GRAMMY-Winning Experiential Orchestra Announces 2026-2027 NYC Season - Beauty in the Face of Adversity
GRAMMY®️-Winning Experiential Orchestra (EXO) Announces 2026-2027 Season Beauty in the Face of Adversity
James Blachly, Music Director
An Embrace of Sound: The Music of Anna Clyne
Featuring Cellist Inbal Segev in the New York City Premiere of Dance
Friday, October 23, 2026 at 8pm
The DiMenna Center for Classical Music | 450 W. 37th St., New York, NY
Music in a Time of War
Featuring Violist Paul Neubauer, Pianist Stewart Goodyear, and Violinist Michelle Barzel Ross
Music by Herbert Howells, Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, Samuel Barber, and Ralph Vaughan-Williams
Saturday, February 20, 2027 at 7:30pm
Roulette Intermedium | 509 Atlantic Ave., Brooklyn, NY
Strength Through Song: Choral Music of Arvo Pärt
Saturday, May 22, 2027 at 7:30pm
The New York Society for Ethical Culture | 2 W 64th St., New York, NY
Brad Balliet’s A Field Guide to Imaginary Birds
Spring 2027 Outdoors at Inwood Hill Park | Payson Ave. &, Seaman Ave., New York, NY
Details TBA
New York, NY – The GRAMMY®️-winning Experiential Orchestra (EXO) announces its 2026-2027 season, Beauty in the Face of Adversity, running from October 2026 through June 2027. Led by founding Music Director James Blachly, EXO presents four immersive programs, each reflecting the mission of the orchestra – to curate programs that embrace the unique acoustics and characters of each venue, creating a one-of-a-kind listening environment and a new experience of sound. Subscription sales begin July 21, 2026 and individual tickets will be available starting August 25, 2026.
Clockwise L-R: Stewart Goodyear by Anita Zvonar, James Blachly by Allison Stock, Inbal Segev by Bri Elledge, Paul Neubauer by Rosalie O’Connor, Michelle Barzel Ross by Samira Bouaou. Press photos available in high resolution here.
The season opens on October 23, 2026 with An Embrace of Sound, a celebration of the music of composer Anna Clyne, including the New York City premiere of her Dance for Cello and Orchestra, featuring cellist Inbal Segev (who commissioned and recorded the work), as well as Clyne’s This Midnight Hour and Within Her Arms, at the DiMenna Center for Classical Music (450 W. 37th St., New York, NY). On February 20, 2027 at Roulette Intermedium (509 Atlantic Ave., Brooklyn, NY), EXO presents Music in a Time of War, a concert featuring three acclaimed soloists: Paul Neubauer, Stewart Goodyear, and Michelle Barzel Ross. On May 22, 2027 at the New York Society for Ethical Culture (2 W 64th St., New York, NY), EXO performs the choral music of Arvo Pärt, expanding the orchestra’s ongoing relationship with the Estonian composer. The final event of the season is a reprise of EXO’s celebrated collaboration with composer Brad Balliett in his A Field Guide to Imaginary Birds, to be held outdoors at Inwood Hill Park in Spring 2027 (details TBA).
Experiential Orchestra Music Director James Blachly says, “This season brings together extraordinary composers, internationally acclaimed soloists, and beautiful venues to create concerts that we hope will speak directly to our audience from a place of strength and comfort. In October, we embrace the way that Anna Clyne's music is uniquely attuned to the way we can turn to music and poetry in life's hardest moments. In February, we turn to several of the most celebrated 20th century composers and their personal responses to the cost of war. And in May, we see how the choral music of Arvo Pärt fits within the context of the Estonian Singing Revolution – when an entire nation rose together through the power of song.”
EXO’s season opening concert on October 23, 2026, An Embrace of Sound, is a celebration of the music of Anna Clyne. It features the New York City premiere of Clyne’s Dance for Cello and Orchestra, performed with Inbal Segev, for whom it was written. The program also includes Clyne’s This Midnight Hour, an evocative tour de force for orchestra, which was written in part as a response to the poetry of Charles Baudelaire and Juan Ramón Jiménez. Clyne’s Within Her Arms, written in the wake of the death of her mother, opens the program, with the EXO strings surrounding the audience at the DiMenna Center for Classical Music in a sound embrace.
Music in a Time of War on February 20, 2027 at Roulette Intermedium presents four powerful works that reflect on the cost of war. Internationally acclaimed violist Paul Neubauer performs Herbert Howells’s gorgeous and rarely performed Elegy for viola, string quartet and string orchestra; GRAMMY-nominated pianist Stewart Goodyear performs Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson’s 1973 composition Grass, a reflection on the Vietnam War; and violinist Michelle Barzel Ross performs Vaughan Williams’s The Lark Ascending, orchestrated in the direct aftermath of the First World War, during which Williams served as a stretcher carrier (inspired by his love of the poetry of Walt Whitman). Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings, composed in 1938 as the world marched towards global conflict, completes the program.
EXO has established a deep relationship with the music of Arvo Pärt through previous concerts at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. On May 22, 2027 at the New York Society for Ethical Culture, EXO presents Strength Through Song: Choral Music of Arvo Pärt, a program that pairs the Estonian composer’s profound sacred choral works and works for string quartet, including Estonian folk songs that formed a part of the Estonian Singing Revolution, a movement that helped the small Baltic country face the adversity of occupation by the USSR. The concert will include Pärt’s works Drei Hirtenkinder, Silouan’s Song (for SATB Chorus), Nunc Dimittis, Psalom for String Quartet, Sieben Magnificat-Antiphonen, Most Holy Mother of God, Estonian Lullaby, Fratres for String Quartet, “Prayer after the Kanon” from Kanon Pokajanen, and Da Pacem.
Finally, in Spring 2027 (details TBA), EXO will again present Brad Balliet’s A Field Guide to Imaginary Birds outdoors in Inwood Hill Park. This is an immersive, experiential program designed with families and bird-lovers in mind, in which participants will discover the songs of seven remarkable imaginary birds.
About Experiential Orchestra:
The GRAMMY®️-winning Experiential Orchestra (EXO) brings audiences close to the music by engaging listeners through imaginative, immersive, and interactive concert experiences. Founded by Music Director James Blachly in 2009, EXO’s performances and recordings have been described as “strikingly persuasive” by the San Francisco Chronicle and “immaculate” by Musical America, and have been praised for having “luscious tone and poise” by Classics Today.
EXO was founded to forge transformative concerts in community, where each curated performance is imbued with a generous spirit of celebration, facilitating the exploration of what Blachly calls, “a new experience of sound” by audiences. The orchestra’s performances take place in and outside the concert hall with audiences invited to participate in unorthodox ways. EXO has performed the music of Arvo Pärt in the Temple of Dendur at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, invited audiences to dance during Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring and Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker at National Sawdust, enveloped the audience in concerts at Lincoln Center with audience and orchestra members sitting together, and presented Symphonie fantastique and Petrushka with circus choreography at The Muse in Brooklyn.
Recent highlights have included a concert at The Library of Congress in Washington, DC; an immersive performance of Strauss’s Four Last Songs with cellist Andrew Yee and soprano Sarah Brailey; and an ongoing close relationship with the Arvo Pärt Centre, Michael Pärt, and the Estonian Embassy in yearly presentations of the music of Arvo Pärt. In January 2024, EXO performed Pärt’s masterwork Passio at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, offering audiences the opportunity to experience the concert while reclining on yoga mats. In March 2024, the orchestra co-presented a four-day Julia Perry Centenary Celebration and Festival in New York, coinciding with Perry’s 100th birthday that month.
EXO is known for imaginative and groundbreaking programming that frequently advocates for under-celebrated masterpieces and composers. The orchestra’s world premiere recording of Dame Ethel Smyth’s The Prison (1930) was released on Chandos Records in 2020 to international critical acclaim in The New York Times, Gramophone, The New Yorker, The Guardian, and many other publications. The album won the GRAMMY for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album in 2021 – the first GRAMMY ever awarded for Smyth’s music. EXO’s world premiere recording of Julia Perry’s Violin Concerto, with soloist Curtis Stewart, was released on the Bright Shiny Things label in March 2024 and earned two GRAMMY nominations.
EXO is led by Founder and Music Director James Blachly, General Manager Sandy Choi, Concertmasters Alex Fortes and Henry Wang, Personnel Manager Arthur Sato, and Artistic Advisor Patrick Castillo.
About Founding Music Director James Blachly:
James Blachly is a GRAMMY®-winning conductor dedicated to enriching the concert experience by connecting with audiences in memorable and meaningful ways. James Blachly serves as Music Director of Experiential Orchestra and Johnstown Symphony Orchestra. He is a versatile guest conductor in diverse repertoire for orchestras including New York Philharmonic, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, and WDR Funkhausorchester. A strong supporter of composers of our time, Blachly has commissioned and premiered more than 40 works by composers including Jessie Montgomery, Courtney Bryan, Viet Cuong, Michi Wiancko, Kate Copeland Ettinger, Tommy Daugherty, Patrick Castillo, Brad and Doug Balliett, and many others. In recent seasons, he has collaborated with soloists Daniel Hope, Paul Jacobs, Julia Bullock, Dashon Burton, Michelle Cann, Andrew Yee, Curtis Stewart, Simone Porter, and more. In addition to his work with Experiential Orchestra, with the Johnstown Symphony, Blachly has conducted the orchestra at the Flight 93 Memorial for the 20th Anniversary of 9/11, in a former steel mill in a concert that was featured on Katie Couric’s America Inside Out, at the First Summit Arena at the War Memorial, and in eight seasons the orchestra has increased season ticket sales and annual giving each by more than 50%. In 2021, he received a commendation by the City of Johnstown and the Johnstown chapter of the NAACP. In recent seasons, Blachly has introduced an annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Juneteenth, and youth concert. For more information, visit www.jamesblachly.com.