Composer

Besides being one of the finest baritones of his generation, a natural successor to his great teacher, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Benjamin Appl is among the most thoughtful of programme builders. He opens his recital with the Jerusalem Quartet with Robert Schumann’s melodramatic Belsatzar, a spine-tingling ballad recalling Belshazzar’s feast from the Book of Daniel, and ventures into the world, past and present, and beyond into the infinite cosmos of dreams.

EPSG:4326

Benjamin Appl baritone; Jerusalem Quartet

Wigmore Hall

From Tchaikovsky to Copland

Lesher Center for the Arts

Copland wrote the Fanfare for the Common Man in 1942, at the height of World War II, as a tribute to the everyday American. It arrives at the end of his monumental Third Symphony, and hearing it build to that moment is one of those experiences that stops you cold. GRAMMY® Award-nominated violinist Curtis Stewart performs Barber’s deeply lyrical Violin Concerto, and Gershwin’s Of Thee I Sing Overture opens the evening. America turns 250 this year. This is what it sounds like.

America at 250

Alaska Center for the Performing Arts

Join NatPhil and conductor Daniel Hege for a musical journey across the Americas that captures a perfect snapshot of the American experience in each poignant work. Aaron Copland’s sweeping Appalachian Spring Suite paints a portrait of pioneer life, complete with the iconic Shaker hymn “Simple Gifts.” In Joan Tower’s Made in America, the familiar melody of “America the Beautiful” is explored as a love letter and challenge to the country. Samuel Barber sets James Agee’s prose to music in Knoxville: Summer of 1915, a nostalgic depiction of an idyllic evening in the American South as seen through the eyes of a child, sung by soprano Danielle Talamantes. The charm of George Gershwin takes center stage as Talamantes performs cherished songs like The Man I love and Love Is Here to Stay. The program concludes with the vibrant rhythms of Danzón No. 2 by Arturo Márquez, a colorful and electrifying work inspired by the dance halls of Veracruz that brings the concert to a joyful, high-energy close.

Postcards from America

Strathmore

Soprano Mary Bevan joins Leeds Song Director Joseph Middleton for an evocative recital built around Elegy, the pair's acclaimed 2025 release on Signum Records.

Born from their programme From Earth to Heaven, Elegy reflects a period of profound personal loss and the healing power of music. Shaped by Bevan’s experience of grieving for her father, the performance traces a moving arc from sorrow to consolation, exploring the mystery of death and the quiet transcendence found in song.

The programme features works by Schubert, Fauré, Mahler, Jeanne Landry, Errollyn Wallen, Pauline Viardot, and others—an intimate journey through mourning, reflection, and renewal. Their previous album Voyages was shortlisted for a Gramophone Award, and their recitals across Europe have earned widespread critical praise.

Leeds Song: Mary Bevan and Joseph Middleton

Leeds Conservatoire

The sun’s warmth on your front porch. The burble of a nearby stream. The crackling energy of a summer storm. Feel the pull of nostalgia, wonder, and melancholy in works by George Walker, Samuel Barber, and Ludwig van Beethoven. Joined by soprano and St. Louis native Julia Bullock—winner of the 2024 Grammy Award for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album—the SLSO performs Barber’s poignant, brooding reverie on childhood alongside Beethoven’s sublime Pastoral Symphony.

Beethoven’s Pastoral

Powell Hall

Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes… a space probe hurtles outwards from our solar system; its cargo, a golden record. That’s the starting point for Caroline Shaw’s The Listeners: a new oratorio in which Shaw’s intensely communicative music carries the words of Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson and Carl Sagan into a future bounded only by our imagination, and our courage.

Randall Goosby plays Barber’s Violin Concerto

Barbican Centre

Ryan Bancroft brings his trademark energy to an evening centred on two of Barber’s most powerful works. First Clara-Jumi Kang performs the Violin Concerto, bringing her compelling insight and dazzling virtuosity to this beautiful work. Then the Orchestra performs Barber’s instantly recognisable Adagio, made popular thanks to its use in powerful film moments, such as Platoon and The Elephant Man.

Barber's Adagio & Violin Concerto

City Halls & Old Fruitmarket

The Queen's Hall

Ryan Bancroft brings his trademark energy to an evening centred on two of Barber’s most powerful works.

SCO 26/27: Barber's Adagio & Violin Concerto

Rowan Tidball was raised in Cornwall where his musical upbringing was rooted in traditional folk music. He began playing the clarinet at seven and quickly found a passion for jazz with his teacher Simon Gilby, who taught him to improvise and introduced him to his first jazz band. Outside of these early influences, Rowan’s first introduction to music came through a deep love of the score in the Lord of the Rings trilogy which in fact inspired Rowan’s choice to take up the clarinet.

Lunchtime Music

Royal Birmingham Conservatoire

Flexible in format and strikingly diverse in repertoire, the Orsino Ensemble comprises some of Britain’s finest wind players. ‘This is all-star playing of the highest level’, noted the Guardian in a review of its 2021 debut album. Its latest Wigmore Hall recital includes Nielsen’s delightful Wind Quintet and the UK première of Mark Simpson’s The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, inspired by five of John Koenig’s neologisms for different types of emotion.

Orsino Ensemble

American Reflections explores the many voices of a nation in music both intimate and grand. Joan Tower’s Made in America opens with bold energy, followed by Kevin Puts’ Letters from Georgia, a song cycle inspired by Georgia O’Keeffe’s letters, featuring soprano Katie Van Kooten. Narrator Ray Horak brings President Lincoln’s words to life in Copland’s A Lincoln Portrait, before Barber’s Symphony No. 1 closes the program with sweeping lyricism.

American Reflections

Skagit Valley College

Grief plays a central role in this special concert, which opens with American composer Samuel Barber's  Adagio for strings – a work whose painful longing but also defiant spirit America has sought in its darkest moments, including after 9/11.

Kochanovsky & Shostakovich

DR Koncerthuset

European iconoclasts meet American masters. Composer Franz Berwald—an erstwhile orthopedic surgeon—stood apart from the early Romantic mainstream, cultivating a distinctly eccentric voice with his overture to Estrella di Soria. Sergei Prokofiev's Violin Concerto No. 1, an early work from the so-called "bad boy of Russian music," conjures a dreamlike sound world, interweaving introspective lyricism with flashes of steely virtuosity. Completing the program are two pillars of 1940s Americana: the orchestral suite from Aaron Copland's iconic ballet Appalachian Spring and the probing musical argument of Samuel Barber's Second Essay for Orchestra.

Appalachian Spring + Alexi Kenney

Sunset Center Theater

Dance across America with the Greeley Philharmonic Orchestra; drive in an old Model T Ford down historical, winding Colorado roads with James David; read a New York newsreel with William Schuman; and experience the jazzy All-American symphonies of Aaron Copland and Samuel Barber! Join us for a night of musical storytelling and interpreting America’s musical identity.

ON the move: american snapshots

University of Northern Colorado

Discover the resilient brilliance of three composers who transform darkness into radiant, enduring beauty, each in their own unique way: from Brahms’ triumphant breakthrough First Symphony to the glowing lyricism and fireworks of Barber’s Violin Concerto (featuring our former Concertmaster Robert Uchida), and a specially-commissioned world premiere by Canadian composer Matthew-John Knights.

Shadows & Light: Barber & Brahms

Dalhousie Arts Centre

Bernstein, Brahms, and Barber

Andrews University

Composed in 1941 during his time in America, Britten’s An American Overture was intended for the Cleveland Orchestra, but was never performed during the composer’s lifetime, receiving its premiere in Birmingham in 1983. Barber’s much-loved Violin Concerto, composed two years earlier, features soloist Charlie Lovell-Jones.

The American Dream

Smith Square Hall

The Pacifica Quartet celebrates America 250 with a program featuring Samuel Barber’s Quartet Op. 11 with its moving Adagio movement, two new works by Jennifer Higdon and Gabriela Lena Frank, and Antonin Dvorak’s evocative American string quartet.

The Pacifica Quartet

Detroit Country Day School - Upper School

A highlight of the season, the Défilé du Ballet introduces the opening gala of the Paris Opera’s dance season, bringing together the entire company on the stage of the Palais Garnier, from the “little rats” of the Ballet School to the Étoiles and the Junior Ballet.

Gala

Palais Garnier

Known for her dynamic presence on the podium and her “splendid and confident” (San Francisco Classical Voice) conducting, Laura Jackson leads the Royal Conservatory Orchestra in a powerful season-opening program.

Royal Conservatory Orchestra with conductor Laura Jackson

The Royal Conservatory of Music

Dvořák | Barber | Suk

Imperial Baths

Drop in during your lunch break and discover a wide range of performances for free with our Monday and Thursday Lunchtimes.

Monday Lunchtimes

Royal Northern College of Music

Dani Howard wrote a new work when she won the Classic FM composition prize for the radio station’s 25th birthday in 2017 and now, internationally acclaimed for her inviting and shimmering sound world, she presents another new work written especially to celebrate the Orchestra’s 25 year relationship with Classic FM. There'll be iconic music from John Williams, a burst of Beethoven, Márquez's popular Conga party piece, and we'll hear ancient and contemporary British minds collide. Benjamin Britten’s Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra draws on themes by Henry Purcell, and Vaughan Williams reimagines the most famous of English folksongs. Something for everyone!

Classic FM Hall of Fame

Royal Liverpool Philharmonic

A beloved San Francisco icon, Michael Tilson Thomas redefined the San Francisco Symphony during his extraordinary 25-year tenure as Music Director. In a one-of-a-kind event, MTT’s longtime friends and artistic collaborators—join the San Francisco Symphony and Chorus in a concert celebrating his life and legacy. The program features music by composers closely associated with MTT, including Gustav Mahler, Leonard Bernstein, George Gershwin, Charles Ives, and Aaron Copland, alongside world premieres by Mason Bates and MTT himself.

A Concert for MTT

Davies Symphony Hall

Derek Hartman, piano

Yale University

Inspired by Steve Reich’s 90th birthday, Liverpool String Quartet dive headfirst into all things USA. From the cinematic Mishima by Philip Glass, through Reich’s New York Counterpoint and Barber’s iconic String Quartet – featuring the breathtaking Adagio – they’ll finish this journey through 20th-century America with an exciting new arrangement of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue.

Liverpool String Quartet

Looking Back, Looking Forward

Idaho State University

Dvořák’s New World Symphony inspired American composers to look to Native American and African-American music in creating their own unique traditions. Join us on a journey through Dvořák’s musical legacy through Barber’s beloved Violin Concerto to the triumphant power of a new American classic by Carlos Simon.

Barber Violin Concerto + Dvořák Symphony No. 9

Cape Fear Community College

An evening of music from the Baroque and Romantic eras, ranging from tenderly dreamy to deeply melancholic, with clarinet and the CHAARTS Chamber Artists. An artist talk takes place 45 minutes before the performance.

Moonlight – Diving into the Starry Sky

Theater in Kempten

The American Voice

Julie Rogers Theatre

Open the season with the lyrical beauty of Barber’s Violin Concerto, followed by the explosive passion of Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony.

Tchaikovsky’s Fourth

Globe-News Center for the Performing Arts

Lose yourself in Elgar’s dark yet lyrical Cello Concerto. Written in the aftermath of World War I, this melancholy piece will break your heart and leave you breathless—an “autumnal” meditation to welcome fall.

Elgar’s Cello Concerto & Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 5

Salt Palace Convention Center

Attend a concert with musicians from the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, where all are welcome to listen to the music their own way. There is space here for all ages, temperaments and functional variations. Simply put: a concert with a little more freedom.

Relaxed Performance

Göteborgs Konserthus

Embark on a musical grand tour of Austria, America, and France with the WT Faculty Woodwind Quintet and pianist Dr. Sarah Rushing as they perform vibrant works by Mozart, Barber, Saint-Saëns, and Poulenc.

A Grand Tour: Music from Austria, America and France

Diverse. Devoted. Determined. In honor of America 250, the 80th anniversary of the Nashville Symphony, and the 20th anniversary of the Schermerhorn Symphony Center, our opening program of the 2026/27 season celebrates the rich sonic kaleidoscope of American composers past and present.You’ll feel it all: from the boundless optimism of Joan Tower’s Made in America, a work for which the Nashville Symphony’s recording received our first GRAMMY® Award in 2008, to the solemn strains of Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings marking the 25th anniversary of September 11, 2001. 

Opening Weekend: An American Celebration

Shermerhorn Symphony Center

For 25 years, Yuja Wang has dazzled the music world with her stupendous virtuosity, yet routine has never crept in. She is always searching for something new, eager to discover the unfamiliar and reinvent herself. The Festival theme “American Dreams” immediately resonated with her. That’s why she has added Samuel Barber’s Piano Concerto to her repertoire: a work that picks up threads from Prokofiev and Rachmaninoff, yet also shows the influence of Bartók and jazz. The result was so striking that Barber received the Pulitzer Prize for it in 1963. The real fun starts in the second half, when Yuja Wang performs the Jazz Suite by the Ukrainian composer Alexander Tsfasman — taking on the musical direction herself. She has a true feeling for jazz and, not coincidentally, received the 2024 Grammy Award for Best Classical Instrumental Solo for her album The American Project. Her longtime friend Teddy Abrams was on the podium for that recording. In Lucerne, he will conduct the first half of the concert, beginning with Aaron Copland’s refreshing Appalachian Spring, with its echoes of folk songs, hymns, square dances, and fiddle music. America at its best!

Mahler Chamber Orchestra | Yuja Wang | Teddy Abrams

KKL Luzern Concert Hall

Acclaimed as an “outstanding ensemble…cohesive yet full of temperament” (The New York Times), the Verona Quartet has firmly established itself amongst the most distinguished ensembles on the chamber music scene today. The group’s singular sense of purpose most recently earned them Chamber Music America’s coveted 2020 Cleveland Quartet Award, and a reputation for its “bold interpretive strength, robust characterization and commanding resonance” (Calgary Herald). The Quartet serves on the faculty of the Oberlin College and Conservatory as the Quartet-in-Residence. In addition to its position at Oberlin, the Quartet holds residencies at Nova Scotia’s Lunenburg Academy of Music Performance and North Carolina’s Chamber Orchestra of the Triangle. As committed advocates of diverse programming, the Verona Quartet curates the UpClose Chamber Music Series on behalf of the COT, electrifying audiences from concert halls to craft breweries with their “sensational, powerhouse performance[s]” (Classical Voice America).

VERONA QUARTET with ALEXANDER FITERSTEIN, clarinet

Maverick Concert Hall

This season's opening concert might well be heard as an echo of the Prague Philharmonia's long-awaited 2026 US tour, one that took the orchestra to three states and culminated in a phenomenally successful debut at New York's Carnegie Hall. Under the baton of music director Emmanuel Villaume, for this very special evening the orchestra welcomes another of its US touring partners, outstanding Canadian violin talent Blake Pouliot.

Martinů. Barber. Beethoven

Rudolfinum

The scene is set for tonight’s concert by Vaughan Williams’ timeless Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, which opens with solemn chords before expanding into soaring strings. This contemplative work was inspired by a Tudor tune by 16th-century composer Thomas Tallis, and first performed in Gloucester Cathedral in 1910.

Gaia x BBC Concert Orchestra: Sounds of the Earth

Southbank Centre

This pianist fits into no mold. Bridget Yee was born in Malaysia in 2004, came to London at age eleven to study, and went on to win the Windsor International Piano Competition, among others. Yet she doesn’t shine only at the keyboard: she also trained as a cellist and double bassist, performing in orchestral concerts under Jac van Steen and Benjamin Zander. That broadened her horizons, she says — and benefits her piano playing, too.

Bridget Yee

Reformierte Lukaskirche

This ensemble is a true cult favorite. When the brass players of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra gather around trumpeter Reinhold Friedrich and trombonist Jörgen van Rijen to form a brass band, the atmosphere reaches fever pitch in no time at all. All the more so at this summer’s appearance, which is devoted to the theme of “American Dreams.” Gershwin's Strike Up the Band injects an irresistible jolt of swing and high spirits.

Lucerne Festival Orchestra 4 Soloists and Brass Ensemble of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra

Song treasures in the Palace Chapel. Kathleen O'Mara (soprano) and Olesya Tutova (piano) in a chamber music concert in the Palace Chapel, Royal Palace, Oslo.

Kathleen O'Mara at the Palace

Royal Palace

For his debut as this summer’s “artiste étoile,” Augustin Hadelich brings along a work from his adopted American homeland that he especially loves: the irresistibly beautiful Violin Concerto by Samuel Barber. He finds Barber’s musical language “highly emotional” and notes that the intensely expressive slow movement can send chills up and down your spine. But the virtuoso in Hadelich is challenged here too — above all in the finale: “It’s like a perpetual-motion machine — you have to let go and still keep everything under control.” 

Lucerne Festival Orchestra | Klaus Mäkelä | Augustin Hadelich

Five voices, one sound of timeless beauty: the Leipzig vocal ensemble amarcord devotes its new programme "Immortal Beauty" to the immortality of beauty, in music, nature and human experience.

13 AMARCORD: "IMMORTAL BEAUTY"

St. Magnus Kirche

Music from Salem brings together musicians of international reputation to prepare and perform chamber music in the peace and beauty of rural Washington County, New York, and environs. Chamber music is classical music written for a small group of performers, and includes a range of styles, from the 18th century to today. Music from Salem also leads educational workshops and conducts violin, viola, and cello seminars for emerging young artists.

Music From Salem August Summer Concert

Hubbard Hall - Center for the Arts and Education

The Edinburgh Festival Chorus joins with our Rising Stars for a programme of American music from the 20th and 21st centuries.

This Shining Night

Usher Hall

The exceptional National Youth Orchestra of the United States of America performs three vibrant 20th-century masterpieces. These talented young musicians are joined by Festival regular, American conductor Karina Canellakis, praised by Gramophone for her ‘finesse and fire’.

Gershwin & Bartók

Filled with short and spirited solo works, this recital by Orion Weiss—hailed as a “brilliant pianist” by The New York Times and praised for his “head-spinning range of colors” by the Chicago Tribune—lets listeners revel in lesser-known gems by major 19th- and 20th-century composers, from Tchaikovsky to Copland.

Orion Weiss Piano Recital

New Mexico Museum of Art

The Orchestra of St. Luke’s returns to close out the summer season led by the dynamic Xian Zhang. This program reunites the orchestra with world-renowned violinist Gil Shaham, a long-time Caramoor favorite whose numerous appearances here dates back to 1994. The afternoon features Shaham’s definitive interpretation of Barber’s Violin Concerto, a work of inherent sweetness and playfulness. Framed by the wit of Rossini’s L'italiana in Algeri Overture and the majestic architecture of Mozart’s ("Jupiter") Symphony, the concert offers a masterclass in both lyrical intimacy and orchestral grandeur.

Orchestra of St. Luke's & Gil Shaham

Venetian Theater at Caramoor

4th Festival Chamber Concert: Rheingold Quartet

Munich Residence

CMS’s summer tradition returns for its 11th year. Get the summer’s hottest ticket, featuring favorite chamber music works in the cool atmosphere of Alice Tully Hall. Stay after the performance and get to know the artists in the lobby with a complimentary glass of wine. 

Summer Evenings V 2026

Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts

The wind quintet WindSync embraces the classics and the growing contemporary repertoire with a fresh sensibility. Versatile and vibrant, the group plays “many idioms authoritatively, elegantly, with adroit technique, and with great fun” (All About the Arts). In the span of one performance, they can cover vast musical ground from revitalized standards to freshly inked works to folk and songbook, the common thread telling a compelling story about music history and our human selves.

Bronze Medalist at the 2025 Van Cliburn Competition, American pianist Evren Ozel has won numerous honors and awards; most recently Evren was awarded an Avery Fisher Career Grant in 2023. Other accolades include second prize and special prizes for Best Mazurka and Best Polonaise at the 2020 U.S. National Chopin Competition, first prize at the 2016 Boston Symphony Concerto Competition, second prize and the Mozart and Chopin special prizes at the 2018 Dublin International Piano Competition, second prize at the 2016 Thomas and Evon Cooper International Competition, and scholarships from the U.S Chopin Foundation and Young Arts Foundation.

WindSync with EVREN OZEL, piano

Beloved Festival Orchestra member José González Granero moves from the woodwind section to the front of the stage to perform Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto, one of the great composer’s last masterpieces.

Festival Orchestra: Shostakovich & Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto

Jackson Hole High School

Enjoy a behind-the-scenes look as Sir Donald Runnicles and the orchestra rehearse for the weekend Festival Orchestra concerts. This week, beloved Festival Orchestra member José González Granero moves from the woodwind section to the front of the stage to perform Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto, one of the great composer’s last masterpieces. In contrast to Mozart’s meaningful late utterance are two more youthful works by important 20th century icons – a playful literary overture by American Samuel Barber, The School for Scandal Overture, and an incredibly precocious college graduation project by Dmitri Shostakovich, his Symphony No. 1.

Open Rehearsal: Shostakovich & Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto

There’s an elusive logic that occurs only in dreams, that nocturnal state where the human mind processes the flood of impressions and information it takes in every day, sifting and sorting without interruption from the waking world. In this very special and wide-ranging program, Manchester Music Festival artistic director Philip Setzer is our guide through a vivid, varied dreamscape in sound—a journey epitomized by composer Paul Epstein’s appropriately titled Dreamsonata, which leaps from Viennese ballroom sounds to midwestern ragtime in the blink of an ear. The rest of the program blazes a similarly unlikely yet ultimately harmonious path, from the courtly String Quartet of Benjamin Franklin (yes, really) to Samuel Barber’s elegiac Adagio for Strings, by way of Scott Joplin, Amy Beach, and Carlos Simon.

Setzer and the Sound of Dreams

Southern Vermont Arts Center

The concert begins with Mozart’s Trio in E major, a graceful and lyrical work highlighting his gift for chamber music. From there, the program moves to the Sonata for Violin and Piano by Maurice Ravel, the great French composer of the early 20th century, whose music shimmers with color and atmosphere.

Saratoga Springs, NY

Skidmore College

Join conductor Edwin Outwater, banjo legend Béla Fleck, and the SF Symphony for our annual free Stern Grove Festival concert in San Francisco’s beautiful outdoor amphitheater. Pack a picnic, grab some friends, and relax as the Orchestra fills the summer air with sparkling music.

Stern Grove Festival

San Francisco Symphony

“From Man to Myth” considers how larger-than-life personalities capture the public imagination and, over time, become legend. Debussy’s Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun drifts in with luminous color and sensuous calm, its opening flute line evoking a mythical creature poised between dream and reality. Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3, “Eroica,” was originally dedicated to Napoleon, whom the composer saw as a heroic symbol of a new era—before famously withdrawing the dedication in disillusionment. Monumental in scale and emotional sweep, the work charts struggle, mourning, and hard-won triumph, revealing both the power and fragility behind the making of a myth.

From Man to Myth

Riverwalk Center

The Grammy-nominated British a cappella octet returns to Caramoor for LEAD ME HOME, a celebration of the American choral landscape.  Showcasing a wide array of American styles, their program includes traditional hymns and folk songs alongside contemporary compositions.

Voces8

The Rosen House at Caramoor

Tito Muñoz makes a performance feel “like the center of a social triangle of concerts, parties, and going to church” (I Care If You Listen). Now, he throws more fun into the mix, turning the Hollywood Bowl into a sports arena during this soccer-themed classical program.

The Classical World Cup

Hollywood Bowl

Andris Nelsons leads some of the most acclaimed stars of opera today in performances of Samuel Barber’s Vanessa, a work considered by many the greatest American opera. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1958, Vanessa premiered at the Metropolitan Opera that year. Barber wrote the opera on a libretto by Gian Carlo Menotti; they aimed for a cosmopolitan, nostalgic work on lost love and the consequences of self-delusion. Barber’s romantic lyricism is ever-present in this powerfully affecting work, a centerpiece of this season’s E Pluribus Unum: From Many, One focus.

Vanessa | E Pluribus Unum: From Many, One

Boston Symphony Orchestra

Barber & Hanson

Santa Monica College Performing Arts Center California

Kalena Bovell leads the Grant Park Orchestra in the wistful lyricism of Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto with acclaimed violinist Will Hagen. Jessie Montgomery’s Starburst opens the concert with a bang, and actors from Lookingglass Theatre Company bring to life Peter Boyer’s innovative multimedia work Ellis Island: The Dream of America.

Barber Violin Concerto

Millennium Park

The Knights

Central Park

The Knights celebrate America’s 250th anniversary with a bold new festival across iconic New York City parks and the historic Caramoor Center. In a three-part musical showcase, audiences will experience the multifaceted potential and power of American music—rooted in history, alive in the present, shaped by many voices, and brimming with possibility.

The Knights at Naumburg Orchestral Concerts

BNY Classics showcases unforgettable performances by your Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, featuring timeless masterpieces, thrilling premieres, and renowned guest artists.

Appalachian Spring

Heinz Hall for the Performing Arts

Enjoy a night of world-class music with Beo String Quartet in the beautiful setting of Unity Chapel in Latrobe.

Beo String Quartet – Summer Chamber Series

Unity Chapel

What a fabulous luxury to have 4 of the brilliant Kanneh-Mason family in one concert! As well as all pursuing stellar international careers they are also firm Perth favourites. To hear wonderful chamber music played by star musicians like this will offer seriously intoxicating music-making. Not to be missed.

Classical Stars: The Kanneh Masons

Perth Concert Hall

It’s a work full of contrasts, from soaring lyricism and radiant emotion to a turbulently charged finale. Bringing this concerto to life is Charlie Lovell-Jones, guest leader of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, John Wilson’s award-winning Sinfonia of London, and soloist with orchestras including the BBC Philharmonic and English Chamber Orchestra.

The evening opens with Mark-Anthony Turnage’s A Jolly Good Knees-Up, a spirited burst of sharp rhythms, bold colour, and mischievous energy.

Rush Hour 5: Barber Violin Concerto

St John's Waterloo

A kaleidoscopic program of 20th-century music by LGBTQ+ composers, conducted by festival founder Oliver Zeffman.

Classical Pride 2026

June Concert 2026

Pomona College

Musical essays are unusual, yet the connection between music and rhetoric already exists in works of earlier centuries. Barber brings the American essay genre into a one-movement orchestral form that, while not programmatic, is nevertheless rooted in a non-musical idea. Brahms's symphonic debut, which only saw the light of day in 1876 after decades of preparation and subtly represents a reaction to the national unification of Germany, appears to have a very similar structure.

Composer

Samuel Barber

Events

Upcoming events

Nov 10, 2026

with Esther Yoo · Bath Philharmonic Orchestra

Nov 15, 2026

Pause · San José Chamber Orchestra

Nov 15, 2026

An American Tapestry: Remember the Past – Change the Future · Corvallis-OSU Symphony Orchestra

Nov 15, 2026

An American Tapestry · Lima Symphony Orchestra

Nov 18, 2026

Cherry Ge · Royal Academy of Music

Past events

Nov 8, 2026

Benjamin Appl baritone; Jerusalem Quartet · Wigmore Hall

7 - 8 Nov, 2026

From Tchaikovsky to Copland · California Symphony

About

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