Announcing the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s Fall 2025 Weekend Concert Series - 11 Concerts from September through November

Press photos available here.

Announcing the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s
Fall 2025 Weekend Concert Series

 Eleven Performances at Calderwood Hall from September through November

Information & Tickets: gardnermuseum.org/about/music

BOSTON, MA – The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum announces its Fall 2025 Weekend Concert Series, an eleven-concert autumn season curated by Abrams Curator of Music George Steel running from September 13 through November 23, 2025. Opening with two performances of J.S. Bach’s complete Brandenburg Concertos by period-instrument superstars ACRONYM on Saturday, September 13 and Sunday, September 14, the series continues with nine Sunday afternoon concerts (all at 1:30 pm) featuring world-class artists in the Museum’s extraordinary Calderwood Hall—a 300-seat “sonic cube” with three-levels of balconies designed so that 80% of seats are front row, creating a uniquely intense and intentional listening experience.

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

In addition to ACRONYM’s opening performances of Bach’s complete Brandenburg Concertos (September 13 and 14), the fall season includes supergroup Junction Trio in a concert of music by John Zorn including two world premieres (September 21); Catalyst Quartet in music by the legendary Joseph Bologne (Chevalier de Saint-Georges) and newly rediscovered Croatian composer Dora Pejačević (September 28); the Sphinx Virtuosi returning to the Gardner with solo cellist Sterling Elliott (October 5) performing a program celebrating the Americas, including Boston premieres of new works by Quenton Blache and Jessie Montgomery; extraordinary violinist Miranda Cuckson in a program spanning two hundred years of violin music (October 19); Rachel Barton Pine performing on the Museum’s 1770s viola d’amore in music by the instrument’s former owner, composer (and close friend of Isabella Stewart Gardner) Charles Martin Loeffler (October 26); innovative, vanguard flutist Claire Chase in a concert pairing very old and very new music (November 2); renowned mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke in a concert celebrating American song, including the Boston premiere of a new song cycle co-commissioned by the Gardner Museum from composer Jasmine Barnes (November 16); and the Gardner debuts of stellar pianists Clayton Stephenson (November 9) and Michelle Cann (November 23).

“Our Fall season balances debuts by artists giving their first Calderwood performance with return visits by members of the Gardner Museum’s wider musical family,” says George Steel. “I am particularly excited about new works by John Zorn, Tania Léon, Jasmine Barnes, Jessie Montgomery, and Quenton Blanche, as well as the Gardner premieres of some wonderful older music that has been unknown for too long, including music by Dora Pejačevic, José White Lafitte, and Mrs. Gardner’s friend Charles Martin Loeffler.”

Fall 2025 Weekend Concert Series Overview

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

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

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

October opens with the blazing 22-member Sphinx Virtuosi returning to the Gardner on Sunday, October 5, featuring cellist Sterling Elliott in a program spanning the Americas—from biracial Cuban composer and violinist José White Lafitte, to Argentine Alberto Ginastera, to the Mexican composer Manuel Ponce. The concert will include two Boston premieres of newly commissioned works by Quenton Blache and Jessie Montgomery.

A musician’s musician, violinist Miranda Cuckson comes to the Gardner Museum with pianist Blair McMillen on Sunday, October 19 to present a program comprising nearly two hundred years of violin music—from Beethoven’s Sonata in G, Op. 30, No. 3 (1802) to Lili Boulanger’s D'un matin de printemps (1918), to Jamaican-British composer Eleanor Alberga’s The Wild Blue Yonder (1995). The centerpiece of the concert is Prokofiev’s Violin Sonata No. 1 in F minor, Op. 80 (1946), an ideal showcase for Cuckson’s virtuosity and range of expressive colors.

Rachel Barton Pine returns on Sunday, October 26 for a special recital on her own violin and viola d’amore. She will also perform on the Gardner Museum’s extraordinary 18th century viola d’amore, on display in the Yellow Room, last played in the 1980s. This instrument, crafted in the 1770s, was given to Isabella Stewart Gardner in 1903 by composer Charles Martin Loeffler, who was her close friend and central to music programming at the Museum. Pine will perform selections by Vivaldi, Telemann, and Haydn for viola d’amore, as well as two works composed by Loeffler—his Mescolanza “Olla Podrida” and Norske Land. On violin, she will perform Brahms’ Violin Sonata and Sarasate’s Introduction and Tarantella.

On Sunday, November 2, MacArthur Fellow and Harvard Professor, flutist Claire Chase, joined by period instrumentalists—violinist Aisslinn Nosky, cellist Katinka Kleijn, and pianist/harpsichordist Alex Peh—presents a fascinating program blending the old and the new, combining Baroque masterpieces by Marais, J.S. Bach, and Boismortier with new music from the 20th and 21st centuries by Messiaen, Saariaho, Tania León, Marcos Balter, Michael Oesterle, and Dai Fujikura.

Pianist Clayton Stephenson, winner of the 2025 Sphinx Medal and recent Harvard and New England Conservatory graduate, makes his Gardner debut on Sunday, November 9 with a brilliant solo piano program featuring J.S. Bach, Schubert, Albéniz, Stravinsky, and Gershwin. Gramophone magazine raves, “Stephenson is not just a remarkable virtuoso, but a poet, a dramatist and a master story-teller.”

Mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke, quite simply one of America's greatest singers, takes a night off from the global operatic stage on Sunday, November 16 to present a program of American songs, including a Gardner Museum co-commissioned Boston premiere from Jasmine Barnes. Her program with pianist Myra Huang, titled Goin’ Home, features songs written in the United States and by composers who found their home there, in anticipation of the 250th anniversary of the founding of the country in 2026. The program includes Antonín Dvořák’s Goin’ Home, plus the songs of Aaron Copland, Samuel Barber, Leonard Bernstein, H. Leslie Adams, Jennifer Higdon, Carlos Simon, Michael Tilson Thomas, and more.

The Fall 2025 season concludes on Sunday, November 23 with the Gardner debut of pianist Michelle Cann, a two-time GRAMMY® Award winner for her recordings of the music of Florence Price, the first African-American woman to have her music performed by a major symphony orchestra. Cann’s program features dazzling music from pianist-composers, including Price’s Sonata in E minor, as well as three 19th-century showpieces from Romantic greats—Mendelssohn, Liszt, and Chopin. Cann will also perform Joel Thompson’s “My Dungeon Shook” from Three American Preludes, composed in 2020 and inspired by the words of celebrated author and civil rights activist James Baldwin.

Fall 2025 At-a-Glance Concert Schedule 

September 13-14: ACRONYM - The Complete Brandenburg Concertos by J.S. Bach
September 21: Junction Trio Plays John Zorn
September 28: Catalyst String Quartet
October 5: Sphinx Virtuosi with Sterling Elliott, cello
October 19: Miranda Cuckson, violin, and Blair McMillen, piano
October 26: Rachel Barton Pine, violin and viola d'amore
November 2: Claire Chase, flutes, with Aisslinn Nosky, violin, Katinka Kleijn, cello, and Alex Peh, piano and harpsichord

This performance is made possible by the Anne Hawley Fund for Programs.
November 9: Clayton Stephenson, piano

This program is performed in memory of Willona Sinclair.
November 16: Sasha Cooke, mezzo-soprano with Myra Huang, piano

This concert is made possible by the generous support of David Scudder in memory of his wife, Marie Louise Scudder.
November 23: Michelle Cann, piano

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

Ticketing Information

Tickets ($20-$85) go on sale to the general public on Wednesday, August 13 at 10:00 am and are available at gardnermuseum.org/about/music or by calling the Box Office at 617 278 5156. All concert tickets include Museum admission.  

About the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

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

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

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