May 1: New Sony Classical Album by Pianist Arcadi Volodos Featuring the Music of Franz Schubert & Robert Schumann - New Single Out Today

New Sony Classical Album by Pianist Arcadi Volodos

Schubert: Piano Sonata No.17 In D Major, D.850
Schumann: Kinderszenen Op.15

Kinderszenen, Op.15/VII. Träumerei
Out Today - Listen Here

Album Release Date: May 1, 2026
Pre-Order Available Now

A musician known for conjuring up magical sounds on the piano is back. Seven years after his last album, the exceptionally gifted Arcadi Volodos is releasing a new and long-awaited Sony Classical album on May 1, 2026, recorded live at Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris. And again, he is devoting himself to the music of Franz Schubert as well as Robert Schumann’s Kinderszenen. Accompanying today’s announcement is the first single, Kinderszenen, Op.15/VII. Träumerei - listen here.

“The great difficulty with Schubert”, says Volodos, “is the basic outline, the absolute transparency. It is in silence that the personality and the spirituality of the interpreter shine through.” For Volodos as an interpreter, it is here, in this world of stillness and half-tones, that his real work begins, since “this demands simplicity and depth”.

Volodos’s earlier Schubert recordings have included the great sonatas in G major (D 894, released in 2002) and in A major (D 959, first issued in 2019). He is now turning his attention to the D major Sonata D 850, a work sometimes known as the “Gastein” Sonata since Schubert composed it during the summer of 1825, when he was taking the waters at Bad Gastein to the south of Salzburg.

Arcadi Volodos draws particular attention to the “extreme sensibility” of Schubert’s music, which explains why he favours a freedom of approach that allows for flexible tempos.

“It is absurd to want to fix the tempo by means of a metronome,” he argues, because “music is a language, not an equation.” It is very much the many incomparable transition passages, the melodies and the gently changing harmonies that make Schubert’s music so unmistakably his own. And this is all the more true when they are performed by a pianist as exceptional as Arcadi Volodos.

The second work on his new album is Robert Schumann’s Kinderszenen, a set of thirteen priceless miniatures for the piano, the best known of which is the famous “Träumerei”.

“I think that it is only when you grow older that you understand these pieces better and better,” says Volodos, referring obliquely to the fact that Schumann did not write them for children. What matters more, as Volodos explains, is “It is a question of rediscovering within oneself the child’s sense of wonderment, this pure and sincere understanding of a world that one spends an entire lifetime trying to rediscover.”

To that extent this recording of Kinderszenen seems like a summation of Volodos’s whole life as an artist: each piece is a little jewel that allows the piano to radiate with light and to shine in all its colours and nuances. One could argue that this profundity is accessible only to those artists who, like Volodos, have a relatively manageable repertory at their command, at least in terms of their public appearances. “I like it when the works come to life inside me and become a part of me.” The present recording attests to the truth of this comment in many different ways.

Arcadi Volodos was born in St Petersburg and it was there, too, that he studied. He first became famous for his highly virtuosic piano arrangements of Romantic orchestral works but since his international breakthrough in the late 1990s he is now invariably numbered among the finest pianists currently before the public. He appears in all the leading concert halls and at festivals all over the world. His relatively few recordings have regularly garnered the most prestigious international awards.

Out Today: Countertenor Randall Scotting's Divine Impresario - Nicolini on Stage

Countertenor Randall Scotting Releases New Album Today

Divine Impresario: Nicolini on Stage

Celebrating the Legendary 18th-Century Castrato
Through Rarely Heard Baroque Repertoire
Including Nine Works Recorded for the First Time

Listen Now

Release Date: March 13, 2026
Signum Classics

"As well as giving ravishing accounts of the slower, expressive arias, Scotting is more than capable of negotiating the virtuoso demands of some of the more flamboyant music audiences came to expect of their castrato idols. He also joins forces with HIP royalty, Mary Bevan, for three lovely duets, while he benefits throughout from beautifully idiomatic orchestral support from the Academy of Ancient Music under the direction of Laurence Cummings..." - D. James Ross, Early Music Review

"On a scale of one to ten, I give this album an eleven." - Maggie Ramsey, Opera Today

"Randall Scotting weaves a fascinating selection of arias written for Nicolini into an engaging recital." - Planet Hugill

www.randallscotting.com | www.signumrecords.com/product/divine-impresario

Review CDs and downloads available upon request.

Internationally acclaimed countertenor Randall Scotting announces the release of Divine Impresario: Nicolini on Stage, out March 13, 2026 on Signum Classics. The landmark album celebrates Nicolò Grimaldi, the castrato who conquered the opera world under the stage name Nicolini (1673 - 1732). Recorded with the Academy of Ancient Music under the direction of Laurence Cummings, with soprano Mary Bevan, the album features rarely performed arias and duets from the early 18th century, nine of which have never been recorded before and have not been heard since Nicolini's lifetime.

While Nicolini is best remembered today for the music Handel wrote for him, including beloved arias from Rinaldo and Amadigi, this album reveals his far broader musical world. For Divine Impresario, Scotting has revived works by a range of composers who wrote for this castrato, drawn to his dramatic range and vocal brilliance, including Francesco Gasparini, Nicola Porpora, Riccardo Broschi, Francesco Mancini, Attilio Ariosti, and Giovanni Antonio Giaj.

Divine Impresario takes its title from Nicolini's unique role as both performer and visionary. “When I think about Nicolò Grimaldi, the word that comes to mind is impresario,” explains Scotting. “Not in the limited sense of a theatre manager, but rather as a creative force who shaped the artform itself. Nicolini wasn't content just to stand and sing; he directed performances, he reworked libretti, and he elevated the standard of acting in opera.”

For Scotting, this project marries his onstage and offstage roles. Sought-after by some of the world's most esteemed opera houses and concert halls, the countertenor’s performances have been described as “expressive” (The New York Times), “rich-toned” (Musical America), “luminous” (Ópera Actual), “ravishing” (BBC Music Magazine), and “flexible and rich” (Early Music Review). His breakout moment came in 2019 at London's Royal Ballet & Opera when he stepped in last-minute for Sir David McVicar's production of Britten's Death in Venice, praised for “singing brilliantly” to sold-out audiences, after which he joined the roster of the Metropolitan Opera. In 2023, he created the role of Adone in the world premiere of Venere e Adone at the Staatsoper Hamburg under Kent Nagano, earning praise for a “vocally and physically muscular” performance. He has previously worked with Lyric Opera of Chicago, Seattle Opera, Santa Fe Opera, the New York Philharmonic, Italy's Spoleto Festival, Boston Baroque, and Sydney's Pinchgut Opera, among others. He recently made spectacular debuts at the Royal Ballet & Opera, Bayerische Staatsoper, and Staatsoper Hamburg, with upcoming debuts at Carnegie Hall and La Fenice in Venice.

Holding a PhD from the Royal College of Music in London, where his dissertation focused on the castrato Senesino and early 18th-century Italian opera, Scotting is also that rare performer who has trained extensively as a scholar – a background that served him well in researching and bringing to life the repertoire he performs here.

After extensive research into Nicolini’s performing career, Scotting sought out manuscripts from archives in England, Belgium, Austria, Germany, and Sweden. Choosing the best of what he found, he then meticulously created modern performing editions for all the music on the album so that it could be performed and recorded.

“For me, stepping into this repertoire is a kind of conversation across time, with Nicolini, but also with the idea of what it means to be an impresario today,” says Scotting. “Like him, I'm drawn to music-making that is dramatically committed. In recording this music, I sought to channel the intensity for which Nicolini was famous and to honor his legacy as the divine impresario: defined by an ambition for opera to be more than just dazzling technique, but also a captivating and emotional experience.”

Born into a poor Neapolitan family in 1673, Nicolò Grimaldi rose to become one of the most celebrated performers of his era. After making his stage debut in Naples at only twelve years old, he rapidly gained fame throughout Italy, eventually being inducted into the Order of Saint Mark’s Cross in Venice in 1705 for his outstanding performances. His reputation soon spread across Europe, and in 1708 he arrived in London with a three-year contract and an extraordinary £1,000 salary (an amount that at that time would have taken a skilled tradesman thirty years to earn).

Nicolini quickly became an international superstar, praised not only for his vocal brilliance but for his exceptional acting. One of the album's highlights is “Mostro crudel che fai?” from Riccardo Broschi's Idaspe, representing the famed lion-fighting scene that electrified London audiences. In Mancini's Idaspe fedele, Nicolini became notorious for slaying a “live” lion onstage in a nude-colored costume – a theatrical spectacle that became one of early 18th-century London's most talked-about moments. The album also includes the delicate and lyrical aria “È vano ogni pensiero” from Mancini's setting of the opera, revealing how Nicolini could, as Scotting puts it in his liner note for the album, “wrestle monsters and still sing with incomparable elegance.”

More about Randall Scotting:

Dramatically persuasive and intensely musical, Randall Scotting is recognized for winning over audiences with his vocal beauty, stylish singing, and charismatic stage presence. He has released several solo albums in recent years, building a growing profile as a recording artist. For his debut album, The Crown, with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment led by Laurence Cummings, he was lauded for "ravishing vocalism" and "impressive beauty and warmth." Signum Classics then released Lovesick, an album of lute and folk songs featuring Scotting and Grammy-award winner and lutenist Stephen Stubbs, widely praised and noted as "not only beautifully sung, but 'lived'." His most recent album, Infinite Refrain, with London's Academy of Ancient Music, offers 17th-century arias and love duets for countertenor and tenor, receiving glowing acclaim as "a vibrantly seductive" and "strikingly beautiful declaration of same-sex love."

Remarkable for the breadth of his artistic curiosity, Scotting delights in defying expectations, from improvising live with Bobby McFerrin at Carnegie Hall to performing with the avant-garde cabaret troupe Company XIV in a blend of opera, folk, and pop music. Trained at London's Royal College of Music, the Juilliard School, and as a Fulbright Scholar at Budapest's Liszt Academy, his scholarly credentials complement his performing career. In 2018 he was awarded a PhD from the Royal College of Music in London for his thesis on the castrato Senesino (Francesco Bernardi) and early 18th-century Italian opera 

About Mary Bevan:

Mary Bevan is one of Britain's most celebrated sopranos, equally at home in opera, concert, and recital. During the 2025/26 season, she debuts with the Dutch National Opera in a new Michel van der Aa commission Theory of Flames, sings Pat Nixon in John Adams's Nixon in China conducted by the composer in Rome, and returns to the Semperoper Dresden in Handel's Saul.

In recent seasons she has sung the title role in La Calisto with the Bayerische Staatsoper, Cleopatra in Giulio Cesare with Teatro dell'Opera di Roma, Morgana in Alcina at Royal Opera House Covent Garden, and Eurydice in Orfeo ed Eurydice for Teatro La Fenice. Her concert appearances have included her Carnegie Hall debut with the English Concert, Haydn's Creation at the Barbican with the Academy of Ancient Music, and Bach's Mass in B Minor at the BBC Proms. She has toured extensively across Europe, Australia, Asia, and the US. Bevan's many releases on Signum Records include Elegy, art song albums, Voyages and Divine Muse, French song album Visions Illuminées, and Handel's Queens. She was awarded an MBE in the Queen's birthday honors list in 2019 and was made a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music in 2025.

About Laurence Cummings:

Laurence Cummings is Music Director of the Academy of Ancient Music and Orquestra Barroca Casa da Música in Porto, and one of Britain’s most exciting exponents of historical performance both as a conductor and harpsichordist. A noted authority on Handel, the Guardian has written that “he now ranks as one of the composer's best advocates in the world. Self-effacing on the podium, faithful above all to the score, he matches Handel's energy and invention with unmistakable lyricism, generosity and dignity.”

Frequently praised for his stylish and compelling performances in the opera house, his career has taken him across Europe conducting productions at Royal Ballet and Opera Covent Garden, Glyndebourne, Opernhaus Zurich, Dutch National Opera, Theater an der Wien, and Gothenburg Opera, working with directors including David McVicar, Christoph Marthaler, Deborah Warner, and Peter Sellars. He is equally at home on the concert platform, regularly invited to conduct both period and modern instrument orchestras worldwide.

His previous collaborations with Randall Scotting include The Crown, Heroic Arias for Senesino with Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and Infinite Refrain, Music of Love's Refuge with Academy of Ancient Music, both on Signum Classics.

About Academy of Ancient Music:

Academy of Ancient Music is an orchestra with a worldwide reputation for excellence in baroque and classical music. Using historically informed techniques, period-specific instruments and original sources, they bring music vividly to life in committed, vibrant performances.

Established more than 50 years ago by Christopher Hogwood, AAM has released more than 300 albums to date, collecting countless accolades including Classic BRIT, Gramophone and Edison awards. They are the most listened-to period-instrument orchestra online, with over one million monthly listeners on streaming platforms. AAM recently celebrated their Golden Anniversary with the completion of a landmark project to record Mozart's complete works for keyboard and orchestra, a series described by the Financial Times as having “set new standards.”

Beyond the concert hall, AAM is committed to nurturing the next generation of musicians through their innovative AAMplify initiative, working with music colleges and universities across the UK. AAM holds the position of Associate Ensemble at London’s Barbican Centre and the Teatro San Cassiano, Venice, and Orchestra-in-Residence at the University of Cambridge and The Apex, Bury St Edmunds.

About Signum Records:

Signum Records is a leading British independent label, specialising in classical music. Founded in 1997, Signum boasts a catalogue of over 900 titles collectively streamed over 850 million times and continues to release 40+ new recordings each year by internationally acclaimed artists. Signum works closely with its sister company, Floating Earth, the leading production and engineering specialist service provider in Europe.

Album Track Listing & Credits:

Divine Impresario: Nicolini on Stage
Randall Scotting, countertenor | Mary Bevan, soprano | Academy of Ancient Music led by Laurence Cummings
Release Date: March 13, 2026
Signum Classics 

1. *Mostro crudel che fai? from Idaspe [4:34]
Riccardo Broschi (c. 1698-1756) | Venice 1730

2. Porto piagato in petto from Ambleto [3:01]
Francesco Gasparini (1661-1727) | London 1712

3. Sinfonia from Rinaldo | Instrumental [1:02]
George Frideric Handel (1685-1759) | London 1711

4. Cara sposa from Rinaldo [10:00]
G.F. Handel | London 1711 

5. *Spiegami il tuo desio from Siface [5:55]
Nicola Porpora (1686-1768) | Venice 1726
with Mary Bevan, soprano

6. Oh notte!… Notte amica from Amadigi [4:47]
G.F. Handel | London 1715

7. *Come nave in mezzo all'onda from Siface [5:28]
N. Porpora | Venice 1726

8. *Per te bell'idol mio from Antioco [4:48]
F. Gasparini | London 1711
with Mary Bevan, soprano

9. *È vano ogni pensiero from Idaspe fedele [8:56]
Francesco Mancini (1672-1737) | London 1710

10. Venti turbini from Rinaldo [5:02]
G.F. Handel | London 1711

11. *Nò, non piangete nò from Tito Manlio [4:43]
Attilio Ariosti (1666-1729) | London 1717

12. *Sì, t'intendo o core amante from Tomiri [3:41]
F. Gasparini | London 1709

13. *Questo conforto from Antioco [5:47]
F. Gasparini | London 1712 

14. *Pensa se ancor from Mitridate [5:18]
Giovanni Antonio Giaj (1690-1764) | Venice 1729

15. Crudel tu non farai from Amadigi [5:30]
G.F. Handel | London 1715
with Mary Bevan, soprano

*recorded for the first time

Total Time: 78:37

Randall Scotting, countertenor
Mary Bevan, soprano
Laurence Cummings, conductor and harpsichord
Academy of Ancient Music

Recorded: November 18-21, 2024
Location: St Jude On-the-Hill, Hampstead, London, UK
Producer: Nicholas Parker
Audio Engineer, Mixing, and Mastering: Tom Lewington
Assistant Engineer: Alex Sermon
Musical Coaching: Yukiko Oba and Murray Hipkin

Concept, Repertoire Selections, and Performing Editions: Randall Scotting, PhD
Album Booklet, Package Design, Copy Editing, and Photo Editing: Nic Mramer

April 17: GRAMMY-Nominated Harpist Yolanda Kondonassis Releases New Album Terra Infirma - World Premiere Recordings of Music by Reena Esmail

GRAMMY®-Nominated Harpist Yolanda Kondonassis
Releases Terra Infirma on April 17 Just Before Earth Day 2026

World Premiere Recordings of Major New Works Composed by Reena Esmail

Featuring Vijay Gupta, Violin
Interlochen Center for the Arts Orchestra & Chorus
Conducted by Andrew Grams | Carter Smith, Choral Director

Watch the Trailer for The Terra Infirma Project

Release Dates: April 17 (digital), May 15 (CD) on Azica Records 

Yolanda Kondonassis | Reena Esmail | Azica Records

Review CDs and downloads available upon request.

On April 17, 2026, shortly before Earth Day, GRAMMY®-nominated harpist Yolanda Kondonassis releases her new album Terra Infirma on Azica Records. Terra Infirma, which will be released on CD on May 15, 2026, features world premiere recordings of major new works by acclaimed composer Reena Esmail, including the titular concerto for harp and percussion (both performed by Kondonassis) with orchestra, as well as Sandhiprakash for violin and harp, and Earth Speaks: Curiosity for chorus and solo harp. In addition to Kondonassis, the album includes violinist Vijay Gupta, the Interlochen Center for the Arts Orchestra and Chorus, conductor Andrew Grams, and choral director Carter Smith.

Each piece on the album concerns our relationship to the environment – an ongoing theme in both Kondonassis’s and Esmail’s work. Kondonassis’s most recent album is FIVE MINUTES for Earth from 2022, which features pieces (including one by Esmail) commissioned through her environmental awareness non-profit organization Earth at Heart. Esmail often uses her work as a composer and performer to support environmental advocacy, particularly with her compositions Earth Speaks and Malhaar: A Requiem for Water.

Esmail’s new harp and percussion concerto Terra Infirma was directly informed by the composer’s experience living in Los Angeles during the catastrophic fires of January 2025. Esmail, who is Indian-American, also drew on her extensive studies of Hindustani music in composing the piece. Her compositional voice is at once arresting, lyrical, haunting, and fierce. She writes in the liner notes, “Though the idea had been set in motion four years earlier, the timing of its creation was uncanny. I began writing this concerto in January 2025, a few days before wildfire ravaged my neighborhood of Altadena, CA. The material for immolation came to me as I walked the hills of Los Angeles while we were evacuated. The piece draws on the ancient Hindustani raags of Deepak, which evokes fire, and Megh, which extinguishes it through rain.” Kondonassis, known for “a range of colour that’s breathtaking,” (Gramophone), brings the work to life with colorful authenticity. 

Terra Infirma reflects not only the environmental passion and advocacy of both artists, but also their inspiration to innovate and expand the concerto form. In this bold new work, with a title taken from a poem by Robert Walters (also commissioned by Kondonassis through Earth at Heart), the harp symbolizes the protagonist Earth, both fragile and powerful. The towering instrument is moved choreographically by Kondonassis across the stage as she journeys through various arrays of suspended percussion. Esmail describes the work as “part virtuoso concerto, part performance art, and part theater.”

Says Esmail, “Terra Infirma sits somewhere between a harp/percussion concerto and a monodrama – Yolanda leads us through the trajectory of a wildfire, starting with the eerie moments before the first spark, and ending with the hope of new growth. The work explores our human relationship to fire – a force that can be at once devastating and illuminating. It has been a dream to work so closely with Yolanda, who has reinvented the role of the harp over and over again throughout her career. We have built the DNA of this piece together over so many years – experimenting in percussion studios, mapping stage plots, pushing our imaginations to the limit. I am so excited to share this work with the world.”

Kondonassis says, “The personal and musical resonance that I feel with Reena has resulted in a work that’s deeply personal, uniquely colorful, and ground-breaking in so many ways. The harp is a highly visual instrument, and Terra Infirma utilizes that element to the fullest. In this work, the harp is actually a character in the musical drama onstage, and that gives me the chance to portray an enormous range of artistic emotion.”

Photos by Ryan Zimmerman available in high resolution here.

The album also includes Esmail’s works Sandhiprakash (originally written for solo cello in 2022, reimagined for violin and harp for this project) and Earth Speaks: Curiosity (originally written in 2014 for chorus and solo piano, revised for chorus and solo harp). Esmail writes, “Sandhiprakash, meaning ‘the joining of light’, is the term for a particular set of Hindustani raags that are performed at the moments of sunrise and sunset. This piece focuses on the sunrise raags, Bhairav, Ahir Bhairav and Vibhas. Quite different from the sonorities that evoke dawn in Western music, these melodies are darker and more mysterious.” Earth Speaks: Curiosity uses as its texts the list of stops that the rover Curiosity made on Mars in 2011 – many of them named from the places worldwide where the scientists involved conducted their research – as well as haikus which were submitted to an online competition to commemorate the launch.

The new album forms the heart of The Terra Infirma Project, a multi-year initiative of the Interlochen Center for the Arts, which boasts Kondonassis as an alumna (class of ‘82). In addition to the world premiere performances and recording of Esmail’s pieces, the project consists of a live multi-media concert video, the creation of a two-part documentary, and a year-long series of educational and residency activities at Interlochen Center for the Arts. The entire process, from initial workshops to the world-premiere and recording, has been captured by the award-winning film crew Fulvew Productions for the upcoming documentary to be released in August 2026. .

Watch a trailer for The Terra Infirma Project:

Of working with and mentoring the students at her alma mater during her residency at Interlochen, Kondonassis states, “Bringing Terra Infirma to life with my dear friend, Reena Esmail, was a gift in itself, but to do it at Interlochen – where many of my earliest and most important musical values were formed – was extraordinary. My time on campus suggested to me that maybe, just maybe, we actually can go home again when ‘home’ represents the genesis of our best selves. My time spent with the incredible Interlochen students assured me that the future of music is safe in the hands of these smart, curious, motivated young players. Even in our increasingly complex world, their ability to commit and collaborate with their whole hearts gives me hope. I find it enormously inspiring to be reminded that the training ground of great artists shouldn’t be considered an assembly line, but a magnificent garden – rich with seeds, buds, and blooms for which opportunity and mentorship are the sun and water.”

About Yolanda Kondonassis:

Yolanda Kondonassis enjoys a career as one of the world’s leading solo harpists. Hailed as “viscerally exciting” by TheChicago Tribune, she has performed around the globe as a concerto soloist and in recital, pushing the boundaries of what listeners expect of the harp. Since making her debut at age 18 with the New York Philharmonic and Zubin Mehta, Kondonassis has appeared as soloist with countless major orchestras in the United States and abroad. Also a published author, speaker, professor of harp, and environmental activist, she weaves her many passions into a vibrant and multi-faceted career.

Praised by Gramophone for her “keen sense of dramatic timing and a range of colour that’s breathtaking,” Kondonassis has released over 25 commercial recordings and her music has been sold and downloaded by millions of listeners. She was nominated for a 2020 GRAMMY® Award for Best Classical Instrumental Solo for her world premiere recording of Jennifer Higdon’s Harp Concerto (Azica). Her album of music by Takemitsu and Debussy, Air (Telarc), was also nominated for a GRAMMY® Award.

Committed to the advancement of new music, Kondonassis’ body of solo harp commissions includes works by Aaron Jay Kernis, Michael Daugherty, Reena Esmail, Chen Yi, Bright Sheng, Jennifer Higdon, Stephen Hartke, Takuma Itoh, Zhou Long, Donald Erb, and Arturo Sandoval, among numerous others. As an author, she has published several books to date, including The Composer’s Guide to Writing Well for the Modern Harp (Carl Fischer); On Playing the Harp (Carl Fischer); The Yolanda Kondonassis Collection (Carl Fischer); and The Earth Collection (Theodore Presser), a curated volume of newly-composed, earth-inspired works for solo harp.

Kondonassis’s first children’s book, Our House is Round: A Kid’s Book About Why Protecting Our Earth Matters, was released in 2012 by Skyhorse Publishing and praised as “the perfect children’s introduction to environmental issues” by The Environmental Defense Fund. The book was subsequently licensed by Scholastic Books and recently released in an updated paperback edition under the title, My Earth, My Home.

Kondonassis is currently Director of the Harp Department at The University of Michigan, after previously heading the harp departments at Oberlin Conservatory and the Cleveland Institute of Music for over 25 years. She has presented masterclasses around the world and is the founding director of The American Harp Institute. She attended Interlochen Arts Academy as a high school student and continued her studies at The Cleveland Institute of Music, where she received her BM and MM degrees in Harp Performance.

About Reena Esmail:

Reena Esmail’s music weaves together the traditions of Hindustani and Western classical music, drawing musicians from many perspectives into shared creative spaces. Esmail divides her attention evenly between orchestral, chamber and choral work. She has written commissions for ensembles including the Los Angeles Master Chorale, Seattle Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra and San Francisco Symphony and her music has featured on multiple Grammy-nominated albums, including The Singing Guitar by Conspirare, BRUITS by Imani Winds, and Healing Modes by Brooklyn Rider.

Many of her choral works are published by Oxford University Press, and her piece TaReKiTa has sold over 100,000 copies worldwide. Her life and music was profiled on Season 3 of the PBS Great Performances series Now Hear This, as well as Frame of Mind, a podcast from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Esmail was the Los Angeles Master Choral’s 2020-2025 Swan Family Artist in Residence, and was Seattle Symphony’s 2020-21 Composer-in-Residence. She has been in residence with Tanglewood Music Center (co-Curator – 2023), Spoleto Festival (Chamber Music Composer-in-Residence – 2024) and Marlboro Music Festival (2025 Composer in Residence). 

Esmail holds degrees in composition from The Juilliard School (BM’05) and the Yale School of Music (MM’11, MMA’14, DMA’18). Her primary teachers have included Susan Botti, Aaron Jay Kernis, Christopher Theofanidis, Christopher Rouse, and Samuel Adler. She received a Fulbright-Nehru grant to study Hindustani music in India. Her Hindustani music teachers include Srimati Lakshmi Shankar and Gaurav Mazumdar, and she currently studies and collaborates with Saili Oak. Her doctoral thesis, entitled Finding Common Ground: Uniting Practices in Hindustani and Western Art Musicians explores the methods and challenges of the collaborative process between Hindustani musicians and Western composers. Esmail resides in her hometown of Los Angeles, CA. 

About the Featured Artists & Ensembles:

Vijay Gupta: vijaygupta.com
Andrew Grams:andrewgrams.com
Carter Smith: interlochen.org/person/carter-smith

About Earth at Heart: www.earthatheart.org

About Interlochen Center for the Arts:

The nonprofit Interlochen Center for the Arts is a recipient of the National Medal of Arts and the only organization in the world that brings together a 3,400 -plus-student summer camp program; a 570-plus-student fine arts boarding high school; a year-round source of expert online arts education for children, teens, and adults; opportunities for adults to engage in fulfilling artistic and creative programs; two 24-hour, listener-supported public radio services (classical music and news); more than 600 arts presentations annually by students, faculty, and world-renowned guest artists; a robust hospitality division that curates on-campus lodging, dining, and transportation services; and a global alumni base spanning nine decades, including leaders in the arts and all other endeavors. For information, visit interlochen.org.

About the Interlochen Arts Academy Orchestra:

A recipient of The American Prize, the Interlochen Arts Academy Orchestra is recognized as one of America’s finest high school orchestras. Under the direction of Leslie B. Dunner, the orchestra performs an advanced repertoire encompassing symphonies, concertos, and contemporary works. The orchestra has appeared at Carnegie Hall, David Geffen Hall, Symphony Hall, the Kimmel Center, and the New World Center, and has premiered works by Wynton Marsalis, Reena Esmail, Ash Fure, and Hannah Lash, among many others. Deeply committed to interdisciplinary creation, the ensemble collaborates regularly with the six other artistic divisions within Interlochen Arts Academy, reflecting the institution’s belief in artistic connection and creative exploration across disciplines. Interlochen Arts Academy Orchestra alumni occupy positions in leading orchestras around the world, including principal positions with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, The Philadelphia Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and The Cleveland Orchestra, among others. For more information, visit interlochen.org/music/academy/music-ensembles.

Album Information:

Terra Infirma | Yolanda Kondonassis, Harp & Percussion | Azica Records
All Music Composed by Reena Esmail
Featuring Vijay Gupta, Violin | Interlochen Center for the Arts Orchestra & Chorus
Andrew Grams, Conductor | Carter Smith, Choral Director
Release Date: April 17, 2026 (Digital) | May 15, 2026 (CD) (Worldwide)

Terra Infirma: Concerto for Harp, Percussion, and Orchestra

1. i. bone-colored branches [2:30]
Broken rocks reflecting the sun. Waterless, the terraced vineyards
Have all turned brown. Her Eden disintegrates, a daily
Orchard of dead trees with bone-colored branches. 

2. ii. immolation [3:30]
Immolation. The world’s trees snap into flame...
The world is burning. 

3. iii. helium ember [5:25]
...a helium ember that pulleys up through a tightening sky. 

4. iv. roaming the ghost forest [7:05]
...glowing in aftermath...Dante roaming the ghost forest,
A spectral coastline of damp embers, black ash and hissing smoke. 

5. v. skeletal silhouette [2:41]
Only the skeletal remains of Manzanita bushes
Scratch the horizon, a torched past in eerie silhouette. 

6. vi. swallowed [5:25]
...swallowed by fire...
Smoldering forests forge new deliriums.

7. vii. facing the flame [3:52]
But somewhere, at this very moment, the snow is melting as it should.
On a high mountain trail, a cool spring rushes out of a low stand of Alders.
This is where you kiss the ground, gather the soil in your hands,
Tend to the shelter of new life greening at the water’s edge... 

8. Sandhiprakash for violin and harp [8:40]

Earth Speaks: Curiosity for SATB chorus and solo harp
9. I. Ethereal [7:01]
10. II. Remote. Icy [2:48]
11. III. Intimate, Serene [3:39]

Total Time: [52:44] 

All World Premiere Recordings 

Executive Producer: Yolanda Kondonassis
Producer: Alan Bise
Recording Engineers: Alan Bise and Michael Culler
Mixing Engineer: Alan Bise
Project Manager at Interlochen Center for the Arts: Eric Stomberg
Cover Photo: Adobe Stock
Concert Photography: Ryan Zimmerman
Designer: Anilda Carrasquillo, Cover to Cover Design
Recorded in Corson Auditorium at Interlochen Center for the Arts

April 18: Lisa Bielawa's Rochester Broadcast – A Spatial Symphony Presented by Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester

High resolution press photos available here.

Rochester Broadcast by Lisa Bielawa
A Spatial Symphony for Hundreds of Musicians at Parcel 5

Presented by Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester

Two Performances on Saturday, April 18, 2026 at 12pm and 2:00pm
Parcel 5 | 285 East Main Street | Rochester, NY
Free and Open to the Public, No Registration Required

More Information: esm.rochester.edu/esm-event/rochester-broadcast

Rochester, NY –– This spring, award-winning composer Lisa Bielawa, currently the Howard Hanson Visiting Professor at the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester, partners with the Eastman School of Music to bring together Eastman students and members of the Rochester community for Rochester Broadcast, a large-scale, site-specific “spatial symphony,” celebrating the diversity of artistic life in Rochester. There will be two outdoor performances, free and open to the public, on Saturday, April 18, 2026 (rain date April 19) from 12-12:30pm and 2-2:30pm at Parcel 5 (285 East Main Street, Rochester).

Featured groups will include Eastman School of Music (Eastman); Eastman Community Music School (ECMS); University of Rochester (URochester): All-In Brass Band (Tom Allen, director), URochesterMarching Pep Band (Anika Tripathi, student leader), URochester Chorus (Lee Wright, director), EastmanBrass Guild (Mark Kellogg, director), Eastman Saxology (Charles Pillow, director), ECMS Klezmer Ensemble (Jonathan Allentoff, director), Eastman Tuba Mirum (Justin Benavidez, director), Rochester Mandolin Orchestra (Ken Luk, director), ECMSGamelan Ensemble (Ken Luk, director), Eastman Chorale (Bill Weinert, director), ECMSChorus (Karen Templeton, director), Rochester Medical Orchestra (Evan Meccarello, director), Rochester School of the Arts Orchestra (John Fetter, , director), and Rochester School of the Arts Band (Kerry Venanzi, director).

Composer, producer, and vocalist Lisa Bielawa is a Guggenheim Fellow and a Rome Prize winner in Musical Composition, whose music has been described as “ruminative, pointillistic and harmonically slightly tart,” by The New York Times. She is established as one of today’s leading composers and performers, consistently incorporating community-making as part of her artistic vision. In an article which branded Bielawa a “fire starter,” New Music Box reported, “It’s difficult to stand anywhere near composer and vocalist Lisa Bielawa and not feel energized by proximity… An extrovert to the core, Bielawa acknowledges that her highly social nature has taken her in some specific directions both as a composer and as a musical citizen. Community building and close collaboration with performing artists are often central to her compositional process.” She has created music for public spaces in Lower Manhattan, a bridge over the Ohio River in Louisville, KY, the banks of the Tiber River in Rome, on the sites of former airfields in Berlin and San Francisco, and to mark the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall; she has composed and produced a twelve-episode, made-for-TV opera that features over 350 musicians and was filmed in locations across the country.

The San Francisco Chronicle described Bielawa’s work Crissy Broadcast, which took place on Crissy Field in San Francisco, as “one of the most moving performances of the year…where all the boundaries we take for granted in musical life…are casually obliterated.” The Knoxville News Sentinel described the preparation of Knoxville Broadcast as being “like observing the creation of a Rube Goldberg machine, in which each piece is carefully placed and prepped with precision before the first event sets off a chain of activity.”

“I’m so happy that Rochester will join the list of Broadcast cities!” says Bielawa. “I create these radically inclusive spatial symphonies for people to fill public urban space with sound, joyfully bringing people together through a celebration of the multiple musical communities in their hometown. Eastman is a perfect partner for this next adventure, in this famously musical city.”

“Education and performance are two sides of the same coin,” states Eastman’s Joan and Martin Messinger Dean Kate Sheeran. “By inviting Lisa to helm a Broadcast specifically composed for Rochester, we are finding new ways to bring music to members of our local community by inviting them to be a part of it.”

About the Composer

Composer, producer, and vocalist Lisa Bielawa is a Guggenheim Fellow and Rome Prize winner who takes inspiration for her work from literary sources and close artistic collaborations. She has received awards and fellowships from the Koussevitzky Foundation, American Academy of Arts & Letters, OPERA America, and American Antiquarian Society, Loghaven Artist Residency, and was part of the inaugural Louisville Orchestra’s Creators Corps. She received a Los Angeles Area Emmy nomination for her unprecedented, made-for-TV-and-online opera Vireo: The Spiritual Biography of a Witch's Accuser. Her music has been premiered at the NY PHIL BIENNIAL, Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, The Kennedy Center, SHIFT Festival, National Cathedral, Rouen Opera, MAXXI Museum in Rome, and Helsinki Music Center, among others. Orchestras that have championed her music include The Knights, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, ROCO, and the Orlando Philharmonic. Premieres of her work have been commissioned and presented by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Brooklyn Rider, Seattle Chamber Music Society, Radio France, Yerevan Concert Hall in Armenia, the Venice Architectural Biennale, American Music Week in Salzburg, the INFANT Festival in Novi Sad, Serbia, and more. Bielawa consistently incorporates community-making as part of her artistic vision. She has created music for public spaces in Lower Manhattan, a bridge over the Ohio River in Louisville, KY, the banks of the Tiber River in Rome, on the sites of former airfields in Berlin and San Francisco, and munity using submitted testimonies and recorded voices from six continents through her work Broadcast from Home, now archived by the Library of Congress. For more information, please visit www.lisabielawa.net. .

Artist Website | Broadcasts | Facebook | Instagram

About Bielawa’s Broadcasts

Composer Lisa Bielawa’s Rochester Broadcast is the latest in a series of broadly inclusive Broadcast works, starting with her large-scale piece Airfield Broadcasts, a massive 60-minute work for hundreds of musicians that premiered on the tarmac of the former Tempelhof Airport in Berlin (Tempelhof Broadcast, May 2013) and Crissy Field in San Francisco (Crissy Broadcast, October 2013). Bielawa turned these former airfields into vast musical canvases as professional, amateur, and student musicians executed a spatial symphony. The series continued with Mauer Broadcast at the site of the former Berlin Wall, commissioned for the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall by Kulturprojekte Berlin in 2019; Broadcast from Home, developed remotely during the early days of the pandemic lockdown in 2020, which included the testimonies and home-recorded voices of over 500 people from six continents worldwide; Brickyard Broadcast, developed in 2020 with the city and university in Raleigh, North Carolina, partnering with their libraries to create a performance site entirely in virtual reality; Voters’ Broadcast, commissioned in 2020 as part of the Democracy and Debate Theme Semester by the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor with support from its School of Music, Theatre & Dance, and developed in partnership with Kaufman Music Center in New York; Louisville Broadcast presented in 2023 by the Louisville Orchestra in two historic locations, Shelby Park and the Big Four Bridge; and Knoxville Broadcast, presented by Big Ears in October 2025 at World’s Fair Park.

About Eastman School of Music

The Eastman School of Music was founded in 1921 by industrialist and philanthropist George Eastman (1854-1932), founder of Eastman Kodak Company. It was the first professional school of the University of Rochester. Mr. Eastman’s dream was that his school would provide a broad education in the liberal arts as well as superb musical training.

More than 900 students are enrolled in the Collegiate Division of the Eastman School of Music—about 500 undergraduates and 400 graduate students. They come from almost every state, and approximately 23 percent are from other countries. They are taught by a faculty comprising more than 170 highly regarded performers, composers, conductors, scholars and educators. They are Pulitzer Prize winners, GRAMMY winners, Emmy winners, Guggenheim fellows, ASCAP Award recipients, published authors, recording artists and acclaimed musicians who have performed in the world’s greatest concert halls. Each year, Eastman’s students, faculty members and guest artists present more than 1,000 concerts to the Rochester community. Additionally, over 1,700 members of the Rochester community, from young children through senior citizens, are enrolled in the Eastman Community Music School.

About the University of Rochester

The University of Rochester is one of the nation’s leading private research universities, one of only 62-member institutions in the Association of American Universities. Located in Rochester, N.Y., the University gives undergraduates exceptional opportunities for interdisciplinary study and close collaboration with faculty through its unique cluster-based curriculum. Its College, School of Arts and Sciences, and Hajim School of Engineering and Applied Sciences are complemented by the Eastman School of Music, Simon School of Business, Warner School of Education, Laboratory for Laser Energetics, School of Medicine and Dentistry, School of Nursing, Eastman Institute for Oral Health, and the Memorial Art Gallery.

April 25: Jupiter Quartet Presented by Krannert Center for the Performing Arts – Featuring Music by Clarice Assad, Salina Fisher, Florence Price, and Robert Schumann

Photo of the Jupiter Quartet by Todd Rosenberg available in high resolution at www.jensenartists.com/artists-profiles/jupiter-string

Jupiter Quartet Presented by Krannert Center for the Performing Arts
Performing the Music of Clarice Assad, Salina Fisher, 
Florence Price, and Robert Schumann

Saturday, April 25, 2026 at 7:30pm
University of Illinois | Foellinger Great Hall - Krannert Center for the Performing Arts
500 S Goodwin Ave. | Urbana, IL
Tickets and Information

Jupiter Quartet’s New Album Undreamed Shores
Out April 17 on Orchid Classics

“an ensemble of eloquent intensity, has matured into one of the mainstays of the American chamber-music scene.” – The New Yorker

www.jupiterquartet.com

Urbana, IL – The Jupiter String Quartet –– whose playing The Washington Post describes as “characterful, illuminating and utterly committed” –– will perform at Krannert Center for the Performing Arts on Saturday, April 25, 2026 at 7:30pm. This is the ensemble’s final performance on this series during the 2025-2026 season. The program originally featured a collaboration with pianist Bernadette Harvey but has been changed due to circumstances beyond her control. Based at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and giving concerts all over the country, the Jupiter String Quartet is a particularly intimate group, consisting of violinists Mélanie Clapiès and Meg Freivogel, violist Liz Freivogel (Meg’s older sister), and cellist Daniel McDonough (Meg’s husband, Liz’s brother-in-law). Founded in 2001, the ensemble is firmly established as an important voice in the world of chamber music, and exudes an energy that is at once friendly, knowledgeable, and adventurous.

The Jupiter Quartet brings its well-honed artistic chemistry to a musically diverse program that spans from the mid-19th century to the present day.. The performance will include Cançoes da America by Clarice Assad; Heal by Salina Fisher; selections from Five Folksongs in Counterpoint by Florence Price; and Quartet in A minor, Op. 41 No. 1 by Robert Schumann.

Says the Jupiter Quartet: “It is always a treat to play for our hometown community of Champaign-Urbana at the lovely Krannert Center. Although we are sad that the original program planned, which was to feature the wonderful pianist Bernadette Harvey, had to be postponed due to a visa delay, we are excited to share this dynamic program instead. All four of the composers we will feature have created works filled with color and variety, and we hope the audience will enjoy them as much as we do.”

A powerful communicator renowned for her musical scope and versatility, the GRAMMY-nominated composer, pianist, vocalist, and educator Clarice Assad is acclaimed for her evocative colors, rich textures, and diverse stylistic range. Of Canções da America, she writes: “Canções da America is a collection of song-like movements inspired by chants, dances, and rhythms associated with South American music. A melting pot of cultures consisting of Europeans, immigrants, natives, and people from Africa.” Salina Fisher is an award-winning New Zealand composer who draws from her background as a multi-instrumentalist of mixed Japanese heritage. Of the inspiration behind her 2021 work Heal, Fisher says: “During a year of collective and personal challenges, I became interested in the process of healing and its relation to music making,’ says Fisher. ‘Can composing be part of a healing process? What does it mean to share physical space and sound?’” African-American composer Florence Price’s Five Folksongs in Counterpoint is a brilliant reworking of popular folk tunes and spirituals. The movements the Jupiters will play are based on the songs My Darling Clementine, Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes, and Shortnin’ Bread.. Finally, Robert Schumann’s vivid Quartet in A minor, Op. 41 No. 1, which he composed in his “chamber music year” of 1842, will close out the program. The quartet, which is dedicated to Felix Mendelssohn, along with the two other string quartets of Opus 41, drew particular inspiration from close study of the contrapuntal style of Beethoven, Mozart, and Haydn. Schumann’s life was filled with a personal struggle between light and darkness, and his music expresses this inner turbulence to powerful emotional effect.

On April 17, 2026, the Jupiter String Quartet releases Undreamed Shores, the ensemble’s ninth studio album and first on Orchid Classics. On Undreamed Shores, the Jupiter Quartet turns to old friends with new inspiration. The album features the world premiere recordings of new string quartets written for the Jupiter by composers who are also longtime friends of the ensemble — Michi Wiancko (To Unpathed Waters, Undreamed Shores), Stephen Andrew Taylor (Chaconne/Labyrinth), and Kati Agócs (Imprimatur, String Quartet No. 2) — exploring themes including the climate crisis, the pandemic, memory, and re-imagination. This highly anticipated recording is the Jupiter’s final album with violinist Nelson Lee, who departed from the group’s lineup in September 2025, succeeded by violinist Mélanie Clapiès.

More About Jupiter String Quartet: The Jupiter Quartet has performed in some of the world’s finest halls, including New York City’s Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, London’s Wigmore Hall, Boston’s Jordan Hall, Mexico City's Palacio de Bellas Artes, Washington, D.C.’s Kennedy Center and Library of Congress, Austria’s Esterhazy Palace, and Seoul’s Sejong Chamber Hall. Their major music festival appearances include the Aspen Music Festival and School, Bowdoin International Music Festival, Cape Cod Chamber Music Festival, Rockport Music Festival, Caramoor International Music Festival, Music at Menlo, Tucson Winter Chamber Music Festival, the Banff Centre, the Seoul Spring Festival, and many others. In addition to their performing career, they have been artists-in-residence at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign since 2012, where they maintain private studios and direct the chamber music program.   

Their chamber music honors and awards include the grand prizes in the Banff International String Quartet Competition and the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition; the Young Concert Artists International auditions in New York City; the Cleveland Quartet Award from Chamber Music America; an Avery Fisher Career Grant; and a grant from the Fromm Foundation. From 2007-2010, they were in residence at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s Chamber Music Two. 

The Jupiter String Quartet feels a strong connection to the core string quartet repertoire; they have presented the complete Bartok and Beethoven string quartets on numerous occasions. Also deeply committed to new music, they have commissioned string quartets from Nathan Shields, Stephen Andrew Taylor, Michi Wiancko, Syd Hodkinson, Hannah Lash, Dan Visconti, and Kati Agócs; a quintet with baritone voice by Mark Adamo; and a piano quintet by Pierre Jalbert. 

In addition to Undreamed Shores, the Jupiter’s discography includes a collaborative album with the Jasper Quartet released on Marquis Records in 2021, featuring Dan Visconti’s Eternal Breath, Felix Mendelssohn’s Octet in E-flat, Op. 20, and Osvaldo Golijov’s Last Round, which was praised by The Arts Fuse for its “smart program and fine execution.” The quartet has recorded previously for Azica Records and Deutsche Grammophon.

The quartet chose its name because Jupiter was the most prominent planet in the night sky at the time of its formation and the astrological symbol for Jupiter resembles the number four.

For Calendar Editors:

Description: The Jupiter Quartet, described by The New Yorker as having “technical finesse and rare expressive maturity,” is presented by Krannert Center for the Performing Arts in their final series performance for the 2025-2026 season. The award-winning ensemble will perform a musically diverse program of works that spans from the mid-19th century to the present day, including works by living composers. The performance will include: Cançoes da America by Clarice Assad, Heal by Salina Fisher; selections from Five Folksongs in Counterpoint by Florence Price; and Quartet in A minor, Op. 41 No. 1 by Robert Schumann.

Concert details:

Who: Jupiter String Quartet
Presented by Krannert Center for the Performing Arts
What: Music by Clarice Assad, Salina Fisher, Florence Price, and Robert Schumann
When: Saturday, April 25, 2026 at 7:30pm
Where: University of Illinois, Foellinger Great Hall - Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, 500 S Goodwin Ave., Urbana, IL
Tickets and information: ​​https://krannertcenter.com/events/jupiter-string-quartet-bernadette-harvey-piano

Mini-Doc on Raymond J. Lustig's Forthcoming Album SEMMELWEIS Out Now - Album Out April 17 on Sono Luminus

Sono Luminus Releases SEMMELWEIS on April 17

A New Song Cycle
Music by Raymond J. Lustig and Words by Matthew Doherty 

Featuring Charlotte Mundy, Raymond J. Lustig, and The Rhythm Method 

Inspired by the Life of Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis

Watch the Mini-Documentary on the Making of the Album

 "entrancing...surreally beautiful...ecstatic...rapturous" – The New York Times 

"compelling beauty and eerie prescience" – The Washington Post

www.raylustig.com  | www.sonoluminus.com

Review CDs and downloads available upon request.

American composer Raymond J. Lustig releases his next album, a recording of his new song cycle SEMMELWEIS, on the Sono Luminus label on April 17, 2026. With words by Matthew Doherty and music by Lustig, the recording featuring soprano Charlotte Mundy, Raymond J. Lustig, and The Rhythm Method, plus violinist Leah Asher, cellist Meaghan Burke, bass clarinetist Chrystof Knoche, and double bassist Ranjit Prasad.

The source material for Lustig’s compelling song cycle is the story of Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis, the 19th-century obstetrician who championed the practice of handwashing which is the foundation of today’s antiseptic procedures. Amidst a devastating epidemic in the 1840s, Dr. Semmelweis discovered that the deadly disease was being spread to healthy mothers by the unclean hands of their own doctors. Tragically, the medical community rebelled against his discovery. Semmelweis’s insight had a lot to do with watching the washing rituals of midwives. Their practices reflected ancient learned knowledge, and noticing their superior outcomes alerted Semmelweis that his doctors were skipping something of critical importance, with tragic results. An impatient and irascible man, speaking twenty years ahead of the germ theory of disease, and with news that would bring unbearable guilt to countless doctors, he found few ears open to considering his shocking hypothesis. They scoffed at his findings, rejected his theory, stripped him of his credentials, and he was subsequently driven into an asylum where he died alone. It was not until decades later that his discovery was validated and accepted. 

Not surprisingly, Dr. Semmelweis had a resurgence of interest during the pandemic. He was even featured as the “Google Doodle” on March 20, 2020, described as being, “widely remembered as ‘the father of infection control,’ credited with revolutionizing not just obstetrics, but the medical field itself, informing generations beyond his own that handwashing is one of the most effective ways to prevent the spread of diseases.”

For many years, composer Raymond Lustig has been intrigued and inspired by Dr. Semmelweis. He first conceived of a stage work around the doctor’s story in 2007. At the time, he was a graduate student in music, but he had spent several years doing biomedical research. After many iterations, the fully staged production of SEMMELWEIS came to fruition in 2018, when Lustig joined forces with writer Matthew Doherty and Hungarian director Martin Boross, and the world premiere performances were presented by Budapest Operetta Theatre and Bartók Plusz Opera Festival.

Lustig has released a mini-documentary, SEMMELWEIS: From Stage to Studio Album, about the making of the recording:

The song cycle recorded here derives from that production. “Our goal was to make a true studio album, rather than a capture of the stage work,” Lustig says. “I knew I wanted to work with Charlotte Mundy, whose voice has always been the ideal for me for this work. We then decided that, rather than try to build a choir of matching female voices, we would instead use only Charlotte’s voice, multiplied over itself, spread out in the stereo field, one unified voice totally surrounding and overwhelming. These female voices often represent a chorus of ghosts of the mothers he could not save (or ‘mother ghosts,’ as we call them), who haunt Dr. Semmelweis. Engineer and co-producer Maximilien Hein and I, as well as engineer Drew Schlingman, recorded with the musicians in my studio at Respirano on Hudson and at The Hit Factory in New York. The theatrical experience and private listening are very different. We knew we needed to rebuild the music from the ground up, reconsidering every detail, refining and elaborating, revising and revising, to get to the true emotional heart of the story as an auditory experience.”

The entire action of SEMMELWEIS may be seen as a reflection – a fever dream or death dream – of Ignaz Semmelweis’ inner psyche at his life’s end. Dr. Semmelweis re-experiences events from throughout his life, perhaps out of sequence, distorted, or unreliable, as if through a lens of a mind in turmoil.

“We envisioned it as a story made of glass that had fallen to the floor, smashed, and the shards lay there reflecting only segments of the meaning, but somehow, gazing upon all of them, letting them come back together in the mind, the meaning might be perceived,” explains Lustig. “Maybe, or maybe just partially, or maybe not at all.”

About Raymond J. Lustig: ASCAP-award-winning composer and multi-instrumentalist Raymond Lustig’s music stretches boundaries to weave together his classical upbringing, his love of folk choral traditions, and indie rock. Having also taken a significant detour into the world of biomedical research, he continues to draw inspiration from nature and the sciences.

His critically acclaimed 2013 work Latency Canons—composed for an orchestra made up of musicians playing literally from around the globe via the internet—brought international attention to his music. Premiering seven years before the Covid pandemic at Carnegie Hall and simultaneously at sites worldwide, it pioneered remote music making as something accessible to traditional players and audiences.

Lustig has collaborated with cellist Joshua Roman, tenor Nicholas Phan, American Composers Orchestra, Grand Rapids Symphony, Metropolis Ensemble, Budapest Operetta Theater, the Bartok Plusz Opera Festival, the American Opera Project, pianist Blair McMillen, and classical guitar ensemble Duo Noire. He is currently working closely with Italian alternative rock artist Luigi Porto, with whom he co-leads the alternative rock band Manicburg, whose debut album premiered in 2024.

Lustig’s work has been honored with the Charles Ives Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, ASCAP’s Rudolf Nassim Prize for his orchestral work UNSTUCK, the Aaron Copland Award from Copland House, the Juilliard Orchestra competition, the New Juilliard Ensemble competition.

ALBUM TRACK LISTING & CREDITS:

SEMMELWEIS
Music by Raymond Lustig
Words by Matthew Doherty
Raymond Lustig | Charlotte Mundy | The Rhythm Method
Sono Luminus
Release Date: April 17, 2026 

1. What is the Day
2. Market Squares
3. Give Birth on the Earthworks
4. Best Idea
5. My Doctor's Hands
6. Never a Choice
7. Out in the Yard
8. Archaeology
9. Our Skin So Fair
10. As if Your Body Were a Cathedral
11. You Cannot Stay
12. My Dark Disgrace
13. Etiology
14. Eureka
15. I am the Experiment
16. Madness
17. Once a Candle
18. The Only One
19. Lullaby
20. Finale

Total Time: 65:28 

Music by Raymond J. Lustig
Words by Matthew Doherty
Additional Latin words: Martin Boross, Diána Eszter Mátrai, Julia Jakubowska 

Charlotte Mundy - voice of Woman and the Mother Ghosts
Raymond J. Lustig - voice of Semmelweis, piano, organ, accordion, music boxes
The Rhythm Method - string quartet
Leah Asher - violin
Meaghan Burke - cello
Ranjit Prasad - double bass
Chrystof Knoche - bass clarinet 

Produced by Raymond J. Lustig and Maximilien Hein
Executive Produced by Raymond J. Lustig
Additional Production by Drew Schlingman (“Best Idea”, “Eureka”)
Recorded by Maximilien Hein and Drew Schlingman
Mixed by Maximilien Hein
Mastered by Daniel Shores 

Recorded at The Hit Factory, NYC and Respirano on Hudson, NYC from 2023 to 2025
Assistant Engineer at The Hit Factory: Brendan O’Neill 

Album Art by Alex Sopp
Graphic Design by Josh Frey

GatherNYC Presents Sunday Concerts Violinist Rachell Ellen Wong & Harpsichordist David Belkovski; Boyd Meets Girl & Friends; Bassist & Composer Kebra-Seyoun Charles; Poiesis Quartet

L-R: Osvaldo Golijov, Poiesis Quartet, Boyd Meets Girl, En-Chi Cheng, Kebra-Seyoun Charles, Jennifer Choi, David Felberg, Clarice Assad, Rachell Ellen Wong & David Belkovski

GatherNYC Continues Expanded 2025-2026 Season in NYC
at Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) in Columbus Circle

31 Concerts – Now Held Weekly, Every Sunday Morning at 11AM through May 31, 2026

Up Next:
April 5: Rachell Ellen Wong and David Belkovski (Violin, Harpsichord)
April 12: Boyd Meets Girl and Friends (Flute, Guitar and Strings)
April 19: Kebra-Seyoun Charles (Bass, Composer​​​​​)
April 26: Poiesis Quartet (String Quartet)

“thoughtful, intimate events curated with refreshing eclecticism by its founders, the cellist Laura Metcalf and the guitarist Rupert Boyd, complete with pastries and coffee – The New Yorker

“A sweet chamber music series” – The New York Times

“Impressive Aussie/American led concert series proves music can be a religion.”
– Limelight Magazine

Museum of Arts and Design | The Theater at MAD | 2 Columbus Circle | NYC

Tickets & Information: www.gathernyc.org

New York, NY – GatherNYC, a revolutionary concert experience founded in 2018 by cellist Laura Metcalf and guitarist Rupert Boyd, continues its expanded 2025-2026 season at the series’ home venue, Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) (2 Columbus Circle). For the first time, GatherNYC is offering weekly concerts, held every Sunday morning at 11am, in The Theater at MAD. Coffee and pastries are served before each performance at 10:30am. Admission for children under 12 is free. The series presents an astonishing thirty-one concerts between October 2025 and May 2026.

Guests at GatherNYC are served exquisite live classical music performed by New York’s immensely talented artists, artisanal coffee and pastries, a taste of the spoken word, and a brief celebration of silence. The entire experience lasts one hour and evokes the community and spiritual nourishment of a religious service – but the religion is music, and all are welcome.

Spoken word artists perform briefly at the midpoint of each concert, many of whom are winners of The Moth StorySLAM events. “It’s an interesting moment of something completely different from the music, and it often connects with the audience,” Metcalf told Strings magazine in a feature about the series. “Then we have a two-minute celebration of silence when we turn the lights down, centering ourselves in the center of the city. Then the lights come back on, and the music starts again out of the silence. We find that the listening and the feeling in the room changes after that.”

Metcalf and Boyd say, “We are thrilled to be offering 31 concerts throughout our expanded 2025-2026 season, by far our largest lineup yet. In these challenging times, we feel it’s essential to provide our community with a gathering place each week where we can enjoy world-class artists together in an intimate, unique setting – complete with spoken word, silence, coffee and a communal, welcoming environment. We look forward to welcoming new and old friends week after week.”

Up Next – All Concerts Take Place on Sundays at 11AM:

April 5: Rachell Ellen Wong, violin + David Belkovski, harpsichord
Following their much-loved performance at GatherNYC in 2023 as part of the early music collective Twelfth Night, Wong and Belkovski return to the stage for a charming and intimate recital featuring impeccably performed Baroque gems.

April 12: Boyd Meets Girl and Friends play Clarice Assad & Osvoldo Golijov
This exciting program for flute, guitar and string quartet pair works by two superstar Latin-American composers whose styles contrast and compliment each other. Golijov’s achingly beautiful Tenebrae is juxtaposed with Clarice Assad’s exhilarating Sephardic Suite. Boyd Meets Girl is joined by violinists David Felberg and Jennifer Choi and violist En-Chi Cheng.

April 19: Kebra-Seyoun Charles, bass + composer
Kebra-Seyoun Charles is a distinguished double bass soloist and composer lauded for their counter-classical musical language and their ability to aptly communicate complex ideas and emotions to audiences. For their GatherNYC debut, they will perform a new work entitled “Shango” for bass and percussion duo, interspersed with virtuosic double bass solos.

April 26: Poeisis Quartet
Fresh off their win at the 2025 Banff International String Quartet Competition (arguably the most important competition of its kind in the world), this fast-rising young string quartet will treat audiences to its vital and energetic approach to music-making and programming.

Says Poeisis of their program: “In collaboration with five emerging QTPOC (Queer/Trans People of Color) composers from our alma mater, Oberlin College & Conservatory, the Oberlin Commission Project expands the string quartet canon with approaches to music-making that are too often unheard. This initiative brings underrepresented voices, genres, and influences to the forefront, and also serves as an act of resistance and perseverance. Composer Zola Saadi-Klein's composition is rooted in the Persian Dastgāh music tradition, and through their work they are "acknowledging our queer and ancestral identities can freely coexist beyond the binaries of classical music and societal expectations." As queer musicians and as Oberlin graduates, this project serves as our way of giving back to the communities who raised us and brought us together.”

2026 GatherNYC Schedule:

May 3: Thomas Mesa, cello + JP Jofre, bandoneon
Two of the most exciting soloists working today, Mesa and Jofre come together for a morning of tango and tango-inspired works that spotlight the unusual combination of their instruments, cello and bandoneon, while allowing each performer to shine.

May 10: Curtis Stewart, violin + composer
GatherNYC favorite, Curtis Stewart, returns to the stage with a preview of his much-anticipated project “24 American Caprices.” The 24 American Caprices are inspired by a kaleidoscope of recorded American music, with some honorary American additions...musical aspects of each inspiration are abstracted and imbued with challenging violin techniques emulating the sounds and styles of their origin. In the full meaning of caprice, these violin fragments dance and sing lightly from inspiration to ornamentation, both with flights of fantasy and fastidious settings of referenced material, creating playful musical dialogue around American lineage and individual perspective in Classical music.

May 17: Catalyst Quartet
The GRAMMY-winning Catalyst Quartet, known for their masterful, comprehensive recordings of music by Black composers throughout history, bring their signature polish and style back to GatherNYC for the second time.

May 24: Aeolus Quartet
The acclaimed Aeolus Quartet presents a touching and thoughtful program for their first performance at GatherNYC. From a Bach chorale composed to unite the voices of church congregations to the expansive Overture and Chorale by Andrea Casarrubios inspired by it; from the textural celebration of Montgomery's Strum to the bubbling virtuosity of Bacewicz’s Quartet No. 3 composed in the new world that arose from the ashes of WWII. In this program, storytelling and silence give way to the tender slow movement of Price’s G Major Quartet rooted in the tradition of Black spirituals.

May 31: Season Finale – Musicians from the NY Phil with Boyd Meets Girl
GatherNYC artistic directors Laura Metcalf and Rupert Boyd once again team up with members of the New York Philharmonic, including returning violist Leah Ferguson, violinist Alina Kobialka and more, to craft an exhilarating program centered around Aaron Jay Kernis’ tour de force for guitar and string quartet, “100 Greatest Dance Hits.” Dance into the summer and celebrate the conclusion of another wonderful season of GatherNYC!

For tickets and information, visit www.gathernyc.org.

Composer Robert Sirota’s Muzzy Ridge Concerts Announces Sixth Season in Searsmont, ME – Six Concerts in July 2026

(Left to Right) American String Quartet, Graeme Steele Johnson, Min Kwon, Claire Bryant, Nadia Sirota | Available in hi-resolution here

Searsmont Composer Robert Sirota
Announces Season Six of Muzzy Ridge Concerts
Featuring Six Performances in July 2026

Monday, July 5 and Tuesday, July 6 at 5pm
Tuesday, July 14 and Wednesday, July 15 at 5pm
Tuesday, July 28 and Wednesday, July 29 at 5pm
Tickets and More Information

“A unique and intimate concert experience” – The Republican Journal

robertsirota.com/muzzy-ridge-concerts

Searsmont, ME – Muzzy Ridge Concerts — the beloved concert series founded by celebrated composer Robert Sirota — returns for its sixth season of summer performances in July 2026. Muzzy Ridge Concerts expands this year from four to six performances over the month of July, offering three enticing programs, each performed twice, on Monday, July 5 and Tuesday, July 6 at 5pm; Tuesday, July 14 and Wednesday, July 15 at 5pm; and Tuesday, July 28 and Wednesday, July 29 at 5pm.

The popular Maine chamber series welcomes new guest artists this season, including Robert Sirota’s longtime friends and colleagues from the American String Quartet — for whom Sirota has written music in the past –– as well as the return of Robert Sirota’s daughter, Nadia Sirota.

The opening concerts will feature clarinetist Graeme Steele Johnson and pianist Min Kwon performing a mix of works from the 19th, 20, and 21st centuries. The performance also highlights American work, with music by George Gershwin and selections from Min Kwon’s commissioning project, America/Beautiful, which strives to “paint a sonic picture of [Kwon’s] adopted country in all of its sprawling complexity, and ultimately try to find the beauty at the core of the American experiment and its credo of e pluribus unum.” The American String Quartet’s program embraces the beauty of the traditional classical canon from the late 18th and 19th centuries, showcasing the group’s highly refined interconnected musicianship. This is also the American String Quartet’s final season together, making these concerts some of the last opportunities to hear a live performance by this storied ensemble. The series concludes its sixth season with the dynamic playing of

violist Nadia Sirota and cellist Claire Bryant, as the two perform a varied program of classical music and works by living composers.

Concerts take place in Robert Sirota’s Searsmont, Maine studio – the creative sanctuary where he has composed a great deal of his work throughout the past 35 years. Performances will run for approximately 60 minutes with no intermission. Indoor seating is limited to 50 patrons with an additional 20 outdoor seats. Tickets are on sale now.

Robert Sirota says:

“In the summer of 2021, we began Muzzy Ridge Concerts with two concerts and the simple idea to have our tremendously gifted friends and family come to our place to play chamber music and enjoy a few days in Mid-coast Maine. The concept hasn’t changed, but our audience has grown! This year we are happy to extend our hospitality to you at six stellar concerts. We hope you will find your way to Searsmont and join us!"

On Monday July 5 and Tuesday, July 6, clarinetist Graeme Steele Johnson and pianist Min Kwon perform a lively mix of traditional and contemporary works from the 19th century to the present day blending classical canon with jazz, blues, and the expressive artistry of Impressionism. The program will feature “Blues” from An American in Paris by George Gershwin and Michele Mangani, Première Rhapsodie by Claude Debussy, Apparition by Viet Cuong, Selections from the America/Beautiful commissioning project, and Sonata in E-flat for Clarinet and Piano by Johannes Brahms.

On Tuesday, July 14 and Wednesday, July 15, the American String Quartet — Peter Winograd and Laurie Carney, violins; Matthias Buchholz, viola; and Wolfram Koessel, cello — perform two stylistically divergent quartets by two composers nearly a century apart: Franz Joseph Haydn’s Quartet in D Major Opus 76 No. 5 and Johannes Brahms’ Quartet in A Minor Op. 51 No. 2. The former diverges from Haydn’s imposing thematic style, embracing modest but deeply expressive motifs, ranging from slow and poignant to vibrant and frenzied. Brahms’ quartet by contrast, showcases his penchant for melodic themes of an unwaveringly bold, dramatic, and emotionally heavy nature.

Closing out the season on Tuesday, July 28 and Wednesday, July 29, violist Nadia Sirota and cellist Claire Bryant perform a colorful program of music for viola and cello, featuring a lively array of works by contemporary and classic composers. Their performance will feature Limestone & Felt by Caroline Shaw, Drones by Nico Muhly, and Duet for Two Obbligato Eyeglasses by Ludwig van Beethoven. The expressive nature of this program spans a variety of musical objectives –– from a melodically lighthearted duet written in Beethoven’s early years, to channeling the embodiment of textural contrast in Shaw’s material-minded work, to Nico Muhly focusing on developing harmonic ideas over a static structure. The program intertwines fun and contemplative artistry.

Tickets for all Muzzy Ridge Concerts performances are now on sale at www.robertsirota.com/muzzy-ridge-concerts.

Robert Sirota has garnered distinction as composer, arranger, music executive and arts advocate. His chamber works have been performed by Alarm Will Sound; Sandbox Percussion; Yale Camerata; yMusic; the Chiara, American, Blair, and Telegraph Quartets; and in festivals including Tanglewood, Aspen, Yellow Barn, Cooperstown, and Bowdoin. Orchestral performances include the Seattle, Vermont, Virginia, East Texas, Lincoln (NE), Meridian (MS), New Haven, Greater Bridgeport, Oradea (Romania) and Saint Petersburg (Russia) symphonies, as well as conservatory orchestras of

Oberlin, Peabody, Manhattan School of Music, Toronto, and Singapore. Recent commissions include the Neave Trio, Judith Clurman/Essential Voices USA, Jeffrey Kahane/Sarasota Music Festival, Palladium Musicum, the Naumburg Foundation, and arrangements for Paul Simon. Recipient of grants from the Watson and Guggenheim Foundations, National Endowment for the Arts, Meet the Composer, and the American Music Center, Sirota’s works are recorded on the Capstone, Albany, New Voice, Gasparo and Crystal labels. For more information, visit https://www.robertsirota.com.

About the Artists:

Graeme Steele Johnson: graemesteelejohnson.com
American String Quartet: americanstringquartet.com
Min Kwon: pianistminkwon.com
Nadia Sirota: nadiasirota.com/bio-and-photos
Claire Bryant: clairebryant.com/#bio

Caramoor Announces 2026 Summer Season - Over Thirty Performances from June 20 to August 2, 2026

Press photos available in high resolution here.

Caramoor Announces 2026 Summer Season
Over Thirty Performances from June 20 to August 2, 2026

Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts
149 Girdle Ridge Road | Katonah, NY
Tickets & Information

KATONAH, NY (March 10, 2026) – Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts, a vibrant cultural destination nestled on 81 acres of historic gardens and woodlands in Katonah, NY, announces its highly anticipated Summer Season, bringing audiences together for over 30 unforgettable performances from June 20 to August 2, 2026. Once the home of music and art lovers Walter and Lucie Rosen, Caramoor has evolved into one of the region’s most distinctive destinations for live performances, cultural engagement, and exploration – a sanctuary for music, arts, and nature. The Summer Season immerses the entire estate in music, with performances happening in five distinct settings – the Venetian Theater, Spanish Courtyard, Friends Field, Sunken Garden, and the Music Room.

Caramoor’s Summer Season extends across genres – highlights this year include opening night with Tony Award-winner Kelli O’Hara and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s (June 20); superstar pianist Yuja Wang and People of Earth (July 23) in a thrilling new collaboration exploring the vibrant rhythms and colors of Afro-Latin and Caribbean music; performances by classical music luminaries including Hélène Grimaud (June 25), Les Arts Florissants (July 17) in a Charpentier opera double bill, and Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra (July 26) in Handel’s opera Tolomeo; a Summer Season finale featuring one of the foremost violinists of our time, Gil Shaham, with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s conducted by Xian Zhang (August 2); virtuosic American string band Punch Brothers (July 18); evocative singer-songwriter Patty Griffin (July 11); the incomparable Mark Morris Dance Group (July 30); the legendary Bruce Hornsby & The Noisemakers (August 1); plus special community celebrations including the Dedicated Men of Zion celebrating Juneteenth (June 21); Isaac Mizrahi in a Pride Month performance (June 26); and Pops, Patriots, and Fireworks featuring the Westchester Symphonic Winds for America’s 250th (July 4); and much, much more. This summer also brings the return of Dancing at Dusk, Caramoor’s series for young listeners and the continuation of Music and Meditation in the Garden, pairing chamber music and meditation in an idyllic setting.

“Each summer at Caramoor, we invite audiences to experience the extraordinary intersection of music, nature, and community,” says Gillian Fox, Caramoor President & CEO. “This season reflects our commitment to presenting exceptional artists spanning a broad range of musical traditions while creating welcoming pathways for audiences of every age. I am especially delighted to welcome back Dancing at Dusk, our beloved children’s concert series, which invites families to experience the joy of music together and helps spark a lifelong connection to the arts here at Caramoor.”

Kathy Schuman, Caramoor Vice President and Artistic Director says, “The unique Caramoor setting continues to inspire and inform our programs, from world-class celebrated artists to rising stars, in a multitude of genres. As part of each season we strive to bring one-of-a kind programs such as this year's Baroque opera performances by Les Arts Florissants and Philharmonia Baroque, the world premiere of a concert-length work by Christopher Cerrone, and one of the first performances of a new collaboration between Yuja Wang and People of Earth. We pride ourselves on the breadth and diversity of the musical experiences we bring to new and returning visitors each summer.”

Trimpin's in “C” and Friends Field, photo by Gabe Palacio. Available in high resolution here. 

Opening Night and Summer Gala

Opening Night & Summer Gala: An Evening with Kelli O’Hara and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s

Saturday, June 20, 2026 at 7:00pm, Venetian Theater

One of Broadway’s most beloved voices, Tony Award-winner Kelli O’Hara returns to Caramoor to kick off the 81st season, performing with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s conducted by Rob Fisher with Dan Lipton, music director. Experience the magic of this artist who continues to define the beauty and heart of the Broadway stage, with a program of American Songbook gems, Broadway favorites, and timeless pop standards. O’Hara can currently be seen on HBO’s The Gilded Age, which was nominated for a SAG Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series, as well as on the CBS series Sheriff Country. Recently, she starred opposite Tom Hanks in the world premiere of the Off-Broadway play This World of Tomorrow. She is currently performing on Broadway in the revival of Fallen Angels opposite Rose Byrne. 

Opera and Dance

Les Arts Florissants in Charpentier's Les Arts Florissants and La Descente d'Orphée aux enfers
Friday, July 17, 2026 at 7:00pm, Venetian Theater
6:00pm, Pre-concert talk by Julia I. Doe, Associate Professor of Music at Columbia University

Following the magical performance of Purcell’s The Fairy Queen at Caramoor in 2024, pioneering conductor and harpsichordist William Christie returns to present the work that gave his renowned Baroque ensemble its name: Les Arts Florissants. In this double bill, two miniature operatic gems by Marc-Antoine Charpentier shimmer with expressive choruses, eloquent declamation, courtly airs, and vibrant instrumental colors, revealing the French composer’s dramatic genius. The performance features soloists from Le Jardin des Voix (the ensemble’s international academy for young singers), choreography by Martin Chaix, and stage direction by Marie Lambert and Stéphane Facco.

Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra in Handel's Tolomeo
Sunday, July 26, 2026 at 4:00pm, Venetian Theater
3:00pm, Pre-concert talk by MIT professor emeritus and Handel scholar Ellen T. Harris)

The Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra returns to the Venetian Theater for a semi-staged production of Handel’s masterpiece, Tolomeo, re d'Egitto. The ensemble has previously brought memorable Handel productions of Atalanta and Acis and Galatea to Caramoor. This production, led by Music Director Designate Peter Whelan and directed by James Darrah, features an elite cast of Baroque specialists, including countertenor Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen in the title role and soprano Lauren Snouffer as Seleuce. Bass-baritone Dashon Burton and countertenor Kangmin Justin Kim round out a powerhouse lineup for this tale of exile, romance, and political intrigue.

Mark Morris Dance Group
Thursday, July 30, 2026 at 7:30pm, Venetian Theater

Hailed as "the preeminent modern dance organization of our time" by none other than Yo-Yo Ma, Mark Morris Dance Group returns to Caramoor with its signature blend of wit, grace, and profound musicality. Morris, celebrated as the most musical of living choreographers, treats the audience to a feast for eyes and ears. This performance captures the sheer joy and human authenticity that make this company an enduring treasure. The company performs Three Preludes with music by George Gershwin, Northwest with music by John Luther Adams, Jenn and Spencer with music by Henry Cowell, and Dancing Honeymoon with music by Ethan Iverson.

Orchestras

The Knights and Pianist Conrad Tao in Rhapsody in Blue
Sunday, June 28, 2026 at 4:00pm, Venetian Theater

Experience a vibrant celebration of the American sound with the boundary-breaking orchestral collective The Knights in an afternoon of fearless music-making. Led by Artistic Directors Eric and Colin Jacobson, the program anchors the spirit of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, featuring Conrad Tao’s acclaimed, explosive interpretation within a broader narrative of musical innovation. From the pastoral beauty of Copland’s Appalachian Spring Suite and Margaret Bonds’ soulful Troubled Water to contemporary rhapsodies by Jessie Montgomery and the ensemble's own Christina Courtin, this performance bridges the gap between classical tradition and modern energy.

Apollo's Fire in Dueling Double Concertos
Sunday, July 12, 2026 at 4:00pm, Venetian Theater

The GRAMMY Award-winning Baroque orchestra Apollo’s Fire returns to the Venetian Theater with Dueling Double Concertos, a high-energy program directed by the charismatic Jeannette Sorrell. This "fencing match" themed performance pits soloists against one another in a brilliant display of 18th-century virtuosity. The afternoon features the driving rhythms of Vivaldi’s Concerto for Two Violins and Two Cellos, the intricate dialogue of Bach’s Double Violin Concerto, and the folk-inspired textures of Telemann. Moving beyond the traditional Baroque canon, the ensemble also performs René Schiffer’s tango-infused Concerto for Two Violas da Gamba and Sorrell’s own acclaimed arrangement of Vivaldi’s La Folia.
 

Summer Season Finale: Orchestra of St. Luke's and Violinist Gil Shaham
Sunday, August 2, 2026 at 4:00pm, Venetian Theater
3:00pm, Pre-concert conversation with Gil Shaham

The Orchestra of St. Luke’s returns to its summer home in the Venetian Theater for a cornerstone performance of the season led by the dynamic conductor Xian Zhang. This program reunites the orchestra with world-renowned violinist Gil Shaham, an audience favorite since his first performance at Caramoor in 1994. The afternoon features Shaham’s definitive interpretation of Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto, a work he has championed with what critics describe as inherent sweetness and electrifying playfulness. Framed by the wit of Rossini’s L'italiana in Algeri Overture and the majestic architecture of Mozart’s Symphony No. 41 ("Jupiter"), the concert offers a masterclass in both lyrical intimacy and orchestral grandeur.

Chamber Music & Ensembles

Poiesis Quartet, Caramoor’s 2025-26 Ernst Stiefel String Quartet-in-Residence
Thursday, July 2, 2026 at 7:30pm, Music Room

The Poiesis Quartet concludes its time as 2025-26 Ernst Stiefel String Quartet-in-Residence with a bold program titled A Love Letter to the Queer Community. Performing in the intimate Music Room, Poiesis explores identity and heritage through a curated selection of modern works. The evening includes the Chickasaw-inspired textures of Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate’s Pisachi alongside evocative works commissioned by Poiesis from Zola Saadi-Klein, Daniel Lasagna, Maya Irizarry Lambright, and Calvin Ray Shawler, as well as the world premiere of composer Jeff Scott’s Caramoor-commissioned Tapestry of the Beloved Beatified. This program highlights the ensemble's commitment to social narrative and musical innovation, offering a unique window into the future of the string quartet. Poiesis’s first concert in residence at Caramoor was chosen as one of the best classical performances of 2025 by The New York Times.

VOCES8 in Lead Me Home

Friday, July 10, 2026 at 7:30pm, Spanish Courtyard

The GRAMMY-nominated British a cappella octet returns to Caramoor for Lead Me Home, a celebration of the American choral landscape. Showcasing a wide array of American styles, the concert features traditional hymns and folk songs alongside contemporary compositions including music by Caroline Shaw, Bobby McFerrin, The Beatles, Samuel Barber, Cole Porter, Virgil Thomson, and more. Gramophone magazine declares, “The singing of VOCES8 is impeccable in its quality of tone and balance. They bring a new dimension to the word ‘ensemble’ with meticulous timing and tuning.”

Sandbox Percussion Premieres Christopher Cerrone’s The Only Way is Through
Sunday, July 19, 2026 at 4:00pm, Sunken Garden (Free)

In this immersive outdoor world premiere, GRAMMY-nominated composer Christopher Cerrone explores the fundamental human journey of learning to exist in the world. Inspired by Robert Frost's poetry, The Only Way is Through, co-commissioned by Caramoor, traces the path from first sounds to full understanding. During the piece, Sandbox Percussion will physically assemble their instruments from raw materials – loose wooden bars, individual bells, scattered pipes – and the sounds of construction will become the music itself: the clatter of materials, the testing of pitches, the gradual building of something coherent from elemental parts. The Young People's Chorus of New York City, led by Artistic Director Francisco J. Núñez and stage director Mary Birnbaum, will move among them, bringing components to the musicians, their physical journey mirroring their vocal evolution from wordless sounds to fully formed language. Throughout, the audience is invited to move freely through the Sunken Garden, navigating their own relationship with the unfolding work, experiencing the joy and struggle of watching consciousness take shape.

Verona Quartet in Inflection Points
Friday, July 24, 2026 at 7:30pm, Spanish Courtyard

The Verona Quartet returns to the Spanish Courtyard with Inflection Points, a program focusing on societal changes every 100 years through the lens of music. As the 2017-18 Ernst Stiefel String Quartet-in-Residence, the ensemble has a long-standing history with Caramoor, including a highly praised 2021 performance of Ligeti and Dvořák that showcased their “cohesive…vibrant, intelligent” (The New York Times) approach. This evening’s selection spans centuries, beginning with the Baroque elegance of Scarlatti’s Sonata a Quattro No. 4 before moving into the luminous, modern textures of Augusta Read Thomas’ Clara’s Ascent. The program concludes with two dramatic masterpieces: Janáček’s intense, psychological String Quartet No. 1 and the profound architectural beauty of Beethoven’s String Quartet Op. 127.

Ruckus in The Edinburgh Rollick 
Friday, July 31, 2026 at 7:30pm, Spanish Courtyard

Ruckus is a shapeshifting, collaborative Baroque ensemble with a visceral and playful approach to early music. Described as “the world’s only period-instrument rock band” (San Francisco Classical Voice), Ruckus’ core is a continuo group, the Baroque equivalent of a jazz rhythm section: guitars, keyboards, cello, bassoon and bass. In The Edinburgh Rollick, Ruckus and violinist Keir GoGwilt celebrate the legacy of Niel Gow (b. Perthshire, 1727-1807), one of Scotland’s most important musicians, in this dynamic folk-Baroque feast of Scottish dance music. Weaving together these jubilant, hard-driving and nostalgic tunes into large-scale dramatic forms, Ruckus and GoGwilt bring the 18th-century tradition of blending folk and art music to the present day.

Featured Soloists & Recitals

Hélène Grimaud, piano
Thursday, June 25, 2026 at 7:30pm, Venetian Theater

Renowned Renaissance woman Hélène Grimaud returns to Caramoor for a deeply poetic recital exploring the profound emotional landscapes of the “Three Bs” – Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms. Known for a visceral intensity that has captivated Caramoor audiences since her 1998 debut and a celebrated 2015 residency, Grimaud brings her trademark technical control to this program of masterpieces. From the intimate, variation-rich Beethoven Piano Sonata No. 30, Op. 109 to the nostalgic textures of Brahms’ Fantasies and the monumental architecture of Bach’s Chaconne, this performance showcases the same unapologetically personal artistry that defines her work as both a world-class pianist and a dedicated wildlife conservationist. 

Johnny Gandelsman: This is America
Sunday, July 5, 2026 at 1:00pm, Caramoor Grounds

Violinist, producer, and 2024 MacArthur Fellow Johnny Gandelsman will perform a solo violin program of works from his This is America project at Caramoor, featuring the New York premiere of a Caramoor co-commission by Pulitzer-Prize-winning composer Tyshawn Sorey. A reflection of the complex times in which we are living, this two-part performance at 1:00pm in the Sunken Garden and 3:00pm in the Spanish Courtyard features intimate musical portraits of joy, uncertainty, isolation, and love by composers including Justin Messina, Layale Chaker, Dana Lyn, Kinan Azmeh, Akshaya Tucker, Ebun Oguntola, Christina Courtin, Olivia Davis, and Rhiannon Giddens. At 2:15pm, Gandelsman, Lyn, and Courtin will give a talk offering insights on the program.

Aristo Sham, piano, 2025 Van Cliburn Gold Medalist
Saturday, July 11, 2026 at 4:30pm, Music Room

2025 Van Cliburn Gold Medalist Aristo Sham brings his lucid and gripping artistry to the intimate Music Room for a program centered on the transformative transcriptions of Ferruccio Busoni. This afternoon recital highlights Sham’s technical mastery through a curated selection of Brahms character pieces, including the soulful Intermezzo in A Major and the spirited Capriccio in C Major. The second half of the performance focuses on Busoni's iconic arrangements, featuring the monumental Bach Chaconne and Chopin’s Variations on Prelude in C minor. As the newest Cliburn winner, Sham continues the competition's legacy of elite pianism with a performance that balances late-Romantic introspection with towering virtuosity.

Conor Hanick, piano in Hans Otte’s The Book of Sounds
Thursday, July 16, 2026 at 7:30pm, Spanish Courtyard

In the 1980s, the German composer and broadcaster Hans Otte released a series of solo piano pieces called Das Buch der Klänge. Inspired by Buddhist thought and American Minimalism, Otte created a series of works that are lyrical, alternately contemplative and energetic, and possibly a little psychedelic. It was an overlooked masterpiece until pianist Conor Hanick, praised as one of his generation’s most inquisitive interpreters of music new and old, began playing it a few years ago, to great acclaim. Otte wrote of the work, “This Book of Sounds rediscovers the listener as a partner of sound and silence, who in the quest for his world, wishes for once to be totally at one with sound.”

Yuja Wang, piano and People of Earth
Thursday, July 23, 2026 at 7:30pm, Venetian Theater

One of today’s most electrifying pianists, Yuja Wang, makes her Caramoor debut in a collaboration with New York City’s most exciting Latin music supergroup, People of Earth. They join forces for a vibrant journey through the sounds of the Caribbean – composed and music directed by Cuban piano phenom Ahmed Alom. People of Earth includes Raul Rios, trumpet and vocals; Jesus Ricardo, trumpet and vocals; Rubén Rengel, violin and vocals; Ivan Llanes, percussion and vocals; and Gabriel Globus-Hoenich, percussion and bandleader.

Njioma Grevious, violin & Andrew Goodridge, piano
Saturday, August 1, 2026 at 4:30pm, Music Room

Violinist Njioma Grevious brings her vibrant and compelling artistry to the Music Room following a string of major milestones, including winning both the Robert F. Smith First Prize and the Audience Choice Award at the 2023 Sphinx Competition and a 2024 Avery Fisher Career Grant. With pianist Andrew Goodridge, Grevious presents a wide-ranging program that mirrors the versatility she has displayed as a member of the acclaimed Abeo Quartet (2023-24 Ernst Stiefel String Quartet-in-Residence) and in recent solo debuts with the Chicago and National Symphony Orchestras. The recital opens with the solemnity of Bach and the atmospheric modernism of Electra Perivolaris, moving through the fiery energy of Brahms’ Scherzo and the mystical architecture of Messiaen’s Theme and Variations. The afternoon concludes with Clarence Cameron White’s soulful Levee Dance and the soaring, lyrical brilliance of Prokofiev’s Sonata No. 2.

American Roots, Global, and Jazz

American Roots Music Festival
Saturday, June 27, 2026 from 12:30-7:00pm, Caramoor Grounds
Presented in collaboration with City Winery

Caramoor’s annual American Roots Music Festival fills the stunning grounds with the sounds of Americana, folk, bluegrass, and more. Audiences can wander from stage to stage and discover their next favorite artist as an incredible lineup of bands performs at Caramoor’s picturesque venues. This year’s festival features the Grateful Dead songbook with the acoustic string-band Deadgrass; the vintage-inspired sounds of The Moonrise Cartel; the rich, evocative storytelling of Caleb Caudle & The Sweet Critters; and the next-generation alt-country flair of Chloe Kimes; concluding with the high-energy Memphis soul of Southern Avenue. Additional artists and full schedule to be announced.

Louis Armstrong Hot Five Centennial Celebration
Friday, July 3, 2026 at 7:30pm, Friends Field
Presented in collaboration with Jazz at Lincoln Center

The music Louis Armstrong created in the 1920s with his small group, the Hot Five, remains among the most influential, timeless, and joyous in the history of American music. Under the auspices of the Louis Armstrong House Museum, and on the eve of what Armstrong always claimed to be his birthday (the Fourth of July), trumpeter Alphonso Horne will lead an all-star ensemble of today’s finest jazz musicians in celebration of the 100th anniversary of this groundbreaking group. Hosted by two-time GRAMMY Award winner Ricky Riccardi, the evening honors the recordings that transformed jazz from a collective style into a soloist’s art form, forever changing the course of popular music. While Armstrong is celebrated worldwide as the beloved entertainer behind classics like What a Wonderful World and Hello, Dolly, it was these revolutionary recordings from a century ago that reshaped the sound and future of jazz.

Ricardo Lemvo & Makina Loca – Afro-Cuban Rhythms
Thursday, July 9, 2026 at 7:30pm, Friends Field

Ricardo Lemvo and Makina Loca channel the rich currents of the Afro-Cuban global diaspora, blending Congolese soukous music, salsa horn blasts, and Angolan cadence into one irresistible groove. The group’s joyous, multilingual songs invite every dancer in the house to join in, making them a perfect addition to Caramoor’s festive Summer Season.

Patty Griffin
Saturday, July 11, 2026 at 7:30pm, Venetian Theater      
Presented in collaboration with City Winery

Patty Griffin is among the most consequential singer-songwriters of her generation. Over two decades, the two-time GRAMMY Award winner – and seven-time nominee – and Americana Music Association Lifetime Achievement award winner, has crafted a remarkable body of work that prompted The New York Times to hail her for “[writing] cameo-carved songs that create complete emotional portraits of specific people…[her] songs have independent lives that continue in your head when the music ends.” Her latest album Crown of Roses, was released in July 2025.

Punch Brothers
Saturday, July 18, 2026 at 7:30pm, Venetian Theater     
Presented in collaboration with City Winery

Punch Brothers are a virtuosic American string band with bluegrass roots, but one whose imagination spans classical, jazz, and folk traditions, earning them acclaim from The New Yorker as “one of the most incredible bands this country has ever produced.” With impeccable acoustic musicianship and emotional depth, they have won a GRAMMY for Best Folk Album and bring both precision and spontaneity to the stage.

Caramoor Jazz Festival
Saturday, July 25, 2026 from 12:30pm to 9:00pm, Caramoor Grounds    
Presented in collaboration with Jazz at Lincoln Center

The Caramoor Jazz Festival fills the grounds with the spirit of jazz, inviting audiences to wander, listen, and discover music unfolding across the gardens and open-air stages. Spend the day immersed in sound and shared experience with performances by El Arte Del Bolero (Miguel Zenon & Luis Perdomo), Jazz at Lincoln Center Summer Jazz Academy Big Bands, and more to be announced, then come together for an unforgettable evening performance by Caramoor favorite Emmet Cohen Trio (7:30pm), bringing the Jazz Festival to a thrilling close.

Bruce Hornsby & The Noisemakers
Saturday, August 1, 2026 at 7:30pm, Venetian Theater
Presented in collaboration with City Winery

A three-time GRAMMY winner and one of America’s most adventurous songwriters, Bruce Hornsby & The Noisemakers engage in genre-defying performances that blur the lines between rock, jazz, bluegrass, and improvisational jam. Known for hits like The Way It Is as well as collaborations with the Grateful Dead, Hornsby continues to reinvent his sound while staying rooted in masterful songwriting and brilliant piano work. The band’s live shows are known for virtuosity, spontaneity, and Hornsby’s unmistakable piano touch.

Celebrations of Community

Dedicated Men of Zion – Celebrating Juneteenth
Sunday, June 21, 2026 at 4:00pm, Gala Tent (Free)

With roots in gospel and their voices in harmony, the Dedicated Men of Zion bring a jubilant sacred soul tradition to Caramoor for the annual Juneteenth celebration. Their sound carries the strength of their Eastern North Carolina church upbringing, blending praise, joy, and deep-rooted family ties. This performance offers a powerful reminder of the resilience and joy at the heart of the holiday. 

Isaac Mizrahi – Celebrating Pride
Friday, June 26, 2026 at 7:30pm, Venetian Theater
Presented in collaboration with The LOFT LGBTQ+ Community Center

Entertainment and fashion icon Isaac Mizrahi lights up Caramoor with this special Pride Month performance. Accompanied by his jazz band, Mizrahi will serenade with iconic tunes from Madonna to Sondheim and everything in between, all interspersed with his signature, unfiltered storytelling. Expect a hilarious, sophisticated, and undeniably fabulous evening. Note: This performance may include mature themes and is not recommended for children. 

Pops, Patriots, and Fireworks
Saturday, July 4, 2026 at 8:00pm, Venetian Theater

Celebrate America’s Semiquincentennial with Caramoor’s most festive tradition. This historic Independence Day spectacular featuring the Westchester Symphonic Winds, led by conductor Curt Ebersole with vocalist MaryKay Messenger, honors 250 years of American spirit with a program of patriotic favorites including music by John Philip Sousa, Harold Arlen, Earl Robinson, Barton Green, and Frank Ticheli, plus Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture. The evening concludes with a dazzling fireworks display.

Music and Meditation in the Garden – Chamber Music and Meditation in an Idyllic Setting

Music and Meditation in the Garden – Adam W. Sadberry, flute; Alexander Davis, bassoon; Jennifer Llewellyn, meditation coach
Saturday, July 11, 2026 at 11:00am, Sunken Garden

Flutist Adam W. Sadberry and bassoonist Alexander Davis bring Caramoor’s first woodwind duo to the Music and Meditation series. Sadberry is a winner of Concert Artists Guild’s 2021 Victor Elmaleh Competition, and is paving a distinctive career with his citizenry, creativity, and vibrancy both on and off stage. Davis's artistic intentions center on space-making, connection, and community-building within classical music. Join us for deep listening in the tranquil Sunken Garden, including a short led meditation led by Jennifer Llewellyn.

Music and Meditation in the Garden – Kyle Sanna, guitar; Dana Lyn, violin; Jennifer Llewellyn, meditation coach
Saturday, July 18, 2026 at 11:00am, Sunken Garden

Hailed as “a top-notch fiddle-and-guitar duo” by The New York Times, Dana Lyn and Kyle Sanna connect the dots between their experience as composers and improvisers and their deep admiration for traditional Irish music. Their passion for the environment will be keenly felt in the serene setting of the Sunken Garden.  

Music and Meditation in the Garden – Emily Levin, harp; Julia Choi, violin; Jennifer Llewellyn, meditation coach
Saturday, August 1, 2026 at 11:00am, Sunken Garden  

A morning of ethereal resonance concludes this summer’s Music and Meditation in the Garden series. The shimmering strings of harpist Emily Levin, praised for her “technical wizardry and artistic intuition” (Herald Times) and Metropolitan Opera violinist Julia Choi create a textured soundscape to cultivate focus, clarity, and a sense of tranquility.

Great for Families – Dancing at Dusk, Caramoor’s Series for Young Listeners

Dancing at Dusk – WindSync plays Peter and the Wolf
Wednesday, July 8, 2026 at 5:30pm, Friends Field

WindSync brings Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf to life as a playful, participatory musical adventure. Families and young listeners are invited to experience a timeless story in Friends Field’s beautiful and spacious setting.

Dancing at Dusk – Flor Bromley’s Fiesta Global
​​Wednesday, July 15, 2026 at 5:30pm, Friends Field

Flor Bromley lights up Dancing at Dusk with a vibrant, interactive program that weaves together Latin American rhythms, bilingual storytelling, and family-focused fun. Expect an uplifting community dance party filled with color, rhythm, and joyful energy.

Dancing at Dusk – Hopalong Andrew
Wednesday, July 22, 2026 at 5:30pm, Friends Field

Hopalong Andrew brings his high-spirited “urban cowboy” music to Dancing at Dusk, turning Caramoor’s Friends Field into a joyful, family-friendly hoedown. With playful Western-themed songs, call-and-response games, and plenty of chances to move, he delights kids and grownups alike.

Sonic Innovations

Sonic Innovations is Caramoor’s seasonal (June through October) exhibition of sound art, which uses the historic grounds as the site for multiple works and grew out of the 2014 site-specific commissioning initiative In the Garden of Sonic Delights. Each artist has drawn inspiration from their chosen location, creating work that is mindful of the natural and human-made sounds and systems present in the environment, while engaging each site’s unique characteristics, be they acoustic, historic, architectural, or aesthetic. Sonic Innovations encourages us to hear and see Caramoor differently, bringing a listener’s awareness to the surroundings and the change of seasons. 

Currently on display are Trimpin's in "C"; Lisa Renée Coons’ Five Essays on Caramoor; Liz Phillips’ Dyning in the Dovecote; Annea Lockwood and Bob Bielecki’s Wild Energy; Ranjit Bhatnagar’s Stone Song; and Taylor Deupree’s t(ch)ime. Learn more.

More about Caramoor

Each year, Caramoor presents an exciting array of concerts across genres – from classical, opera, and chamber music to jazz, American roots, global sounds, and the American songbook. In addition to the Summer Season, the intimate Rosen House Concert Series runs from October through May in the historic Rosen House, a Mediterranean-style villa listed on the National Register of Historic Places and filled with treasures from around the world. With a mission to engage audiences of all ages, Caramoor also offers a selection of concerts and programs for families and our youngest listeners.

Caramoor is a place where music, history, and nature come together to create moments of beauty and connection for all who visit. In addition to hearing concerts, visitors to Caramoor can tour the spectacular Rosen House, explore its intriguing collections, enjoy a picnic, and experience the lush gardens and grounds – including Caramoor’s unique collection of site-specific Sound Art, sound sculptures which draw inspiration from their environment. Caramoor also offers a formal afternoon tea service year-round in the Music Room (by reservation), a seasonal concessions tent, and a selection of public programs such as yoga, art classes, conversations, and large-scale community events.

Caramoor’s 2026 Summer Season Schedule At-A-Glance 

Saturday, June 20 at 7:00pm: Opening Night & Summer Gala – An Evening with Kelli O'Hara (Venetian Theater)
Sunday, June 21 at 4:00pm: Dedicated Men of Zion – Celebrating Juneteenth (Gala Tent)
Thursday, June 25 at 7:30pm: Hélène Grimaud, piano (Venetian Theater)
Friday, June 26 at 7:30pm: Isaac Mizrahi – Celebrating Pride (Venetian Theater)
Saturday, June 27 from 12:30-7:00pm: American Roots Music Festival (Caramoor Grounds)
Sunday, June 28 at 4:00pm: The Knights & Conrad Tao, piano (Venetian Theater)
Thursday, July 2 at 7:30pm: Poiesis Quartet – Ernst Stiefel String Quartet-in-Residence (Music Room)
Friday, July 3 at 7:30pm: Louis Armstrong Hot Five Centennial Celebration (Friends Field)
Saturday, July 4 at 8:00pm: Pops, Patriots, and Fireworks (Venetian Theater)
Sunday, July 5 at 1:00pm: Johnny Gandelsman – This is America (Caramoor Grounds)
Wednesday, July 8 at 5:30pm: Dancing at Dusk – WindSync plays Peter and the Wolf (Friends Field)
Thursday, July 9 at 7:30pm: Ricardo Lemvo and Makina Loca (Friends Field)
Friday, July 10 at 7:30pm: VOCES8 – Lead Me Home (Spanish Courtyard)
Saturday, July 11 at 11:00am: Music and Meditation in the Garden – Adam W. Sadberry, flute and Alexander Davis, bassoon (Sunken Garden)
Saturday, July 11 at 4:30pm: Aristo Sham, piano (Music Room)
Saturday, July 11 at 7:30pm: Patty Griffin (Venetian Theater)
Sunday, July 12 at 4:00pm: Apollo's Fire – Dueling Double Concertos (Venetian Theater)
Wednesday, July 15 at 5:30pm: Dancing at Dusk – Flor Bromley’s Fiesta Global (Friends Field)
Thursday, July 16 at 7:30pm: Conor Hanick, piano – The Book of Sounds (Spanish Courtyard)
Friday, July 17 at 7:00pm: Les Arts Florissants in a Charpentier Opera Double Bill (Venetian Theater)
Saturday, July 18 at 11am: Music and Meditation in the Garden – Kyle Sanna, guitar and Dana Lyn, violin (Sunken Garden)
Saturday, July 18 at 7:30pm: Punch Brothers (Venetian Theater)
Sunday, July 19 at 4:00pm: Sandbox Percussion Premieres Christopher Cerrone’s The Only Way is Through (Sunken Garden)
Wednesday, July 22 at 5:30pm: Dancing at Dusk – Hopalong Andrew (Friends Field)
Thursday, July 23 at 7:30pm: Yuja Wang, piano and People of Earth (Venetian Theater)
Friday, July 24 at 7:30pm: Verona Quartet – Inflection Points (Spanish Courtyard)Saturday, July 25 from 12:30pm to 9:00pm: Caramoor Jazz Festival (Caramoor Grounds)
Sunday, July 26 at 4:00pm: Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra – Handel’s Tolomeo (Venetian Theater)
Thursday, July 30 at 7:30pm: Mark Morris Dance Group (Venetian Theater)
Friday, July 31 at 7:30pm: Ruckus – The Edinburgh Rollick (Spanish Courtyard)
Saturday, August 1 at 11:00am: Music and Meditation in the Garden – Emily Levin, harp and Julia Choi, violin (Sunken Garden)
Saturday, August 1 at 4:30pm: Njioma Grevious, violin and Andrew Goodridge, piano (Music Room)
Saturday, August 1 at 7:30pm: Bruce Hornsby & The Noisemakers (Venetian Theater)
Sunday, August 2 at 4:00pm: Summer Season Finale – Orchestra of St. Luke's and Gil Shaham (Venetian Theater)

For Caramoor’s complete schedule visit: caramoor.org/whats-on

Visitor & Ticketing Information

Tickets are available for purchase online at caramoor.org; by phone at 914.232.1252 Tuesdays through Fridays from 10:00am to 4:00pm; and on site from the Box Office two hours before each performance. 

Caramoor is located at 149 Girdle Ridge Road in Katonah, NY and open daily from 10:00am to 4:00pm for free exploration.

About visiting Caramoor: caramoor.org/visit-us
Getting to Caramoor: caramoor.org/visit-us/getting-here

April 10: Jonas Kaufmann Announces New Sony Classical Album Magische Töne – Title Track Out Today

Jonas Kaufmann
Announces New Operetta Album on Sony Classical
Magische Töne
Title Track Out Today - Listen Here

Album Release Date: April 10, 2026
Pre-Order Available Now

Jonas Kaufmann’s new Sony Classical album, Magische Töne (Magical Sounds), features some of the most beautiful operetta and opera melodies. In addition to perennial favourites by Emmerich Kálmán, Franz Lehár, and Paul Abraham, the album also includes one of the most popular arias in the tenor repertoire: the eponymous Magische Töne from Karl Goldmark's opera Die Königin von Saba (The Queen of Sheba), which is out today – listen here. Pre-order is available now.

First Vienna, now Budapest: this is where Jonas Kaufmann recorded his new album with the Hungarian State Opera Orchestra, conducted by Dirk Kaftan. The album focuses on highlights by composers from the era of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (1867–1918), including perennial favourites from the operettas of Emmerich (Imre) Kálmán, Franz (Ferenc) Lehár, and Paul (Pál) Abraham.

According to Kaufmann, “this era produced an incredible wealth of music. In retrospect, it is fortunate that the majority of these works were premiered in Vienna and written in German, because that meant they quickly achieved international success.”

Had they used the Hungarian language, these works would probably have remained a national art form – like the operettas of Jenő Huszka (1875–1960), which, despite their quality, were rarely performed outside Hungary. For this album, Kaufmann has chosen one of Huszka’s “best known” pieces: Bob’s entrance aria from the operetta Bob herceg (Prince Bob).

“There, the whole world is still red, white, and green” – these are the final words of the duet Komm mit nach Varasdin (Come with me to Varasdin) from Kálmán’s Gräfin Mariza (Countess Maritza). Of course, the colors of the Hungarian flag are just as clearly audible in the music as they are in the lyrics, and thus represent an element of national identity. But this second heyday of operetta also represents the melancholic memory of a liberal, cosmopolitan, and culturally diverse Europe that perished with the First World War, and which Stefan Zweig described so vividly in his memoir Die Welt von gestern (The World of Yesterday). Jonas Kaufmann's duet partner is Nikola Hillebrand, currently one of the most “sought-after” sopranos of her generation.

For Dirk Kaftan, the conductor featured on the album, the recordings were a welcome reunion with a genre he had studied thoroughly during his time as general music director in Graz: “Above all, one must develop an understanding for a musical language that cannot be captured in notation. Gustav Mahler’s famous statement is particularly applicable to this repertoire: ‘The most important things are not written in the score!’ This is also why I found the recording sessions with the Hungarian State Opera Orchestra so rewarding: these musicians know exactly what it is all about and how to bring it to life.”

Kaftan sees a clear parallel between the innovative style of Paul Ábrahám, who enriched the genre with elements of jazz, foxtrot, and revue, and the works of Kurt Weill: both represent “a means of expression for a future that was destroyed by the Nazis.”

Two opera arias round off the new album: Hazám, hazám (My Homeland) from Ferenc Erkel’s opera Bánk bán – a passionate declaration of love for the Hungarian homeland – and Magische Töne, the famous aria from Karl (Károly) Goldmark’s Die Königin von Saba. These sounds become magical when the singer knows how to produce delicate, intimate pianissimo sounds in a high register – something that Jonas Kaufmann finds particularly enticing: “Someone once said to me: ‘Your loud notes are thrilling, but your soft ones drive me crazy.’ Dramatic sounds probably have more of an effect on the listener’s body and nervous system, while soft ones affect the heart and soul.”

Magische Töne with Jonas Kaufmann, the Hungarian State Opera Orchestra, conductor Dirk Kaftan, and soprano Nikola Hillebrand will be released digitally and on CD by Sony Classical on April 10, 2026.

Magische Töne Repertoire

Imre Kálmán (1882–1953): Komm Zigány [Gräfin Mariza, Act 1]

Imre Kálmán (1882–1953): Ich bitte, nicht lachen … Komm mit nach Varasdin! [Gräfin Mariza, Act 1, Duett] (mit Nikola Hillebrand, Sopran)

Imre Kálmán (1882–1953): Mondd meg, hogy imádom a pesti nőket (Grüß mir mein Wien) [Gräfin Mariza, Act 1]

Imre Kálmán (1882–1953): Holdes, berauschendes Bild … Liebe singt ihr Zauberlied [Kaiserin Josephine, Act 1, No. 4]

Imre Kálmán (1882–1953): Tanzen möcht’ ich … Tausend kleine Engel singen [Die Csárdásfürstin, Act 2, Duett] (mit Nikola Hillebrand, Sopran)

Imre Kálmán (1882–1953): So verliebt kann ein Ungar nur sein (Tief wie der Bergsee) [Der Teufelsreiter, Act 1, No. 2]

Ferenc Lehár (1870–1948): Allein! Wieder allein! (Es steht ein Soldat am Wolgastrand) [Der Zarewitsch, Act 1]

Ferenc Lehár (1870–1948): O Mädchen, mein Mädchen… [Friederike, Act 2]

Ferenc Lehár (1870–1948): Ich trete ins Zimmer … Immer nur lächeln [Das Land des Lächelns, Act 1]

Ferenc Lehár (1870–1948): Wer hat die Liebe uns ins Herz gesenkt [Das Land des Lächelns, Act 2, Duett] (mit Nikola Hillebrand, Sopran)

Ferenc Lehár (1870–1948): Schön wie die blaue Sommernacht [Giuditta, Act 2, Duett] (mit Nikola Hillebrand, Sopran)

Pál Ábrahám (1892–1960): Ein Paradies am Meeresstrand [Die Blume von Hawaii, Act 1]

Pál Ábrahám (1892–1960): Will Dir die Welt zu Füßen legen [Die Blume von Hawaii, Act 1]

Pál Ábrahám (1892–1960): Pardon Madame [Viktoria und ihr Husar, Act 1]

Pál Ábrahám (1892–1960): Nur ein Mädel gibt es auf der Welt [Viktoria und ihr Husar, Act 1]

Pál Ábrahám (1892–1960): Sing-Sing [Julia]

Pál Ábrahám (1892–1960): Der schönste Gedanke [Zigeuner der Nacht]

Fred Raymond (1900–1954): Die Juliska, die Juliska aus Buda-, Budapest [Maske in Blau, Drittes Bild, Nr. 11, Duett] (mit Nikola Hillebrand, Sopran)

Nico Dostal (1895–1981): Frag nur dein Herz, was Liebe ist [Die ungarische Hochzeit, Act 1, Duett] (mit Nikola Hillebrand, Sopran)

Jenő Huszka (1875–1960): Londonban hej! (Bob belépője) [Bob herceg, Act 1, No. 3]

Ferenc Erkel (1810–1893): Mint számûzött ki vándorol … Hazám, hazám [Bánk bán, Act 2]

Karl Goldmark (1830–1915): Magische Töne, berauschender Duft [Die Königin von Saba, Op. 27, Act 2]

Magische Töne Live Tour Dates

11.04. Hamburg, Laeiszhalle
15.04. München, Isarphilharmonie
18.04. Nürnberg, Meistersingerhalle
20.04. Paris, Théâtre des Champs-Élysées
22.04. Wien, Konzerthaus
24.04. Budapest, MüPa
26.04. Hannover, Kuppelsaal
28.04. Essen, Philharmonie
30.04. Freiburg, Konzerthaus
03.05. Stuttgart, Liederhalle
05.05. Luzern, KKL
07.05. Mannheim, Rosengarten / Mozartsaal
09.05. Frankfurt, Alte Oper

Tickets and information: jonaskaufmann.com

Newport Classical Presents Two Community Concerts this Spring - PROJECT Trio on April 26 and Toomai String Quartet on May 24

Toomai String Quintet (top) and PROJECT Trio (bottom)

Newport Classical Presents Two Free Community Concerts this Spring

Free, Casual, and Welcoming to All
Presented by BankNewport

PROJECT Trio
Sunday, April 26, 2026 at 2:30pm
Newport Classical Recital Hall | 42 Dearborn St. | Newport, RI

Toomai String Quintet
Sunday, May 24, 2026 at 2:30pm
293 JT Connell Hwy. | Newport, RI

Information & Registration:
newportclassical.org/community-concerts

Newport, RI – Newport Classical announces two free concerts as part of its Community Concerts Series presented by BankNewport taking place in April and May 2026. PROJECT Trio, praised for “musicianship, joy, and surprise” by Downbeat Magazine, performs on Sunday, April 26, 2026 at 2:30pm at Newport Classical Recital Hall (42 Dearborn St.) On Sunday, May 24, 2026 at 2:30pm, Toomai String Quintet performs at 293 JT Connell Hwy.

Audiences can look forward to enjoying these casual, engaging, and welcoming concerts designed especially for families right in their neighborhoods. Newport Classical's Community Concerts Series is free and open to the community; advanced registration is requested but not required for all performances.

On April 26, audiences will experience a high-energy, genre-blending afternoon with PROJECT Trio. Known for their electrifying stage presence, the trio fuses classical, jazz, hip-hop, and world music for audiences of all ages. This free concert features a program ranging from Mozart and Bach to Bernstein and Beatles classics, alongside original works by PROJECT Trio themselves. Praised by Gramophone for “ranging from Baroque to nu-Metal and taking in pretty much every stylism in between,” the group brings their infectious energy and playful creativity to Newport, transforming our stage into a playground of rhythm, melody, and surprise.

On May 24, Experience a free, family-friendly outdoor concert with the award-winning Toomai String Quintet at Newport Craft! Celebrated for their inventive arrangements and passion for Latin American repertoire, Toomai highlights creative approaches to music through the lens of Cuban and Brazilian traditions. A group of world-class musicians and passionate educators, Toomai combines these elements to create highly interactive programs for audiences of all ages. Set against the scenic Newport Craft Lawn with views of the Pell Bridge, this concert invites listeners of all ages to immerse themselves in the vivid sounds and stories of Latin American music. Bring your blankets and chairs and enjoy a drink from Newport Craft’s outdoor bar!

These concerts are generously presented as part of the BankNewport Community Concerts Series with additional support from the Newport County Fund at the Rhode Island Foundation and a Legislative Grant of the RI House of Representatives sponsored by Rep Cortvriend & Speaker Shekarchi..

Up next as part of Newport Classical’s Chamber Series, 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.

For Newport Classical’s complete concert calendar, visit www.newportclassical.org/concerts

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.

March 27: GRAMMY®-nominated Pianist Simone Dinnerstein Performs Reflections – A Concert Shaped by Musical Interconnection

GRAMMY®-nominated Pianist Simone Dinnerstein
Performs Reflections

A Concert Shaped by Musical Interconnection
Presented by UChicago Presents

Friday, March 27, 2026 at 7:30pm
Logan Center for the Arts | 915 E 60th St. | Chicago, IL
Tickets and More Information

“lean, knowing, and unpretentious elegance” – The New Yorker

Simone Dinnerstein: www.simonedinnerstein.com

Chicago, IL – GRAMMY®-nominated pianist Simone Dinnerstein, described as “a unique voice in the forest of Bach interpretation” by The New York Times, performs on Friday, March 27, 2026 at 7:30pm in a concert presented by UChicago Presents, the University of Chicago's professional concert series, in the Logan Center for the Arts (915 E 60th St.).

Dinnerstein –– who is celebrated for her Bach recordings –– will perform the music of J. S. Bach and other Baroque era-inspired selections in a program titled Reflections, which includes Philip Lasser’s Twelve Variations On A Chorale By J.S. Bach (2002); Gavotte et 6 Doubles from Nouvelles Suites de Pieces de Clavecin by Jean-Philippe Rameau (c. 1729-30); J. S. Bach’s Fifteen Sinfonias, BWV 787–801 (1720-23); and Encore From Tokyo (1978) by Keith Jarrett.

“I have titled this program Reflections, as I think that each work sounds unusual because of the way it is reflected against the music around it,” Dinnerstein says. “To enhance this quality, I play each half of the program (Rameau-Lasser and Bach-Jarrett) without pause between the pieces.”

Simone Dinnerstein has been playing Philip Lasser’s Twelve Variations on a Chorale by J.S. Bach for over two decades –– including as part of The Berlin Concert, her 2008 album. Lasser takes the chorale from Cantata No. 101 in which, he says, “Bach chooses a particular melodic moment from the Lutheran hymn and infuses all the other voices of the Chorale with this unique sonority, with an almost maniacal insistence. In my Variations, I take on this mania to see how far one can go.” Bach’s contemporary Rameau also composed a set of variations but on his own gavotte: Gavotte et 6 Doubles from Nouvelles suites de pieces de clavecin. In his preface, Bach wrote that his Fifteen Sinfonias were, “An honest guide by which the amateurs of the keyboard – especially, however, those desirous of learning – are shown a clear way…to achieve a cantabile style in playing and at the same time acquire a strong foretaste of composition.” Keith Jarrett’s Encore from Tokyo embraces the Baroque convention of a descending repeating bass line and builds a harmonically adventurous and wide-ranging improvisation around it.

In May 2025, Simone Dinnerstein released her fifteenth recording, Complicité on Supertrain Records. This 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 (a portmanteau of Baroque and Brooklyn, Dinnerstein’s home New York borough). 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. Complicité reached over one million streams on Apple Music in its first two weeks after release. Read the album press release here.

About Simone Dinnerstein: American pianist Simone Dinnerstein 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 personal. She is, wrote The New York Times, “a unique voice in the forest of Bach interpretation.”

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 fourteen albums, all of which topped the Billboard charts and were recorded by 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.

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 released her live recording of the premiere in October 2024 on Supertrain Records to coincide with Ives’s 150th birthday. The Eye is the First Circle also marked Dinnerstein’s fourteenth and final recording produced with the late Adam Abeshouse. Dinnerstein 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. Dinnerstein has also created her own ensemble, Baroklyn, which she directs. 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, described as “a unique voice in the forest of Bach interpretation” by The New York Times, will perform a program of Baroque-era inspired works in a concert presented by the UChicago Presents – the University of Chicago's professional concert series. Her program, titled Reflections, will include J.S. Bach’s Fifteen Sinfonias (1720-23), Philip Lasser’s Twelve Variations on a Chorale by J.S. Bach (2002), Keith Jarrett’s Encore From Tokyo (1978), and Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Gavotte et 6 Doubles from Nouvelles Suites de Pieces de Clavecin (c. 1729-30).

Concert details:

Who: Pianist Simone Dinnerstein
Presented by UChicago Presents
What: Reflections – Music by J.S. Bach, Philip Lasser, Keith Jarrett, Jean-Philippe Rameau
When: Friday, March 27, 2026 at 7:30pm
Where: ​​Logan Center for the Performing Arts, 915 E 60th St, Chicago, IL 60637
Tickets and information: https://chicagopresents.uchicago.edu/concerts-and-events/simone-dinnerstein-piano

Countertenor Randall Scotting Releases Three Videos in Advance of New Album Divine Impresario: Nicolini on Stage

Countertenor Randall Scotting Releases Three Videos in Advance of New Album Divine Impresario: Nicolini on Stage

Latest Video Featured Today as Gramophone’s Video of The Day
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Album Out Next Week: March 13, 2026
Signum Classics
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www.randallscotting.com | www.signumrecords.com/product/divine-impresario

Review CDs and downloads available upon request.

Internationally acclaimed countertenor Randall Scotting will release Divine Impresario: Nicolini on Stage on March 13, 2026 via Signum Classics. The landmark album celebrates Nicolò Grimaldi, the castrato who conquered the opera world under the stage name Nicolini (1673 - 1732). Recorded with the Academy of Ancient Music under the direction of Laurence Cummings, with soprano Mary Bevan, the album features rarely performed arias and duets from the early 18th century, nine of which have never been recorded before and have not been heard since Nicolini's lifetime.

In advance of the album, Scotting has released three behind-the-scenes videos filmed during the recording sessions. The associated singles are also now available. The latest video is featured today as Gramophone’s Video of the Day.

Gramophone’s Video of The Day – Watch Randall Scotting and the Academy of Ancient Music in Porpora’s “Come nave in mezzo all'onda” from Siface:

Watch Randall Scotting and the Academy of Ancient Music in Broschi’s "Mostro crudel, che fai?":

Watch Randall Scotting and Mary Bevan with the Academy of Ancient Music in Handel’s "Crudel, tu non farai":

Divine Impresario takes its title from Nicolini's unique role as both performer and visionary. “When I think about Nicolò Grimaldi, the word that comes to mind is impresario,” explains Scotting. “Not in the limited sense of a theatre manager, but rather as a creative force who shaped the artform itself. Nicolini wasn't content just to stand and sing; he directed performances, he reworked libretti, and he elevated the standard of acting in opera.”

While Nicolini is best remembered today for the music Handel wrote for him, including beloved arias from Rinaldo and Amadigi, this album reveals his far broader musical world. For Divine Impresario, Scotting has revived works by a range of composers who wrote for this castrato, drawn to his dramatic range and vocal brilliance, including Francesco Gasparini, Nicola Porpora, Riccardo Broschi, Francesco Mancini, Attilio Ariosti, and Giovanni Antonio Giaj. 

For Scotting, this project marries his onstage and offstage roles. Sought-after by some of the world's most esteemed opera houses and concert halls, the countertenor’s performances have been described as “expressive” (The New York Times), “rich-toned” (Musical America), “luminous” (Ópera Actual), “ravishing” (BBC Music Magazine), and “flexible and rich” (Early Music Review). His breakout moment came in 2019 at London's Royal Ballet & Opera when he stepped in last-minute for Sir David McVicar's production of Britten's Death in Venice, praised for “singing brilliantly” to sold-out audiences, after which he joined the roster of the Metropolitan Opera. In 2023, he created the role of Adone in the world premiere of Venere e Adone at the Staatsoper Hamburg under Kent Nagano, earning praise for a “vocally and physically muscular” performance. He has previously worked with Lyric Opera of Chicago, Seattle Opera, Santa Fe Opera, the New York Philharmonic, Italy's Spoleto Festival, Boston Baroque, and Sydney's Pinchgut Opera, among others. He recently made spectacular debuts at the Royal Ballet & Opera, Bayerische Staatsoper, and Staatsoper Hamburg, with upcoming debuts at Carnegie Hall and La Fenice in Venice.

Holding a PhD from the Royal College of Music in London, where his dissertation focused on the castrato Senesino and early 18th-century Italian opera, Scotting is also that rare performer who has trained extensively as a scholar – a background that served him well in researching and bringing to life the repertoire he performs here.

After extensive research into Nicolini’s performing career, Scotting sought out manuscripts from archives in England, Belgium, Austria, Germany, and Sweden. Choosing the best of what he found, he then meticulously created modern performing editions for all the music on the album so that it could be performed and recorded.

“For me, stepping into this repertoire is a kind of conversation across time, with Nicolini, but also with the idea of what it means to be an impresario today,” says Scotting. “Like him, I'm drawn to music-making that is dramatically committed. In recording this music, I sought to channel the intensity for which Nicolini was famous and to honor his legacy as the divine impresario: defined by an ambition for opera to be more than just dazzling technique, but also a captivating and emotional experience.”

Born into a poor Neapolitan family in 1673, Nicolò Grimaldi rose to become one of the most celebrated performers of his era. After making his stage debut in Naples at only twelve years old, he rapidly gained fame throughout Italy, eventually being inducted into the Order of Saint Mark’s Cross in Venice in 1705 for his outstanding performances. His reputation soon spread across Europe, and in 1708 he arrived in London with a three-year contract and an extraordinary £1,000 salary (an amount that at that time would have taken a skilled tradesman thirty years to earn).

Nicolini quickly became an international superstar, praised not only for his vocal brilliance but for his exceptional acting. One of the album's highlights is “Mostro crudel che fai?” from Riccardo Broschi's Idaspe, representing the famed lion-fighting scene that electrified London audiences. In Mancini's Idaspe fedele, Nicolini became notorious for slaying a “live” lion onstage in a nude-colored costume – a theatrical spectacle that became one of early 18th-century London's most talked-about moments. The album also includes the delicate and lyrical aria “È vano ogni pensiero” from Mancini's setting of the opera, revealing how Nicolini could, as Scotting puts it in his liner note for the album, “wrestle monsters and still sing with incomparable elegance.”

For more information: www.jensenartists.com/news-complete/randall-scotting-divine-impresario

April 17: World Premiere at Carnegie Hall of A Call for the Battle to Cease by Robert & Victoria Sirota performed by GRAMMY-nominated Pianist Simone Dinnerstein & Cecilia Chorus of New York

World Premiere of A Call for the Battle to Cease at Carnegie Hall
Music by Robert Sirota and Text by Victoria Sirota

Performed by GRAMMY®-Nominated Pianist Simone Dinnerstein
and The Cecilia Chorus of New York with Orchestra
Led by Music Director Mark Shapiro

Friday, April 17, 2026 at 8pm
Carnegie Hall | Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage | 57th St. and 7th Ave. | NYC
Tickets: www.carnegiehall.org, 212.247.7800, or the Carnegie Hall Box Office
Tickets & More Information

Watch Here: Mark Shapiro and Simone Dinnerstein Talk About A Call for the Battle to Cease

Robert Sirota | Simone Dinnerstein | The Cecilia Chorus of New York

L- R Robert and Victoria Sirota, The Cecilia Cecilia Chorus of New York, Simone Dinnerstein

New York, NY – On Friday, April 17, 2026 at 8pm, A Call for the Battle to Cease –– composed by Robert Sirota with text by Victoria Sirota — will have its world premiere at Carnegie Hall
in Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage (57th St. and 7th Ave.), performed by GRAMMY®-nominated pianist Simone Dinnerstein and The Cecilia Chorus of New York with Orchestra led by Music Director Mark Shapiro, joined by the Every Voice Choirs (EVC) Concert Choir. The concert also includes excerpts from Missa in tempore belli by Franz Joseph Haydn and the New York premiere of Mass in Exile by Mark Buller librettist Leah Lax. The program responds to today’s hunger for justice and peace with an uplifting vision of inspiration and compassion.

Although husband-and-wife team Robert Sirota (music) and Victoria Sirota (text) created A Call for the Battle to Cease a decade ago in 2016, the work was never played due to the commissioning ensemble unexpectedly ceasing operations before the premiere. The piece was always intended for the featured soloist, Simone Dinnerstein, to perform –– the Sirotas have known the celebrated Brooklyn-based pianist since her childhood.

The message of this major new composition feels even more poignant today. Robert Sirota describes how he and Victoria approached their respective work on the project: “[I] was tasked with using the same instrumentation as Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy –– solo piano, orchestra, and chorus. Victoria was tasked with writing a text which would address, in Beethovenian terms, the need for us to transcend the divisions of race, nationality, class and politics that tear at the fabric of our common humanity. What she came up with is stunning in its eloquent simplicity.”

Victoria Sirota’s text underscores the need to refocus on love, solidarity, and embracing differences. Robert Sirota says, “Expanded to incorporate youthful voices, A Call for the Battle to Cease comes across as even more achingly relevant to our current moment: ‘Rejoice in the gift of our differences!,’ The virtuosic piano solo begins with the actual ‘call,’ picked up later by brass. The piece moves from anger and anguish –– from hatred and fear, to a place of love and wonder, at times echoing Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy, and punctuated by the young people lifting their hearts to us; not a plea for mere tolerance or peaceful coexistence, but rather the triumphant assertion that it is our very diversity that gives joy and meaning to our lives together. Pianist Simone Dinnerstein ends the piece with the same ‘call,’ now presented as a question to us all: do we have the will to embrace this difficult world with love and hope?”

Robert Sirota has garnered distinction as composer, arranger, music executive and arts advocate. His chamber works have been performed by Alarm Will Sound; Sandbox Percussion; Yale Camerata; yMusic; the Chiara, American, Blair, and Telegraph Quartets; and in festivals including Tanglewood, Aspen, Yellow Barn, Cooperstown, and Bowdoin. Orchestral performances include the Seattle, Vermont, Virginia, East Texas, Lincoln (NE), Meridian (MS), New Haven, Greater Bridgeport, Oradea (Romania) and Saint Petersburg (Russia) symphonies, as well as conservatory orchestras of

Oberlin, Peabody, Manhattan School of Music, Toronto, and Singapore. Recent commissions include the Neave Trio, Judith Clurman/Essential Voices USA, Jeffrey Kahane/Sarasota Music Festival, Palladium Musicum, the Naumburg Foundation, and arrangements for Paul Simon. Recipient of grants from the Watson and Guggenheim Foundations, National Endowment for the Arts, Meet the Composer, and the American Music Center, Sirota’s works are recorded on the Capstone, Albany, New Voice, Gasparo and Crystal labels. For more information, visit https://www.robertsirota.com.

Victoria R. Sirota, Episcopal priest, organist and author, holds degrees from Oberlin Conservatory of Music, Boston University and Harvard Divinity School. She has taught at Yale Institute of Sacred Music, The Ecumenical Institute of Theology, Boston University and Concord Academy. Former National Chaplain for the American Guild of Organists and the Association of Anglican Musicians, she is the author of articles, reviews and texts for hymns, cantatas and song cycles. Recorded on Northeastern, Gasparo and Albany Records, her book Preaching to the Choir: Claiming the Role of Sacred Musician is available from Church Publishing. Honors include awards and grants from the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst, The Newington-Cropsey Foundation, Woodrow Wilson Foundation and Episcopal Diocese of Maryland. The Rev. Canon Sirota has served in Baltimore and Yonkers, and at The Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in NYC. Active as a guest preacher and writer, she lives in Searsmont, Maine.

About Simone Dinnerstein: 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. The first fourteen were from Grammy-winning producer Adam Abeshouse. 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, including world premiere of The Eye Is the First Circle at Montclair State University, the first multi-media production she conceived, created, and directed, as well as the premiere performance of Richard Danielpour’s An American Mosaic, at Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery. Following her recording, Mozart in Havana, she brought the Havana Lyceum Orchestra from Cuba to the U.S., performing in 11 concerts. Philip Glass composed his Piano Concerto No. 3 for her, co-commissioned by twelve orchestras. 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 Mark Shapiro: Six-time ASCAP Award-winner Mark Shapiro is active as a conductor of choruses, orchestras, and opera. He is Music Director of The Cecilia Chorus of New York, Artistic Director of Cantori New York, Principal Conductor of Marshall Opera, and Conductor Emeritus of The Prince Edward Island Symphony Orchestra, which he served as Music Director for a decade. Characterizing his leadership as “insightful,” The New York Times has praised his “virtuosity and assurance”; Opera News has noted his “superb pacing and great confidence.” Favorite venues include Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Le Poisson Rouge, the Guggenheim and Rubin Museums, Charlottetown’s Confederation Centre of the Arts, and the amphitheater at Vaison-la-Romaine, France. Opera credits include five productions with Juilliard Vocal Arts and appearances with American Opera Projects, Center for Contemporary Opera, Encompass New Opera, Opera Company of Middlebury, and Underworld Opera, as well as the opera programs of Hofstra and Rutgers. Stage directors include Ed Berkeley, Mary Birnbaum, John Giampietro, Crystal Manich, Louisa Muller, and Emma Griffin. Shapiro has recorded for Albany, Arsis, Newport Classics, and PGM. His recording of Frank Martin’s oratorio Le vin herbé was an Opera News Editor’s Choice. An album of music by Philip Glass with Irish violinist Gregory Harrington and Shapiro conducting the Janacek Philharmonic was released in 2020. Radio appearances have included WQXR, WNYC, Minnesota Public Radio, and Sirius. Shapiro is represented by Encompass Arts. markshapiromusic.com

The Cecilia Chorus of New York is a widely recognized, diverse, multigenerational, mixed 150-member chorus that has been enriching New York's musical life since 1906. Each season the chorus performs two major concerts at Carnegie Hall and a third concert at another venue. Spanning five centuries, our imaginatively curated repertoire includes standard works, neglected gems, and exciting commissions. Membership by audition is open to all.

For Calendar Editors:

Concert details:

Who: GRAMMY®-Nominated Pianist Simone Dinnerstein, The Cecilia Chorus of New York with Orchestra, and Every Voice Choirs (EVC) Chorus
Presented by The Cecilia Chorus of New York
What: Excerpts from Missa in tempore belli by Franz Joseph Haydn, Mass in Exile by Mark Buller (NY Premiere) and A Call for the Battle to Cease by Robert Sirota (World Premiere)
When: Friday, April 17, 2026 at 8pm
Where: Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage at Carnegie Hall, 57th St. and 7th Ave., New York, NY 10019
Tickets and information: https://www.carnegiehall.org/Calendar/2026/04/17/The-Cecilia-Chorus-of-New-York-with-Orchestra-0800PM

Description: On April 17, 2026, A Call for the Battle to Cease by composer Robert Sirota with text by Victoria Sirota, has its world premiere performance at Carnegie Hall in Stern Auditorium / Perlman Stage, presented by The Cecilia Chorus of New York. First composed in 2016, the message of the piece remains pertinent as ever, emphasizing the need to refocus on love, solidarity, and embracing differences. The performance features GRAMMY®-nominated pianist Simone Dinnerstein and The Cecilia Chorus of New York with Orchestra led by Music Director Mark Shapiro, joined by the Every Voice Choirs (EVC) Concert Choir.The program also includes Excerpts from Missa in tempore belli by Franz Joseph Haydn and the New York premiere Mass in Exile by Mark Buller.

April 17: Jupiter String Quartet Releases Undreamed Shores – New Album on Orchid Classics Coinciding with Earth Day 2026

The Jupiter String Quartet Releases Undreamed Shores on April 17
Highly Anticipated New Album and Orchid Classics Debut

Coinciding with Earth Day 2026

Featuring the Music of Michi Wiancko, Stephen Andrew Taylor, and Kati Agócs

Pre-Save Available Now

Downloads and CDs available to press on request

“Tonal refinement and precision” – The Strad

www.jupiterquartet.com | www.orchidclassics.com

On April 17, 2026, the Jupiter String Quartet releases Undreamed Shores, the ensemble’s ninth studio album and first on Orchid Classics. On Undreamed Shores, the Jupiter Quartet turns to old friends with new inspiration. The album features the world premiere recordings of new string quartets written for the Jupiter by composers who are also longtime friends of the ensemble — Michi Wiancko (To Unpathed Waters, Undreamed Shores), Stephen Andrew Taylor (Chaconne/Labyrinth), and Kati Agócs (Imprimatur, String Quartet No. 2) — exploring themes including the climate crisis, the pandemic, memory, and re-imagination. This highly anticipated recording is the Jupiter’s final album with violinist Nelson Lee, who departed from the group’s lineup in September 2025, succeeded by violinist Mélanie Clapiès.

The Jupiter writes of this project:

“We are excited to share these three wonderful works, which were written for us, all of which find space for hope and light in challenging times. Commissioning and programming new musical works has always been a core part of our mission and we believe these contemporary works are able to speak to our current times in unique ways. We have lived and performed these works dozens of times over the last decade, in concert halls, schools, symposia, and virtual spaces. We are delighted to now present them in one album. While each compositional voice represented on this album is distinct and original, the three quartets find common ground in their desire to reach for something that transcends our often difficult and fraught modern-day society. Each work offers space for us to consider our collective humanity.”

Of her piece, Michi Wiancko writes, “To Unpathed Waters, Undreamed Shores is a multi-movement work for string quartet that celebrates the power of the natural world while carving out space to explore the notions of regeneration, hope, and wildness in relationship to ecological grief. Central to the piece is the idea of kinship and collective humanity, and the need to help protect each other and our most vulnerable places and populations.” Appropriately, the new album is being released in close proximity to Earth Day, April 22, 2026. To Unpathed Waters, Undreamed Shores was commissioned jointly by the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts (Urbana, IL) and Bay Chamber Concerts (Rockport, ME).

Stephen Andrew Taylor writes in his program notes for Chaconne/Labyrinth: “‘Chaconne’ is an old-fashioned word for a repeating chord progression, like the 12-bar blues. My chords are a little weirder, using just intonation to find notes that don’t exist on the piano keyboard. The quartet plays a chaconne, but at the same time they are lost in a labyrinth. The chords keep returning, only to point in new directions. This is how I felt during the pandemic: stuck in a loop, but at the same time lost in a maze, desperately seeking the way out. At the center of this maze, like the Minotaur of Greek myth, lies a depiction of the coronavirus that has so profoundly changed our world. After this encounter – marked by strange, percussive sounds – the quartet traces their way, like following Ariadne’s thread, back through the labyrinth.” Chaconne/Labyrinth was commissioned by the Arizona Friends of Chamber Music, sponsored by Drs. Margot and JD Garcia, and is dedicated to Harold Weaver and Cecile Weaver.

In her program notes, Kati Agócs writes, “Imprimatur (String Quartet No. 2) is a rhapsodic suite in five movements framed by an introduction and coda. A meditation on spiritual lightness that is celebratory in tone, the piece explores how a single idea imprints itself upon the memory through rapturous re-imagination. The movements flow into one another without pause to create a fifteen-minute trajectory. The opening chords and their answer, a rhapsodic melody, develop into tropes which re-appear transmuted, even sublimated throughout, embracing a dialectic of darkness and light. The work culminates in a serene quodlibet, merging the tropes. The word imprimatur, from Roman Catholic tradition, signifies approval to print a text – an affirmation or sanctioning. Most saliently, it can also mean a mark of distinction or an imprint.” Imprimatur (String Quartet #2) was commissioned jointly by the Aspen Music Festival and School (Robert Spano, Music Director); the Harvard Musical Association; and the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts/University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign in honor of the Fifteenth Anniversary of the Jupiter String Quartet.

The Jupiter String Quartet is a particularly intimate group, consisting of violinists Mélanie Clapiès and Meg Freivogel, violist Liz Freivogel (Meg’s older sister), and cellist Daniel McDonough (Meg’s husband, Liz’s brother-in-law). Founded in 2001, the ensemble is firmly established as an important voice in the world of chamber music, and exudes an energy that is at once friendly, knowledgeable, and adventurous. The New Yorker states, “The Jupiter String Quartet, an ensemble of eloquent intensity, has matured into one of the mainstays of the American chamber-music scene.” 

The quartet has performed in some of the world’s finest halls, including New York City’s Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, London’s Wigmore Hall, Boston’s Jordan Hall, Mexico City's Palacio de Bellas Artes, Washington, D.C.’s Kennedy Center and Library of Congress, Austria’s Esterhazy Palace, and Seoul’s Sejong Chamber Hall. Their major music festival appearances include the Aspen Music Festival and School, Bowdoin International Music Festival, Cape Cod Chamber Music Festival, Rockport Music Festival, Taos School of Music Summer Festival, Caramoor International Music Festival, Music at Menlo, Tucson Winter Chamber Music Festival, the Banff Centre, the Seoul Spring Festival, and many others. In addition to their performing career, they have been artists-in-residence at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign since 2012, where they maintain private studios and direct the chamber music program.  

Their chamber music honors and awards include the grand prizes in the Banff International String Quartet Competition and the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition; the Young Concert Artists International auditions in New York City; the Cleveland Quartet Award from Chamber Music America; an Avery Fisher Career Grant; and a grant from the Fromm Foundation. From 2007-2010, they were in residence at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s Chamber Music Two.  

The Jupiter String Quartet feels a strong connection to the core string quartet repertoire; they have presented the complete Bartok and Beethoven string quartets on numerous occasions. Also deeply committed to new music, they have commissioned string quartets from Nathan Shields, Stephen Andrew Taylor, Michi Wiancko, Syd Hodkinson, Hannah Lash, Dan Visconti, and Kati Agócs; a quintet with baritone voice by Mark Adamo; and a piano quintet by Pierre Jalbert. 

The quartet’s discography includes numerous recordings on labels including Azica Records and Deutsche Grammophon. In fall 2024, the Jupiter Quartet recorded their new album with GRAMMY-winner Judith Sherman, featuring the world premiere recordings of Michi Wiancko’s To Unpathed Waters, Undreamed Shores, Stephen Taylor’s Chaconne/Labyrinth, and Kati Agócs's Imprimatur, which were all composed for the Jupiters. In 2021, the quartet recorded a collaborative album with the Jasper String Quartet (Marquis Classics), also produced by Judith Sherman. This album features the world premiere recording of Dan Visconti’s Eternal Breath, Felix Mendelssohn’s Octet in E-flat, Op. 20, and Osvaldo Golijov’s Last Round. The Arts Fuse acclaimed, “This joint album from the Jupiter String Quartet and Jasper String Quartet is striking for its backstory but really memorable for its smart program and fine execution.”

The quartet chose its name because Jupiter was the most prominent planet in the night sky at the time of its formation and the astrological symbol for Jupiter resembles the number four. 

For more information, visit www.jupiterquartet.com.

Undreamed Shores | Jupiter Quartet | Orchid Classics
Release Date: April 17, 2026 (Worldwide)
Recorded September 9-11, 2024 in Foellinger Great Hall, Krannert Center, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Michi Wiancko
To Unpathed Waters, Undreamed Shores
1. I. Pelagic Within [5:20]
2. II. Dream of the Xerces Blue [2:58]
3. III. Central Park Microbial [1:48]
4. IV. Invisible Eviction [0:57]
5. V. Crying, Together [2:33]
6. VI. Follow the Water [2:38]
7. VII. Rise Up [4:16]

Stephen Andrew Taylor
8. Chaconne/Labyrinth [19:03]

Kati Agócs

9. Imprimatur (String Quartet No. 2) [15:15]
Recitative
I. Ostinato
II. Enraptured Troping
III. Meditation – Crystal Chains
IV. Wild Dance
V. Quodlibet
Coda

Total time [54:48]

Producer: Judith Sherman
Engineer: Graham Duncan
Editing assistant: Jeanne Velonis
Mastering: Jeanne Velonis and Judith Sherman
Cover Art: Black Sun by Hua Nian
Booklet photography: Todd Rosenberg

March 28: Pianist Charlotte Hu Presented by Boyer College of Music at Temple University – Performing the Music of Enrique Granados

Photo by Dario Acosta available in high resolution here.

Pianist Charlotte Hu
Presented by Boyer College of Music at Temple University
Performing the Music of Enrique Granados

Saturday, March 28, 2026 at 5:30pm
Rock Hall Auditorium at Boyer College of Music
1715 North Broad Street | Philadelphia, PA
Tickets and information

“praises follow [Charlotte Hu] all around the world” – International Piano

charlottehu.com

Philadelphia, PA – Internationally acclaimed Taiwanese-American pianist Charlotte Hu will be presented in concert by Boyer College of Music at Temple University on Saturday, March 28, 2026 at 5:30pm in Rock Hall Auditorium (1715 North Broad Street). This performance is free and open to the public. Charlotte Hu (formerly known as Ching-Yun Hu) has been praised by audiences and critics across the globe for her dazzling virtuosity, captivating musicianship, and magnetic stage presence. She is an artist in residence at Temple University, and makes her home in Philadelphia.

In this solo recital, Hu takes the audience on a captivating journey through Spanish composer Enrique Granados’ masterpiece Goyescas, which is inspired by Francisco Goya’s paintings. Hu has recently recorded the work for her second PENTATONE album, which will be released in June 2026. The program showcases Granados’s brilliant fusion of Spanish folk elements with sophisticated piano writing. From the flirtatious Los requiebros, to the haunting Serenata del Espectro, this colorful, passionate suite evokes the full emotional spectrum of Spanish Romanticism and stands as one of the pinnacles of Spanish piano literature. The program includes the following selection from the Goyescas – Book 1: I. Los requiebros, II. Coloquio en la reja, and III. El fandango de candil; Book 2 I. Quejas, o la Maja y el Ruiseñor, II. El amor y la Muerte, and III. Epilogo: Serenata del Espectro.

“My first encounter with Granados' Goyescas came during my years as a student at Juilliard,” says Hu.

“Like many artists discovering this cornerstone of Spanish piano literature, I was immediately captivated by the vivid world Granados had created on the keyboard. What struck me most was not simply the technical brilliance of the writing, but rather the poetry embedded within—the nuanced characters, the narrative arc that unfolds across the entire suite, the distinctly Spanish flavors interwoven with profound emotional depth, and the virtuosity that never overshadows the music's intimate storytelling. Here was a masterwork that seemed to contain entire worlds: passion, tenderness, humor, shadow, and light all coexisting within its six movements.”

With a fierce dedication to making classical music more accessible, Charlotte Hu presents captivating programs that tell human stories inclusive of gender and race. By juxtaposing audience favorites with underperformed treasures and newly commissioned works, Hu’s recitals consistently offer musical and narrative contrasts that encourage people to listen deeply and discover anew the work of even the most well-known composers.

More about Charlotte Hu: As a soloist, Charlotte Hu has astounded 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, 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, and Taiwan Philharmonic, among others. Recent and upcoming highlights for Charlotte Hu include performances presented by Newport Classical, the Mansion at Strathmore, the Gilmore Piano Festival, the Evergreen Symphony Orchestra, the Orquesta Filarmónica de Bogotá, the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing, Taipei Concert Hall, Hong Kong Cultural Center, National Taiwan Symphony Orchestra, and the Taichung Opera House.

An active recording artist, Charlotte Hu’s debut album of Chopin works on ArchiMusic was named Best Classical Album of the Year by Taiwan’s prestigious Golden Melody Award, and recordings released on Naxos/CAG Records and BMOP/sound with Boston Modern Orchestra Project 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 it “essential listening for Rachmaninoff admirers.” Her latest album, Liszt Metamorphosis, was released by PENTATONE in July 2024. In June 2026, Charlotte will release her next album on PENTATONE, which will feature Enrique Granados’ Goyescas suite in its entirety.

Charlotte Hu is the founder of two piano festivals across two continents: the Yun-Hsiang International Music Festival in Taipei and the PYPA Piano Festival in Philadelphia. Now in its 13th year, PYPA has become an important fixture in the classical music world, cultivating a deeper appreciation for classical music and serving as a cultural bridge between East and West.

At the heart of Charlotte’s success is a story of strength, dedication, and resilience that has powered her dream of becoming a world-class artist. Moving to the United States from Taiwan at age 14 without her parents to begin studies at The Juilliard School was the first of many challenges Charlotte has overcome in building her illustrious career — one that’s included winning top prizes at the 12th Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Competition and the Concert Artists Guild Competition, performing on classical music’s biggest stages, and fostering the next generation of musicians as an advocate for classical music through entrepreneurial and philanthropic initiatives. A tireless advocate for humanity, Charlotte raised $27,000 for youth education charities through a Hope Charity Concert live-streamed on her Facebook page in June 2020. The online concert reached more than 140,000 people across the globe.

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, in addition to her busy performance schedule. She is a frequent guest artist, leading master classes and artist residencies at universities and music festivals worldwide. She holds degrees from The Juilliard School, Cleveland Institute of Music, and Germany’s Hanover University of Music, Drama, and Media, where she studied with Herbert Stessin, Sergei Babayan, and Karl-Heinz Kammerling, respectively.

For more information, visit www.charlottehu.com

For Calendar Editors:

Description: Taiwanese-American pianist Charlotte Hu, for whom “praises follow her all around the world” (International Piano) is presented in a solo recital by Boyer College of Music at Temple University. Hu will perform the Goyescas Piano Suite by Enrique Granados — a deeply expressive suite that stands as one of the pinnacles of Spanish piano literature. This emotive music makes up Hu’s forthcoming second PENTATONE album, which will be out in June 2026.

Concert details:

Who: Pianist Charlotte Hu
Presented by Boyer College of Music at Temple University
What: The Goyescas Suite by Enrique Granados
When: Saturday, March 28, 2026 at 5:30pm
Where: Rock Hall Auditorium at Boyer College of Music, 1715 North Broad Street, Philadelphia, PA 19122
More information: https://now.temple.edu/events/2026-03-28/faculty-recital-charlotte-hu-piano
Free and Open to the Public

Out Today: Sarah Kirkland Snider's Forward Into Light - New Amsterdam/Nonesuch Records

Album art and photos available here.

Sarah Kirkland Snider Releases Forward Into Light

A New Album Featuring Four Orchestral Works
Out February 27 on New Amsterdam/Nonesuch Records 

Listen Now

Recorded by Metropolis Ensemble
Andrew Cyr, Artistic Director/Conductor 

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

Featured on NPR’s New Music Friday

Review CDs and downloads available upon request.

New York, NY – February 27, 2026 – Sarah Kirkland Snider’s fifth full-length LP, a new, all-orchestral album titled Forward Into Light, produced by multi-GRAMMY-winning producer Silas Brown and recorded by GRAMMY-nominated Metropolis Ensemble led by artistic director/conductor Andrew Cyr, is out today, co-released by Nonesuch Records and the label that Snider co-founded, New Amsterdam Records. 

The new album features four of Snider’s orchestral works: Forward Into Light, a commission for the New York Philharmonic inspired by the American women’s suffrage movement; the string orchestra and harp (Noël Wan) version of Drink the Wild Ayre, a reimagining of the string quartet Snider wrote for the Emerson String Quartet as the ensemble’s final commission; Eye of Mnemosyne, a multimedia orchestral work on memory, innovation, and culture as refracted through the lens of photography, commissioned by the Rochester Philharmonic; and Something for the Dark, a meditation on resilience, commissioned by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra after Snider won its Lebenbom Competition in 2014.

The album has already been met with critical acclaim:

“…Forward Into Light, teems with creative ideas. An arresting introduction reverberates with a shimmering gesture on harp and chiming percussion, underpinned by a falling melody in disjunct motion first heard in the string section…A similarly searching, questing spirit belongs to Drink the Wild Ayre, heard here in a version for harp and string orchestra, where interlocking variations yield a rich sonic palimpsest of layers stacked in ever-increasing intensities…Interlocking sections and movements also shape the eight-part suite Eye of Mnemosyne, which abounds in dramatic, filmic chiaroscuro effects, while the earliest piece on the album, Something for the Dark, explores similar themes of resilience and hope found in Forward Into Light.” – Pwyll ap Siôn, Gramophone

"[Forward Into Light] reveals Snider as, among other things, a master orchestral colorist…there is sheer beauty in Snider’s dynamic wielding of the orchestral voices…intriguing and accessible, complex and emotionally gripping…an exhilarating listening experience…this music adds significantly to her oeuvre.” – Jon Sobel, Blogcritics

“As indicated by the title, Forward Into Light is a hopeful album, suggesting that history is tilting toward something brighter and more positive. This attitude may be in short supply these days, but its rarity makes it all the more essential…The Metropolis Ensemble, conducted by Andrew Cyr, is precise and controlled, unleashing its energy in increments….like an army of angels, war in the skies, darkness and light colliding in a thunderclap of Biblical proportions…This is what Sarah Kirkland Snider offers: not the assurance that everything will be all right, but that resistance is resilience, no matter what the outcome.” – Richard Allen, A Closer Listen

Snider, deemed “one of new music’s leading names” (Gramophone), writes music of direct expression and dramatic narrative that has been hailed as “rapturous” (New York Times), “groundbreaking” (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), her music synthesizes diverse influences to render a nuanced command of immersive storytelling.

“I chose to create an album of these four works because they share themes of perseverance, alliance, and evolution through dark and light – concepts that have been at the forefront of my mind in recent years,” Sarah Kirkland Snider says. “Beyond that, there are musical connections: three of the works feature certain motivic ideas that have haunted me over the past few years, appearing in different guises across projects.”

The album has been recorded with 21st century listeners in mind. Snider states:

“Some of my most vivid memories of feeling awake and alive – whether walking city streets as an adult or lying in the dark on the floor in my childhood bedroom – have been inspired by listening to orchestral music recordings on headphones. In some ways, I’ve loved listening this way even more than live, because it feels private and personal – like a dream you can revisit in any way, at any time. Since childhood, I’ve longed to be on the other side of that alchemical exchange, creating sonic journeys that a listener can personalize in even the most mundane settings. 

When I began thinking about recording my own orchestral music, I knew I wanted a sonically immersive, dynamic, and intricate listening experience – one in which the subtlest orchestration details and tempo changes could be fully realized. To that end, Metropolis and I recorded this music with intentionally idiosyncratic approaches to isolation and tempo mapping, maximizing control over individual lines without sacrificing musicality or expressivity. With that freedom, the mix became painstakingly detailed – but also deeply gratifying.”

Andrew Cyr, Metropolis Ensemble's artistic director and conductor, shares this vision for the recording process. He says, “At Metropolis, the studio is another stage, and recording is its own artistic medium. What draws me to it is the potential for a different kind of closeness: an intensely shared attentiveness between performer and listener. On one end, the composer, musicians, and engineers shape every breath and balance; on the other, technology carries that intention directly to the ear. For this album, we lived with the music for eight months – playing, listening, refining. From tracking to post-production, we worked with a panoramic syntax, engineered for Atmos and modern playback, letting depth, focus, and perspective carry Sarah’s orchestration and vision.”

The new album joins Sarah Kirkland Snider’s previous full-length LPs – The Blue Hour (New Amsterdam/Nonesuch, 2022), Mass for the Endangered (New Amsterdam/Nonesuch, 2020), Unremembered (New Amsterdam, 2015), and Penelope (New Amsterdam, 2010) – which have garnered year-end nods and critical acclaim from The New York Times, NPR, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, NPR, Gramophone Magazine, Pitchfork, BBC Music Magazine, The Nation, and many others.

About Sarah Kirkland Snider: 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. In addition to the music on this album, Snider’s recent works include 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.

Highlights of 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). Her 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.

A founding Co-Artistic Director of Brooklyn-based non-profit New Amsterdam Records, Sarah Kirkland Snider has an M.M.and Artist’s Diploma from the Yale School of Music, and a B.A. from Wesleyan University. The winner of the 2014 Detroit Symphony Orchestra Lebenbom Competition, Snider 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

About Metropolis Ensemble: Metropolis Ensemble is a GRAMMY-nominated, New York City-based orchestral collective and non-profit production house shaping today’s musical landscape. Founded in 2006 by GRAMMY-nominated conductor-producer Andrew Cyr, Metropolis champions exceptional composers and performers at pivotal moments – turning ideas into premieres, site-specific experiences, and definitive recordings. Metropolis provides the scaffolding artists need – bespoke ensembles, creative productions, multi-genre collaborations, and direct on-ramps to global stages – launching careers and inspiring new audiences. The ensemble has been presented by BAM’s Next Wave, The Met, Lincoln Center, Celebrate Brooklyn, Brooklyn Botanic Garden, New Victory Theater, and Prototype. Cross-genre collaborators include Questlove & The Roots, Wye Oak, Deerhoof, Emily Wells, Caroline Rose, and the Immanuel Wilkins Quartet, with stages from the Hollywood Bowl and Brooklyn Steel to Sounds from a Safe Harbour and Eaux Claires Hiver. Its recordings have earned wide acclaim – including Canada’s JUNO Award for Vivian Fung’s Violin Concerto (2013 Best Contemporary Composition) and GRAMMY recognitions for Avner Dorman’s Mandolin Concerto (2010 Best Solo Instrumental Performance), Timo Andres’s Home Stretch (part of David Frost’s 2013 Producer of the Year), and Timo Andres: The Blind Banister (2025 Best Engineered Album, Classical), which also landed on year-end lists from The New York Times, NPR Music, and Gramophone. Recognized as one of New York City’s most prolific incubators of new talent, Metropolis is a national model for artist-driven innovation. For more information about Metropolis: www.metropolisensemble.org 

ALBUM TRACK LISTING:

Forward Into Light
Sarah Kirkland Snider | Metropolis Ensemble | Andrew Cyr
New Amsterdam/Nonesuch Records | Release Date: February 27, 2026
All Music by Sarah Kirkland Snider

1. Forward Into Light [15:04] 

2. Drink the Wild Ayre [12:45]
Noël Wan, harp 

Eye of Mnemosyne
3. Prelude: Eye of Mnemosyne [2:28]
4. Mnemonic: Wheel of the Muses [1:41]
5. Mori: Memory of the Dead [1:43]
6. Vivere: Power of the Snapshot [3:21]
7. Memento: Defense Against Time [3:17]
8. Nostos: War Story [2:57]
9. Ephemera: Fragmented Memory Psyche [1:36]
10. (Epilogue): Lens of Nostalgia [4:13] 

Something for the Dark
11. The Promise [6:28]
12. Of Rise and Renewal [5:36]

Total time: 61:09

 Produced by Silas Brown and Andrew Cyr
Engineered by Silas Brown, Wellington Gordon, Charles Mueller, Mike Tierney, Doron Schachter, and Ryan Streber
Mixed by Silas Brown; Silas Brown and Mike Tierney (Drink the Wild Ayre)
Mastered by Silas Brown/Legacy Sound
Recorded at Drew University, FSU College of Music, Field Notes, Sandbox Percussion, Oktaven Audio (January-June, 2025)
Graphic Design by David (DM) Stith
Photography by Anja Schütz

March 21 & 22: California Symphony Led by Donato Cabrera Presents Northern Lights - Music by Politically and Religiously Oppressed Composers

Photo by Kristen Loken. Hi res photos available here.

California Symphony's 2025-2026 Season Continues with
NORTHERN LIGHTS

Music by Politically and Religiously Oppressed Composers
Valentin Silvestrov, Arvo Pärt, and Jean Sibelius

Led by Donato Cabrera, Artistic & Music Director

Featuring California Symphony Violinists Jennifer Cho and Sam Weiser in Pärt’s Tabula Rasa

In Concert March 21 at 7:30pm & March 22, 2026 at 4:00pm
At Walnut Creek's Lesher Center for the Arts

Tickets & Information: www.californiasymphony.org

WALNUT CREEK, CA – California Symphony and Artistic and Music Director Donato Cabrera continue the 2025-2026 season with NORTHERN LIGHTS – a program featuring defiant and resolute music by politically and religiously oppressed composers including Valentin Silvestrov’s Stille Musik (Quiet Music), Arvo Pärt’s Tabula Rasa, and Jean Sibelius’s Symphony No. 2 on Saturday, March 21, 2026 at 7:30pm and Sunday, March 22, 2026 at 4:00pm at Hofmann Theatre at the Lesher Center for the Arts (1601 Civic Drive, Walnut Creek). Tickets include a free 30-minute pre-concert talk by award-winning instructor Scott Foglesong, one hour before the performances.

The music included on California Symphony’s March concerts is connected on several levels – stylistically, as expressions of deep emotion, and as explicit or implicit artistic responses to Russian/Soviet oppression. The program opens with Silvestrov's Stille Musik (Quiet Music), which sets a reflective tone, taking listeners on an emotional journey through vivid, crystalline memories. California Symphony all-stars Jennifer Cho and Sam Weiser are then featured in Pärt's Tabula Rasa, a minimalistic, melodic conversation between two violins, in a deeply moving and powerful modern masterpiece. The concerts culminate with Sibelius’s stirring and uplifting Symphony No. 2, which captures the breathtaking beauty of the Nordic landscape and evokes a sense of fearless optimism. Its sweeping melodies and bold themes make it a powerful celebration of resilience and triumph.

“Art created in response to political and religious oppression has been, throughout history, a most effective tool and a lasting memorial,” Donato Cabrera says. “From the protest art against the pharaohs of ancient Egypt to Picasso's Guernica, from Goya’s Tres de Mayo to Banksy’s Napalm, these images remain an forever indelible commentary on the atrocities committed against the innocent and thought provoking. The same has been true for musical works throughout the ages. From Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro to John Adams’s Nixon in China, music has also been a most effective mirror for our society. In style, personality, and career trajectory, the three composers I have chosen for this concert couldn't be more different from one another, but their music and respective cultural significance clearly places them in this long and noble line of composers of music of resistance and change.”

Valentin Silvestrov is a Ukrainian composer who has been living in Berlin since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. He wrote Stille Musik in 2002, and the work was premiered that year in Kyiv. In Fanfare magazine, Robert Carl describes Stille Musik, writing that it “positively drips with fin de siècle world-weariness. Its three movements are a slow and ever-fading waltz, a melancholy but lilting serenade, and a suitably elegiac finale. I find the piece truly haunting in the beauty of its melodies and the deeply sincere love it expresses.” 

California Symphony joins the worldwide celebration of iconic Estonian composer Arvo Pärt’s 90th birthday this season by performing his masterpiece Tabula Rasa, composed in 1977. This double concerto for two violins with orchestra was one of Pärt’s first works after eight years of compositional silence, brought on by both political and personal crisis. Pärt emerged with a new approach to composing, which he called tintinnabuli, influenced by his experiences with early music and Gregorian chant. After the premiere of Tabula Rasa, composer Erkki-Sven Tüür said, “I was carried beyond. I had the feeling that eternity was touching me through this music.” 

Finnish composer Jean Sibelius wrote his second symphony in 1901 and 1902, starting the work in the mountains of Italy. After its premiere in Helsinki, the public connected the piece with Finland’s struggle for independence during a time of Russian sanctions, due to its Nordic themes and resilient sound. Sibelius’s intentions with the work are unknown, but many listeners were drawn to this interpretation. “There is something about this music – at least for us – that leads us to ecstasy; almost like a shaman with his magic drum,” said Finnish composer Sulho Ranta.

California Symphony’s signature approach to creating vibrant concerts, rich in storytelling and spanning the breadth of orchestral repertoire, the 2025-2026 season explores evocative programmatic music including Maurice Ravel’s Boléro, Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, and Valentin Silvestrov’s Stille Musik; the fruitful intersection of jazz and classical in music by Jessie Montgomery, Friedrich Gulda, and George Gershwin; the monumental symphonies of Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Schubert, Jean Sibelius, and Alexander Borodin; the timelessness of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart including excerpts from Don Giovanni; and world-class soloists in riveting concertos including pianist Robert Thies in Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21, Nathan Chan in Friedrich Gulda’s Cello Concerto, violinists Jennifer Cho and Sam Weiser in Arvo Pärt’s Tabula Rasa, and pianist Sofya Gulyak in Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3. 

This season, California Symphony continues to serve its community beyond the stage through its nationally recognized educational initiative Sound Minds and its innovative lifelong learning program Fresh Look: The Symphony Exposed. It will also expand its programs for vulnerable populations at Trinity Center Walnut Creek and continue community partnerships to reach more underserved youth throughout Contra Costa County.

Founded in 1986, California Symphony has been led by Donato Cabrera since 2013. 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. 

Single tickets start at $50 and at $25 for students 25 and under. More information is available at CaliforniaSymphony.org or call the Lesher Center Ticket Office at (925) 943-7469 (open Wed – Sun, 12pm to 6pm).

FOR CALENDAR EDITORS:

WHAT: California Symphony and Artistic and Music Director Donato Cabrera celebrate the triumph of the human spirit. These concerts open with the rich harmonies of GRAMMY-winning composer Jessie Montgomery’s Overture and continue with Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21 featuring pianist Robert Thies, closing with Ludwig van Beethoven’s towering Symphony No. 3 – the Eroica, a bold, powerful celebration of struggle, triumph, and humanity.

California Symphony takes the stuffiness out of the concert experience: Take selfies at the photo booth, order a signature cocktail, and sip at your seat. Tickets include a free 30-minute pre-concert talk by Artistic and Music Director Donato Cabrera, starting one hour before the show.

WHEN:
Saturday, November 15, 2025 at 7:30pm
Sunday, November 16, 2025 at 4:00pm

WHERE:
Hofmann Theatre at the Lesher Center for the Arts
1601 Civic Drive, Walnut Creek 

CONCERT:
BEETHOVEN’S EROICA
Donato Cabrera, conductor
California Symphony

PROGRAM:
Jessie Montgomery: Overture (2022)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 21 (1785)
Robert Thies, piano
Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony No. 3 (Eroica) (1804)

TICKETS: Single tickets start at $50 and at $25 for students 25 and under. For more information or to purchase tickets, visit CaliforniaSymphony.org or call the Lesher Center Ticket Office at (925) 943-7469 (open Wed – Sun, 12pm to 6pm).

PHOTOS: Available here

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.

For more information, visit CaliforniaSymphony.org.

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

OUT TODAY: PERSEVERANTIA by Composer & Pianist Vadim Neselovskyi – Featured on NPR's Morning Edition – Coinciding with the Fourth Anniversary of the Invasion of Ukraine

Ukrainian-Born Composer and Pianist Vadim Neselovskyi
Releases New Album PERSEVERANTIA on Tzadik Today

Coinciding with the Fourth Anniversary of the Invasion of Ukraine
Listen Here

Featured on NPR's Morning Edition

“The album takes you on a journey,”
– Leila Fadel, Morning Edition

Album Release Concert at Roulette
Thursday, March 5, 2026 at 8pm | 509 Atlantic Ave. | Brooklyn, NY 11217
Tickets and More Information | Livestream

“Neselovskyi is a rare mix of classically trained pianist and brilliant jazz improviser, a musical omnivore for whom different sounds have always flowed together.”
– PBS Newshour

Downloads, press photos, and CDs available to press on request

VadimNeselovskyi.com | Tzadik.com

Today, February 24, 2026, Ukrainian-born, Brooklyn-based Vadim Neselovskyi — composer, pianist, and Professor of Jazz Piano at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, MA — releases his new album PERSEVERANTIA, executive produced by John Zorn for Tzadik. PERSEVERANTIA is an original suite for piano and string trio in 11 movements, recorded with the Netherlands-based Ysaÿe String Trio (Rada Ovcharova, violin; Emlyn Stam, viola and Willem Stam, cello). The album’s release date coincides with the fourth anniversary of the invasion of Ukraine. Neselovskyi performs music from PERSEVERANTIA at Roulette (509 Atlantic Ave.) on Thursday, March 5, 2026 at 8pm with violinist Pauline Kim Harris, violist Celia Hatton, and cellist Andrew Janss. The concert will be livestreamed and available on demand.

“Composing PERSEVERANTIA was my way of processing everything that has happened in my home country since February 2022,” says Neselovskyi. “Music, particularly instrumental music devoid of lyrics, is a universal language. And while I did not intend for this work to be an easy listening experience, I hope that its message of resilience, empathy, and hope reaches those who choose to listen.”

Neselovskyi spoke with Leila Fadel about PERSEVERANTIA for NPR's Morning Edition – listen here.

“I don’t know what the next year will bring us but the little I can do, I will be doing,” says Neselovskyi. “And that is, being honest, sharing empathy and awareness, and perhaps, car[ing] for each other––the basic human values––through music, as much as it’s possible. That’s all I can do, and hope and pray for better times.”

PERSEVERANTIA is Vadim Neselovskyi’s seventh full-length album and follows his most recent work — 2022’s critically acclaimed ODESA (Sunnyside Records) — an emotionally vivid and personal reflection on Neselovskyi’s Ukrainian birthplace and its connection to his multifaceted life. ODESA features compositions inspired by Ukrainian landmarks like the Odesa Railway Station, Potemkin Stairs, and Odesa Conservatory. The New York Times described how throughout the album, Neselovskyi “takes care to depict each given scene or concept with a sure compositional hand.” The album was also featured by NPR’s Morning Edition, WNYC's All of It, PBS Newshour, The Boston Globe, and more.

As a young composer and pianist growing up in Odesa, Ukraine, Neselovskyi discovered that his calling was not to follow any one stylistic path but to become a “creator of music.” Known for his collaborations with Gary Burton, John Zorn, and Fred Hersch, he has long since fulfilled that early promise in myriad ways both inventive and unexpected: as a composer whose vision is expansive enough to spark inspired interpretations from jazz trio and symphony orchestra alike; as an improviser carving surprising pathways through the straightahead, the avant-garde, and the indefinable; and as a collaborator valued by peers, mentors and fellow innovators.

Four years after ODESA, both Neselovskyi’s compositional instincts and his sense of resilience have only grown, paving the way for PERSEVERANTIA — an album that tells a story of compassion, empathy, willpower, resistance, sincerity, falsehood, freedom, and the arduous path to it.

Neselovskyi says, “Stylistically, PERSEVERANTIA weaves together the many strands of my life, as a post-classical composer, world-touring jazz musician, and individual inextricably connected to my Ukrainian and Jewish roots, ultimately converging toward a single cohesive artistic statement.”

As a Ukrainian, Neselovskyi is deeply connected to current events. However, this suite is not only about the devastating war; it speaks to everyone, reflecting on timeless human challenges and the best aspects of human nature. Placing exhilarating piano improvisations in the context of gorgeous compositions for classical string trio, PERSEVERANTIA evokes a cornucopia of emotions and striking scenes, encouraging unhurried consideration from beginning to end.

Vadim Neselovskyi
PERSEVERANTIA: A Suite for Piano and String Trio

Release Date: February 24, 2026 | Tzadik
Recorded October 16-17, 2024 in Bethlehemkerk, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Tracklist:

[1] Before 24 [8:02]
[2] Tanks Near Kyiv [5:44]
[3] March Passacaglia [8:14]
[4] I Don’t Need a Ride [5:18]
[5] Orwell [6:27]
[6] Refugees [6:38]
[7] Dancing As If Nothing Ever Happened [5:59]
[8] Chorale [5:35]
[9] Lviv Funeral [2:56]
[10] Perseverantia [8:26]
[11] After 24 [7:54]

[Total Time: 71:13]

Vadim Neselovskyi, Piano
Rada Ovcharova, Violin
Emlyn Stam, Viola
Willem Stam, Cello

Executive Producer: John Zorn
Engineered by Joeri Saal
Mixed by Christian Heck
Edited by Lukas Lohner
Pre-Mastered by Christoph Stickel
Mastered by Scott Hull
Album Front Cover Photos by Alexander Yakimchuk
Album Back Cover Photos by Arkady Mitnik
Album Design by Heung Heung Chin

About Vadim Neselovskyi: The Los Angeles Times has praised Vadim Neselovskyi’s “extraordinary playing” while The Guardian (UK) called him “the most promising of the young improvisers." Whether as a pianist, composer, improviser, soloist or bandleader, Neselovskyi creates music that is truly inspired and wholly unique. His work has been played by jazz greats like Randy Brecker, Antonio Sanchez, Julian Lage, and Gary Burton, as well as classical artists (Daniel Gauthier, whose recording of Neselovskyi’s “San Felio” won an ECHO Classical Award) and symphony orchestras in the United States and Europe.

Those diverse talents have attracted the attention of revered artists crossing the boundaries of genre, including legendary vibraphonist Gary Burton, who famously enlisted Neselovskyi for his acclaimed Generations Quintet; the prestigious Graz Philharmoniker, which performed his composition “Prelude for Vibes” on their New Year’s program; iconoclastic composer/saxophonist John Zorn, who invited Neselovskyi to contribute to The Book Beriah, the final installment of his Masada project; and French horn/alphorn pioneer Arkady Shilkloper, a profound influence with whom the pianist now shares a longstanding duo collaboration. In the summer of 2022, an orchestral version of Winter in Odesa — one of the movements from the Odesa Suite — was premiered at the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, featuring classical saxophone star Asya Fateyeva and Ensemble Reflektor as part of the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival. The concert was recorded and broadcast by ARTE TV.

About the Ysaÿe Trio: Founded in 2006 by Rada Ovcharova (violin), Emlyn Stam (viola) and Willem Stam (cello) the Ysaÿe Trio performs regularly at the leading festivals and concert halls throughout the Netherlands as well as abroad. “The Ysaÿe Trio performs with conviction, craftsmanship and love. Superb!” Haarlems Dagblad (Haarlem, Netherlands)

# # #

Newport Classical presents Two Chamber Series Concerts - Benjamin Appl on March 13 and Ars Poetica on March 27

L-R: Benjamin Appl and James Baillieu, Ars Poetica. Photos available in high resolution here.

Newport Classical Continues 2025-2026 Chamber Series

Baritone Benjamin Appl and Pianist James Baillieu Perform Franz Schubert’s Die Winterreise
Friday, March 13, 2026 at 7:30pm

Ars Poetica Performs Dance and Transfiguration
Friday, March 27, 2026 at 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 two concerts in March. Baritone Benjamin Appl and pianist James Baillieu perform on Friday, March 13, 2026 at 7:30pm and Baroque ensemble Ars Poetica performs on Friday, March 27, 2026 7:30pm.

On Friday, 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. Named Gramophone Award Young Artist of the Year in 2016, Appl continues to captivate listeners with artistry that gracefully weaves timeless tradition and vivid, heartfelt expression. He brings this hauntingly beautiful song cycle to life, offering an unforgettable journey through loneliness, memory, and the stark poetry of winter. Appl’s recent recital debuts include Carnegie Hall, San Francisco Performances, Dallas Opera, Boston Celebrity Series, New York’s Park Avenue Armory (of all three Schubert song cycles), Sydney Opera House, Mozarteum Salzburg, Festival St. Denis, and three presentations of Winterreise by the Gran Teatre del Liceu Barcelona. 

Watch Benjamin Appl and James Baillieu Perform Die Post from Die Winterreise

On Friday, March 27, Newport Classical presents Ars Poetica, an ensemble of acclaimed musicians who share a passion for bringing historical music to the stage. Comprised of a colorful array of Baroque instruments, including viola, lute, recorder, and voice, Ars Poetica’s concerts combine innovative repertoire choices, particularly of music from the high Renaissance to early Baroque, with sophisticated interpretations. Their Newport Classical program Dance and Transfiguration finds its inspiration in music that has taken previous material and turned it into something new. This is celebrated in the beauty of bastarda repertoire, diminution practices, and in music with strong text settings. Each of these genres rely on previously written material to come to life. 

Watch Ars Poetica Perform Diego Ortiz:

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.

The Chamber Series continues with violinist Yevgeny Kutik, who makes his Newport Classical debut on April 10 alongside returning pianist Llewellyn Sanchez-Werner. Praised for his "dark-hued and razor-sharp technique" (The New York Times), Kutik performs 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.