Upcoming Concerts & Performances
65 upcoming concerts and performances from New England Conservatory, with dates, venues and ticket links taken from the organization’s own pages and refreshed weekly. All classical in Greater Boston →
Wed Oct 7 · 7:30pm
David Loebel conducts the Philharmonia in two symphonies in minor keys: Mozart's Symphony No. 25 in G minor, K. 183, the so-called little G minor written when the composer was seventeen, and after the intermission Shostakovich's Symphony No. 10 in E minor, Op. 93, completed in 1953, the year of Stalin's death, and his first symphony since the Ninth of 1945.
Thu Oct 8 · 7:30pm
John Mallia, who teaches at NEC, curates a programme of new and recent music: his own Concrete, Metal, Rust, Moss (2026) and Stray Signals (2007), the world premiere of Sid Richardson's Ringer, Robert Ceely's Metamir (2009) in a revised acoustic version, and Joseph Bozich's City in Stasis (2026). Bozich conducts; Mallia performs on electronics and Richardson on double bass and electronics, with fourteen other musicians.
Wed Oct 14 · 7:30pm
The Chamber Orchestra gives its first concert of the season, prepared by its artistic director Donald Palma and playing without a conductor. Its players are chosen by audition, and the ensemble exists to carry chamber-music habits into an orchestral setting.
Sun Oct 18 · 3:00pm
Flautist Paula Robison plays Vivaldi with a chamber orchestra of NEC students, in a concert the Conservatory bills as celebrating 85 years and a life of music-making. Robison, who teaches at NEC, won first prize at the Geneva International Music Competition in 1966 and was a founding artist member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. She studied with Marcel Moyse and, at Juilliard, with Julius Baker.
Sun Oct 18 · 8:00pm
Baritone Michael Meraw, with pianist Leonardo Ciampa, sings Italian art songs by Paolo Tosti, among them Sogno and L'ultima canzone, and three by Stefano Donaudy, including Vaghissima sembianza, then gives the Boston premiere of Ciampa's Trilogia della Luce. Meraw has sung with Seattle Opera, Opéra Atelier and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, in roles including Szymanowski's King Roger and Rossini's Figaro.
Wed Oct 21 · 7:30pm
David Loebel leads the NEC Symphony in Jessie Montgomery's Overture and Haydn's Symphony No. 88 in G major, then a Dvořák second half: two of the Slavonic Dances from the Op. 72 set, Nos. 2 and 6, and the Symphony No. 8 in G major, which Dvořák wrote in 1889 at his country house in Vysoká.
Mon Oct 26 · 7:30pm
Violist Wenting Kang, who teaches at NEC, plays Schumann's Three Romances and selections from Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet in Vadim Borisovsky's arrangement, then Britten's Third Suite for solo cello in Nobuko Imai's viola transcription and Stravinsky's Suite Italienne as arranged by Kim Kashkashian. All three arrangers are violists: Borisovsky was a founding member of the Beethoven Quartet, and Imai and Kashkashian are among the instrument's best-known soloists.
Tue Oct 27 · 7:30pm
NEC's Wind Ensemble, one of the Conservatory's large wind groups alongside the Symphonic Winds, gives its autumn concert. Kevin Fitzgerald became NEC's director of wind ensembles this year, after serving as associate conductor of the Jacksonville Symphony and assistant conductor of the Alabama Symphony; he won a special prize for contemporary music at the 2023 Mahler Competition and founded ÆPEX Contemporary Performance.
Wed Oct 28 · 7:30pm
Two new works — Gabriela Lena Frank's Frida y Diego Suite of 2025 and a new double concerto by Derrick Skye — set against excerpts from Berlioz's Roméo et Juliette and music of Ravel. Hugh Wolff conducts the Philharmonia. Frank's suite takes Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera as its subject.
Thu Oct 29 · 6:00pm
The Opera Department's twice-yearly scenes programme, drawing highlights from across the repertory — comedy and tragedy in short excerpts rather than a full staging. Joshua Major directs. An early start, at six. A scenes programme lets a department cast far more singers than a full staging would.
Thu Oct 29 · 7:30pm
Erica J. Washburn, NEC's director of choral activities, conducts the NEC Chamber Singers, a choir of 24 to 30 students open to every major at the Conservatory. The ensemble sings challenging works from all periods, with particular emphasis on a cappella music of the nineteenth to twenty-first centuries, rehearses three times a week and usually performs in the round.
Sat Oct 31 · 10:00am
Seymour Barab's one-act Little Red Riding Hood is the other half of NEC's annual touring children's opera, a collaboration between the Conservatory's opera department and its Community Performances and Partnerships program. Barab, an American cellist, wrote dozens of short operas. The show runs about 50 minutes, is meant for children of all ages, and audiences are invited to come in Halloween costume.
Sun Nov 1 · 4:00pm
Pianist Pavel Nersessian pairs Mendelssohn's six Songs Without Words and Rondo capriccioso with Fauré's songs without words, two valses-caprices, the second Barcarolle and two pieces from Pelléas et Mélisande, then ends on Ravel's Gaspard de la nuit. Nersessian taught at the Moscow Conservatory for more than three decades, assisting Sergei Dorensky with students including Nikolai Lugansky and Denis Matsuev, and won the Dublin International Piano Competition in 1991.
Mon Nov 2 · 7:30pm
This month's programme is built around Budapest's Liszt Academy. The violinist and NEC alumna Tessa Lark plays Bartók's Romanian Folk Dances with the pianist Alessio Bax and traditional American tunes with violinist Eden Mac-Adam-Somer and cellist Mike Block. Soprano Dani Zhang sings Liszt's Oh! Quand je dors and Pace non trovo, and Bax anchors Dohnányi's Sextet, Op. 37, with faculty strings, clarinet and horn.
Wed Nov 4 · 7:30pm
David Loebel conducts the NEC Philharmonia, one of the conservatory's student orchestras, in music from Eastern Europe: Smetana, Bartók and Requiem Fragments of 2008 by Kati Agócs, the Canadian-American composer who teaches composition at NEC. The listing names Smetana and Bartók without their individual works. Loebel, formerly music director of the Memphis Symphony Orchestra, is on the conservatory's orchestral conducting faculty.
Fri Nov 6 – Sat Nov 7
Singers from NEC's Undergraduate Opera Studio, an auditioned programme for voice majors who have passed their first-year promotional exam, perform staged scenes from the opera repertoire, mixing tragedy and comedy, across two nights. Steven Goldstein directs and Justin Williams is music director; the studio is led by its artistic director, Michael Meraw.
Sun Nov 8 · 7:30pm
Pianist Minsoo Sohn plays the whole of Book 1 of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier in one Jordan Hall evening — twenty-four preludes and fugues, one pair in every major and minor key, written in 1722 as a demonstration that the thing could be done.
Mon Nov 9 · 7:30pm
Pianist Clayton Stephenson, who in 2022 became the first Black finalist at the Van Cliburn Competition, gives a recital as a member of NEC's Institute for Concert Artists, the Conservatory's two-year Artist Diploma course. A graduate of the Harvard–NEC dual-degree programme, he won the inaugural Nina Simone Piano Competition and an Avery Fisher Career Grant in 2024 and has appeared with the Houston and Cincinnati symphonies.
Nov 9/12, Feb 25, Mar 2/7
Mon Nov 9 · 7:30pm / Thu Nov 12 · 7:30pm / Thu Feb 25 · 7:30pm / Tue Mar 2 · 7:30pm / Sun Mar 7 · 8:00pm
Students chosen from NEC's College and Preparatory School play Domenico Scarlatti's keyboard sonatas, the subject of six Piano Department concerts this year and of a series that will cover all 555 of them over four years. Each year the department marks an anniversary, celebrates a composer or explores a theme; Bruce Brubaker, NEC's Curator of Piano Programming, oversees the concerts.
Wed Nov 11 · 7:30pm
Paul Biss conducts the NEC Symphony, the Conservatory's second full orchestra alongside the Philharmonia. Biss, a violinist and violist who taught at Indiana University before joining the NEC faculty, is one of the Symphony's regular conductors; he is married to the violinist Miriam Fried, and their son is the pianist Jonathan Biss. Admission is free, with a ticket.
Mon Nov 16 · 7:30pm
NEC's period-instrument orchestra gives its autumn concert. The ensemble belongs to the Pratt Early Music Program, which Harold I. Pratt and Frances G. Pratt endowed to bring historically informed performance, visiting scholars and master classes to the Conservatory. Admission is free and open to the public, with no ticket required.
Wed Nov 18 · 7:30pm
The NEC Chamber Orchestra plays without a conductor: its members are chosen by audition each autumn and stay together for the year, and the leadership rotates for every work so that each player takes responsibility for musical decisions. Donald Palma, a double bassist and founding member of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, is its artistic director.
Thu Nov 19 · 7:30pm
Saxophonist Kenneth Radnofsky and colleagues play Schoenberg and works written in his wake. At 6pm a new documentary about the composer is screened, followed by a panel moderated by Alex Ross, music critic of the New Yorker and author of The Rest Is Noise, with Schoenberg's son Larry among the panellists. Radnofsky founded the World-Wide Concurrent Premieres and Commissioning Fund.
Thu Nov 19 – Sun Nov 22
Humperdinck's Hansel and Gretel, staged by the Opera Department over four nights. Written in 1893, it puts Wagner-scale orchestration behind a fairy tale, and is the one opera in the standard repertory aimed as squarely at families as at opera-goers.
Sun Nov 22 · 8:00pm
The Gunther Schuller Society joins NEC students and alumni to celebrate Schuller in an annual concert. Schuller, who died in 2015, was a horn player, composer and conductor; he coined the term Third Stream for music joining jazz and classical practice, served as the Conservatory's president from 1967 to 1977, and won the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for Of Reminiscences and Reflections.
Mon Nov 23 · 7:30pm
Kenneth Radnofsky leads the NEC Saxophone Ensemble in works composed and arranged for saxophones. Adolphe Sax patented the instrument in 1846, and much of what saxophone ensembles play is arranged from music first written for other forces. Radnofsky, who teaches saxophone at NEC, founded the World-Wide Concurrent Premieres and Commissioning Fund, through which saxophonists around the world premiere a new work at the same time.
Tue Nov 24 · 7:30pm
Pianist and vocal coach Ji Yung Lee builds a programme on artisthood and motherhood: Helen Grime’s Bright Travellers and Thomas Kotcheff’s Both, and more with soprano Sydney Pexton, Bacewicz’s Violin Sonata No. 4, and Schumann’s Frauenliebe und -leben with mezzo-soprano Sarah Heltzel. A video presents The Joy of Being a Mother, a song made by mothers in Maya, Kenya, for Mtree’s Every Mother Has a Song project.
Wed Dec 2 – Thu Dec 3 · 6pm
Wed Dec 2 / Thu Dec 3 · 6pm
NEC’s first-year opera students pair Handel arias with Shakespeare monologues in a single evening, moving between Baroque opera and spoken verse. Admission is free, and a live stream is open to members of the NEC community.
Thu Dec 3 · 7:30pm
The first of NEC's three chamber-music galas of the year, held in December, April and May, in which student ensembles perform the works they have studied this term. Piano trios, string quartets and other groups play in sequence across the evening; the students are coached by NEC's chamber-music faculty, who also perform in the series' other concerts.
Fri Dec 4 · 7:30pm
Erica J. Washburn, the conservatory's Director of Choral Activities, and Honghao Zheng direct the Symphonic Choir and Chamber Singers in a programme marking fifty years since Britten's death in 1976. Britten wrote a great deal for amateur and student forces, which makes a conservatory choir a natural fit for the anniversary.
Mon Dec 7 · 7:30pm
A programme built around Lionel Tertis and Pablo Casals — the violist and the cellist who each did most to establish their instrument as a solo voice — in the conservatory's chamber series, which for more than forty years has put faculty, distinguished alumni, exceptional students and guest artists on the same programme.
Wed Dec 9 · 7:30pm
Clayton Stephenson, a Concert Artist at the conservatory, is the soloist in Prokofiev's Third Piano Concerto, with Shostakovich and Stravinsky completing the programme. Hugh Wolff conducts the Philharmonia. The Third Concerto, finished in 1921, is the most played of Prokofiev's five.
Fri Dec 11 · 8:00pm
Flutist Claire Chase joins NEC’s New Music Ensemble. Chase founded the International Contemporary Ensemble in 2001, received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2012 and teaches at Harvard, and each year she premieres new flute works for Density 2036, a commissioning cycle that runs to 2036, the centenary of Varèse’s solo Density 21.5.
Mon Dec 14 · 7:30pm
The conservatory's annual holiday concert, with the Chamber Singers, the Symphonic Winds and Navy Band Northeast: popular seasonal tunes, a singalong, and an explicit invitation to turn up in a seasonal sweater and a Santa hat. Navy Band Northeast is the US Navy's regional band, based in Newport.
Tue Dec 15 · 7:30pm
Graduate conducting students of Stefan Asbury take the podium in front of an orchestra of their fellow students. NEC's own page for this date would not load during the sweep, so the date here comes from the season listing alone.
Wed Dec 16 · 8:00pm
Student ensembles coached in the Borromeo String Quartet's chamber-music seminar perform Dvořák, part of the December, April and May run in which NEC fills the season with piano trios, string quartets and other groups. The Borromeo, NEC's quartet-in-residence since the early 1990s, are Nicholas Kitchen and Kristopher Tong, violins, Melissa Reardon, viola, and Yeesun Kim, cello.
Tue Jan 12 · 7:30pm
Pianist Stephen Drury, known for the range of his repertory and as a champion of contemporary music, plays a programme NEC describes only as diverse works. Drury, who teaches piano at the Conservatory, founded its Summer Institute for Contemporary Performance Practice and the new-music group the Callithumpian Consort, and is closely associated with the music of John Cage and John Zorn.
Jan 13/17 · 7:30pm/3:00pm
Wed Jan 13 · 7:30pm / Sun Jan 17 · 3:00pm
The first of two faculty recitals this season by pianist Pei-Shan Lee, who has taught collaborative piano at NEC since 2009 and directs the Collaborative Piano Fellowship at the Bowdoin International Music Festival. In 2006 she was appointed pianist for Itzhak Perlman’s violin studio at the Perlman Music Program, and she has recorded the Strauss and Szymanowski sonatas with violinist Grzegorz Kotow.
Fri Jan 15 · 7:30pm
Mezzo-soprano MaryAnn McCormick, of NEC’s voice faculty, gives a recital. Over more than twenty-five seasons at the Metropolitan Opera she sang 140 performances, and she shares the 2012 Grammy for Best Opera Recording as Grimgerde in the Met’s Die Walküre. Her roles elsewhere include Isabella in L’italiana in Algeri at La Scala and the title role of Carmen in Rome.
Wed Jan 20 · 7:30pm
Each year the Borromeo String Quartet, in residence at NEC since the early 1990s, auditions the Conservatory's students for its Guest Artist Awards, spending a week in which every entrant plays and works with the quartet. This concert features the winners. The Borromeo are Nicholas Kitchen and Kristopher Tong, violins, Melissa Reardon, viola, and Yeesun Kim, cello.
Wed Jan 27 · 7:30pm
Hugh Wolff, NEC's Director of Orchestras, conducts the Philharmonia in Clarice Assad's Boitatá, named for the fire serpent of Brazilian folklore, Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini for piano and orchestra, and Schumann's Symphony No. 3, the Rhenish, written in 1850 in the composer's first months in Düsseldorf. Assad, a Brazilian-American composer and pianist, is the daughter of the guitarist Sérgio Assad.
Sun Jan 31 · 4:00pm
Warren Senders, a Hindustani vocalist on NEC’s Music Education faculty whose work spans Indian, Western, African and African-American traditions, gives a faculty recital. Also trained as a jazz bassist, he founded the pan-cultural ensemble Antigravity in 1981, is a core member of Boston’s Jazz Composers’ Alliance and serves as a creativity consultant for Babson College’s MBA program.
Thu Feb 4 · 7:30pm
Kevin Fitzgerald, NEC's Director of Wind Ensembles, leads the Symphonic Winds, one of the Conservatory's two large wind groups alongside the Wind Ensemble, in its winter concert. Fitzgerald joined NEC this year; his October debut with the Symphonic Winds paired Karel Husa's Cheetah, Bach's Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor, David Liptak's Through the Brightening Air and Grainger's Lincolnshire Posy.
Wed Feb 10 · 7:30pm
The NEC Symphony, the Conservatory's second full orchestra alongside the Philharmonia, gives its first concert of the spring term. The Symphony's autumn concerts were conducted by David Loebel, NEC's associate director of orchestral activities, and the violinist and violist Paul Biss. Admission is free, with a ticket.
Mon Feb 22 · 7:30pm
The conductorless NEC Chamber Orchestra gives its spring concert. Its players are chosen by audition at the start of the academic year and stay together throughout, rotating the leadership for every work so that each player takes responsibility for musical decisions. Donald Palma, a double bassist and founding member of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, is artistic director.
Tue Feb 23 · 7:30pm
Trumpeter Michael Dobrinski, who joined NEC’s faculty in 2018 and has chaired its Brass and Percussion department since 2023, gives a faculty recital. He plays regularly with the Boston Symphony and Boston Pops and appears on the BSO’s recordings of Shostakovich’s Seventh and Twelfth symphonies and Strauss’s An Alpine Symphony. He was previously principal trumpet of the Sarasota Orchestra.
Thu Mar 4 · 7:30pm
The NEC Wind Ensemble, one of the Conservatory's two large wind groups alongside the Symphonic Winds, gives its spring concert under Kevin Fitzgerald, NEC's Director of Wind Ensembles. Fitzgerald joined the Conservatory this year and leads both groups. Admission is free, with a ticket.
Wed Mar 10 · 7:30pm
An annual concert in NEC's Composition Department honours Arthur Berger, who joined its faculty in 1980 and stayed two decades. Berger reviewed music for the Boston Transcript and the New York Herald Tribune, founded two journals, and moved as a composer from neoclassicism to twelve-tone writing; BMOP has recorded his complete orchestral works for New World. Sid Richardson curates the programme.
Thu Mar 11 · 7:30pm
The second of Pei-Shan Lee’s two faculty recitals this season, after one in January. Lee, who came to the United States from Taiwan and joined NEC’s collaborative piano faculty in 2009, has played with the Jupiter and Szymanowski quartets and with members of the Boston and Chicago symphonies, and is a founding member of DC8, a Los Angeles group devoted to commissioning new music.
Sun Mar 14 · 8:00pm
Violinist Ayano Ninomiya, who teaches at NEC, gives a faculty recital. As first violinist of the Ying Quartet she recorded the complete quartets of Schumann and of Arensky and the album American Anthem, and she is a founding member of the conductorless East Coast Chamber Orchestra. She made her Carnegie Hall debut in 2016 in Stravinsky’s Violin Concerto.
Mon Mar 15 · 7:30pm
Kenneth Radnofsky conducts the NEC Saxophone Ensemble, the Conservatory's student saxophone group, in its spring-term concert. Radnofsky, a longtime member of the NEC faculty, founded World-Wide Concurrent Premieres and Commissioning Fund, which pools saxophonists and institutions to commission new works and premiere them in many places at once. Admission is free with a ticket.
Wed Mar 17 · 7:30pm
NEC’s New Music Ensemble, inaugurated in fall 2022, plays a programme of diverse works under Stefan Asbury, the British conductor who directs it. Asbury specialises in contemporary repertoire and has long taught conducting and led new-music programmes at the Tanglewood Music Center.
Wed Mar 17 · 7:30pm
The NEC Symphony, the Conservatory's second full orchestra alongside the Philharmonia, gives its second concert of the spring term. David Loebel, NEC's associate director of orchestral activities, and the violinist and violist Paul Biss conducted the Symphony's autumn concerts. Admission is free, with a ticket.
Thu Mar 18 · 7:30pm
Erica J. Washburn, NEC's Director of Choral Activities, conducts the NEC Chamber Singers in their spring concert. The choir, 24 to 30 students drawn from every major at the Conservatory, sings works from all style periods with an emphasis on a cappella music of the nineteenth to twenty-first centuries, rehearses three times a week, and usually performs in the round.
Mon Mar 29 · 7:30pm
The Borromeo String Quartet, ensemble-in-residence at NEC for more than three decades, is joined by Paul Wiancko, cellist of the Kronos Quartet and a composer, for a faculty recital. The Borromeo (Nicholas Kitchen, Kristopher Tong, Mai Motobuchi and Yeesun Kim) was the first string quartet to play from laptop scores on stage, and performs Kitchen's transcriptions of Bach's Goldberg Variations.
Sun Apr 4 · 7:30pm
The Brass Bash, directed by Stephen Lange and James Markey, presents students of NEC's Brass Department in mixed brass ensembles and in its horn, trumpet, trombone and tuba classes, ending with a massed brass choir of all the department's students. The concert is supported by a visiting artist fund honouring the memory of Teddy Malasky, a trombonist and conductor who took NEC degrees in 2016 and 2017.
Mon Apr 5 · 7:30pm
The April concert in First Monday at Jordan Hall, NEC's free chamber music series, which for more than forty years has put faculty, distinguished alumni, students and guest artists on stage together. The cellist Laurence Lesser, a former president of the Conservatory, founded it; violist Nicholas Cords, violinist Soovin Kim and pianist HaeSun Paik now curate it as artistic co-chairs.
Tue Apr 6 · 7:30pm
Handel, with NEC's period-instrument Baroque Orchestra joined by the Chamber Singers and the violinist Alana Youssefian Ruocco, who has appeared as soloist with Philharmonia Baroque under Nicholas McGegan, Bach Collegium Japan under Masaaki Suzuki, The English Concert under Harry Bicket and Les Arts Florissants under William Christie. The Conservatory has not yet said which Handel works are on the programme.
Mon Apr 19 · 7:30pm
The NEC Symphony, one of the New England Conservatory's two full student orchestras alongside the flagship Philharmonia, in its April concert. The Conservatory's orchestral programme is led by Hugh Wolff, its Director of Orchestras and a former music director of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. Admission is free, with a ticket required.
Sun Apr 25 · 4:00pm
Rachel Childers, second horn of the Boston Symphony Orchestra since 2011 and the first woman in its brass section, gives a faculty recital. A Michigan native, she studied at the University of Michigan and in the first class of horn players at the Colburn School, and was Acting Assistant Principal/Utility Horn of the Colorado Symphony before joining the BSO.
Tue Apr 27 · 8:00pm
NEC's graduate conductors take an orchestra of their fellow students through a Brown Hall programme. Joseph Bozich and Leonard Bopp are among those on the podium; the Conservatory frames it as a chance to hear conductors at the very start of their careers.
Wed Apr 28 · 7:30pm
Stefan Asbury conducts the NEC Philharmonia, the Conservatory's flagship student orchestra. Asbury, a British conductor who has taught conducting at the Tanglewood Music Center for many years, also directs NEC's New Music Ensemble; the Philharmonia's other conductors this year are Hugh Wolff, the Conservatory's Director of Orchestras, and David Loebel. Admission is free with a ticket.
Thu Apr 29 · 7:30pm
NEC's two choirs sing together under Erica J. Washburn, the Conservatory's Director of Choral Activities: the large Symphonic Choir and the Chamber Singers, a select ensemble of 24 to 30 voices. The concert is billed as Great Music for a Great Space. Admission is free with a ticket.
Mon May 3 · 7:30pm
First Monday at Jordan Hall's May concert. The free series, founded more than forty years ago by the cellist Laurence Lesser, then president of the Conservatory, brings NEC faculty, distinguished alumni, students and guest artists together in chamber music. It is now curated by three artistic co-chairs: violist Nicholas Cords, violinist Soovin Kim and pianist HaeSun Paik.
Thu May 6 · 7:30pm
The last of NEC's three chamber-music galas of the year, after those in December and April, in which piano trios, string quartets and other groups play in turn through the evening. At this one the Conservatory's student ensembles perform the works they have prepared over the semester with their chamber-music faculty coaches.
