Upcoming Concerts & Performances

Boston University School of Music

Curtain Times

Tsai Performance Center, 685 Commonwealth Ave / CFA Concert Hall, 855 Commonwealth Ave · Boston University, Boston · bu.edu/cfa/music

10 upcoming concerts and performances from Boston University School of Music, with dates, venues and ticket links taken from the organization’s own pages and refreshed weekly. All classical in Greater Boston →

Production art for BU Choral Series: Identity — Voices of Rivers, Roots, and Open Sky
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Sat Oct 17 · 2pm

BU Choral Series: Identity — Voices of Rivers, Roots, and Open Sky

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Daniel Parsley conducts the Boston University Chamber Choir, University Choruses and Graduate Conductors Chorus in a programme on water, heritage and open landscapes by contemporary composers. It includes Carol Barnett’s A World Beloved: Bluegrass Mass, Ola Gjeilo’s Tundra, Andrea Ramsey’s Lineage, Susan LaBarr’s The River, Connor Koppin’s Everything, Everything, Shawn Kirchner’s Unclouded Day and Craig Hella Johnson’s Let the River Run.

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Production art for Living Jazz
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Sat Oct 17 – Sun Oct 18 · 7:30pm/2pm

Living Jazz

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Sat Oct 17 · 7:30pm / Sun Oct 18 · 2pm

Boston University's School of Theatre presents a piece of spoken text, voice and movement coordinated by Yo-El Cassell, with images drawn from Seeing Jazz, the Smithsonian anthology. In an abandoned dance hall and jazz club, spirits of the afterlife reconvene to replay vignettes and memories of how their lives moved them, and of how jazz's rhythm, improvisation and call and response ran through those lives.

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Production art for BU Symphony Orchestra: Conflict to Calm, Nature Transforms
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Mon Oct 19 · 7:30pm

BU Symphony Orchestra: Conflict to Calm, Nature Transforms

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Joshua Roach and the School of Music's graduate conductors lead the Boston University Symphony Orchestra in a programme on humanity and the natural world: Verdi's Overture to Nabucco, the world premiere of Terra Branta Canadensis by Jacob M. Whitchurch, a BU composition winner, and Beethoven's Symphony No. 6, "Pastoral," whose five movements evoke countryside scenes, a storm and renewal.

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Production art for BU Chamber Orchestra: The Art of Play — Jazz, Wit & Wonder
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Wed Oct 21 · 7:30pm

BU Chamber Orchestra: The Art of Play — Jazz, Wit & Wonder

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Sarah Ioannides and graduate conductor David Scott lead the Boston University Chamber Orchestra in a programme pairing Haydn's Symphony No. 45, the Farewell, with twentieth-century scores: Deep Forest by the Massachusetts-born Mabel Daniels and Milhaud's jazz-inflected La Création du Monde, drawn from African creation myths. Andrius Žlabys, the Grammy-nominated pianist who lectures in piano at BU, closes with Franck's Symphonic Variations.

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Production art for Richmond Piano Competition Winner's Recital: Che Li
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Thu Nov 5 · 7:30pm

Richmond Piano Competition Winner's Recital: Che Li

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Che Li, an Artist Diploma pianist at Boston University and a student of Pavel Nersessian, plays a solo recital of works by Haydn, Prokofiev and Liszt as winner of the 2026 Richmond Piano Competition. The annual competition, open to every piano performance major in the School of Music, was established by the Boston philanthropist and music lover Aaron Richmond.

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Production art for Ketty Nez Album Release Concert
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Fri Nov 6 · 8pm

Ketty Nez Album Release Concert

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Boston University’s Center for New Music marks the release of Only the Path Remains, a new Albany Records album by composer and pianist Ketty Nez, a member of BU’s composition faculty, with a concert of music from the recording. Nez’s work draws on folk traditions and musical heritage, exploring “questions of memory, cultural identity, family history, and musical tradition.”

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Production art for Breaking the Silence: Rediscovering the Music of Elfrida Andrée
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Mon Nov 9 · 7:30pm

Breaking the Silence: Rediscovering the Music of Elfrida Andrée

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The Boston University Symphony Orchestra and Treble Choirs, conducted by Sarah Ioannides, give a programme of works by Elfrida Andrée, the Swedish composer and women’s rights advocate, with soprano Kristine Nowlain. It includes the world premiere of I Templet and U.S. premieres of the Minuet and Till Näktergalen, and ends with Andrée’s Suffrage Cantata (1911), heard for the first time on the East Coast.

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Production art for BU Wind Ensemble: America 250, Part 2
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Thu Nov 12 · 7:30pm

BU Wind Ensemble: America 250, Part 2

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Joshua Roach conducts the Boston University Wind Ensemble as it concludes its America 250 celebration: William Bolcom’s Liberty Enlightening the World, in a new critical edition Roach prepared, William Schuman’s George Washington Bridge and Bernstein’s Three Dance Episodes from On the Town, in Lavender’s arrangement. Pianist Antian Ye plays Gershwin’s Prelude II and then Donald Grantham’s Fantasy Variations on it.

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Production art for Masterworks for Cello & Piano: Kee Kim and Victor Cayres
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Fri Nov 13 · 8pm

Masterworks for Cello & Piano: Kee Kim and Victor Cayres

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Cellist Kee Kim, Professor of Music at Harvard and a member of the Grammy-winning Parker Quartet, joins Victor Cayres, a lecturer in piano and collaborative piano at Boston University. They open with Nadia Boulanger’s three short pieces, then play three cello sonatas: one by Beethoven, Debussy’s of 1915 and Prokofiev’s of 1949, written for the young Rostropovich.

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Production art for BU Choral Series: Identity — Anthems and Belief
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Sat Dec 5 · 1pm

BU Choral Series: Identity — Anthems and Belief

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Daniel Parsley conducts Boston University’s chorus and orchestra in four works that take up belonging, memory, faith and conviction. David Lang’s National Anthems reflects on collective identity and Brahms’s Begräbnisgesang, Op. 13, on communal remembrance; Margaret Bonds’s Credo sets the words of W. E. B. Du Bois, and Vaughan Williams’s Five Mystical Songs turns to personal faith. The concert is part of the BU Choral Orchestral Series.

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