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Leslie Odom, Jr. brings a night of holiday hits to Jacobs Music Center – including selections from his release The Christmas Album, which Broadway World said “infuses love, joy, and merriment into the holiday season.”

Conducted by Music Director Rafael Payare and featuring pianist Inon Barnatan, this program highlights the humorous side of classical music in works by Richard Strauss and Dmitri Shostakovich. Strauss wrote his tone poem Don Juan when he was just 24 years old. The work, inspired by the same figure of legend as Mozart’s Don Giovanni, was the young composer’s first international success, while Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streich depicts the misadventures of the German folk hero Till Eulenspiegel. Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 2, written for his son Maxim’s 19th birthday (and for Maxim to play at his conservatory graduation exam), is an uncharacteristically cheerful piece. Shostakovich’s wrote his Piano Concerto No. 1 during the height of his early career for himself to play; it is sardonic and tongue-in-cheek, quoting and parodying several well-known pieces.

The concert will be led once again by the artistic tour-de-force team consisting of celebrated guest conductor Christopher Dragon and director Jonathan Gilmer, and it features the return of the San Diego Symphony Orchestra and the San Diego Children’s Choir.

Give the gift of NUTCRACKER! Magical Christmas Ballet! to the whole family. Celebrate America’s favorite Christmas tradition with an international all-star cast that blends world class ballet with whimsical puppets, lavish costumes and stunning acrobatics! Share the tradition of pure Holiday magic and Tchaikovsky’s timeless score with friends and family of all ages. Don’t miss this chance to create warm glowing memories under the tree: get tickets now!

Voctave’s holiday spectacular "It Feels Like Christmas" includes a stocking full of holiday favorites from their chart-topping album and is sure to be a magical evening of music for the whole family. Jazz Weekly raves, “Voctave brings a cappella music to a new dimension.”

Experience your favorite Christmas film transformed with the music of a live symphony orchestra in Elf™ in Concert! For the first time ever, audiences can rediscover the magic of this holiday classic while a live symphony orchestra performs John Debney’s wonderful score and Santa Claus soars across the big screen in high-definition.

California-based French conductor Ludovic Morlot celebrates the music of his native land with two masterworks by his great 19th century compatriot Camille Saint-Saëns: the Third Violin Concerto, written for the great Spanish virtuoso Sarasate and brimming with sweet melodies; and the composer’s most famous symphony, known as the Organ Symphony for its sumptuous organ writing which dramatically extends and deepens the colors of the orchestra. It's the ideal music to celebrate the fabulous new sound of our own completely renovated Robert Morton pipe organ in Jacobs Music Center!

What a sumptuous feast of beautiful sounds and ravishing orchestral virtuosity! The celebrated composer Anna Clyne’s Color Field opens the concert with a delicious imagining of what mixing yellow and red would sound like.

Your family’s musical exploration starts here! San Diego Symphony musicians share their favorite sing-a-longs, rhymes, dances, and musical games in a series that introduces your youngest listeners to the instruments of the orchestra.

One of the most compelling conductors of his generation, Daniele Rustioni makes his Symphony debut in conducting this program of Italian-themed works. The evening begins with Berlioz’s rousing Roman Carnival Overture. Ferruccio Busoni was one of the great Italian musicians of the late 19th and early 20th century. As a pianist he was world famous; as a composer he worked in almost every style, from Brahmsian romanticism to the strangest most dreamlike modernism. Making her Symphony debut, violinist Francesca Dego will perform one of her signatures: Busoni’s wonderfully dark and lyrical but dazzlingly virtuosic Violin Concerto. The second half of the program features Tchaikovsky’s symphonic fantasy based on one of the greatest and most tragic love stories ever told, the fatal affair between Francesca da Rimini and her brother-in-law Paolo and their subsequent murder by her enraged husband. It was Italy’s greatest poet Dante who immortalized their tale in his Inferno [Hell], and it was from Dante that Tchaikovsky took the motto which he wrote on the first page of his score: There is no greater sorrow/Than a happy time remembered in a time of misery. The concert ends with Respighi’s exuberantly dramatic Roman Festivals depicting scenes from ancient and contemporary Rome, from the gladiators and the harvest festival to celebrating the Epiphany in the Piazza Navona.