Announcing the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s Winter/Spring 2026 Weekend Concert Series
Announcing the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s Winter/Spring 2026 Weekend Concert Series
Press photos available here.
Announcing the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s
Winter/Spring 2026 Weekend Concert Series
Fifteen Performances at Calderwood Hall from January through May
Information & Tickets: gardnermuseum.org/about/music
BOSTON, MA – The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum announces its Winter/Spring 2026 Weekend Concert Series, a fifteen-concert season curated by Abrams Curator of Music George Steel running from January 25 through May 17, 2026, 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 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.
The Gardner Museum's Winter/Spring 2026 Weekend Concert Series includes: Rachell Ellen Wong, the first Baroque violinist to receive an Avery Fisher Career Grant, making her Calderwood Hall debut with collaborators from her Twelfth Night Ensemble (January 25); a chamber music program created especially for the Gardner Museum by violinist Romuald Grimbert-Barré, cellist Tommy Mesa, and pianist Albert Cano Smit (February 1); the celebrated Claremont Trio returning with Louise Farrenc's Piano Quintet No. 1 alongside music by Ravel and Shulamit Ran (February 8); the impossibly talented Attacca Quartet performing a Museum-commissioned Boston premiere by David Lang paired with works by Mendelssohn and Bartók (February 22); Boston piano star Gloria Chien joining the young German stars of the Goldmund Quartet for Amy Beach's Piano Quintet alongside music by Haydn and Grażyna Bacewicz (March 1); the great American lutenist Hopkinson Smith in a special 400th anniversary celebration of John Dowland (March 8); Boston's beloved Borromeo String Quartet in Schubert's "Death and the Maiden" and works by Vijay Iyer, Caroline Shaw, and Jessie Montgomery (March 15); longtime Gardner Museum collaborators Castle of Our Skins presenting a portrait concert of violinist-composer Daniel Bernard Roumain (March 29); superstar guitarist Paul Galbraith performing on his remarkable eight-string “Brahms Guitar” (April 5); the return of virtuoso violinist Randall Goosby in a program of music by Beethoven, Debussy, and Amy Beach (April 12); Boston Children's Chorus honoring the legacy of civil rights icon Melnea Cass (April 18); the remarkable Imani Winds in a varied program including music by Simon Shaheen, Stevie Wonder, Valerie Coleman, and Fazil Say (April 19); the Diderot String Quartet performing Haydn and Beethoven on period instruments (April 26); stellar pianist Isata Kanneh-Mason in a thoughtful program including Beethoven's "Moonlight" and "Waldstein" sonatas, Ravel's Gaspard de la nuit, and selections by Dobrinka Tabakova (May 10); and the Renaissance String Quartet (violinists Randall Goosby and Jeremiah Blacklow, violist Jameel Martin, and cellist Daniel Hass) with works by Florence Price, Brahms, and Daniel Hass (May 17).
“I am very excited about our Winter/Spring season in Calderwood Hall,” George Steel says. “Violinist Randall Goosby returns for two concerts: a solo recital and a performance with his group Renaissance String Quartet. We have guitar and lute recitals—Calderwood Hall is the ideal venue for those. And a wonderful range of chamber music: piano quintets from Amy Beach and Louise Farrenc, string quartets from Schubert, Mendelssohn, Haydn, Daniel Bernard Roumain, and more. Please join us for a season of beauty and rediscovery.”
Winter/Spring 2026 Weekend Concert Series Overview
The Winter/Spring 2026 Weekend Concert Series opens on January 25 with Rachell Ellen Wong, the first Baroque violinist ever to receive an Avery Fisher Career Grant, making her overdue Gardner Museum debut in a program of trio sonatas with collaborators from her group, the excellent (and seasonally named) Twelfth Night Ensemble. Wong is a major talent—eloquent, virtuosic, and always musicianly. The program spans the great era of Baroque violin music, from Biber’s Sonata V in F major through Corelli’s celebrated “La Folia” Sonata, Tartini’s diabolical Sonata in G minor (nicknamed “The Devil’s Trill”), J.S. Bach’s Sonata No. 2 in A major for violin and harpsichord, and other gems by Veracini, Royer, and Leclair.
On February 1, violinist Romuald Grimbert-Barré, who comes from a family of exceptional French/Caribbean musicians, presents a program of chamber music created especially for the Gardner Museum, joined by two equally talented colleagues—the Spanish/Dutch pianist Albert Cano Smit and Tommy Mesa, the Cuban American cellist who won the 2025 Avery Fisher Career Grant on the heels of winning the 2023 Sphinx Competition. Their program ranges from Clara Schumann’s Three Romances and Brahms’ Piano Trio No. 3 in C Minor, to Debussy’s Sonata for cello and piano, Lili Boulanger’s D’un soir triste, and Jessie Montgomery’s contemporary Duo for violin and cello.
The celebrated Claremont Trio returns to the Gardner Museum on February 8, joined by violist Rosemary Nelis and bassist Bradley Aikman, for a performance of 19th-century French composer Louise Farrenc’s Piano Quintet No. 1 in A minor, Op. 30. Farrenc, whose music is only now receiving the attention it deserves, was a formidable pianist and composer whose piano quintet stands alongside the finest chamber works of her era. The trio will also take on Ravel’s luscious piano trio and Shulamit Ran’s yearning Soliloquy, which grew out of her work on an operatic adaptation of The Dybbuk by S. An-sky.
The impossibly talented Attacca Quartet returns to Calderwood Hall on February 22, bringing Bartók’s pungent fourth quartet, which mixes Hungarian folk music and modernism with foot-stomping ferocity. Mendelssohn’s Apollonian musicianship will be on display in his elegant String Quartet in E minor. The program is balanced by the Boston premiere of a Museum-commissioned work by David Lang, daisy, from the composer who created his “in-ear opera” true pearl for the Gardner Museum’s Tapestry Room in 2018. Lang’s music continues to surprise and delight with its inventive approaches to texture and form.
Boston piano star Gloria Chien returns to the Gardner Museum on March 1 to join the young German stars of the Goldmund Quartet in composer Amy Beach’s Piano Quintet, one of the finest works by the greatest of Boston’s “Second New England School” of composers. The Goldmunds will offer Haydn’s String Quartet in E-flat major, nicknamed his “Joke” quartet, from his astonishing Opus 33 set of quartets, along with the fourth quartet of Polish mid-century modernist Grażyna Bacewicz. Her music, only now finding a wider audience, balances Baltic intensity and Mendelssohnian wit.
On March 8, the great American lutenist Hopkinson Smith celebrates the life and music of John Dowland, the great Elizabethan songwriter and performer. This concert, celebrating the 400th anniversary of Dowland’s death in 1626, will be built around lute transcriptions of Dowland’s celebrated Lachrimae Pavanes, a set of exquisite variations on his own song, Flow My Tears, one of the supreme examples of glorious Tudor musical melancholy. Smith’s artistry and deep understanding of this repertoire make him the ideal guide to Dowland’s world. This is a special event not to be missed.
Boston’s beloved Borromeo String Quartet pays a visit to the Gardner Museum on March 15 with a program built around Schubert’s monumental “Death and the Maiden” quartet, one of his supreme late masterpieces and a paragon of the Romantic spirit. The Borromeos also bring a quartet by jazz pianist and composer Vijay Iyer, who is Harvard’s Franklin D. and Florence Rosenblatt Professor of the Arts and a MacArthur Fellow. Nicholas Kitchen has arranged a pair of preludes and fugues from Bach and Shostakovich, while Entr’acte by Museum-favorite Caroline Shaw and Jessie Montgomery’s Source Code round out this adventurous and eclectic program that showcases the quartet’s remarkable range.
The Gardner’s longtime collaborators, Castle of Our Skins, perform a portrait concert on March 29 of violinist, composer, and musical firebrand Daniel Bernard Roumain, joined by the composer himself on electric violin along with Val-Inc as sound chemist. This concert includes three string quartets from Roumain’s cycle of musical portraits of major Black figures: String Quartet No. 1, “X” (1993); String Quartet No. 2, “King” (2001); and String Quartet No. 4, “Angelou” (2004). Roumain’s music thrillingly mixes classical American music, jazz, and hip-hop, all transformed through his own unique voice. His quartets are powerful testimonies to the lives and legacies of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Maya Angelou.
On April 5, the Gardner Museum presents superstar Paul Galbraith, one of the great guitarists of our time and a superb interpreter. With the music of J.S. Bach and Albéniz at the heart of his program, Galbraith will perform on his remarkable eight-string “Brahms Guitar,” which he holds like a cello. His instrument and his artistry are sui generis. There is simply no one else doing what Galbraith does. The program ranges from Dowland’s Elizabethan gems through J.S. Bach’s French Suites and Partitas, to a sonata by Haydn, Albéniz’s masterpieces Suite Española and España, Ravel’s Menuet sur le nom d’Haydn, and Lennox Berkeley’s Quatre pièces. There is no better place to hear Galbraith’s miraculous playing than in the superb acoustics of Calderwood Hall.
Virtuoso violinist Randall Goosby returns on April 12 with pianist Zhu Wang for an intimate recital of epic music. Two major sonatas bookend the program: Debussy’s elusive and gorgeous sonata is paired with Beethoven’s sunny F major essay in the form. The concert also includes Southland Sketches by Harry Burleigh, who was key in forging a quintessential American musical language, modifying the gorgeous modal inflections of spirituals with the chromatic ambiguities of Wagner’s harmony. Romance by Boston’s Amy Beach, the best of the Second New England School of composers, gorgeously drinks from a similar Wagnerian well. Dvořák’s Four Romantic Pieces provide a bridge between these worlds, showing how Romanticism and folk traditions can be seamlessly interwoven.
Boston Children’s Chorus honors the remarkable legacy of Melnea Cass, the “First Lady of Roxbury,” on April 18. A tireless advocate for justice, Cass championed women’s suffrage, Black employment, early childhood education, care for the elderly, and civil rights leadership as president of Boston’s NAACP. Her lifelong commitment to equity shaped generations in Boston and her influence continues to resonate today. Audiences are invited to celebrate the enduring impact of this powerful yet often unsung Boston icon through a program of music that reflects her spirit of activism, community, and hope.
The celebrated wind quintet Imani Winds returns to the Gardner Museum on April 19 with a typically wide-ranging program showcasing works by composer-performers. Including the great American ‘oud player Simon Shaheen, Turkish pianist Fazil Say, the nonpareil Stevie Wonder, and Imani’s own Valerie Coleman, this program demonstrates the quintet’s commitment to expanding the wind repertoire with music that crosses cultural and stylistic boundaries. From Wonder’s jubilant Overjoyed to Coleman’s evocative Red Clay & Mississippi Delta, from Finnish composer Kalevi Aho’s substantial Wind Quintet No. 1 to Paquito D’Rivera’s A Little Cuban Waltz, this wonderful program is full of color and invention.
Four superlative musicians (all colleagues in the Baroque ensemble ACRONYM) come together as the Diderot String Quartet on April 26 to perform crowning glories of the Classical era on period instruments with gut strings. Haydn’s Opus 20 “Sun” Quartets may be his finest works for string quartet. These players will know how to bring out the contrapuntal splendors of Haydn’s writing—the second quartet concludes with a witty fugue on four subjects. The program is completed by Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 6 in B-flat major, the last of his Opus 18 set, showing the younger composer already pushing at the boundaries Haydn had established.
The stellar pianist member of the great English Kanneh-Mason family of musicians, Isata Kanneh-Mason, takes a moment away from the concerto stage on May 10 to bring this thoughtfully constructed program to Calderwood Hall: two of Beethoven’s best-loved sonatas, the “Moonlight” and the “Waldstein;” Ravel’s astonishing three-movement tour-de-force Gaspard de la nuit, inspired by the dark poetry of Aloysius Bertrand; and pair of shorter works, Halo and Nocturne, by Bulgarian-British composer Dobrinka Tabakova.
The Gardner Museum is thrilled and fortunate to present the Renaissance String Quartet on May 17, for the closing performance of the Winter/Spring 2026 Weekend Concert Series. These four terrific musicians (violinists Randall Goosby and Jeremiah Blacklow, violist Jameel Martin, and cellist Daniel Hass) find time in their busy touring lives as soloists and chamber musicians to perform together as a quartet. Brahms’ String Quartet No. 2 in A minor anchors the program with its characteristic blend of passion and intellectual rigor. The concert also includes the great American composer Florence Price’s String Quartet No. 1 in G Major. Price had a special gift for quartet writing; the exquisite and eloquent slow movement of her first quartet shows her love of American song, especially Black spirituals. The program closes with String Quartet No. 1, “Love and Levity,” by Daniel Hass, the cellist in the Renaissance String Quartet. He describes the piece as “Beethovenian in its thematic and structural tautness, but even more so in its motion towards excess.”
Winter/Spring 2026 At-a-Glance Concert Schedule
January 25: Twelfth Night Ensemble
February 1: Romuald Grimbert-Barré, violin; Tommy Mesa, cello; Albert Cano Smit, piano
February 8: Claremont Trio
February 22: Attacca Quartet
March 1: Goldmund Quartet with Gloria Chien, piano
March 8: Hopkinson Smith, lute
March 15: Borromeo String Quartet
March 29: Castle of Our Skins with Daniel Bernard Roumain, electric violin and Val-Inc, sound chemist
April 5: Paul Galbraith, guitar
April 12: Randall Goosby, violin with Zhu Wang, piano
April 18: Boston Children’s Chorus: The Road She Paved
April 19: Imani Winds
April 26: Diderot String Quartet
May 10: Isata Kanneh-Mason, piano
May 17: Renaissance String Quartet
All concerts take place on Sundays at 1:30 pm (except for the Boston Children’s Chorus which performs on Saturday, April 18 at 2pm) in Calderwood Hall at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (25 Evans Way, Boston, MA).
Ticketing Information
Tickets are available at gardnermuseum.org/about/music or by calling the Box Office at 617 278 5156. For additional information including about accessibility, please contact boxoffice@isgm.org.
About the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum invites you to escape the ordinary in a magical setting where art and community come together to inspire new ways of envisioning our world. Embodying the fearless legacy of its founder, the Museum offers a singular invitation to explore the past through a contemporary lens, creating meaningful encounters with art and joyful connections for all. Modeled after a Venetian palazzo, unforgettable galleries surround a luminous Courtyard and are home to masters such as Rembrandt, Raphael, Titian, Michelangelo, Whistler, and Sargent. The Renzo Piano Wing provides a platform for contemporary artists, musicians, and scholars and serves as an innovative venue where creativity is celebrated in all of its forms.
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum • 25 Evans Way, Boston, MA 02115 • Hours: Open Weekends from 10 am to 5 pm, Weekdays from 11am to 5 pm and Thursdays until 9 pm. Closed Tuesdays. • Admission: Adults $22; Seniors $20; Students $15; Free for members, children under 18, everyone on their birthday, and all named “Isabella” • $2 off admission with a same-day Museum of Fine Arts, Boston ticket • For information 617 566 1401 • Box Office 617 278 5156 • www.gardnermuseum.org
Music at the Gardner is supported by 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.
Dec 3: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Presents Holiday Music in the Courtyard
Dec 3: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Presents Holiday Music in the Courtyard
George Steel leads Holiday Music in the Courtyard. Photo by Michael Blanchard, available here.
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Presents
Holiday Music in the Courtyard 2025
Featuring Vox Vocal Ensemble and the American Brass Quintet
And Announcing Special Guests the Boston Arts Academy Spirituals Ensemble
Wednesday, December 3, 2025 from 6–9 pm
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum | Courtyard
25 Evans Way | Boston, MA
Tickets: www.gardnermuseum.org/calendar/holiday-music-courtyard-2025
For press tickets, please contact Christina Jensen at christina@jensenartists.com
BOSTON, MA – The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum reimagines the traditional holiday concert with its Holiday Music in the Courtyard celebration, from 6–9pm on Wednesday, December 3, 2025. The performance will take place in the Gardner Museum’s famed Courtyard, while guests are invited to watch from the surrounding galleries, strolling through the Museum to take in the music from every angle. (Please note, this is not a seated concert.)
Led by George Steel, Abrams Curator of Music, this immersive evening will showcase music from across four centuries, celebrating a variety of cultures’ winter traditions. The performance features the acclaimed Vox Vocal Ensemble and the all-star American Brass Quintet, with opportunities for everyone to sing along with familiar carols.
The music and sing-along will run from 7–8 pm, and ticket holders can come early at 6 pm or stay late until 9 pm to enjoy the Museum galleries, shop at Gift at the Gardner, or purchase treats from Café G’s holiday menu of small plates and cocktails/mocktails.
Visible from virtually any gallery in the Palace, the Courtyard is the heart and soul of the Gardner Museum, with changing horticultural displays throughout the year. In December, the festive garden features dark forest greens and shades of red and silver including masses of flowering jade trees, silver dusty miller, green aloe, and the dark red winter blooms of amaryllis, creating a magical setting for Holiday Music in the Courtyard.
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.
Ticketing Information
Tickets ($20-$85) are available at gardnermuseum.org/about/music or by calling the Box Office at 617 278 5156. All concert tickets include Museum admission.
About the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum invites you to escape the ordinary in a magical setting where art and community come together to inspire new ways of envisioning our world. Embodying the fearless legacy of its founder, the Museum offers a singular invitation to explore the past through a contemporary lens, creating meaningful encounters with art and joyful connections for all. Modeled after a Venetian palazzo, unforgettable galleries surround a luminous Courtyard and are home to masters such as Rembrandt, Raphael, Titian, Michelangelo, Whistler, and Sargent. The Renzo Piano Wing provides a platform for contemporary artists, musicians, and scholars and serves as an innovative venue where creativity is celebrated in all of its forms.
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum • 25 Evans Way, Boston, MA 02115 • Hours: Open Weekends from 10 am to 5 pm, Weekdays from 11am to 5 pm and Thursdays until 9 pm, Closed Tuesdays. • Admission: Adults $22; Seniors $20; Students $15; Free for members, children 17 and under, everyone on their birthday, and all named “Isabella” • $2 off admission with a same-day Museum of Fine Arts, Boston ticket • For information 617 566 1401 • Box Office 617 278 5156 • www.gardnermuseum.org
Music at the Gardner is supported by Nora McNeely Hurley / Manitou Fund. The Museum thanks its generous concert donors: The Coogan Concert in memory of Peter Weston Coogan; Fitzpatrick Family Concert; James Lawrence Memorial Concert; Alford P. Rudnick Memorial Concert; David Scudder in memory of his wife, Marie Louise Scudder; Wendy Shattuck Young Artist Concert; and Willona Sinclair Memorial Concert. The piano is dedicated as the Alex d’Arbeloff Steinway. The harpsichord was generously donated by Dr. Robert Barstow in memory of Marion Huse, and its care is endowed in memory of Dr. Barstow by The Barstow Fund. Music at the Gardner is also supported in part by Barbara and Amos Hostetter, Nicie and Jay Panetta, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council, which is supported by the state of Massachusetts and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Nov 23: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Presents Pianist Michelle Cann
Nov 23: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Presents Pianist Michelle Cann
Photo by Titilayo Ayangade. Press photos available here.
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Presents Pianist Michelle Cann
Sunday, November 23, 2025 at 1:30 pm
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum | Calderwood Hall
25 Evans Way | Boston, MA
Tickets: www.gardnermuseum.org/calendar/michelle-cann-11.23.25
For press tickets, please contact Christina Jensen at christina@jensenartists.com
BOSTON, MA – The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum concludes its Fall 2025 Weekend Concert Series with the Gardner debut of pianist Michelle Cann, a two-time GRAMMY® Award winner, on Sunday, November 23, 2025 at 1:30 pm. Michelle Cann is lauded as “exquisite” by The Philadelphia Inquirer and “a pianist of sterling artistry” by Gramophone. Her recent engagements include appearances with Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Orquestra Sinfônica Municipal de São Paulo, and more.
Cann’s program for her first appearance at the Gardner Museum features dazzling music from pianist-composers, including Florence Price’s Sonata in E minor, as well as three 19th-century showpieces from Romantic greats—Felix Mendelssohn’s Fantasie in F-sharp minor, Op. 28; Franz Liszt’s Mephisto Waltz No. 1, S. 514; and Frédéric Chopin’s Ballade No. 3 in A-flat major, Op. 47. 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 as well as a traditional spiritual famously quoted by Martin Luther King, Jr. in his "I Have a Dream" speech.
Michelle Cann is 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. Recognized as a leading interpreter of the piano music of Price, Cann performed the New York City premiere of Price’s Piano Concerto in One Movement with The Dream Unfinished Orchestra in 2016 and the Philadelphia premiere with The Philadelphia Orchestra and Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin in 2021. Her recording of the concerto with the New York Youth Symphony won a GRAMMY® Award in 2023 for Best Orchestral Performance. She also won a GRAMMY® Award in 2025 for Beyond the Years: Unpublished Songs of Florence Price, recorded with soprano Karen Slack, which features 19 unpublished songs composed by Price. Her acclaimed debut solo album Revival, featuring music by Price and Margaret Bonds, was released in May 2023 on the Curtis Studio label. Cann is a recipient of the Sphinx Medal of Excellence and the Andrew Wolf Chamber Music Award. She is on the faculty of Curtis Institute of Music and the Manhattan School of Music.
The Fall 2025 Weekend Concert Series is an eleven-concert autumn season curated by Abrams Curator of Music George Steel running from September 13 through November 23, 2025, which features world-class artists in the Museum’s extraordinary Calderwood Hall—a 300-seat “sonic cube” with three levels of balconies designed so that 80% of seats are front row, creating a uniquely intense and intentional listening experience.
George Steel’s programming for the Fall 2025 Weekend Concert Series continues founder and legendary arts patron Isabella Stewart Gardner’s vision of bringing together musicians and audiences for inspiring gatherings. Dating to 1927, the Gardner’s Weekend Concert Series is the longest running museum music program in the country. Much like Isabella Stewart Gardner did in her time, Steel champions unknown repertoire and embraces new works, creates connections and builds community among musicians, and supports them by presenting them in new endeavors and collaborations. His programming also frequently draws on the history of the Gardner Museum, featuring instruments from the Museum’s collection and music by composers who were associated with its founder. In honoring Isabella Stewart Gardner’s musical legacy, Music at the Gardner remains strongly committed to broadening the repertoire of music presented to include previously overlooked and marginalized composers as well as performers of all backgrounds.
Fall 2025 At-a-Glance Concert Schedule
September 13-14: ACRONYM - The Complete Brandenburg Concertos by J.S. Bach
September 21: Junction Trio Plays John Zorn
September 28: Catalyst String Quartet
October 5: Sphinx Virtuosi with Sterling Elliott, cello
October 19: Miranda Cuckson, violin, and Blair McMillen, piano
October 26: Rachel Barton Pine, violin and viola d'amore
November 2: Claire Chase, flutes, with Aisslinn Nosky, violin, Katinka Kleijn, cello, and Alex Peh, piano and harpsichord
This performance is made possible by the Anne Hawley Fund for Programs.
November 9: Clayton Stephenson, piano
This program is performed in memory of Willona Sinclair.
November 16: Sasha Cooke, mezzo-soprano with Myra Huang, piano
This concert is made possible by the generous support of David Scudder in memory of his wife, Marie Louise Scudder.
November 23: Michelle Cann, piano
All concerts take place on Sundays at 1:30 pm (except ACRONYM, which performs on both Saturday and Sunday at 1:30 pm) in Calderwood Hall at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (25 Evans Way, Boston, MA).
Ticketing Information
Tickets ($20-$85) are available at gardnermuseum.org/about/music or by calling the Box Office at 617 278 5156. All concert tickets include Museum admission.
About the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum invites you to escape the ordinary in a magical setting where art and community come together to inspire new ways of envisioning our world. Embodying the fearless legacy of its founder, the Museum offers a singular invitation to explore the past through a contemporary lens, creating meaningful encounters with art and joyful connections for all. Modeled after a Venetian palazzo, unforgettable galleries surround a luminous Courtyard and are home to masters such as Rembrandt, Raphael, Titian, Michelangelo, Whistler, and Sargent. The Renzo Piano Wing provides a platform for contemporary artists, musicians, and scholars and serves as an innovative venue where creativity is celebrated in all of its forms.
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum • 25 Evans Way, Boston, MA 02115 • Hours: Open Weekends from 10 am to 5 pm, Weekdays from 11am to 5 pm and Thursdays until 9 pm, Closed Tuesdays. • Admission: Adults $22; Seniors $20; Students $15; Free for members, children 17 and under, everyone on their birthday, and all named “Isabella” • $2 off admission with a same-day Museum of Fine Arts, Boston ticket • For information 617 566 1401 • Box Office 617 278 5156 • www.gardnermuseum.org
Music at the Gardner is supported by Nora McNeely Hurley / Manitou Fund. The Museum thanks its generous concert donors: The Coogan Concert in memory of Peter Weston Coogan; Fitzpatrick Family Concert; James Lawrence Memorial Concert; Alford P. Rudnick Memorial Concert; David Scudder in memory of his wife, Marie Louise Scudder; Wendy Shattuck Young Artist Concert; and Willona Sinclair Memorial Concert. The piano is dedicated as the Alex d’Arbeloff Steinway. The harpsichord was generously donated by Dr. Robert Barstow in memory of Marion Huse, and its care is endowed in memory of Dr. Barstow by The Barstow Fund. Music at the Gardner is also supported in part by Barbara and Amos Hostetter, Nicie and Jay Panetta, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council, which is supported by the state of Massachusetts and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Nov 16: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum presents Sasha Cooke in Of Thee I Sing, including Boston Premiere of American Lament by Jasmine Barnes
Nov 16: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum presents Sasha Cooke in Of Thee I Sing, including Boston Premiere of American Lament by Jasmine Barnes
Photo by Stephanie Girard. Press photos available here.
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
Presents Sasha Cooke, mezzo-soprano with Myra Huang, piano
Featuring the Boston Premiere of American Lament by Jasmine Barnes
Co-Commissioned by the Gardner Museum
Sunday, November 16, 2025 at 1:30 pm
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum | Calderwood Hall
25 Evans Way | Boston, MA
Tickets: www.gardnermuseum.org/calendar/sasha-cooke-11.16.25
For press tickets, please contact Christina Jensen at christina@jensenartists.com
BOSTON, MA – The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum continues its Fall 2025 Weekend Concert Series, presenting mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke, quite simply one of America's greatest singers, on Sunday, November 16, 2025 at 1:30 pm. Cooke’s program with pianist Myra Huang, titled Of Thee I Sing, celebrates the rich tapestry of American song while offering a nuanced exploration of the still-unrealized American dream.
The concert features music by iconic 20th and 21st century American composers such as Leonard Bernstein, George Gershwin, Samuel Barber, Aaron Copland, Michael Tilson Thomas, and Stephen Sondheim, as well as émigré composers Alma Mahler and Erich Wolfgang Korngold. Through this poignant juxtaposition, the recital explores themes of identity, wandering, and renewal. From folk-rooted melodies to contemporary reflections, Cooke and Huang bring each work vividly to life, illuminating the many paths that lead toward a sense of home.
Of Thee I Sing includes the Boston premiere of a new song cycle called American Lament by Emmy Award-winning composer Jasmine Barnes. Co-commissioned by the Gardner Museum and New York’s Park Avenue Armory for Sasha Cooke, American Lament draws text from the famous Langston Hughes poem “Let America be America Again.” In this evocative new work, Barnes depicts the journey of being a “dreamer” in the past and present of the United States—the promises made and forgotten, the yearning for justice, and a steadfast belief in the possibility of a more free and inclusive nation. Jasmine Barnes’s music has been called "beautifully lyrical" by The Telegraph and “the best possible blend of Billie Holiday and Claude Debussy” by The Boston Globe.
Two-time GRAMMY® Award-winning mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke just finished her third summer as Co-Director of the Lehrer Vocal Institute at the Music Academy of the West, and was featured in summer 2025 performances at Ravinia, Grand Tetons, and Saratoga Performing Arts Center. She is seen as one of today’s most compelling and versatile vocalists. She has performed on the world’s leading stages, from the Metropolitan Opera to San Francisco Opera, Wigmore Hall, and Carnegie Hall—and with over eighty orchestras across the globe. A dedicated champion of American music and new voices, she has premiered dozens of works by today’s most influential composers and earned critical acclaim for her imaginative and deeply human interpretations.
Cooke says, “Of Thee I Sing is full of music that captures the beauty, complexity, and spirit of America—from timeless classics to powerful new works, especially Jasmine Barnes’ American Lament. I hope each song invites listeners to reflect and connect in new ways to their own American experience and what America means, then and now. Sharing this journey with Myra and our audiences feels like a celebration of where we’ve been and where we’re going.”
The Fall 2025 Weekend Concert Series is an eleven-concert autumn season curated by Abrams Curator of Music George Steel running from September 13 through November 23, 2025, which features world-class artists in the Museum’s extraordinary Calderwood Hall—a 300-seat “sonic cube” with three levels of balconies designed so that 80% of seats are front row, creating a uniquely intense and intentional listening experience.
George Steel’s programming for the Fall 2025 Weekend Concert Series continues founder and legendary arts patron Isabella Stewart Gardner’s vision of bringing together musicians and audiences for inspiring gatherings. Dating to 1927, the Gardner’s Weekend Concert Series is the longest running museum music program in the country. Much like Isabella Stewart Gardner did in her time, Steel champions unknown repertoire and embraces new works, creates connections and builds community among musicians, and supports them by presenting them in new endeavors and collaborations. His programming also frequently draws on the history of the Gardner Museum, featuring instruments from the Museum’s collection and music by composers who were associated with its founder. In honoring Isabella Stewart Gardner’s musical legacy, Music at the Gardner remains strongly committed to broadening the repertoire of music presented to include previously overlooked and marginalized composers as well as performers of all backgrounds.
Fall 2025 At-a-Glance Concert Schedule
September 13-14: ACRONYM - The Complete Brandenburg Concertos by J.S. Bach
September 21: Junction Trio Plays John Zorn
September 28: Catalyst String Quartet
October 5: Sphinx Virtuosi with Sterling Elliott, cello
October 19: Miranda Cuckson, violin, and Blair McMillen, piano
October 26: Rachel Barton Pine, violin and viola d'amore
November 2: Claire Chase, flutes, with Aisslinn Nosky, violin, Katinka Kleijn, cello, and Alex Peh, piano and harpsichord
This performance is made possible by the Anne Hawley Fund for Programs.
November 9: Clayton Stephenson, piano
This program is performed in memory of Willona Sinclair.
November 16: Sasha Cooke, mezzo-soprano with Myra Huang, piano
This concert is made possible by the generous support of David Scudder in memory of his wife, Marie Louise Scudder.
November 23: Michelle Cann, piano
All concerts take place on Sundays at 1:30 pm (except ACRONYM, which performs on both Saturday and Sunday at 1:30 pm) in Calderwood Hall at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (25 Evans Way, Boston, MA).
Ticketing Information
Tickets ($20-$85) are available at gardnermuseum.org/about/music or by calling the Box Office at 617 278 5156. All concert tickets include Museum admission.
About the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum invites you to escape the ordinary in a magical setting where art and community come together to inspire new ways of envisioning our world. Embodying the fearless legacy of its founder, the Museum offers a singular invitation to explore the past through a contemporary lens, creating meaningful encounters with art and joyful connections for all. Modeled after a Venetian palazzo, unforgettable galleries surround a luminous Courtyard and are home to masters such as Rembrandt, Raphael, Titian, Michelangelo, Whistler, and Sargent. The Renzo Piano Wing provides a platform for contemporary artists, musicians, and scholars and serves as an innovative venue where creativity is celebrated in all of its forms.
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum • 25 Evans Way, Boston, MA 02115 • Hours: Open Weekends from 10 am to 5 pm, Weekdays from 11am to 5 pm and Thursdays until 9 pm, Closed Tuesdays. • Admission: Adults $22; Seniors $20; Students $15; Free for members, children 17 and under, everyone on their birthday, and all named “Isabella” • $2 off admission with a same-day Museum of Fine Arts, Boston ticket • For information 617 566 1401 • Box Office 617 278 5156 • www.gardnermuseum.org
Music at the Gardner is supported by Nora McNeely Hurley / Manitou Fund. The Museum thanks its generous concert donors: The Coogan Concert in memory of Peter Weston Coogan; Fitzpatrick Family Concert; James Lawrence Memorial Concert; Alford P. Rudnick Memorial Concert; David Scudder in memory of his wife, Marie Louise Scudder; Wendy Shattuck Young Artist Concert; and Willona Sinclair Memorial Concert. The piano is dedicated as the Alex d’Arbeloff Steinway. The harpsichord was generously donated by Dr. Robert Barstow in memory of Marion Huse, and its care is endowed in memory of Dr. Barstow by The Barstow Fund. Music at the Gardner is also supported in part by Barbara and Amos Hostetter, Nicie and Jay Panetta, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council, which is supported by the state of Massachusetts and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Oct 26: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Presents Rachel Barton Pine Performing on Violin and the Museum's Historic Viola d’Amore
Oct 26: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Presents Rachel Barton Pine Performing on Violin and the Museum's Historic Viola d’Amore
Photo of Rachel Barton Pine by Lisa Marie Mazzucco. Press photos available here.
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Presents Rachel Barton Pine
Performing on Violin and Viola d’Amore
Sunday, October 26, 2025 at 1:30pm
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum | Calderwood Hall
25 Evans Way | Boston, MA
Information: gardnermuseum.org/calendar/rachel-barton-pine-10.26.25
“Striking and charismatic . . . she demonstrated a bravura technique and soulful musicianship.” — The New York Times
For press tickets, please contact Christina Jensen at christina@jensenartists.com
BOSTON, MA – The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum continues its Fall 2025 Weekend Concert Series, presenting Rachel Barton Pine, described by The Washington Post as "display[ing] a power and confidence that puts her in the top echelon,” on Sunday, October 26 at 1:30pm. Pine will give a very special recital with pianist Matthew Hagle, performing on her own violin and viola d’amore, as well as on the Gardner Museum’s extraordinary 18th century viola d’amore, which she tested at the Museum last year.
The Gardner Museum’s viola d’amore, which was last played in concert in the 1980s, was crafted in the 1770s by Tomaso Eberle in Naples, Italy, and is on display in the Yellow Room. The instrument 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. Championed by composers as varied as Vivaldi, Haydn, and Bernstein, the viola d’amore developed from roots in Middle Eastern music. The Museum’s instrument has seven bowed strings and additional sympathetic strings, which add a silvery glow to its sound.
On October 26, Rachel Barton 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’s Violin Sonata and Sarasate’s Introduction and Tarantella.
With an infectious joy in music-making and a passion for connecting historical research to performance, Rachel Barton Pine transforms audiences’ experiences of classical music. Her discography consists of over 40 recordings, including 25 for Cedille Records, and her many recital appearances have included Davos, the Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, Marlboro, Ravinia, Salzburg, Bravo! Vail, and Wolf Trap. She performs regularly with world’s foremost orchestras, including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Camerata Salzburg, and the Chicago, Dallas, Atlanta, Baltimore, Detroit, and Vienna Symphony Orchestras.
Pine began playing the viola d’amore in 2007. "Reading about the history of the great violinists of the past, going back to the 1700s, I was struck by the fact that the greatest virtuosos of their era were also known as great players of the viola d'amore as well," she said in an interview with Violinist.com. In 2015, she released a widely praised album, Vivaldi’s Complete Viola d’Amore Concertos, performing on the complex instrument. Classics Today reported, “When played with perfect intonation such as we might expect from Rachel Barton Pine, the result is captivatingly mellow and expressive, even in virtuoso passages.”
A multiinstrumentalist, in addition to the violin and viola d’amore, Rachel Barton Pine also plays Renaissance violin, Baroque violin, the Medieval rebec, electric violin, and more.
The Isabella Stewart Gardner’s Fall 2025 Weekend Concert Series is an eleven-concert autumn season curated by Abrams Curator of Music George Steel running from September 13 through November 23, 2025, which features world-class artists in the Museum’s extraordinary Calderwood Hall—a 300-seat “sonic cube” with three levels of balconies designed so that 80% of seats are front row, creating a uniquely intense and intentional listening experience.
George Steel’s programming continues founder and legendary arts patron Isabella Stewart Gardner’s vision of bringing together musicians and audiences for inspiring gatherings. Dating to 1927, the Gardner’s Weekend Concert Series is the longest running museum music program in the country. Much like Isabella Stewart Gardner did in her time, Steel champions unknown repertoire and embraces new works, creates connections and builds community among musicians, and supports them by presenting them in new endeavors and collaborations. His programming also frequently draws on the history of the Gardner Museum, featuring instruments from the Museum’s collection and music by composers who were associated with its founder. In honoring Isabella Stewart Gardner’s musical legacy, Music at the Gardner remains strongly committed to broadening the repertoire of music presented to include previously overlooked and marginalized composers as well as performers of all backgrounds.
Fall 2025 At-a-Glance Concert Schedule
September 13-14: ACRONYM - The Complete Brandenburg Concertos by J.S. Bach
September 21: Junction Trio Plays John Zorn
September 28: Catalyst String Quartet
October 5: Sphinx Virtuosi with Sterling Elliott, cello
October 19: Miranda Cuckson, violin, and Blair McMillen, piano
October 26: Rachel Barton Pine, violin and viola d'amore
November 2: Claire Chase, flutes, with Aisslinn Nosky, violin, Katinka Kleijn, cello, and Alex Peh, piano and harpsichord
This performance is made possible by the Anne Hawley Fund for Programs.
November 9: Clayton Stephenson, piano
This program is performed in memory of Willona Sinclair.
November 16: Sasha Cooke, mezzo-soprano with Myra Huang, piano
This concert is made possible by the generous support of David Scudder in memory of his wife, Marie Louise Scudder.
November 23: Michelle Cann, piano
All concerts take place on Sundays at 1:30 pm (except ACRONYM, which performs on both Saturday and Sunday at 1:30 pm) in Calderwood Hall at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (25 Evans Way, Boston, MA).
Ticketing Information
Tickets ($20-$85) are available at gardnermuseum.org/about/music or by calling the Box Office at 617 278 5156. All concert tickets include Museum admission.
About the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum invites you to escape the ordinary in a magical setting where art and community come together to inspire new ways of envisioning our world. Embodying the fearless legacy of its founder, the Museum offers a singular invitation to explore the past through a contemporary lens, creating meaningful encounters with art and joyful connections for all. Modeled after a Venetian palazzo, unforgettable galleries surround a luminous Courtyard and are home to masters such as Rembrandt, Raphael, Titian, Michelangelo, Whistler, and Sargent. The Renzo Piano wing provides a platform for contemporary artists, musicians, and scholars and serves as an innovative venue where creativity is celebrated in all of its forms.
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum • 25 Evans Way, Boston, MA 02115 • Hours: Open Weekends from 10 am to 5 pm, Weekdays from 11am to 5 pm and Thursdays until 9 pm. Closed Tuesdays. • Admission: Adults $22; Seniors $20; Students $15; Free for members, children under 18, everyone on their birthday, and all named “Isabella” • $2 off admission with a same-day Museum of Fine Arts, Boston ticket • For information 617 566 1401 • Box Office 617 278 5156 • www.gardnermuseum.org
Music at the Gardner is supported by Nora McNeely Hurley / Manitou Fund. The Museum thanks its generous concert donors: The Coogan Concert in memory of Peter Weston Coogan; Fitzpatrick Family Concert; James Lawrence Memorial Concert; Alford P. Rudnick Memorial Concert; David Scudder in memory of his wife, Marie Louise Scudder; Wendy Shattuck Young Artist Concert; and Willona Sinclair Memorial Concert. The piano is dedicated as the Alex d’Arbeloff Steinway. The harpsichord was generously donated by Dr. Robert Barstow in memory of Marion Huse, and its care is endowed in memory of Dr. Barstow by The Barstow Fund. Music at the Gardner is also supported in part by Barbara and Amos Hostetter, Nicie and Jay Panetta, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council, which is supported by the state of Massachusetts and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s Weekend Concert Series in October - Sphinx Virtuosi with Sterling Elliott, Miranda Cuckson and Blair McMillen, Rachel Barton Pine
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s Weekend Concert Series in October - Sphinx Virtuosi with Sterling Elliott, Miranda Cuckson and Blair McMillen, Rachel Barton Pine
Clockwise from top left: Sphinx Virtuosi, Sterling Elliott, Blair McMillen, Miranda Cuckson, Rachel Barton Pine.
Press photos available here.
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s Weekend Concert Series
October Performances
October 5: Sphinx Virtuosi with Sterling Elliott
October 19: Miranda Cuckson and Blair McMillen
October 26: Rachel Barton Pine
“The museum’s handsome Calderwood Hall remains one of the city’s most uniquely intimate and acoustically stunning venues." – A.Z. Madonna, The Boston Globe
Information & Tickets: gardnermuseum.org/about/music
For press tickets, please contact Christina Jensen at christina@jensenartists.com
BOSTON, MA – The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum continues its Fall 2025 Weekend Concert Series with three performances in October. This eleven-concert autumn season curated by Abrams Curator of Music George Steel runs from September 13 through November 23, 2025, and features world-class artists in the Museum’s extraordinary Calderwood Hall—a 300-seat “sonic cube” with three levels of balconies designed so that 80% of seats are front row, creating a uniquely intense and intentional listening experience.
On Sunday, October 5 at 1:30 pm, the blazing 22-member Sphinx Virtuosi, praised for its “elegant ascent into the upper ranks of string orchestras” by The Strad, returns to the Gardner Museum for a performance featuring cellist Sterling Elliott in a program spanning the Americas—from biracial Cuban composer and violinist José White Lafitte, to Argentine Alberto Ginastera, to the Mexican composer Manuel Ponce. The concert will include two Boston premieres of newly commissioned works by Quenton Blache and Jessie Montgomery. Sphinx Virtuosi is a dynamic, self-conducted chamber orchestra and the flagship performing ensemble of the Sphinx Organization, the nation’s leading nonprofit dedicated to transforming the arts. Comprising 18 of the nation’s most accomplished professional string players, Sphinx Virtuosi is redefining classical music through artistic excellence, pioneering programming, and cultural leadership. Cellist Sterling Elliott is a 2021 Avery Fisher Career Grant recipient and the winner of the Senior Division of the 2019 National Sphinx Competition. Throughout his young career, he has already appeared with major orchestras such as the Philadelphia Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Detroit Symphony, the Dallas Symphony, and more.
A musician’s musician, violinist Miranda Cuckson comes to the Gardner Museum with pianist Blair McMillen on Sunday, October 19 at 1:30 pm to present a program comprising nearly 200 years of violin music—from Beethoven’s Sonata in G, Op. 30, No. 3 (1802) to Lili Boulanger’s D'un matin de printemps (1918) to Jamaican-British composer Eleanor Alberga’s The Wild Blue Yonder (1995). The centerpiece of the concert is Prokofiev’s Violin Sonata No. 1 in F minor, Op. 80 (1946), an ideal showcase for Cuckson’s virtuosity and range of expressive colors. In the past few years, Miranda Cuckson has given celebrated concerto debuts at the Vienna Musikverein (playing Georg Friedrich Haas’ Violin Concerto No. 2, which she premiered in four countries), and with John Adams at the Ojai Music Festival. She has been a featured performer internationally at Wien Modern, Grafenegg, Lincoln Center, St. Paul’s Liquid Music, Tokyo’s Suntory Hall, Mexico City’s Palacio de Bellas Artes, the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, and more.
Rachel Barton Pine, praised for her “bravura technique and soulful musicianship” by the New York Times, returns to the Gardner Museum on Sunday, October 26 at 1:30pm for a special recital on her own violin and viola d’amore. She will also perform on the Gardner Museum’s extraordinary 18th century viola d’amore (on display in the Yellow Room), which she tested at the Museum last fall. The instrument, which was last played in concert in the 1980s, was crafted in the 1770s and given to Isabella Stewart Gardner in 1903 by composer Charles Martin Loeffler, who was her close friend and central to music programming at the Museum. Pine will perform selections by Vivaldi, Telemann, and Haydn for viola d’amore, as well as two works composed by Loeffler—his Mescolanza “Olla Podrida” and Norske Land. On violin, she will perform Brahms’ Violin Sonata and Sarasate’s Introduction and Tarantella. With an infectious joy in music-making and a passion for connecting historical research to performance, Rachel Barton Pine transforms audiences’ experiences of classical music. Her discography consists of over 40 recordings, including 25 for Cedille Records, and her many recital appearances have included Davos, the Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, Marlboro, Ravinia, Salzburg, Bravo! Vail, and Wolf Trap.
George Steel’s programming for the Fall 2025 Weekend Concert Series continues founder and legendary arts patron Isabella Stewart Gardner’s vision of bringing together musicians and audiences for inspiring gatherings. Dating to 1927, the Gardner’s Weekend Concert Series is the longest running museum music program in the country. Much like Isabella Stewart Gardner did in her time, Steel champions unknown repertoire and embraces new works, creates connections and builds community among musicians, and supports them by presenting them in new endeavors and collaborations. His programming also frequently draws on the history of the Gardner Museum, featuring instruments from the Museum’s collection and music by composers who were associated with its founder. In honoring Isabella Stewart Gardner’s musical legacy, Music at the Gardner remains strongly committed to broadening the repertoire of music presented to include previously overlooked and marginalized composers as well as performers of all backgrounds.
Fall 2025 At-a-Glance Concert Schedule
September 13-14: ACRONYM - The Complete Brandenburg Concertos by J.S. Bach
September 21: Junction Trio Plays John Zorn
September 28: Catalyst String Quartet
October 5: Sphinx Virtuosi with Sterling Elliott, cello
October 19: Miranda Cuckson, violin, and Blair McMillen, piano
October 26: Rachel Barton Pine, violin and viola d'amore
November 2: Claire Chase, flutes, with Aisslinn Nosky, violin, Katinka Kleijn, cello, and Alex Peh, piano and harpsichord
This performance is made possible by the Anne Hawley Fund for Programs.
November 9: Clayton Stephenson, piano
This program is performed in memory of Willona Sinclair.
November 16: Sasha Cooke, mezzo-soprano with Myra Huang, piano
This concert is made possible by the generous support of David Scudder in memory of his wife, Marie Louise Scudder.
November 23: Michelle Cann, piano
All concerts take place on Sundays at 1:30 pm (except ACRONYM, which performs on both Saturday and Sunday at 1:30 pm) in Calderwood Hall at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (25 Evans Way, Boston, MA).
Ticketing Information
Tickets ($20-$85) are available at gardnermuseum.org/about/music or by calling the Box Office at 617 278 5156. All concert tickets include Museum admission.
About the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum invites you to escape the ordinary in a magical setting where art and community come together to inspire new ways of envisioning our world. Embodying the fearless legacy of its founder, the Museum offers a singular invitation to explore the past through a contemporary lens, creating meaningful encounters with art and joyful connections for all. Modeled after a Venetian palazzo, unforgettable galleries surround a luminous Courtyard and are home to masters such as Rembrandt, Raphael, Titian, Michelangelo, Whistler, and Sargent. The Renzo Piano Wing provides a platform for contemporary artists, musicians, and scholars and serves as an innovative venue where creativity is celebrated in all of its forms.
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum • 25 Evans Way, Boston, MA 02115 • Hours: Open Weekends from 10 am to 5 pm, Weekdays from 11am to 5 pm and Thursdays until 9 pm, Closed Tuesdays. • Admission: Adults $22; Seniors $20; Students $15; Free for members, children 17 and under, everyone on their birthday, and all named “Isabella” • $2 off admission with a same-day Museum of Fine Arts, Boston ticket • For information 617 566 1401 • Box Office 617 278 5156 • www.gardnermuseum.org
Music at the Gardner is supported by Nora McNeely Hurley / Manitou Fund. The Museum thanks its generous concert donors: The Coogan Concert in memory of Peter Weston Coogan; Fitzpatrick Family Concert; James Lawrence Memorial Concert; Alford P. Rudnick Memorial Concert; David Scudder in memory of his wife, Marie Louise Scudder; Wendy Shattuck Young Artist Concert; and Willona Sinclair Memorial Concert. The piano is dedicated as the Alex d’Arbeloff Steinway. The harpsichord was generously donated by Dr. Robert Barstow in memory of Marion Huse, and its care is endowed in memory of Dr. Barstow by The Barstow Fund. Music at the Gardner is also supported in part by Barbara and Amos Hostetter, Nicie and Jay Panetta, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council, which is supported by the state of Massachusetts and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Sept 21: The Junction Trio Premieres Music by John Zorn at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
Sept 21: The Junction Trio Premieres Music by John Zorn at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
Photo by Shervin Lainez. Press photos available here.
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
Presents the Junction Trio in Two World Premieres by John Zorn
September 21: Junction Trio in John Zorn World Premieres
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum | Calderwood Hall
25 Evans Way | Boston, MA
Tickets: gardnermuseum.org/calendar/junction-trio-plays-john-zorn
For press tickets, please contact Christina Jensen at christina@jensenartists.com
BOSTON, MA – The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum continues its Fall 2025 Weekend Concert Series, presenting the Junction Trio on Sunday, September 21 at 1:30 pm in an afternoon of virtuosic and theatrical chamber music by John Zorn, including the world premieres of two new pieces by the celebrated avant-garde composer. The acclaimed supergroup—Stefan Jackiw (violin), Jay Campbell (cello), and Conrad Tao (piano)—will be joined by special guests Jorge Roeder (bass) and Ches Smith (drums).
Known for unique program combinations and vibrant performances, the Junction Trio brings a fresh approach to the repertoire, dazzling audiences with their virtuosity and unity. A.Z. Madonna reported in the Boston Globe, “Watching the trio perform, one really couldn’t tell who was happier to be there—the rapt audience or the musicians, who threw themselves into repertoire they clearly love. . . . These three are onto something special.” Since forming in 2015, the Trio has performed across the country at leading venues including Carnegie Hall, Washington Performing Arts, 92nd Street Y, Royal Conservatory in Toronto, Newport Classical, the Aspen Music Festival, and for the LA Philharmonic's NowRising Series at The Ford Theater.
The New York Times has praised the individual musicians of the Junction Trio, comprising the “brilliant young violinist” Stefan Jackiw, the “electrifying” cellist Jay Campbell, and pianist and composer Conrad Tao, a musician of “probing intellect and open-hearted vision.” Together, Susan Miron writes in the Boston Musical Intelligencer, “This top-notch trio stands at the top of its game.”
At the Gardner Museum, the Junction Trio will give the world premiere of John Zorn’s Notes on the Assumption of Mystical Solidarity Approaching Nine Neological Approximations Illuminating the Eternal Return of the Same and But Doth Suffer a Sea-Change, both composed this year for the Trio. The program also includes Zorn’s Philosophical Investigations I and II and I Am Your Labyrinth…, all composed in the last three years by Zorn for the Trio.
Zorn has written more than a dozen new works for members of the Junction Trio over the years. In an interview with The Strad, cellist Jay Campbell described the unusual process of working with him, saying, “With John Zorn, you can bring up an idea, and then a week later, a piece lands in your inbox—it’s so immediate. And John always thinks about writing for people, not instruments, and takes into consideration the personality of the players. He has written a lot of pieces for me or for ensembles that I’m in, so he knows my playing well and knows where to challenge me. Every single piece of his has new challenges that push my playing—often in directions that I didn’t think were possible. It almost feels like he knows my playing better than I do. It’s really fun to grow into a piece, especially when it’s written for you.”
In the same interview, violinist Stefan Jackiw says of the surprising nature of Zorn’s music, that it “has a reputation for being very dense and thorny, but it’s actually highly lyrical.” He continues, “There are moments of almost Italian, bel canto textures. They get juxtaposed with incredibly kinetic, thorny stuff, where there’s a bajillion things happening at once. Suddenly there will be a clearing and then a soaring melody with a clear, accompanimental line.”
The Fall 2025 Weekend Concert Series is an eleven-concert autumn season curated by Abrams Curator of Music George Steel running from September 13 through November 23, 2025, which features world-class artists in the Museum’s extraordinary Calderwood Hall—a 300-seat “sonic cube” with three-levels of balconies designed so that 80% of seats are front row, creating a uniquely intense and intentional listening experience.
George Steel’s programming for the Fall 2025 Weekend Concert Series continues founder and legendary arts patron Isabella Stewart Gardner’s vision of bringing together musicians and audiences for inspiring gatherings. Dating to 1927, the Gardner’s Weekend Concert Series is the longest running museum music program in the country. Much like Isabella Stewart Gardner did in her time, Steel champions unknown repertoire and embraces new works, creates connections and builds community among musicians, and supports them by presenting them in new endeavors and collaborations. His programming also frequently draws on the history of the Gardner Museum, featuring instruments from the Museum’s collection and music by composers who were associated with its founder. In honoring Isabella Stewart Gardner’s musical legacy, Music at the Gardner remains strongly committed to broadening the repertoire of music presented to include previously overlooked and marginalized composers as well as performers of all backgrounds.
Fall 2025 At-a-Glance Concert Schedule
September 13-14: ACRONYM - The Complete Brandenburg Concertos by J.S. Bach
September 21: Junction Trio Plays John Zorn
September 28: Catalyst String Quartet
October 5: Sphinx Virtuosi with Sterling Elliott, cello
October 19: Miranda Cuckson, violin, and Blair McMillen, piano
October 26: Rachel Barton Pine, violin and viola d'amore
November 2: Claire Chase, flutes, with Aisslinn Nosky, violin, Katinka Kleijn, cello, and Alex Peh, piano and harpsichord
This performance is made possible by the Anne Hawley Fund for Programs.
November 9: Clayton Stephenson, piano
This program is performed in memory of Willona Sinclair.
November 16: Sasha Cooke, mezzo-soprano with Myra Huang, piano
This concert is made possible by the generous support of David Scudder in memory of his wife, Marie Louise Scudder.
November 23: Michelle Cann, piano
All concerts take place on Sundays at 1:30 pm (except ACRONYM, which performs on both Saturday and Sunday at 1:30 pm) in Calderwood Hall at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (25 Evans Way, Boston, MA).
Ticketing Information
Tickets ($20-$85) are available at gardnermuseum.org/about/music or by calling the Box Office at 617 278 5156. All concert tickets include Museum admission.
About the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum invites you to escape the ordinary in a magical setting where art and community come together to inspire new ways of envisioning our world. Embodying the fearless legacy of its founder, the Museum offers a singular invitation to explore the past through a contemporary lens, creating meaningful encounters with art and joyful connections for all. Modeled after a Venetian palazzo, unforgettable galleries surround a luminous Courtyard and are home to masters such as Rembrandt, Raphael, Titian, Michelangelo, Whistler, and Sargent. The Renzo Piano wing provides a platform for contemporary artists, musicians, and scholars and serves as an innovative venue where creativity is celebrated in all of its forms.
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum • 25 Evans Way, Boston, MA 02115 • Hours: Open Weekends from 10 am to 5 pm, Weekdays from 11am to 5 pm and Thursdays until 9 pm. Closed Tuesdays. • Admission: Adults $22; Seniors $20; Students $15; Free for members, children under 18, everyone on their birthday, and all named “Isabella” • $2 off admission with a same-day Museum of Fine Arts, Boston ticket • For information 617 566 1401 • Box Office 617 278 5156 • www.gardnermuseum.org
Music at the Gardner is supported by Nora McNeely Hurley / Manitou Fund. The Museum thanks its generous concert donors: The Coogan Concert in memory of Peter Weston Coogan; Fitzpatrick Family Concert; James Lawrence Memorial Concert; Alford P. Rudnick Memorial Concert; David Scudder in memory of his wife, Marie Louise Scudder; Wendy Shattuck Young Artist Concert; and Willona Sinclair Memorial Concert. The piano is dedicated as the Alex d’Arbeloff Steinway. The harpsichord was generously donated by Dr. Robert Barstow in memory of Marion Huse, and its care is endowed in memory of Dr. Barstow by The Barstow Fund. Music at the Gardner is also supported in part by Barbara and Amos Hostetter, Nicie and Jay Panetta, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council, which is supported by the state of Massachusetts and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s Weekend Concert Series in September - ACRONYM, Junction Trio, Catalyst String Quartet
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s Weekend Concert Series in September - ACRONYM, Junction Trio, Catalyst String Quartet
Clockwise from top left: Junction Trio, Catalyst Quartet, ACRONYM. Press photos available here.
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s Weekend Concert Series
September Performances
September 13-14: ACRONYM in Bach’s Complete Brandenburg Concertos
September 21: Junction Trio in John Zorn World Premieres
September 28: Catalyst String Quartet
Information & Tickets: gardnermuseum.org/about/music
For press tickets, please contact Christina Jensen at christina@jensenartists.com
BOSTON, MA – The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum will launch its Fall 2025 Weekend Concert Series with four performances in September. This eleven-concert autumn season curated by Abrams Curator of Music George Steel runs from September 13 through November 23, 2025, and features world-class artists in the Museum’s extraordinary Calderwood Hall—a 300-seat “sonic cube” with three levels of balconies designed so that 80% of seats are front row, creating a uniquely intense and intentional listening experience.
The Fall 2025 season opens with two concerts featuring Baroque-band and period-instrument superstars ACRONYM, praised for their “consummate style, grace, and unity of spirit” (The New York Times), performing J.S. Bach's complete Brandenburg Concertos on Saturday, September 13 and Sunday, September 14 at 1:30 pm. In anticipation of overwhelming demand, the ensemble will perform the complete cycle twice, featuring Bach's masterworks on authentic period instruments including flutes, recorders, trumpets, hunting horns, gambas, and violins of every size—a motley “kitchen” of continuo instruments, and more.
The season continues on Sunday, September 21 at 1:30 pm with the Junction Trio presenting an afternoon of virtuosic chamber music by John Zorn. The acclaimed trio—Stefan Jackiw (violin), Jay Campbell (cello), and Conrad Tao (piano), joined by special guests Jorge Roeder (bass) and Ches Smith (drums)—will perform Zorn's vivid and theatrical music, which has become an audience favorite at the Gardner. Their program includes two world premieres—Zorn’s Notes on the Assumption of Mystical Solidarity Approaching Nine Neological Approximations Illuminating the Eternal Return of the Same and But Doth Suffer a Sea-Change, as well as his Philosophical Investigations I and II and I Am Your Labyrinth…, all composed in the last three years.
The Catalyst String Quartet returns on Sunday, September 28 at 1:30 pm after their astonishing Gardner debut last season. The quartet’s program features Concertante Quartets No. 2 in G minor (1777) by the legendary violinist-composer Joseph Bologne (Chevalier de Saint-Georges), a superb swordsman who led an all-Black regiment in the French Revolution, alongside Dora Pejačević's splendid String Quartet in C major from 1922—re-introducing Gardner audiences to the work of this late-Romantic Croatian composer—and Beethoven's monumental String Quartet No. 15 in A minor, Op. 132.
George Steel’s programming for the Fall 2025 Weekend Concert Series continues founder and legendary arts patron Isabella Stewart Gardner’s vision of bringing together musicians and audiences for inspiring gatherings. Dating to 1927, the Gardner’s Weekend Concert Series is the longest running museum music program in the country. Much like Isabella Stewart Gardner did in her time, Steel champions unknown repertoire and embraces new works, creates connections and builds community among musicians, and supports them by presenting them in new endeavors and collaborations. His programming also frequently draws on the history of the Gardner Museum, featuring instruments from the Museum’s collection and music by composers who were associated with its founder. In honoring Isabella Stewart Gardner’s musical legacy, Music at the Gardner remains strongly committed to broadening the repertoire of music presented to include previously overlooked and marginalized composers as well as performers of all backgrounds.
Fall 2025 At-a-Glance Concert Schedule
September 13-14: ACRONYM - The Complete Brandenburg Concertos by J.S. Bach
September 21: Junction Trio Plays John Zorn
September 28: Catalyst String Quartet
October 5: Sphinx Virtuosi with Sterling Elliott, cello
October 19: Miranda Cuckson, violin, and Blair McMillen, piano
October 26: Rachel Barton Pine, violin and viola d'amore
November 2: Claire Chase, flutes, with Aisslinn Nosky, violin, Katinka Kleijn, cello, and Alex Peh, piano and harpsichord
This performance is made possible by the Anne Hawley Fund for Programs.
November 9: Clayton Stephenson, piano
This program is performed in memory of Willona Sinclair.
November 16: Sasha Cooke, mezzo-soprano with Myra Huang, piano
This concert is made possible by the generous support of David Scudder in memory of his wife, Marie Louise Scudder.
November 23: Michelle Cann, piano
All concerts take place on Sundays at 1:30 pm (except ACRONYM, which performs on both Saturday and Sunday at 1:30 pm) in Calderwood Hall at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (25 Evans Way, Boston, MA).
Ticketing Information
Tickets ($20-$85) are available at gardnermuseum.org/about/music or by calling the Box Office at 617 278 5156. All concert tickets include Museum admission.
About the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum invites you to escape the ordinary in a magical setting where art and community come together to inspire new ways of envisioning our world. Embodying the fearless legacy of its founder, the Museum offers a singular invitation to explore the past through a contemporary lens, creating meaningful encounters with art and joyful connections for all. Modeled after a Venetian palazzo, unforgettable galleries surround a luminous Courtyard and are home to masters such as Rembrandt, Raphael, Titian, Michelangelo, Whistler, and Sargent. The Renzo Piano wing provides a platform for contemporary artists, musicians, and scholars and serves as an innovative venue where creativity is celebrated in all of its forms.
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum • 25 Evans Way, Boston, MA 02115 • Hours: Open Weekends from 10 am to 5 pm, Weekdays from 11 am to 5 pm and Thursdays until 9 pm Closed Tuesdays. • Admission: Adults $22; Seniors $20; Students $15; Free for members, children under 18, everyone on their birthday, and all named “Isabella” • $2 off admission with a same-day Museum of Fine Arts, Boston ticket • For information 617 566 1401 • Box Office 617 278 5156 • www.gardnermuseum.org
Music at the Gardner is supported by Nora McNeely Hurley / Manitou Fund. The Museum thanks its generous concert donors: The Coogan Concert in memory of Peter Weston Coogan; Fitzpatrick Family Concert; James Lawrence Memorial Concert; Alford P. Rudnick Memorial Concert; David Scudder in memory of his wife, Marie Louise Scudder; Wendy Shattuck Young Artist Concert; and Willona Sinclair Memorial Concert. The piano is dedicated as the Alex d’Arbeloff Steinway. The harpsichord was generously donated by Dr. Robert Barstow in memory of Marion Huse, and its care is endowed in memory of Dr. Barstow by The Barstow Fund. Music at the Gardner is also supported in part by Barbara and Amos Hostetter, Nicie and Jay Panetta, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council, which is supported by the state of Massachusetts and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Announcing the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s Fall 2025 Weekend Concert Series - 11 Concerts from September through November
Announcing the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s Fall 2025 Weekend Concert Series
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 p.m.) 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 afternoon of virtuosic chamber music by John Zorn. The acclaimed trio—Stefan Jackiw (violin), Jay Campbell (cello), and Conrad Tao (piano), joined by special guests Jorge Roeder (bass) and Ches Smith (drums)—will perform Zorn's vivid and theatrical music, which has become an audience favorite at the Gardner. Their program includes two world premieres—Zorn’s Notes on the Assumption of Mystical Solidarity Approaching Nine Neological Approximations Illuminating the Eternal Return of the Same and but doth suffer a sea-change, as well as his Philosophical Investigations I and II and I Am Your Labyrinth…, all composed in the last three years.
The Catalyst String Quartet returns on Sunday, September 28 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 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 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 p.m. (except ACRONYM, which performs on both Saturday and Sunday at 1:30 p.m.) 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 a.m. 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.