as part of KMC’s Piano Dialogues series. The concert also features mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnson Cano and oboist Katherine Needleman with Dinnerstein and Baroklyn.

Simone Dinnerstein is well known for her distinctive musical voice and for her expressive performances of music by J.S. Bach. She first came to wider public attention in 2007 through her recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, reflecting an aesthetic that was both deeply rooted in the score and profoundly idiosyncratic. She is, wrote The New York Times, “a unique voice in the forest of Bach interpretation.”

Both the new album, Complicité, and the upcoming concert at KMC include Dinnerstein and Baroklyn’s arrangement of Bach’s chorale Herr Gott, nun schleuß den Himmel auf, BWV 617; Bach’s Keyboard Concerto in E Major, BWV 1053; J.S. Bach: Der Leib war in der Erden, BWV 161 (arr. Simone Dinnerstein and Baroklyn); Bach’s Cantata 170, Vergnügte Ruh, beliebte Seelenlust with continuo realization by Philip Lasser; and In the Air, Lasser’s recomposition of Bach’s Air on the G String.

The deeply felt recording has been warmly-received by listeners – Complicité has already been streamed over 1 million times. Gramophone describes Dinnerstein’s performance as “full of life, engagement and detail.” Of the new album, Textura writes: “Not only are the performances terrific, the music impresses for being more than faithful replications of existing scores but instead arresting re-imaginings that take Bach's pieces into dynamic new realms.” Read the album press release here and listen here.

Dinnerstein says of her group Baroklyn, “Baroklyn is a group of string players which I lead from the piano. We’re a community that shares the artistic vision that is most important to me, that music should be creative and new. Rehearsal is important to us, and I’ve been influenced by theater practice in which we listen to each other and pass musical ideas and phrases within the group. We rehearse and perform in a semi-circle around the piano and I rearrange parts to emphasize lines, voices and imitative qualities to create a sense of dialogue.” The ensemble’s name is a portmanteau of Baroque and Brooklyn, Dinnerstein’s home borough.

Coinciding with the album’s release, Dinnerstein spoke with NPR’s Morning Edition about the project, as well as about her experience with performance anxiety and the way that playing with the sheet music on an iPad has resolved this for her. Of her work with Baroklyn, she said, “It's like a sharing circle, and you hear everybody's individuality, their individual sound as it gets passed around.” Listen to the NPR interview here.

Of the album’s title, Dinnerstein says, “Complicité is a term that I first heard from my son, who studied the teachings of the French theatre practitioner, Jacques Lecoq. Three important ideas that Lecoq communicated to his students were le jeu (playfulness), complicité (togetherness), and disponsibilité (openness). I was so intrigued by these ideas, and the different exercises that my son learned in order to cultivate these skills within ensemble acting, that I decided to try a Lecoq approach with my own musical ensemble, Baroklyn.”

More about Simone Dinnerstein: Dinnerstein has played with orchestras ranging from the New York Philharmonic and Montreal Symphony Orchestra to the London Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale Rai. She has performed in venues from Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center to the Berlin Philharmonie, the Vienna Konzerthaus, Seoul Arts Center and Sydney Opera House. She has made fifteen albums, all of which have topped the Billboard classical charts. Her first fourteen albums were recorded with Grammy Award-winning producer Adam Abeshouse. During the pandemic she recorded three albums which form a trilogy: A Character of Quiet, An American Mosaic, and Undersong. An American Mosaic was nominated for a Grammy. Her most recent recording Complicité (Supertrain Records, 2025), is her first all-Bach album in over ten years and features Jennifer Johnson Cano, mezzo-soprano and Peggy Pearson, oboe d’amore along with the string ensemble Simone founded and directs, Baroklyn. Recorded with producer Silas Brown, the album also includes composer Philip Lasser’s continuo realizations and recomposition of Bach’s Air on the G String.

In recent years, Dinnerstein has created projects that express her broad musical interests. She gave the world premiere of The Eye Is the First Circle at Montclair State University, the first multi-media production she conceived, created, and directed, which uses as source materials her father Simon Dinnerstein’s painting The Fulbright Triptych and Charles Ives’s Concord Sonata. She premiered Richard Danielpour’s An American Mosaic, a tribute to those affected by the pandemic, in a performance on multiple pianos throughout Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery. Following her recording, Mozart in Havana, she brought the Havana Lyceum Orchestra from Cuba to the U.S. for the first time, performing eleven concerts. Philip Glass composed his Piano Concerto No. 3 for her, co-commissioned by twelve orchestras. Working with Renée Fleming and the Emerson String Quartet, she premiered André Previn and Tom Stoppard’s Penelope at the Tanglewood, Ravinia and Aspen music festivals, and performed it at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, and presented by LA Opera and the Cleveland Orchestra.

The Washington Post comments, “it is Dinnerstein’s unreserved identification with every note she plays that makes her performance so spellbinding.” In a world where music is everywhere, she hopes that it can still be transformative.

For more information, please visit www.simonedinnerstein.com.

For Calendar Editors:

Description: GRAMMY®-nominated pianist Simone Dinnerstein performs with mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnson Cano, oboist Katherine Needleman, and Baroklyn – the string ensemble Dinnerstein founded and directs – as part of Kaufman Music Center’s Piano Dialogues series. The concert will feature music by J.S. Bach and Philip Lasser from Dinnerstein’s new album Complicité.

Concert details:

Who: Pianist Simone Dinnerstein with Baroklyn, Mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnson Cano and Oboist Katherine Needleman
What: Music from Dinnerstein’s New Bach Album Complicité
When: Tuesday, October 21, 2025 at 7:30pm
Where: Merkin Hall at Kaufmann Music Center, 129 West 67th Street, New York, NY 10023
Tickets and Information: https://www.kaufmanmusiccenter.org/mch/event/simone-dinnerstein-with-baroklyn

Oct. 17: Pianist Sarah Cahill Presented by the Other Minds Festival – Performing World Premiere of New Work by Samuel Adams in Tribute to Ingram Marshall

Photo of Sarah Cahill by Kristen Wrzesniewski available in high-resolution at
jensenartists.com/artists-profiles/sarah-cahill

Pianist Sarah Cahill Presented by the Other Minds Festival

Performing the World Premiere of Prelude: Hammer the Sky Bright 
by Composer Samuel Adams

A Tribute to Ingram Marshall Commissioned by Sarah Cahill

Friday, October 17, 2025 at 8pm
Brava Theater | 2781 24th St. | San Francisco, CA
Tickets and More Information

“As tenacious and committed an advocate as any composer could dream of”
– San Francisco Chronicle

Watch Sarah Cahill’s NPR Tiny Desk Concert

www.sarahcahill.com

San Francisco, CA – Pianist Sarah Cahill, described as “a sterling pianist and an intrepid illuminator of the classical avant-garde” by The New York Times, will perform as part of Night 2 of the 29th annual Other Minds Festival on Friday, October 17, 2025 at 8pm. Cahill will give the world premiere of Prelude: Hammer the Sky Bright by Samuel Adams. The concert will be held at Brava Theater (2781 24th St).

Commissioned by Cahill, Adams’ solo piano work is a tribute to composer Ingram Marshall (1942–2022). A resident of the San Francisco Bay Area, Ingram Marshall’s work has greatly influenced a number of composers and musicians from the area, including Adams – who studied with Marshall and considered him his mentor – and Cahill, who has frequently performed Marshall’s music, as well as commissioned other works by the late composer.

“I was seventeen when I met Ingram Marshall in San Francisco, and he had a tremendous influence on me,” says Cahill. “He wrote his great piano piece, Authentic Presence, for me and composed his four-hand work Five Easy Pieces for [pianist] Joseph Kubera and me. In 2008, I commissioned a piece from him called Movement: Deep in My Heart. Along with a small group of fellow musicians, I presented memorial concerts for Ingram at New Sounds Live in New York City and with San Francisco Performances. Prelude: Hammer the Sky Bright is part of a larger project of a group of homages I'm commissioning from various composers titled "No Ordinary Light.”

Of this new work and his own connection to Ingram Marshall, Samuel Adams says, “[Ingram Marshall] and my father, John Adams, share a long history that dates back to the early 70s, when they were part of the small but vibrant contemporary music scene in San Francisco. I remained extremely close with Ingram until his passing in May 2022. Like many others he touched over the years, I remain indebted to his quietly prophetic musical sensibility—an almost opiate-like quality that imbues his work with a mystery and sadness that still resonates with me. Prelude: Hammer the Sky Bright pays tribute to Ingram’s free-form, unpredictable sense of structure and highly impressionistic, almost ambient musical surfaces. His music often embraced the idea that form can be gradual and elusive—like late Sibelius—with the secrets of a piece only occasionally appearing close to its surface, like sunken cathedrals.”

In addition to Cahill’s world premiere performance, the evening’s program will feature additional solo and chamber works by Adams, including Sundial performed by Friction Quartet and percussionist Haruka Fujii, Violin Diptych performed by violinist Helen Kim and pianist Conor Hanick, and Études performed by pianist Conor Hanick. Libby Van Cleve will also perform Ingram Marshall’s Dark Waters on English horn.

Composer Ingram Marshall lived and worked in the San Francisco Bay Area from 1973 to 1985 and in Washington State, where he taught at Evergreen State College, until 1989. He studied at Lake Forest College, Columbia University and California Institute of the Arts, where he received an M.F.A., and has been a student of Indonesian gamelan music, the influence of which may be heard in the slowed-down sense of time and use of melodic repetition found in many of his pieces. In the mid-seventies he developed a series of "live electronic" pieces such as Fragility Cycles, Gradual Requiem, and Alcatraz in which he blended tape collages, extended vocal techniques, Indonesian flutes, and keyboards. He performed widely in the United States with these works.

The Other Minds Festival is a beloved and well known presence in the San Francisco Bay Area. An annual presentation of many different artists and many different styles of music, the Other Minds Festival has been an annual staple of new music since the first event in 1993. Sarah Cahill has been a steadfast figure in the festival’s activities over the years, going as far back as the festival’s third year in 1996 when she performed George Lewis' solo piano suite Endless Shout, which she later recorded for the Tzadik label, under Lewis' supervision. Since that time, Cahill has also given several performances during different years of the festival, including most recently as 2024 when she performed RCSC by New Zealand born, American composer Annea Lockwood.

About Sarah Cahill: Sarah Cahill, hailed as “a sterling pianist and an intrepid illuminator of the classical avant-garde” by The New York Times, has commissioned and premiered over seventy compositions for solo piano. Composers who have dedicated works to Cahill include John Adams, Terry Riley, Frederic Rzewski, Pauline Oliveros, Julia Wolfe, Roscoe Mitchell, Annea Lockwood, and Ingram Marshall. She was named a 2018 Champion of New Music, awarded by the American Composers Forum (ACF).

Cahill’s latest project is The Future is Female, an investigation and reframing of the piano literature featuring more than seventy compositions by women around the globe, from the Baroque to the present day, including new commissioned works. Recent and upcoming performances of The Future is Female include concerts at The Barbican, Metropolitan Museum, Carolina Performing Arts, National Gallery of Art, Carlsbad Music Festival, Detroit Institute of Arts, University of Iowa, Bowling Green New Music Festival, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, North Dakota Museum of Art, Mayville State University, the EXTENSITY Concert Series’ Women Now Festival in New York, and the Newport Classical Music Festival. Cahill also performed music from The Future is Female for NPR Music’s Tiny Desk Concert series.

Sarah Cahill’s discography includes more than twenty albums on the New Albion, CRI, New World, Tzadik, Albany, Innova, Cold Blue, Other Minds, Irritable Hedgehog, and Pinna labels. Her three-album series, The Future is Female, was released on First Hand Records between March 2022 and April 2023. These albums encompass 30 compositions by women from around the globe, from the 17th century to the present day, and include many world premiere recordings.

Cahill’s radio show, Revolutions Per Minute, can be heard every Sunday evening from 6 to 8pm on KALW, 91.7 FM in San Francisco. She is on the faculty of the San Francisco Conservatory and is a regular pre-concert speaker with the San Francisco Symphony and the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

For more information, visit www.sarahcahill.com.

For Calendar Editors:

Description: Pianist Sarah Cahill, described as “a sterling pianist and an intrepid illuminator of the classical avant-garde” by The New York Times, performs as part of the 29th annual Other Minds Festival on October 17, 2025 at 8pm. Sarah will give the world premiere of Prelude: Hammer the Sky Bright. The work, commissioned by Cahill, is a tribute to composer Ingram Marshall (1942–2022) written by composer Samuel Adams. The evening’s program will feature additional solo and chamber works by Adams, including Sundial performed by Friction Quartet and percussionist Haruka Fujii; Violin Diptych performed by violinist Helen Kim and pianist Conor Hanick; and Études performed by pianist Conor Hanick. Libby Van Cleve will also perform Ingram Marshall’s Dark Waters on English horn.

Concert details:

Who: Pianist Sarah Cahill
Presented by Other Minds Festival
What: World premiere of Prelude: Hammer the Sky Bright – a tribute to Ingram Marshall
When: Friday, October 17, 2025 at 8pm
Where: Brava Theater, 2781 24th St, San Francisco, CA 94110
More information: https://www.otherminds.org/other-minds-festival-29/

Sept. 13: Pianists Sarah Cahill and Regina Myers Perform at Flower Piano 10th Anniversary – Presented by Sunset Piano and Gardens of Golden Gate Park

Photo credit: Travis Lange

Pianists Sarah Cahill and Regina Myers Perform at Flower Piano 10th Anniversary
Presented by Sunset Piano and Gardens of Golden Gate Park

Featuring Music by
Eleanor Alberga, Amy Beach, Elena Kats-Chernin, and Terry Riley

Saturday, September 13, 2025 at 11am in the Great Meadow
San Francisco Botanical Garden at Golden Gate Park| 1199 9th Ave. | San Francisco, CA

Free with General Admission to the Botanical Garden. Advanced Tickets Recommended.

www.gggp.org/flowerpiano | www.flowerpiano.com

www.sarahcahill.com | www.reginamusic.com

San Francisco, CA – Pianists Sarah Cahill and Regina Myers will perform together as part of San Francisco’s annual Flower Piano interactive music festival, on Saturday, September 13, 2025 at 11am, presented by Sunset Piano and Gardens of Golden Gate Park. Held at the San Francisco Botanical Garden in Golden Gate Park (1199 9th Ave.), the beloved annual event brings the San Francisco community together for ten days (September 12-21, 2025) of live piano performances, filling the San Francisco Botanical Garden with elegant melodies and the joyful spirits of music lovers from near and far. Flower Piano celebrates its 10th anniversary in 2025, making this year’s events all the more meaningful for long-time attendees and first time visitors alike. The full festival will feature more than 100 performers, including solos, duos, and ensembles.

For this year’s milestone festival, Cahill and Myers will combine their prodigious musical talents in the performance of a vibrant, expressive, image-driven program of music from the 20th and 21st centuries, including Eleanor Alberga's Two-Piano Suite (1986), Amy Beach's Summer Dreams (1901), Dance of the Paper Umbrellas (2013) by Elena Kats-Chernin, and Terry Riley's Cinco de Mayo (1997). Festival attendees can watch the duo’s performance in the Great Meadow area of the Botanical Garden.

Eleanor Alberga’s Two-Piano Suite is a sprightly one movement work that is as lively and uplifting as is the reason for its composition. A Jamaican-born, British composer, Alberga wrote the work to commemorate the 25th anniversary of Jamaica's independence in 1987.

Amy Beach’s Summer Dreams connects with the natural beauty of the New England summer landscape, as well as other brilliant creatives like William Shakespeare, Agnes Helen Lockhart, and Walt Whitman. Made up of six miniatures, each references a specific natural image: The Brownies, Robin Redbreast, Twilight, Katy-dids, Elfin Tarantelle, and Good Night.

Dance of the Paper Umbrellas was written for the Hush Music Foundation – an Australian non-profit dedicated to producing and licensing original music and arts projects with the aim of improving healthcare environments and patient outcomes. Elena Kats-Chernin says of the idea behind the music: “I wondered what kind of piece I could write that would be uplifting. I wanted to enter the world of magic and dreams. I imagined a cake adorned with multi-coloured umbrellas. A dance formed in my head, starting with a pattern in harp, marimba, plucked strings and flutes.”

Terry Riley’s Cinco de Mayo is the first of five works for four hands on one piano that Cahill commissioned from Riley and which Cahill and Myers recorded in 2017 as part of the album, Eighty Trips Around the Sun: Music by and for Terry Riley on Irritable Hedgehog Records.

For more information about Sarah Cahill visit www.sarahcahill.com.

For more information about Regina Myers visit www.reginamusic.com.

For Calendar Editors:

Description: Pianists Sarah Cahill and Regina Myers perform at San Francisco’s annual Flower Piano interactive music festival, presented by Sunset Piano and Gardens of Golden Gate Park, which celebrates its 10th anniversary at the San Francisco Botanical Garden. The two Bay Area pianists will perform a vibrant, expressive, image-driven program of music from the 20th and 21st centuries in the Great Meadow area of the Botanical Garden. The concert will include works by Eleanor Alberga, Amy Beach, Elena Kats-Chernin, and Terry Riley.

Concert details:

Who: Pianists Sarah Cahill and Regina Myers
Presented by Sunset Piano and Gardens of Golden Gate Park
What: Music by Eleanor Alberga, Amy Beach, Elena Kats-Chernin, and Terry Riley
When: Saturday, September 13, 2025 at 11am
Where: San Francisco Botanical Garden at Golden Gate Park 1199 9th Ave., San Francisco, CA 94122
Tickets and information: https://gggp.org/flowerpiano/

Sept 21: The Junction Trio Premieres Music by John Zorn at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

Photo by Shervin Lainez. Press photos available here.

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

Presents the Junction Trio in Two World Premieres by John Zorn

September 21: Junction Trio in John Zorn World Premieres
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum | Calderwood Hall
25 Evans Way | Boston, MA
Tickets: gardnermuseum.org/calendar/junction-trio-plays-john-zorn

For press tickets, please contact Christina Jensen at christina@jensenartists.com

BOSTON, MA – The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum continues its Fall 2025 Weekend Concert Series, presenting the Junction Trio on Sunday, September 21 at 1:30 pm in an afternoon of virtuosic and theatrical chamber music by John Zorn, including the world premieres of two new pieces by the celebrated avant-garde composer. The acclaimed supergroup—Stefan Jackiw (violin), Jay Campbell (cello), and Conrad Tao (piano)—will be joined by special guests Jorge Roeder (bass) and Ches Smith (drums).

Known for unique program combinations and vibrant performances, the Junction Trio brings a fresh approach to the repertoire, dazzling audiences with their virtuosity and unity. A.Z. Madonna reported in the Boston Globe,  “Watching the trio perform, one really couldn’t tell who was happier to be there—the rapt audience or the musicians, who threw themselves into repertoire they clearly love. . . . These three are onto something special.” Since forming in 2015, the Trio has performed across the country at leading venues including Carnegie Hall, Washington Performing Arts, 92nd Street Y, Royal Conservatory in Toronto, Newport Classical, the Aspen Music Festival, and for the LA Philharmonic's NowRising Series at The Ford Theater.

The New York Times has praised the individual musicians of the Junction Trio, comprising the “brilliant young violinist” Stefan Jackiw, the “electrifying” cellist Jay Campbell, and pianist and composer Conrad Tao, a musician of “probing intellect and open-hearted vision.” Together, Susan Miron writes in the Boston Musical Intelligencer, “This top-notch trio stands at the top of its game.”

At the Gardner Museum, the Junction Trio will give the world premiere of John Zorn’s Notes on the Assumption of Mystical Solidarity Approaching Nine Neological Approximations Illuminating the Eternal Return of the Same and But Doth Suffer a Sea-Change, both composed this year for the Trio. The program also includes Zorn’s Philosophical Investigations I and II and I Am Your Labyrinth…, all composed in the last three years by Zorn for the Trio.

Zorn has written more than a dozen new works for members of the Junction Trio over the years. In an interview with The Strad, cellist Jay Campbell described the unusual process of working with him, saying, “With John Zorn, you can bring up an idea, and then a week later, a piece lands in your inbox—it’s so immediate. And John always thinks about writing for people, not instruments, and takes into consideration the personality of the players. He has written a lot of pieces for me or for ensembles that I’m in, so he knows my playing well and knows where to challenge me. Every single piece of his has new challenges that push my playing—often in directions that I didn’t think were possible. It almost feels like he knows my playing better than I do. It’s really fun to grow into a piece, especially when it’s written for you.” 

In the same interview, violinist Stefan Jackiw says of the surprising nature of Zorn’s music, that it “has a reputation for being very dense and thorny, but it’s actually highly lyrical.” He continues, “There are moments of almost Italian, bel canto textures. They get juxtaposed with incredibly kinetic, thorny stuff, where there’s a bajillion things happening at once. Suddenly there will be a clearing and then a soaring melody with a clear, accompanimental line.” 

The Fall 2025 Weekend Concert Series is an eleven-concert autumn season curated by Abrams Curator of Music George Steel running from September 13 through November 23, 2025, which features world-class artists in the Museum’s extraordinary Calderwood Hall—a 300-seat “sonic cube” with three-levels of balconies designed so that 80% of seats are front row, creating a uniquely intense and intentional listening experience.

George Steel’s programming for the Fall 2025 Weekend Concert Series continues founder and legendary arts patron Isabella Stewart Gardner’s vision of bringing together musicians and audiences for inspiring gatherings. Dating to 1927, the Gardner’s Weekend Concert Series is the longest running museum music program in the country. Much like Isabella Stewart Gardner did in her time, Steel champions unknown repertoire and embraces new works, creates connections and builds community among musicians, and supports them by presenting them in new endeavors and collaborations. His programming also frequently draws on the history of the Gardner Museum, featuring instruments from the Museum’s collection and music by composers who were associated with its founder. In honoring Isabella Stewart Gardner’s musical legacy, Music at the Gardner remains strongly committed to broadening the repertoire of music presented to include previously overlooked and marginalized composers as well as performers of all backgrounds. 

Fall 2025 At-a-Glance Concert Schedule

September 13-14: ACRONYM - The Complete Brandenburg Concertos by J.S. Bach
September 21: Junction Trio Plays John Zorn
September 28: Catalyst String Quartet
October 5: Sphinx Virtuosi with Sterling Elliott, cello
October 19: Miranda Cuckson, violin, and Blair McMillen, piano
October 26: Rachel Barton Pine, violin and viola d'amore
November 2: Claire Chase, flutes, with Aisslinn Nosky, violin, Katinka Kleijn, cello, and Alex Peh, piano and harpsichord
This performance is made possible by the Anne Hawley Fund for Programs.
November 9: Clayton Stephenson, piano
This program is performed in memory of Willona Sinclair.
November 16: Sasha Cooke, mezzo-soprano with Myra Huang, piano
This concert is made possible by the generous support of David Scudder in memory of his wife, Marie Louise Scudder.
November 23: Michelle Cann, piano

All concerts take place on Sundays at 1:30 pm (except ACRONYM, which performs on both Saturday and Sunday at 1:30 pm) in Calderwood Hall at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (25 Evans Way, Boston, MA).

Ticketing Information

Tickets ($20-$85) are available at gardnermuseum.org/about/music or by calling the Box Office at 617 278 5156. All concert tickets include Museum admission. 

About the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum invites you to escape the ordinary in a magical setting where art and community come together to inspire new ways of envisioning our world. Embodying the fearless legacy of its founder, the Museum offers a singular invitation to explore the past through a contemporary lens, creating meaningful encounters with art and joyful connections for all. Modeled after a Venetian palazzo, unforgettable galleries surround a luminous Courtyard and are home to masters such as Rembrandt, Raphael, Titian, Michelangelo, Whistler, and Sargent. The Renzo Piano wing provides a platform for contemporary artists, musicians, and scholars and serves as an innovative venue where creativity is celebrated in all of its forms.

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum • 25 Evans Way, Boston, MA 02115 • Hours: Open Weekends from 10 am to 5 pm, Weekdays from 11am to 5 pm and Thursdays until 9 pm. Closed Tuesdays. • Admission: Adults $22; Seniors $20; Students $15; Free for members, children under 18, everyone on their birthday, and all named “Isabella” • $2 off admission with a same-day Museum of Fine Arts, Boston ticket • For information 617 566 1401 • Box Office 617 278 5156 • www.gardnermuseum.org

Music at the Gardner is supported by Nora McNeely Hurley / Manitou Fund. The Museum thanks its generous concert donors: The Coogan Concert in memory of Peter Weston Coogan; Fitzpatrick Family Concert; James Lawrence Memorial Concert; Alford P. Rudnick Memorial Concert; David Scudder in memory of his wife, Marie Louise Scudder; Wendy Shattuck Young Artist Concert; and Willona Sinclair Memorial Concert. The piano is dedicated as the Alex d’Arbeloff Steinway. The harpsichord was generously donated by Dr. Robert Barstow in memory of Marion Huse, and its care is endowed in memory of Dr. Barstow by The Barstow Fund. Music at the Gardner is also supported in part by Barbara and Amos Hostetter, Nicie and Jay Panetta, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council, which is supported by the state of Massachusetts and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Sept. 27-28: Violinist Yevgeny Kutik is Featured Soloist with the Traverse City Philharmonic – Conducted by Artistic Director Kevin Rhodes

Photo of Yevgeny Kutik by Griffin Harrington available in hi-resolution here.

Violinist Yevgeny Kutik Performs as Featured Soloist
with the Traverse City Philharmonic
Conducted by Artistic Director Kevin Rhodes

in Philip Glass’s Violin Concerto No. 2, The American Four Seasons

September 27, 2025 at 7:30pm
September 28, 2025 at 3:00pm
Milliken Auditorium, Dennos Museum Center
1701 East Front Street | Traverse City, MI
Tickets and More Information

“polished dexterity and genteel, old-world charm” – WQXR

www.yevgenykutik.com

Traverse City, MI — On Saturday, September 27 at 7:30pm and Sunday, September 28, 2025 at 3pm, violinist Yevgeny Kutik, who The New York Times describes as having a “dark-hued tone and razor-sharp technique,” is the featured soloist with the Traverse City Philharmonic, conducted by Kevin Rhodes. Kutik will perform Violin Concerto No.2, The American Four Seasons, by Philip Glass. The concert will also include Ludwig van Beethoven’s iconic Symphony No. 5.

Yevgeny Kutik has captivated audiences worldwide with an old-world sound that communicates a modern intellect. Praised for his technical precision and virtuosity, he is lauded for his poetic and imaginative interpretations of standard works as well as rarely heard and newly composed repertoire.

Kutik says, “I’m so excited to be returning back to perform with my friends at the TC Phil and Kevin Rhodes. I’m so inspired by all that they are doing to bring great art and music to the community. The Glass is such a wonderful and unique piece to be playing—gorgeous, meditative, and expansive all at once. In it, I like to see the expanse of this beautiful country and all it has to offer.”

Artistic Director Kevin Rhodes says, “Every time I prepare Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, it feels like the very first time—I’m reminded again of its sheer genius. That iconic ‘da-da-da-DAAAA’ is the most famous opening in music history. Yevgeny and I have played Tchaikovsky, Mendelssohn, Prokofiev, and Sibelius together, so I know what a thrilling performer he is in romantic and neo-romantic literature. I am particularly excited to experience what he will bring to a performance of this work of the minimalist American, Philip Glass!”

Philip Glass composed his Violin Concerto No. 2, subtitled The American Four Seasons, in the summer and autumn of 2009, for violinist Robert McDuffie. Glass wrote the work with the intent that it would serve as a companion to Antonio Vivaldi's iconic work The Four Seasons. At the same time, Glass ultimately decided to design his work to be more open-ended, particularly as it relates to the audience’s experience. In his program notes about the work, he says he saw it as “an opportunity, then, for the listener to make his/her own interpretation. Therefore, there will be no instructions for the audience, no clues as to where Spring, Summer, Winter, and Fall might appear in the new concerto – an interesting, though not worrisome, problem for the listener.”

More about Yevgeny Kutik: Committed to the music of our time, Kutik regularly gives premiere and repeat performances of major works by today’s most celebrated composers. This season, he gives the world premiere of a new work by Jonathan Leshnoff with pianist Llewellyn Sanchez-Werner presented by Newport Classical. In January 2025, he made his debut with the Las Vegas Philharmonic, led by Michelle Merrill, in a performance of Philip Glass’s Violin Concerto No. 2. In 2022 at the Tanglewood Music Festival, he gave the world premiere of Cântico, a work for solo violin by Andreia Pinto Correia co-commissioned for Kutik by the Boston Symphony Orchestra. In 2021, he debuted with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra led by Leonard Slatkin, performing the world premiere of Joseph Schwantner’s Violin Concerto, written for him. The concerto is based on Schwantner’s earlier work, The Poet’s Hour – Soliloquy for Violin, which Kutik recorded on episode six of Gerard Schwarz’s All-Star Orchestra, released on DVD by Naxos and broadcast nationally on PBS.

A native of Minsk, Belarus, Yevgeny Kutik immigrated to the United States with his family at the age of five. His 2014 album, Music from the Suitcase: A Collection of Russian Miniatures (Marquis Classics), features music he found in his family’s suitcase after immigrating to the United States from the Soviet Union in 1990, and debuted at No. 5 on the Billboard Classical chart. The album garnered critical acclaim and was featured on NPR's All Things Considered and in The New York Times. Kutik’s recent releases on Marquis include The Death of Juliet and Other Tales (2021) and Meditations on Family (2019), for which he commissioned eight composers to translate a personal family photo into a short musical miniature – a project featured on the cover of Strings magazine. Kutik’s other recordings include his debut album, Sounds of Defiance (2012), and Words Fail (2016), both released to critical acclaim.  

Other recent performance highlights include debuts at the Kennedy Center presented by Washington Performing Arts, and at the Ravinia Festival, as well as recital appearances as part of the Dame Myra Hess Concerts Chicago; at UCLA; Peoples' Symphony Concerts, Kaufman Music Center, and National Sawdust in New York City; the Embassy Series and The Phillips Collection in Washington D.C.; and at the Lobkowicz Collections Prague presented by Prince William Lobkowicz. Festival performances have included the Tanglewood Music Festival, Cape Cod Chamber Music Festival, Ravinia, the Ludwigsburger Schlossfestspiele in Germany, and the Verbier Festival in Switzerland.  

Kutik made his major orchestral debut in 2003 with Keith Lockhart and The Boston Pops as the First Prize recipient of the Boston Symphony Orchestra Young Artists Competition, and has since performed with orchestras throughout the country including the Rochester and Dayton Philharmonics; the Detroit, New Haven, Asheville, and Wyoming symphony orchestras; and more. Abroad, he has appeared with Germany’s Norddeutsche Philharmonie Rostock and WDR Rundfunk Orchestra Köln, Montenegro’s Montenegrin Symphony Orchestra, Japan’s Tokyo Vivaldi Ensemble, and the Cape Town Philharmonic in South Africa.

Passionate about his heritage and its influence on his artistry, Kutik is an advocate for the Jewish Federations of North America, the organization that assisted his family in coming to the United States, and regularly speaks and performs across the United States to both raise awareness and promote the assistance of refugees from around the world.  

Yevgeny Kutik began violin studies with his mother, Alla Zernitskaya, and went on to study with Zinaida Gilels, Shirley Givens, Roman Totenberg, and Donald Weilerstein. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Boston University and a master’s degree from the New England Conservatory. Kutik is ​​the Artistic Director and co-founder of The Birch Festival – a festival built around connecting and integrating leading musicians with the Berkshire community, while highlighting the unique and original stories of those who make up the Berkshires. His violin was crafted in Italy in 1915 by Stefano Scarampella.  For more information, please visit www.yevgenykutik.com.

More about Maestro Kevin Rhodes here. Currently beginning his 25th season conducting the Traverse City Philharmonic. https://tcphil.org/meet-the-maestro/

For Calendar Editors:

Description: Violinist Yevgeny Kutik, described as having a “dark-hued tone and razor-sharp technique,” (The New York Times) is the featured soloist in a performance with the Traverse City Philharmonic, conducted by Artistic Director and Principal Conductor, Kevin Rhodes. Kutik will perform Philip Glass’s Violin Concerto No. 2, The American Four Seasons, which Glass wrote as a companion to Vivaldi's The Four Seasons. The concert program will also include Beethoven’s iconic Symphony No. 5, and Saturday’s evening performance will include an after-concert reception and toast to the new season.

Concert details:

Who: Violinist Yevgeny Kutik
Presented by Traverse City Philharmonic
Conducted by Kevin Rhodes, Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the Traverse City Philharmonic
What: Music by Ludwig van Beethoven and Philip Glass
When: Saturday, September 27 7:30 pm and Sunday, September 28, 2025 at 3:00 pm
Where: Milliken Auditorium - Dennos Museum Center, 1701 East Front Street, Traverse City, MI 49686
Tickets and information: https://tcphil.org/series/beethoven-5-american-4-seasons/

Sept. 19: Pianist Sarah Cahill Performs The Woods So Wild at Community School of Music and Arts

Photo of Sarah Cahill by Miranda Sanborn, available in high resolution here.

Pianist Sarah Cahill Performs The Woods So Wild  
at Community School of Music and Arts

A Concert Inspired by Nature Featuring Music by
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Mamoru Fujieda, William Byrd, Errki Melartin,
Amy Beach, Leo Ornstein and Leokadiya Kashperova

Friday, September 19, 2025 at 7:30pm
Tateuchi Hall | 230 San Antonio Circle | Mountain View, CA
Free Performance - More Information

“Pianist Sarah Cahill commands a near-godlike status among fans of  contemporary classical music” – NPR Music

Watch Sarah Cahill’s NPR Tiny Desk Concert

Sarah Cahill: www.SarahCahill.com

Mountain View, CA – On Friday, September 19, 2024 at 7:30pm pianist Sarah Cahill, described as a “keen and captivating pianist” by The Washington Post, brings her program The Woods So Wild to Tateuchi Hall (230 San Antonio Circle) of Mountain View’s Community School for Music and Arts. Cahill’s program features a diverse assortment of expressive works reflective of nature’s beauty and an appreciation thereof. This performance is free and open to the public.

Forests, oceans, desert, mountains, flowers, grasslands, wilderness – throughout music’s history, composers have celebrated nature and the great outdoors. As humanity urgently strives to preserve this precious environment, reflecting on nature through music heightens society’s attention to its great wonders. In this program, beginning with William Byrd’s The Woods So Wild from 1590, Sarah Cahill takes listeners on a wondrous journey through musical portraits of the natural world including Forest Scenes by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, A Morning in the Woods by Leo Ornstein, The Murmur of the Wheat by Leokadiya Kashperova, Hermit Thrush at Eve by Amy Beach, Patterns of Plants by Mamoru Fujieda, and The Mysterious Forest by Erkki Melartin.

“It's always a great pleasure and an honor to perform in the CSMA series,” says Cahill. “I have such admiration for this terrific community school and the vital work they are doing, and performing on their gorgeous piano in the stunning Tateuchi Hall is a dream come true.”

About the Music Cahill Features in The Woods So Wild:

Composed in 1907 at the turn of the 20th century, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s remarkable Forest Scenes depicts an ethereal tale of a romantic encounter between a forest maiden and a phantom. The five movement work unfolds like a musical novel, with each section depicting a new chapter between the maiden and the phantom. The writing is fanciful and expressive; Coleridge-Taylor includes a variety of rhythms, tempo changes, and chord progressions throughout the work to evoke both the vacillating emotions of the characters and the dynamic actions of the story.

Leo Ornstein was 78 years old when he wrote Morning in the Woods, and it reflects his love of solitary walks in the forest. The music, full of brief melodic flourishes throughout, appears to embody the many signs of life and movement found in the woods – burst of wind, scurrying animals, the rustle of flora. Cahill recorded the work on her 2008 album, Leo Ornstein: Fantasy and Metaphor released on New Albion Records.

The impetus behind Mamoru Fujieda’s Patterns of Plants is just as organic as the work’s namesake objects. Fujieda measured and recorded the electrical impulses on different plants’ leaves with the help of “Plantron” –– a tool created by botanist and artist Yūji Dōgane. From there, Fujieda converted the electrical impulses into sound using Max, a visual programming language applicable to music and multimedia. It was from this converted information that Fujieda analyzed and noticed different musical patterns, which became the melodic foundation for the work’s miniature pieces. Sarah Cahill recorded Patterns of Plants in 2014 on Pinna Records.

During a summer at MacDowell – a New Hampshire retreat that nurtures all types of American artists – the serene ambiance inspired Amy Beach to compose The Hermit Thrush at Eve and The Hermit Thrush at Morn, the melodies of which echo the calls of the namesake bird, which Beach called "lonely and appealing." Beach heard a hermit thrush outside her window and imitated its song on her piano, leading to she and the bird having a musical dialogue.

Prominent Finnish composer Erkki Melartin’s The Mysterious Forest is an expressive cycle of six piano pieces, which are largely reflective of Melartin’s appreciation of rural life and nature’s beauty. The works were unfortunately never published during Melartin’s lifetime.

English Renaissance composer William Byrd wrote fourteen variations on the melody of The Woods So Wild, a song from the Tudor era. The first of the variations presents a simple rustic version of the main theme, alongside a drone accompaniment and the last variation is formed around a structure of rich polyphony.

Au sein de la Nature is a piano suite of six movements. As its title infers, the emotive suite of music evokes connections to nature. This was inspired by Kashperova’s nostalgia for the tranquil and secluded Russian countryside where she spent her childhood.

About Sarah Cahill: Sarah Cahill, hailed as “a sterling pianist and an intrepid illuminator of the classical avant-garde” by The New York Times, has commissioned and premiered over seventy compositions for solo piano. Composers who have dedicated works to Cahill include John Adams, Terry Riley, Frederic Rzewski, Pauline Oliveros, Julia Wolfe, Roscoe Mitchell, Annea Lockwood, and Ingram Marshall. She was named a 2018 Champion of New Music, awarded by the American Composers Forum (ACF).

One of Cahill’s most extensive projects is The Future is Female, an investigation and reframing of the piano literature featuring more than seventy compositions by women around the globe, from the Baroque to the present day, including new commissioned works. Recent and upcoming performances of The Future is Female include concerts at The Barbican, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Carolina Performing Arts, National Gallery of Art, Carlsbad Music Festival, Detroit Institute of Arts, University of Iowa, Bowling Green New Music Festival, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, North Dakota Museum of Art, Gretna Arts, WoCo Festival, Mayville State University, the EXTENSITY Concert Series’ Women Now Festival in New York, and the Newport Classical Music Festival. Cahill also performed music from The Future is Female for NPR Music’s Tiny Desk Concert series.

Sarah Cahill’s discography includes more than twenty albums on the New Albion, CRI, New World, Tzadik, Albany, Innova, Cold Blue, Other Minds, Irritable Hedgehog, and Pinna labels. Her three-album series, The Future is Female, was released on First Hand Records between March 2022 and April 2023. These albums encompass thirty compositions by women from around the globe, from the 17th century to the present day, and include many world premiere recordings.

Cahill’s radio show, Revolutions Per Minute, can be heard every Sunday evening from 6 to 8 pm on KALW, 91.7 FM in San Francisco. She is on the faculty of the San Francisco Conservatory and is a regular pre-concert speaker with the San Francisco Symphony and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. For more information, visit www.sarahcahill.com.

For Calendar Editors:

Description: Pianist Sarah Cahill, described as a “keen and captivating pianist” by The Washington Post, brings her program The Woods So Wild, an array of expressive works that reflect the beauty of nature, to Mountain View’s Community School of Music and Arts. The concert will include works by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Mamoru Fujieda, William Byrd, Errki Melartin, Amy Beach, Leo Ornstein and Leokadiya Kashperova

Concert details:

Who: Pianist Sarah Cahill in The Woods So Wild
Presented by Community School of Music and Arts
What: Music by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Mamoru Fujieda, William Byrd, Errki Melartin, Amy Beach, Leo Ornstein and Leokadiya Kashperova.
When: Friday, September 19, 2025 at 7:30pm
Where: Tateuchi Hall, 230 San Antonio Circle, Mountain View, CA 94040
More information (Free Concert, Open to the Public): arts4all.org/concerts/

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s Weekend Concert Series in September - ACRONYM, Junction Trio, Catalyst String Quartet

Clockwise from top left: Junction Trio, Catalyst Quartet, ACRONYM. Press photos available here.

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s Weekend Concert Series
September Performances

September 13-14: ACRONYM in Bach’s Complete Brandenburg Concertos
September 21: Junction Trio in John Zorn World Premieres
September 28: Catalyst String Quartet

Information & Tickets: gardnermuseum.org/about/music

For press tickets, please contact Christina Jensen at christina@jensenartists.com

BOSTON, MA – The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum will launch its Fall 2025 Weekend Concert Series with four performances in September. This eleven-concert autumn season curated by Abrams Curator of Music George Steel runs from September 13 through November 23, 2025, and features world-class artists in the Museum’s extraordinary Calderwood Hall—a 300-seat “sonic cube” with three levels of balconies designed so that 80% of seats are front row, creating a uniquely intense and intentional listening experience.

The Fall 2025 season opens with two concerts featuring Baroque-band and period-instrument superstars ACRONYM, praised for their “consummate style, grace, and unity of spirit” (The New York Times), performing J.S. Bach's complete Brandenburg Concertos on Saturday, September 13 and Sunday, September 14 at 1:30 pm. In anticipation of overwhelming demand, the ensemble will perform the complete cycle twice, featuring Bach's masterworks on authentic period instruments including flutes, recorders, trumpets, hunting horns, gambas, and violins of every size—a motley “kitchen” of continuo instruments, and more.

The season continues on Sunday, September 21 at 1:30 pm with the Junction Trio presenting an afternoon of virtuosic chamber music by John Zorn. The acclaimed trio—Stefan Jackiw (violin), Jay Campbell (cello), and Conrad Tao (piano), joined by special guests Jorge Roeder (bass) and Ches Smith (drums)—will perform Zorn's vivid and theatrical music, which has become an audience favorite at the Gardner. Their program includes two world premieres—Zorn’s Notes on the Assumption of Mystical Solidarity Approaching Nine Neological Approximations Illuminating the Eternal Return of the Same and But Doth Suffer a Sea-Change, as well as his Philosophical Investigations I and II and I Am Your Labyrinth…, all composed in the last three years. 

The Catalyst String Quartet returns on Sunday, September 28 at 1:30 pm after their astonishing Gardner debut last season. The quartet’s program features Concertante Quartets No. 2 in G minor (1777) by the legendary violinist-composer Joseph Bologne (Chevalier de Saint-Georges), a superb swordsman who led an all-Black regiment in the French Revolution, alongside Dora Pejačević's splendid String Quartet in C major from 1922—re-introducing Gardner audiences to the work of this late-Romantic Croatian composer—and Beethoven's monumental String Quartet No. 15 in A minor, Op. 132.

George Steel’s programming for the Fall 2025 Weekend Concert Series continues founder and legendary arts patron Isabella Stewart Gardner’s vision of bringing together musicians and audiences for inspiring gatherings. Dating to 1927, the Gardner’s Weekend Concert Series is the longest running museum music program in the country. Much like Isabella Stewart Gardner did in her time, Steel champions unknown repertoire and embraces new works, creates connections and builds community among musicians, and supports them by presenting them in new endeavors and collaborations. His programming also frequently draws on the history of the Gardner Museum, featuring instruments from the Museum’s collection and music by composers who were associated with its founder. In honoring Isabella Stewart Gardner’s musical legacy, Music at the Gardner remains strongly committed to broadening the repertoire of music presented to include previously overlooked and marginalized composers as well as performers of all backgrounds.

Fall 2025 At-a-Glance Concert Schedule 

September 13-14: ACRONYM - The Complete Brandenburg Concertos by J.S. Bach
September 21: Junction Trio Plays John Zorn
September 28: Catalyst String Quartet
October 5: Sphinx Virtuosi with Sterling Elliott, cello
October 19: Miranda Cuckson, violin, and Blair McMillen, piano
October 26: Rachel Barton Pine, violin and viola d'amore
November 2: Claire Chase, flutes, with Aisslinn Nosky, violin, Katinka Kleijn, cello, and Alex Peh, piano and harpsichord
This performance is made possible by the Anne Hawley Fund for Programs.
November 9: Clayton Stephenson, piano
This program is performed in memory of Willona Sinclair.
November 16: Sasha Cooke, mezzo-soprano with Myra Huang, piano
This concert is made possible by the generous support of David Scudder in memory of his wife, Marie Louise Scudder.
November 23: Michelle Cann, piano

All concerts take place on Sundays at 1:30 pm (except ACRONYM, which performs on both Saturday and Sunday at 1:30 pm) in Calderwood Hall at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (25 Evans Way, Boston, MA).

Ticketing Information 

Tickets ($20-$85) are available at gardnermuseum.org/about/music or by calling the Box Office at 617 278 5156. All concert tickets include Museum admission. 

About the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum invites you to escape the ordinary in a magical setting where art and community come together to inspire new ways of envisioning our world. Embodying the fearless legacy of its founder, the Museum offers a singular invitation to explore the past through a contemporary lens, creating meaningful encounters with art and joyful connections for all. Modeled after a Venetian palazzo, unforgettable galleries surround a luminous Courtyard and are home to masters such as Rembrandt, Raphael, Titian, Michelangelo, Whistler, and Sargent. The Renzo Piano wing provides a platform for contemporary artists, musicians, and scholars and serves as an innovative venue where creativity is celebrated in all of its forms. 

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum • 25 Evans Way, Boston, MA 02115 • Hours: Open Weekends from 10 am to 5 pm, Weekdays from 11 am to 5 pm and Thursdays until 9 pm Closed Tuesdays. • Admission: Adults $22; Seniors $20; Students $15; Free for members, children under 18, everyone on their birthday, and all named “Isabella” • $2 off admission with a same-day Museum of Fine Arts, Boston ticket • For information 617 566 1401 • Box Office 617 278 5156 • www.gardnermuseum.org

Music at the Gardner is supported by Nora McNeely Hurley / Manitou Fund. The Museum thanks its generous concert donors: The Coogan Concert in memory of Peter Weston Coogan; Fitzpatrick Family Concert; James Lawrence Memorial Concert; Alford P. Rudnick Memorial Concert; David Scudder in memory of his wife, Marie Louise Scudder; Wendy Shattuck Young Artist Concert; and Willona Sinclair Memorial Concert. The piano is dedicated as the Alex d’Arbeloff Steinway. The harpsichord was generously donated by Dr. Robert Barstow in memory of Marion Huse, and its care is endowed in memory of Dr. Barstow by The Barstow Fund. Music at the Gardner is also supported in part by Barbara and Amos Hostetter, Nicie and Jay Panetta, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council, which is supported by the state of Massachusetts and the National Endowment for the Arts.