Virginia Symphony Orchestra 2024/25 Season
The VSO presents a large variety of classics, pops, movies scores and special event concerts throughout the year. Visit the website to see a full offering of what is in store this season!
Charleston Symphony Orchestra
Ernest Bloch’s Avodath Hakodesh (Sacred Service), a choral-orchestral masterwork for cantor, chorus, and full orchestra “remains the watershed (by many assessments peerless) artistic engagement with the Hebrew liturgy… It was conceived as a transcendent, even inclusive humanistic work of universal spiritual experience” (Neil Levin, Milken Archive). A pinnacle of drama in the Jewish musical canon, this work speaks to Jews and to the masses, much like the great masterworks of other traditions. Grounded in tradition, but revolutionary in its scope, Bloch’s Avodath Hakodesh is a can’t-miss sacred work.
Seattle Symphony
Dive into Maurice Ravel's wildly famous Boléro, with its unmistakable opening bars — full of steady, persistent drumming and enchanting melodies for solo woodwinds. Conductor Emeritus Ludovic Morlot completes our season-long celebration of Ravel with this exciting program, which also includes the ravishing and evocative Rapsodie espagnole. A brand-new flute concerto for Principal Flute Demarre McGill arrives on our stage, courtesy of Allison Loggins-Hull. We also feature our mighty brass and percussion sections one final time before the summer in a rarely heard thriller by Gunther Schuller.
Colorado Music Festival
“[Hélène] Grimaud doesn't sound like most pianists,” proclaims The New Yorker, also calling her “a reinventor of phrasings” and “taker of chances;” here she opens the 2025 Festival season with Brahms’ monumental First Piano Concerto. Surrounding Brahms’ intense work are familiar showstoppers: Ravel’s famously unrelenting Boléro, a dreamy suite from the ballet Daphnis et Chloé, and fantastic musical fireworks by Stravinsky.
Colorado Music Festival
There is something for everyone in these energetic concerts! Be among the first to hear a new showpiece for violin, The Pacific Has No Memory, composed by Eric Whitacre and commissioned by Latin Grammy-winning violinist Anne Akiko Meyers. Meyers, “the coolest thing to happen to the violin since Stradivari” (Denver Post), also performs Ravel’s fiery Tzigane. Music Director Peter Oundjian opens the program with Copland’s idyllic tribute to the American heartland, Appalachian Spring, and concludes with one of the most recognizable pieces of music ever written: the achingly romantic Fantasy-Overture to Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet.
Colorado Music Festival
Known for dominating international cello competitions, Hayoung Choi possesses a talent not to be missed; here Choi performs Tchaikovsky’s Variations on a Rococo Theme, an elegant staple of cello repertoire. Guest conductor Maurice Cohn returns to the Chautauqua stage to lead Beethoven’s classically-styled First Symphony, the symphonic debut that established the composer as the luminary we know him as today. The program opens with Respighi’s five playful attempts to transcribe the sounds of doves, cuckoos, nightingales, and more.
Colorado Music Festival
Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto finds the composer moving toward his own personal style, displaying what would become his hallmark drama, spirit, and agitation; pianist Yeol Eum Son brings a “fearlessly fast articulation” (The Times) to the stage. Sofia Gubaidulina’s striking “Fairytale Poem” draws inspiration from a children’s story about creativity, and its music is fittingly full of color. Guest conductor Ryan Bancroft conducts this dynamic program, which also includes Shostakovich’s Tenth; written shortly after the Soviet dictator Stalin’s death, this symphony is rife with terror, passion, and oppression — until one final, hopeful ray of light.
Colorado Music Festival
Possibly the single most treasured symphony ever written — especially its beloved “Ode to Joy” — Beethoven’s influential Ninth Symphony celebrates brotherhood, forgiveness, and the quest for peace. Music Director Peter Oundjian conducts this masterwork, which also welcomes to the Festival stage soprano Lauren Snouffer, mezzo-soprano Abigail Nims, tenor Issachah Savage, bass Benjamin Taylor, and St. Martin’s Chamber Choir. Composer Michael Abels’ Amplify, co-commissioned by the Festival, opens the program; on top of his Pulitzer Prize-winning compositions for opera, audiences may recognize Abels’ work from film scores such as Get Out, Us, Chevalier, and more.
Colorado Music Festival
Music Director Peter Oundjian continues his tradition of closing the Festival season with a massive Mahler symphony. Composer Alban Berg once wrote of Mahler’s Ninth, “The first movement is the greatest Mahler ever composed. It is the expression of a tremendous love for this earth, the longing to live on it peacefully and to enjoy nature to its deepest depths – before death comes.” The myriad colors of life are present in the mighty Ninth, throughout which Mahler grieves, dances, basks in sunlight, and ultimately reflects on the enormity of it all.
San Francisco Symphony
Power takes many forms. It can be the majesty of Dvorak’s Violin Concerto, played by Stella Chen. It can be Elena Langer’s Leonora’s Dream, tearing down walls between musical styles. It can be the orchestral imagination of Haydn’s “The Clock”.
Seattle Opera
Following last season’s celebrated Samson and Delilah in Concert, join us for an abridged version of Hector Berlioz’s epic in a concert version featuring full orchestra and chorus. Les Troyens à Carthage (Acts 3, 4, & 5) begins after the fall of Troy as Aeneas arrives at Carthage with tales of the Trojan War. Upon arrival, he orders his army to assist Queen Dido in defeating the invading Nubians before falling in love with the Queen himself. However, when duty calls, the two lovers are parted while a funeral pyre burns.
North Carolina Symphony
Power takes many forms. It can be the majesty of Dvorak’s Violin Concerto, played by Stella Chen. It can be Elena Langer’s Leonora’s Dream, tearing down walls between musical styles. It can be the orchestral imagination of Haydn’s “The Clock”.
Virginia Opera
Bold, uninhibited, and strong-willed, Carmen lives life on her own terms. She is brave, beautiful, and independent. She does what she wants. She falls in and out of love. She is a power to behold until her obsessed ex violently and tragically rejects her choice to move on.
Virginia Opera
Bold, uninhibited, and strong-willed, Carmen lives life on her own terms. She is brave, beautiful, and independent. She does what she wants. She falls in and out of love. She is a power to behold until her obsessed ex violently and tragically rejects her choice to move on.
Virginia Opera
Bold, uninhibited, and strong-willed, Carmen lives life on her own terms. She is brave, beautiful, and independent. She does what she wants. She falls in and out of love. She is a power to behold until her obsessed ex violently and tragically rejects her choice to move on.
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
Music Director Jonathon Heyward sheds light on Dvořák’s sun-drenched Eighth Symphony, a celebration of the Bohemian countryside filled with cheerful birdsong and brilliant fanfare. James Lee III kicks off his tenure as BSO Composer in Residence with his Visions of Cahokia, an expressive three-movement work that depicts the Cahokia Mounds Historic Site and celebrates indigenous Mississippian culture. Violinist James Ehnes interprets Barber's sensitive and tuneful concerto with his signature elegance, an approach that solidified Ehnes as a GRAMMY®-winning recording artist.
North Carolina Symphony
Celebrate the opening of the classical season in Raleigh with your North Carolina Symphony and one of the most sought-after violinists on the international stage, Jame Ehnes. This concert will nourish your soul with the spectacular Prokofiev Violin Concerto No. 1 and the orchestral masterpiece Symphonie fantastique, by Berlioz. These audience favorites make this opening weekend a not-to-be-missed event.
San Francisco Symphony
Mahler’s Third Symphony contains multitudes. When the monumental score was almost finished, he predicted that it would be “something the like of which the world has never yet heard! In it the whole of nature finds a voice.” As its creator, he was both god and unconscious instrument “played on by the universe.”
Britt Festival Orchestra
Judy Collins has inspired audiences with sublime vocals, boldly vulnerable songwriting, personal life triumphs, and a firm commitment to social activism. In the 1960s, she evoked both the idealism and steely determination of a generation united against social and environmental injustices. Five decades later, her luminescent presence shines brightly as new generations bask in the glow of her iconic 50-album body of work, and heed inspiration from her spiritual discipline to thrive in the music industry for half a century.
Britt Festival Orchestra
Embark on mesmerizing musical journeys across time in a pair of titanic orchestral works by Mahler and John Corigliano.
From its opening scene of bird song and morning mists to a final victorious chorale sung by a battery of horns, Mahler’s First Symphony follows a coming-of-age journey that finds the composer exploring nature’s majesty, witnessing a surreal funeral procession, and overcoming a crisis of the heart. Plus, violinist Alex Gonzalez — a “true virtuoso that leaves the audience breathless” (Viborg Folkeblad) — traces a mysterious instrument’s travels through time and around the globe in John Corigliano’s Chaconne, drawn from his Academy Award–winning score to The Red Violin.
Britt Festival Orchestra
Experience the magic of the most epic space adventure of all time in Star Wars: A New Hope in Concert as the Britt Festival Orchestra brings John Williams’ Oscar-winning score to life alongside the projected film.
“The Force is strong with this one…”
Britt Festival Orchestra
Experience music inspired by earth and sky — from Tchaikovsky and Beethoven’s pastoral poetry to a sonic portrait of the northern lights.
A tranquil summer holiday near Kyiv inspired Tchaikovsky to pen his spirited Second Symphony, where the composer weaves Ukrainian folk songs with romantic melodies of his own creation to evoke the country’s grand, sun-drenched landscapes. Beethoven’s Violin Concerto offers its own moments of pastoral poetry, with delicate lyricism and dances of earthly exuberance brought to life by soloist Geneva Lewis, while John Estacio compels us to look to the heavens and imagine the celestial majesty of the aurora borealis in Wondrous Light.
Britt Festival Orchestra
Hear the ways Dvořák and Grieg pay tribute to the music and people of their beloved homelands in works brimming with drama and nostalgia.
“My new symphony must be capable of stirring the world,” Dvořák wrote of his Seventh Symphony — a work of stormy drama and tender nostalgia that mirrors not only the composer’s intense emotions, but the struggles of the Czech people in a time of white-hot political conflict. Plus, Gabriela Montero brings her “steely power and soulful lyricism” (New York Times) to Grieg’s Piano Concerto, a love letter to the folk music of his native Norway, and Nigel Westlake captures the dizzying journey of windswept paper planes in Flying Dream.
San Francisco Symphony
Two orchestral innovators tackle the complexities of the human condition: Richard Strauss’s passionate and provocative symphonic poems plumb the psychological depths of his literary sources. Maurice Ravel wrote his dark and intense Piano Concerto for the Left Hand because the Austrian pianist who commissioned it lost his right arm in World War I. The warped and tender waltzes of La Valse are the Frenchman's response to the dream of Viennese refinement in a murderous age.
Minnesota Orchestra
Pianist Yuja Wang has graced stages all over the world, earning rave reviews that describe her performances as daredevil, dazzling and captivating. Now, she makes her Minnesota Orchestra debut in an exhilarating piano concerto by Bela Bartók alongside returning guest conductor Hannu Lintu. The Orchestra also performs Rachmaninoff’s Second Symphony in this concert that travels through starry nights, showcases extreme technical prowess, and fills the soul with feelings of deep romance and passion.
St. Louis Symphony Orchestra
Power takes many forms. It can be the majesty of Beethoven’s Fifth Piano Concerto, played by Tom Borrow. It can be Julia Wolfe’s Pretty, tearing down walls between musical styles, between genders. It can be the orchestral power and imagination of Hector Berlioz’s music.
Hampton Roads Harp Festival
The Hampton Roads Harp Festival and Competition was founded in 2017 at Christopher Newport University; after several years at CNU, the Festival and Competition re-branded to reflect the move to Old Dominion University in 2022. We are the region's largest harp festival and harp competition for young students, with performers and participants from across the globe. This year, we are excited to partner with the Virginia Symphony Orchestra to bring Maeve Gilchrist as our featured artist, and look forward to welcoming you either virtually or in person.
Virginia Opera
Harriet Tubman may be the best-known conductor of the Underground Railroad, but there were others including William Still. An abolitionist and historian, as well as a conductor for the Underground Railroad, he is credited with helping nearly 800 enslaved African Americans escape to freedom. Sanctuary Road by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Paul Moravec, is based on the remarkable writings of William Still.
Virginia Opera
Harriet Tubman may be the best-known conductor of the Underground Railroad, but there were others including William Still. An abolitionist and historian, as well as a conductor for the Underground Railroad, he is credited with helping nearly 800 enslaved African Americans escape to freedom. Sanctuary Road by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Paul Moravec, is based on the remarkable writings of William Still.
Virginia Opera
Harriet Tubman may be the best-known conductor of the Underground Railroad, but there were others including William Still. An abolitionist and historian, as well as a conductor for the Underground Railroad, he is credited with helping nearly 800 enslaved African Americans escape to freedom. Sanctuary Road by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Paul Moravec, is based on the remarkable writings of William Still.
Minnesota Orchestra
A true holiday favorite, this beloved comedy classic features renowned composer John Williams' charming and delightful score performed live to picture by the Minnesota Orchestra. Macaulay Culkin stars as Kevin McCallister, an 8-year-old boy who's accidentally left behind when his family leaves for Christmas vacation, and who must defend his home against two bungling thieves. Hilarious and heart-warming, Home Alone is holiday fun for the entire family!
San Francisco Symphony
Rising young composer Gabriella Smith conjure the spaces and sounds of California, responding to landscapes both urban and rural, geographical and metaphysical. Igor Stravinsky depicts a festive, folk-inflected Slavic wedding in his ballet Les Noces, augmented by Steven Stucky’s orchestration and artist Hillary Leben's vivid new animated shorts. Stravinsky’s Octet for Winds and Brass, a uniquely scored neoclassical work, was inspired by a late-night dream.
This concert is part of the California Festival: A Celebration of New Music
Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra
For this program, the FWSO fronts one of its own. Principal Violist DJ Cheek, appointed in 2021, moves to the front of the stage for Bartók’s final composition, his Viola Concerto. That work launches with a pontificating viola solo in dialogue that quickly evolves into a prismatic exploration of musical color. Russian conductor Anna Skryleva returns to Fort Worth for this program, which also features Bartók’s folk music-inspired Hungarian Sketches and Rachmaninoff’s quick-stepping Symphonic Dances.
Minnesota Orchestra
Brazen and bold, Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony was a deceptive response to Stalin's authoritarian regime in 1938—a desperate attempt to secure some sense of political safety in an unsafe world, while simultaneously communicating the extreme and deep beliefs of Shostakovich’s immediate community. Juraj Valčuha returns to Orchestra Hall to lead this monumental symphony. He brings with him Jörgen van Rijen, principal trombone of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, for the Minnesota Orchestra's first performance of James MacMillan’s Trombone Concerto.
Virginia Opera
In the previous installment of the Ring cycle, we ended with a most operatic cliffhanger: the Valkyrie Brünnhilde imprisoned in a ring of fire. Now, we pick up the story as our fearless hero Siegfried re-forges his father’s shattered sword, embarking on a quest for the greatest prize of all – Brünnhilde’s love.
Virginia Opera
In the previous installment of the Ring cycle, we ended with a most operatic cliffhanger: the Valkyrie Brünnhilde imprisoned in a ring of fire. Now, we pick up the story as our fearless hero Siegfried re-forges his father’s shattered sword, embarking on a quest for the greatest prize of all – Brünnhilde’s love.
Virginia Symphony Orchestra 2023/24 Season
The VSO presents a large variety of classics, pops, movies scores and special event concerts throughout the year. Visit the website to see a full offering of what is in store this season!
Seattle Opera
Would you renounce love to become all powerful? The Nibelung Alberich steals enchanted gold to craft a ring which allows him to do just that. Yet the corruptive power won’t be his forever as gods and giants discover how far they will go to possess the cursed ring. Brother kills brother, the innocent are enslaved, and the King of Gods must decide where his power truly lies.
Britt Festival Orchestra
Inspired by its intimate and scenic hillside venue, the Britt Festival provides diverse live performances, an incomparable orchestra season and dynamic education programs that create a sense of discovery and community.