Nov 1-22: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Presents Four November Concerts including Boston Debut of Poiesis Quartet and Rare US Performance by Eleanor Alberga
Clockwise from top left: Eleanor Alberga, Poiesis Quartet, Jean Rondeau, Lysander Piano Trio.
Press photos available here.
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s Weekend Concert Series
November Performances
November 1: Eleanor Alberga with Green Room Ensemble
November 8: Poiesis Quartet – Boston Debut
November 15: Lysander Piano Trio
November 22: Jean Rondeau, Harpsichord
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum | Calderwood Hall | 25 Evans Way | Boston, MA
Information & Tickets: gardnermuseum.org/music
For press tickets, please contact Christina Jensen at christina@jensenartists.com
BOSTON, MA – The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum continues its Fall 2026 Weekend Concert Series with four performances in November. This ten-concert autumn season curated by Abrams Curator of Music George Steel is held on select Sundays at 1:30 pm and runs from September 13 through November 22, 2026. All concerts take place 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 intimate and intense acoustic environment.
Jamaican-British composer and pianist Eleanor Alberga, one of the most exciting composers writing in the U.K., takes the stage on Sunday, November 1 with the Green Room Ensemble—violinists Thomas Bowes and Nathan Meltzer, violist Jordan Bak, and cellist Sterling Elliott, who are all stars in their own right. The concert is part of the world premiere tour of Alberga’s Piano Quintet No. 2, “Stark,” and will also include her String Quartets Nos. 1, 2, and 3. Born in Kingston, Jamaica, Alberga studied at London’s Royal Academy of Music and was later Musical Director of London Contemporary Dance Theatre. She has been commissioned by the BBC Proms, The Royal Opera, and Covent Garden, among many others. Her Arise, Athena! opened the Last Night of the BBC Proms in 2015, and she was awarded an OBE in 2021 for services to British music. Of the premiere recording of her three string quartets, made by an ensemble led by Thomas Bowes, The Arts Desk reported, “if you’ve ever wondered if good string quartets are still being written, here’s proof that they are.”
Founded only in 2022, the Poiesis Quartet (violinists Sarah Ying Ma and Coco Mi, violist Jasper de Boor, and cellist Drew Dansby) has already become a much-talked-about force in classical music. In their Boston debut on Sunday, November 8, they tackle two landmarks of the repertoire—Ludwig van Beethoven’s final string quartet (a work full of good humor despite having been written in trying circumstances) and Sergei Prokofiev’s String Quartet No. 1. They also bring two recent works: Many Many Cadences, a bright and brilliant work by Sky Macklay, and Tapestry of the Beloved Beatified, a new commission from Jeff Scott, founding horn player of Imani Winds. The Poiesis Quartet won First Prize at the 2025 Banff International String Quartet Competition and was named among the best classical performances of 2025 by The New York Times. In 2026, the quartet also received the Cleveland Quartet Award, one of the most prestigious honors for a young American string quartet.
Formed while its members were students at Juilliard, the Lysander Piano Trio performs on Sunday, November 15, in a concert featuring music by the remarkable Swedish violinist-composer Amanda Maier, who knew and worked with Johannes Brahms and Edvard Grieg. The program also includes works by Grieg and Antonín Dvořák, alongside Two Nguni Dances by South African composer Bongani Ndodana-Breen, whom the Museum has commissioned in the past, and whose sophisticated style draws on sub-Saharan musical traditions, including those of the Xhosa clan, to which he belongs. The Lysander Piano Trio has been praised by The Washington Post for playing with “an uncommon degree of heart-on-the-sleeve emotional frankness.” The trio—violinist Itamar Zorman, pianist Liza Stepanova, and cellist James Kim—won the Concert Artists Guild Victor Elmaleh Competition and the Grand Prize at the Coleman Chamber Ensemble Competition, and takes its name from one of the young lovers in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
The Gardner Museum’s Fall 2026 Weekend Concert Series concludes on Sunday, November 22 with superstar harpsichordist Jean Rondeau—perhaps the world’s most celebrated performer on the instrument—returning to Calderwood Hall for a survey of French Baroque treasures by Louis Couperin, Jean-Philippe Rameau, François Couperin, and Joseph-Nicolas-Pancrace Royer. Rondeau is a global ambassador for the harpsichord, and is at the forefront of bringing the instrument into the 21st century. The Washington Post raves, “He internalizes the music he plays so completely that any interpretive ambivalence or miscalculation is unthinkable. The sincerity and modesty of his delivery are the keys to its power.” At just 21, Rondeau became one of the youngest performers ever to win First Prize at the International Harpsichord Competition in Bruges. In a monumental undertaking, he recorded the complete works for harpsichord by Louis Couperin over ten albums, and has also devoted an entire album to Rameau and Royer, two of the other composers on this program.
George Steel’s music programming for the Museum continues founder and legendary arts patron Isabella Stewart Gardner’s vision of bringing together musicians and audiences for inspiring gatherings. Dating to 1927, the Gardner’s Weekend Concert Series is the longest-running museum music program in the country. Much like Isabella Stewart Gardner did in her time, Steel champions unknown repertoire and embraces new works, creates connections and builds community among musicians, and supports them by presenting them in new endeavors and collaborations. His programming also frequently draws on the history of the Gardner Museum, featuring instruments from the Museum’s collection and music by composers who were associated with its founder. In honoring Isabella Stewart Gardner’s musical legacy, Music at the Gardner remains strongly committed to broadening the repertoire of music presented to include previously overlooked and marginalized composers as well as performers of all backgrounds.
Fall 2026 At-a-Glance Concert Schedule
September 13: Rachel Barton Pine, violin
September 20: Twelfth Night Ensemble
September 27: Chamber Music Celebration
This annual concert celebrates the life and legacy of Scott Nickrenz, first Abrams Curator of Music at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.
October 4: Ivalas Quartet
October 18: ACRONYM: Esther in the Age of Rembrandt
October 25: Celebrating Chrysanthemums
This performance is made possible by the Anne Hawley Fund for Programs.
October 29: Georg Friedrich Haas's in vain performed by Alarm Will Sound, conducted by Alan Pierson – Thursday Night Music
November 1: Eleanor Alberga with Green Room Ensemble
November 8: Poiesis Quartet
November 15: Lysander Piano Trio
November 22: Jean Rondeau, harpsichord
This concert is made possible by the generous support of David Scudder in memory of his wife, Marie Louise Scudder.
All concerts take place on Sundays at 1:30 pm in Calderwood Hall at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (25 Evans Way, Boston, MA), except for the October 29 Thursday Night Music concert which starts at 7 pm.
Ticketing Information
Tickets ($25-$99) are available at gardnermuseum.org/about/music or by calling the Box Office at 617 278 5156. All concert tickets include Museum admission.
About the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum invites you to escape the ordinary in a magical setting where art and community come together to inspire new ways of envisioning our world. Embodying the fearless legacy of its founder, the Museum offers a singular invitation to explore the past through a contemporary lens, creating meaningful encounters with art and joyful connections for all. Modeled after a Venetian palazzo, unforgettable galleries surround a luminous Courtyard and are home to masters such as Rembrandt, Raphael, Titian, Michelangelo, Whistler, and Sargent. The Renzo Piano Wing provides a platform for contemporary artists, musicians, and scholars and serves as an innovative venue where creativity is celebrated in all of its forms.
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum • 25 Evans Way, Boston, MA 02115 • Hours: Open Weekends from 10 am to 5 pm, Weekdays from 11 am to 5 pm, and Thursdays until 9 pm. Closed Tuesdays. • General admission: Adults $25; Seniors $22; Students $15; Free Thursdays from 5 – 9 pm and for members, children 17 and under, and everyone named Isabella • Information: 617 566 1401 • Box Office: 617 278 5156 • www.gardnermuseum.org
Music at the Gardner is supported by the Nora McNeely Hurley Foundation. The Museum thanks its generous concert donors: The Coogan Concert in memory of Peter Weston Coogan; Fitzpatrick Family Concert; James Lawrence Memorial Concert; Scott Nickrenz 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, Joseph Mari, Sallie and Jim McGregor, Nicie and Jay Panetta, and The Aaron Copland Fund for Music, Inc.