Critic’s Choice
Music of Morton Feldman and Earle Brown
Graphic Content Festival
September 11-November 21
2026 has marked the centennials of some of the greatest American musicians in history, including Miles Davis and John Coltrane. Two others made up half of the New York School of composers: Morton Feldman and Earle Brown. Feldman has already been featured in concerts, and this festival brings Brown, one of the great pioneers of indeterminacy, to the fore. The festival starts with Feldman’s Piano and String Quartet, features Brown’s Folio two different nights, and has both rarities and surprises to come. steve-long.com (GG)
Reich: “Staged Variations”—Music for 18 Musicians
Steve Reich and Musicians, Manhattan School of Music, and Alarm Will Sound/Alan Pierson
October 14-18
Steve Reich turns 90 on October 3. He is still creating new music, some of which can be heard this season, but the ideal way to celebrate how Reich changed the course of classical music will be what promises to be an enormous thrill. Conductor Alan Pierson has created “Staged Variations,” an immersive, multi-hour, semi-staged performance of this still-astounding masterpiece. There will be three complete, consecutive performances of Music for 18 Musicians—first by Steve Reich and Musicians, then students from the Manhattan School of Music, and finally Alarm Will Sound, plus a special guest. armoryonpark.org (GG)
Reich: Drumming
Sō Percussion
October 28
Amid this season’s celebrations of Steve Reich’s 90th birthday, this concert at the 92nd Street Y will be the only chance for New Yorkers to hear his seminal, African-influenced 1971 work performed live. Sō Percussion has recorded this monument of minimalism superbly, but no recording can reproduce the impact of watching the musicians in person, fiercely concentrating as they move in and out of phase and make tiny alterations with large consequences. 92ny.org. (DW)
Glass: Einstein on the Beach
Brooklyn Academy of Music
November 19-21.
Philip Glass also turns 90 this season (January 31, 2027), with several performances of his works. None are likely to be more powerful than those at the Brooklyn Academy of Music of his monumental operatic collaboration with Robert Wilson. Though now taking baby steps into the repertoire, these concerts—with installations from Es Devlin—will be played by the Philip Glass Ensemble, a chance to honor these indefatigable musicians as well. bam.org (GG)
Floyd: Wuthering Heights
the little OPERA theatre of ny
November 19-22.
Had he lived five years longer, Carlisle Floyd would have turned 100 this past June. He was just 29 when he composed Susannah, the lyrical and proudly American opera that became his calling card around the world. Determined not to repeat himself, he turned next to Emily Brontë’s dark and disturbing tale of love in the Yorkshire moors, but the result received a lukewarm reception from critics and audiences. This company’s excellent track record with neglected works promises a fresh look at Floyd’s ambitious work, free of 1958 expectations, at the Loreto Theater. lotny.org (DW)
“Cowboy Nations”
Parlando/Ian Niederhoffer
December 4
Parlando (Italian for “speaking”), a chamber orchestra led by Ian Niederhoffer, has earned a reputation for stimulating programs of lesser-known works around historical or philosophical themes, explained by Niederhoffer in engaging talks from the podium. This season the ensemble is venturing beyond this formula in some concerts, but for a classic example of “the Parlando way,” try this program of 20th-century composers seeking to express national identity in sound, from Mexico’s Silvestre Revueltas to Argentina’s Alberto Ginastera to Czechoslovakia’s Erwin Schulhoff. Harpist Parker Ramsay solos in Ginastera’s folk-inspired Harp Concerto, at Merkin Concert Hall. kaufmanmusiccenter.org (DW)
Music of Caroline Shaw and Mendelssohn
Attacca Quartet and Caroline Shaw
February 5, 2027
Caroline Shaw is this season’s Richard and Barbara Debs Composer’s Chair at Carnegie Hall, and the Attacca Quartet is playing some of her work on this concert. Attacca is already one of the great groups for post-minimalist music with a deep partnership with Shaw. In this event she is a participant as well as composer, joining them in performances of her own music and sitting in on viola for Mendelssohn’s String Quintet No. 2. carnegiehall.org (GG)
Music of Schnittke & Zappa
Parlando/Ian Niederhoffer
February 19
The system is more absurd than anything a satirist could invent. In his Gogol Suite, Alfred Schnittke captured the Russian author’s depictions of bureaucratic absurdity with music that treats pomposity as a joke: marches strut, waltzes wobble, familiar classics surface at inappropriate moments, and all dissolves into chaos. Frank Zappa turned the modern workplace into a surreal comic opera in The Adventures of Greggery Peccary, sending his hapless protagonist through a world of trend-mongers, corporate jargon, bureaucratic ritual, and manufactured fashion, while the music ricochets among rock, jazz, avant-garde orchestration, and musical parody. kaufmanmusiccenter.org (RP)
Marina Abramović: Alma y Fuego
New York Philharmonic/Gustavo Dudamel
March 10-14
This first season for Gustavo Dudamel as music director of the Philharmonic is essentially self-recommending. This program deserves a high place even above concerts of Beethoven, Mahler, and more. Dudamel will lead the Philharmonic musicians in Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale and Manuel de Falla’s gorgeous El Amore brujo. More than a concert, this is a multimedia collaboration designed by Marina Abramavić, with film by director Nabil Elderkin, and featuring vocalist Pasión Vega. nyphil.org (GG)
Menotti: The Saint of Bleecker Street
Mannes Opera
March 12-13
During the 1950s, Gian Carlo Menotti was arguably the most prominent American opera composer of his generation. His fourth major opera, The Saint of Bleecker Street, premiered on Broadway in 1954 and won the Pulitzer Prize the following year. After a 15-year absence, it returns to New York in a production directed by Mannes alumna, Argentine opera director Malena Dayen, featuring a new chamber orchestration. Mannes Opera. (RP)
Music of Brahms, Bartók, Chopin, Liszt and Beethoven
Anna Geniushene, pianist at Carnegie Hall
March 18, 2027
In 2022, only the instant superstar Yunchan Lim stood between this outstanding Russian pianist and the gold medal at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. This season Carnegie Hall is presenting Lim in multiple recitals in its cavernous main hall, while Cliburn silver medalist Geniushene slips in the back door to show the exceptional vitality and insight she brings to core repertoire—some familiar and some not so familiar–in Carnegie’s intimate Weill Recital Hall. carnegiehall.org (DW)
“The Knights of the Lute”
Music Before 1800/Paul O’Dette, lutenist
April 18
If this season’s complete Beethoven and Mahler cycles leave your ears begging for relief, head up to Corpus Christi Church in Morningside Heights and lean forward in your seat to hear the exquisite artistry of Paul O’Dette, presented by Music Before 1800. The internationally recognized master of the lute will introduce New York to recently discovered works by 1590s lute stars Lorenzino Tracetti and the composer known as “Il Cavaliere del Liuto” (The Knight of the Lute). mb1800.org (DW)
Metropolitan Opera
“Diamond Jubilee: 60 Years at Lincoln Center”
May 25
The Met celebrates its 60th anniversary at Lincoln Center with a glittering gala conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin, staged by director Julian Crouch, and featuring the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and Chorus. A deliberate throwback to the Met’s great star-studded gala tradition, the program features arias, duets, and scenes from more than thirty operas, including excerpts from Die Walküre, Der Rosenkavalier, La Forza del Destino, Akhnaten, and The Queen of Spades. Metropolitan Opera. (RP)
Mahler: Symphony No. 8
Metropolitan Opera Orchestra/Yannick Nézet-Séguin
June 10-12
Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s Mahler symphony cycle moves to the Metropolitan Opera for three consecutive performances of Mahler’s Symphony No. 8, the “Symphony of a Thousand.” The soloists include sopranos Angela Meade and Elza van den Heever, mezzo-soprano Karen Cargill, and bass-baritone Ryan Speedo Green. The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Chorus, and Children’s Chorus will join the forces of the symphony in what Mahler described as “the whole universe beginning to ring and resound.” Metropolitan Opera. (RP)
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