Community Calendar

Following their bi-annual week-long residency at Skidmore, Ensemble Connect brings its signature energy and precision to a program rooted in richly expressive chamber music. The concert opens with Ligeti’s Trio for Violin, Horn, and Piano and Loeffler’s Two Rhapsodies, followed by Kodály’s Serenade, Op. 12 and Bartók’s Contrasts, BB 116. Together, these works highlight the ensemble’s versatility while offering audiences an intimate encounter with music shaped by folk influence, modernist color, and striking instrumental conversation.

Radio France’s Artists-in-Residence, the Parisian ensemble makes its highly anticipated return to the series after a four-year hiatus. Making regular appearances at Carnegie Hall and in important venues around the world, the quartet will bring its “immense music gifts” (Washington Post) to works of Haydn and Schumann with a recent piece by the Czech iconoclast.

Mařatka: Amedea
Haydn: G-major Quartet, Op. 77, No. 1
Schumann: A-major Quartet, Op. 41, No. 3

"Quietly dazzling performances light up Feldman's introspective minor masterpiece."   
—Limelight Australia
 
For the Morton Feldman Centennial, the John Cage Trust and Bard Conservatory present a special concert by Darragh Morgan (violin) and Mary Dullea (piano) performing Feldman's For John Cage.
Morton Feldman (1926–1987) would be 100 this year. A great friend of John Cage's, the John Cage Trust, Bard Conservatory, and Culture Ireland present a rare opportunity to hear Feldman's rarely performed, exquisite work for violin and piano, For John Cage (1982).

Violinist Darragh Morgan, has been performing Morton Feldman's For John Cage internationally for over 20 years and his celebrated album release on Diatribe Records in 2020 with pianist John Tilbury, renowned as a peerless interpreter of Feldman's piano music. For this special John Cage Trust performance at Bard College's László Z. Bitó ’60 Conservatory Building, Performance Space, Darragh is joined by his long-term pianist partner, Mary Dullea, also of "the virtuosic Fidelio Trio" (Sunday Times).
This late afternoon concert offers an hour and twenty minutes of sheer bliss.

The Naghash Ensemble combines the earthy spirituality of Armenian folk song, new classical music, and contemporary post-minimalism with the energy of rock and jazz. Three brilliant female vocalists and some of Armenia’s finest instrumentalists on duduk, oud, dhol, and piano play captivating new music based on sacred texts by the medieval Armenian mystic poet and priest Mkrtich Naghash.

Written by Armenian-American composer John Hodian, The Naghash Ensemble’s “Songs of Exile” is a meditation on man’s relationship to God from the perspective of a monk forced to live in exile for many years.

“An enchanting elixir of sounds based on new Armenian folk and centuries-old poetry.” – KEXP

“A moment of grace and meditation.” – Rolling Stone

Anthony De Ritis’s Jiggedy, Jingle, Jaunty, Jaunty, a world premiere for orchestra and electronics, pays homage to two 20th-century giants, James Joyce and Luciano Berio ,through a dialogue that stretches across time. BMOP welcomes soprano Julia Bullock for Samuel Barber’s iconic Knoxville: Summer of 1915, a setting of James Agee’s 1938 prose text whose childlike recollection of a summer evening remains one of Barber’s most beloved creations. In addition, Ms. Bullock also performs two movements from Matt Aucoin’s The No One’s Rose, settings of poems by Paul Celan that explore memory, language, and loss. The evening concludes with Charles Wuorinen’s Delight of the Muses, a homageto Mozart based on material from Don Giovanni. Outlandish, sentimental, and a rousing good time, this ballet shows this iconic American composer at his irreverent best.

Hailed for creating diverse, timely and relevant opera-theater, White Snake Projects (WSP) presents the U.S. premiere of Brent Michael Davids’s monumental orchestral work Requiem for America: Singing for the Invisible People. This profoundly moving musical work brings an abrupt and necessary shift of perspective amid the celebrations of the 250th anniversary of America’s independence.
Drawing deeply from his Native American heritage, Davids tackles the genocidal founding of America, challenging music norms and sanitized historical rhetoric to give voice to America’s invisible people: American Indians.

Following its acclaimed world premiere in London by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Requiem for America premieres in America in a one-night only concert, November 14, 2026, at NEC’s Jordan Hall in Boston.

The famed singer and one of the world’s top early music ensembles, led by lutenist Thomas Dunford, return after their memorable 2023 debut for a program of Baroque arias and instrumental works. The “elegant fire” (New Yorker) of Desandre with Jupiter’s “delightful” (NY Times) playing will have you on the edge of your seat. The NY Times named this program in the top 10 they want to hear this season in Carnegie Hall.

Baroque Works of Vivaldi & others

Leading the vanguard in interabled opera, Opera Praktikos presents the world premiere of its latest project La Sonnambula (The Sleepwalker) as part of National Sawdust’s 2026 makemake Festival. In a one-night only concert performance on Wednesday, November 18, 2026, this unique 90-minute work transforms Bellini-Romani’s classic masterwork into an unparalleled integrated experience where Italian song and American Sign Language become one expressive whole. Featuring arrangement and orchestration by Spicer Carr, ASL translation & integration by Brandon Kazen-Maddox, Director of Artistic Sign Language by Patrice Creamer; Book, and English translation by Marianna Mott Newirth, this production integrates ASL and Deaf culture into the narrative of a classic opera setting the standard for what’s possible when Disability-creativity is brought into the field.

This French artist’s recordings are some of the most streamed guitar music in the world. Returning after his awe-inspiring debut at Mont Pleasant in 2024, Feuillâtre brings an “uncommon breadth of spirit that shines through every note” (Gramophone) to beloved guitar masterpieces from Spain and Latin America.

Works of Albéniz, Piazzolla, Villa-Lobos, & others

We kick off a new tradition of jazz during the holidays! Winner of Downbeat Magazine’s 2024 Critic’s Poll, Fortner is a 2026 Grammy-winning pianist who was a regular member of trumpeter Roy Hargrove’s quintet. He plays a solo program of jazz standards and original compositions infused with his New Orleans roots.

Selections from his album Solo Game