Guest conductor Edwin Outwater of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music takes the helm for Berkeley Symphony’s second concert of the 25/26 season, Refracted Light.

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Refracted Light

First Congregational Church of Berkeley

Mozart & Now reimagines the traditional concert weekend experience with three unique performances contrasting the music of Mozart alongside contemporary works by some of today’s brightest composers, all led by Principal Conductor Peter Oundjian.

On Friday and Saturday, hear four of Mozart’s most revered compositions including the indelible Symphony No. 36 and his Fifth Violin Concerto alongside modern works by Samuel Adams, Anna Clyne, and John Adams.

Mozart & Now with Peter Oundjian

Denver Performing Arts Complex

Timothy Weiss leads the Contemporary Music Ensemble (CME) in Warner Concert Hall. CME features Oberlin Conservatory student musicians playing new pieces by a wide range of 20th- and 21st-century composers. This concert features soprano Abigail Fischer and Assistant Professor of Violin Francesca dePasquale.

Concert: Contemporary Music Ensemble

Oberlin College

In their brilliant collaboration, Lyra, The Living Earth Show and Post:ballet embody the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, viscerally studying questions of empathy, technology, and our relationship to the natural world. The music of composer Samuel Adams, the movement of choreographer Vanessa Thiessen, and the cinematography of Benjamin Tarquin come together in the perfect balance of entrancing rhythms and captivating movement. Created both in quarantine and in person, Lyra seamlessly weaves together digital and physical realms, with The Living Earth Show gracing the stage with their refreshing sonic explorations.

The Living Earth Show

The Studio at 414

In a concert produced in collaboration with the Ojai Music Festival, Vimbayi Kaziboni leads new music by California composers.

Green Umbrella

Walt Disney Concert Hall

The Ojai Music Festival presents a special concert celebrating the unique musical creativity of a new generation of California composers, produced as part of the California Festival: A Celebration of New Music. The program brings together a new work for solo piano by Samuel Carl Adams for the brilliant pianist Conor Hanick and a kinetic trio for violin, clarinet, and vibes by Dylan Mattingly. M.A. Tiesenga’s Ganymedes brings together the otherworldly sound of an electronic hurdy-gurdy playing with amplified string quartet. And Reena Esmail’s Ragamala adds the mesmerizing sound of Hindustani vocals to a string quartet, evoking the tradition sounding the raga as a starting point for elaboration and reflection.

Ojai Festival Ensembles

Ojai Valley School

Experience intimate chamber music programs curated and performed by small ensembles of SF Symphony musicians. In this concert: music by California composers Samuel Adams, Reena Esmail, and Sarn Oliver, followed by Johannes Brahms’s String Quartet in A minor. This concert is presented as part of the California Festival: A Celebration of New Music.

Chamber Music at Davies Symphony Hall

Davies Symphony Hall

What could be more delightful than pre-concert picnic in the gorgeous Academy gardens? This series features our most fellow driven music. Fellows choose their own works for the program, put together their own ensembles, and share for your listening pleasure. Bring your own picnic and take a seat at the tables before the concert starts, for a lively summer social event!

Picnic Concert #3: Samuel Carl Adams’ Études

Music Academy of the West

Imagine as an aspiring tennis pro, you get an hour on the court with Venus Williams or Rafael Nadal. Or, as an early career golf talent, hitting the links with Tiger Woods? x2 is the classical music version of this dream – realized before a live audience. This unique series features our Academy Artists paired with the brilliant 2023 fellows – the energy is explosive as emerging talents dance with legends.

x2: Sundial & Dvořák’s String Quintet No. 2

AMFS artist-faculty, all top musicians from renowned orchestras, opera companies, and conservatories, come together to play their favorite chamber music works. Always a joyful and creative 75 minutes of music-making.

Chamber Music

Aspen Meadows Resort

In an intrepid act of programming, the insightful young violinist Alexi Kenney matches well-loved solo works by J.S. Bach with new compositions by the best and brightest voices in contemporary music. Kenney, a recipient of a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award and an Avery Fisher Career Grant, enjoys melding the new with the old, the familiar with the undiscovered, and here highlights the spiritual and mystical dimensions of Bach’s music. The revered Chaconne from the Partita in D minor is the jewel at the center of Kenney’s recital, illuminating recent works for solo violin (with and without electronics) by a host of contemporary composers. The title Shifting Ground references the heart of all Baroque music—the omnipresent ground bass—upon which variations are built. “Spellbinding…[an] architect’s eye for structure and space and a tone that ranges from the achingly fragile to full-bodied robustness” (The New York Times).

Alexi Kenney, violin

University of California, Berkeley

Anton Bruckner never heard his Sixth Symphony performed in full, but he proudly described it as his “boldest symphony.” Still overlooked today, it is awash in beautiful themes and imaginative twists and turns. Opening this program led by Esa-Pekka Salonen, pianist Conor Hanick premieres an SF Symphony commission by Samuel Adams, known for his expressive, innovative, and genre-bending music. 

Salonen Conducts Bruckner & Adams

Don’t miss the world premiere of Samuel Adams‘ Sundial, a LACO commissioned work for percussion and string quartet featuring Principal Percussion Wade Culbreath. Our final chamber concert of the season also includes Contrapunctus I, Stefano Scodanibbio‘s string quartet arrangement reinvented from Bach‘s The Art of the Fugue, and Dvořák‘s lively Piano Quintet No. 2.

PÄRT, ADAMS + DVOŘÁK

The Huntington

In its innovative programs, Chicago’s Spektral Quartet is widely praised for illuminating the connections between beloved works in the canon and fresh new repertoire by living composers. The ensemble’s Berkeley debut features the world premiere of a new electroacoustic composition by Samuel Adams, a bespoke work created especially for the quartet that explores, in Adams’ words, “the relationship between the minimal digital language of resonating snare drums and the warm, acoustic complexity of the string quartet.” Its title, Current, refers to “both the electric currents that activate the resonating snare drums as well as the intense, weather-blasted quality of the work’s sound world.”  Schubert’s haunting Rosamunde Quartet, and Philip Glass’ Company Quartet, originally composed for a theatrical production of Samuel Beckett’s 1979 novella of the same name, round out the expansive program.  “Spektral Quartet likes to put on performances that are not so much concerts as high-energy thrill rides for musically inquisitive listeners” (The Chicago Tribune).

Spektral Quartet

Elim Chan leads the Los Angeles Philharmonic in two enchanting and colorful orchestral favorites. Debussy’s hues in Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun are otherworldly if hazy and in watercolor. The Impressionistic atmosphere Debussy conjures exudes a fragile beauty that set off a revolution, which Pierre Boulez said “breathed new air into the art of music.” By contrast, Stravinsky paints with bold, contrasting blocks of sound. Petrushka’s Picasso-esque approach to musical color and movement sets the stage for the story of a mischievous puppet, packed with Russian folklore and misadventure.

Samuel Adams

Events

Upcoming events

22 - 25 Oct, 2026

Debussy & Stravinsky with Elim Chan · Los Angeles Philharmonic

Past events

Oct 5, 2025

Refracted Light · UC Berkeley Symphony Orchestra

10 - 12 Jan, 2025

Mozart & Now with Peter Oundjian · Colorado Symphony

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