Upcoming Concerts & Performances
37 upcoming concerts and performances from Vivo Performing Arts, with dates, venues and ticket links taken from the organization’s own pages and refreshed weekly. All classical in Greater Boston →
Thu Oct 8 · 7:30pm
Schumann frames the recital at both ends: the Eighth Novelette, Op. 21, to open and the Symphonic Études, Op. 13, to close, with Fauré's F-sharp major Ballade, Rzewski's "Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues" and Leon Kirchner's Interlude II in between. Gagliano, a pianist, makes her Vivo debut.
Sat Oct 10 · 12:00pm
Vivaldi's The Four Seasons, complete: the four Op. 8 violin concertos, from Spring's birdsong through Summer's storms to Winter's ice. Lynn Chang, the violinist, leads Hemenway Strings, the student chamber ensemble of Boston Conservatory at Berklee. Presented by the Roxbury Concert Series with Neighborhood Arts.
Fri Oct 16 · 8:00pm
Two composers' last quartets, Shostakovich's Fifteenth, Op. 144, six adagios played without a break, and Beethoven's Op. 131 in C-sharp minor, each set off by a fugue arrangement drawn from Shostakovich's Op. 87 and Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier. The Brentano Quartet plays.
Sat Oct 17 · 3:00pm
An afternoon of African American spirituals: the foundational settings of H.T. Burleigh, James Weldon Johnson and R. Nathaniel Dett, woven through newer works by Adolphus Hailstork, Jessie Montgomery and others. Castle of our Skins, the Boston ensemble devoted to Black artistry, scores the programme for voice, strings and piano.
Sun Oct 18 · 3:00pm
The 2021 Chopin Competition winner builds a recital of contrasts around Beethoven's "Moonlight" Sonata and two Chopin Nocturnes, Op. 27, with Bach's Fifth French Suite, Ligeti's "Fanfares," Albéniz's "El Puerto," Ravel's Alborada del gracioso and Liszt's Rhapsodie espagnole set around them. Bruce Liu plays.
Fri Oct 23 – Sat Oct 24
Fri Oct 23 · 8pm / Sat Oct 24 · 2pm & 8pm
The Australian contemporary-circus company opens Vivo's dance season with Ten Thousand Hours — the number a skill supposedly takes to master, turned into an hour of astonishing acrobatics about practice, persistence and failure. Human bodies doing impossible things, staged with the discipline of dance.
Sun Oct 25 · 3:00pm
Mozart's nocturnal G-major Violin Sonata, K. 379, opens a wide-ranging programme that takes in Silvestrov's Two Pieces, Weinberg's Fifth Sonata of 1953, Webern's compressed Four Pieces and, to close, Strauss's early E-flat Sonata, Op. 18. The violinist Geneva Lewis makes her Vivo debut.
Sun Oct 25 · 3:00pm
An all-Beethoven programme from the Borromeo Quartet, who then bring young players from the Boston String Academy up beside them for side-by-side selections, the exchange the Stringfest series is built on, with students sharing a stand with the professionals rather than watching from the hall.
Sun Nov 8 · 3:00pm
Forty-eight cellos and nothing else, conducted by Eugene Friesen, marking 150 years since the birth of Pablo Casals in arrangements of Casals's own music, Villa-Lobos and other favourites. The cello's range overlaps the human voice, so a full ensemble of them sits closer to choral sound than to an orchestra.
Sun Nov 8 · 3:00pm
An all-Beethoven recital marking the bicentennial of the composer's death: the First Sonata, Op. 2 No. 1, dedicated to Haydn; the "Tempest," Op. 31 No. 2; the compact Op. 79; and the "Waldstein," Op. 53, to close. Igor Levit makes his Symphony Hall recital debut.
Fri Nov 13 · 8:00pm
Vivaldi's The Four Seasons anchors the U.S. debut of Double Sens, the chamber ensemble the Serbian-born, Paris-based violinist Nemanja Radulović founded from a circle of Serbian and French musicians. The group moves between classical repertoire and folk traditions across the evening.
Sun Nov 15 · 3:00pm
Brahms's Third Quartet, Op. 67, and Dvořák's C-major Eleventh, Op. 61, flank an orchestration by Chickasaw composer Jerod Impichchaachaaha' Tate of Indigenous singer-songwriter Pura Fé's Rattle Songs. The Dover Quartet, Joel Link, Bryan Lee, Julianne Lee and Camden Shaw, plays.
Sat Nov 21 · 3:00pm
Flamenco dancers Triana Maciel and Nino de los Reyes perform a new programme, PerpetuARTE, some of it in silence, some with live musicians and some against technology — the contrast being the point. De los Reyes comes from a flamenco family and has worked across the form's traditional and experimental wings. Vivo presents it in Roxbury.
Sat Nov 21 – Sun Nov 22 · 8pm/2pm
Sat Nov 21 · 8pm / Sun Nov 22 · 2pm
Vancouver's contemporary ballet company makes its Vivo debut with a raw, athletic program featuring a work by artistic director Medhi Walerski — choreography that asks questions most dance doesn't dare pose. One of three international company debuts on Vivo's dance season, and Ballet BC's first Boston appearance.
Sun Nov 22 · 3:00pm
Rob Kapilow takes apart Mozart's Clarinet Concerto, K. 622, written weeks before the composer's death, then performs it whole after the interval, with the A Far Cry chamber orchestra and clarinettist Romie de Guise-Langlois playing the illustrations. The first half is demonstration and discussion; the concerto follows entire.
Fri Dec 11 · 8:00pm
Beethoven's last two piano sonatas, Op. 110 and Op. 111, heard in conversation with Bach's B-major Prelude and Fugue, Unsuk Chin's Six Études and études by Hélène de Montgeroult, the eighteenth-century composer her biographer calls "the missing link between Mozart and Chopin." Jeremy Denk plays.
Sat Dec 12 · 3:00pm
Jorge Santiago Arce, a musician, dancer and cultural historian of the African roots of Puerto Rican tradition, performs Puerto Rican and Latin American folk songs arranged for strings and percussion, joined by young players from Boston Music Project, City Strings United and Project STEP in Stringfest's side-by-side format.
Thu Jan 14 · 8:00pm
All three of Beethoven's Op. 30 violin sonatas, Nos. 6, 7 and 8, the set that opens his "heroic" middle period, written in 1802 alongside the Heiligenstadt Testament, played without an interval. Violinist Gil Shaham and pianist Akira Eguchi, partners of two decades, play.
Thu Jan 28 · 7:30pm
A Boston debut built on Liszt's transcriptions of Schubert Lieder, "Der Wanderer," "Auf dem Wasser zu singen" and "Frühlingsglaube" among them, set beside Schubert's own "Wanderer" Fantasy, D. 760, and Liszt's second book of Années de pèlerinage. The Austrian pianist Lukas Sternath plays.
Tue Feb 2 · 7:30pm
Haydn's F-minor Variations, Schoenberg's Six Little Piano Pieces, Op. 19, Mozart's A-minor Rondo, K. 511, a two-minute Kurtág written in 2022 and Schubert's late A-major Sonata, D. 959, to close. Mitsuko Uchida gives her first Boston solo recital in a generation.
Sun Feb 7 · 3:00pm
Britten's Three Divertimenti and Mendelssohn's grief-stricken F-minor Quartet, Op. 80, written in 1847 in the wake of his sister Fanny's death, precede Brahms's Piano Quintet, Op. 34, in which the Isidore String Quartet is joined by pianist Jeremy Denk for a work that makes equal demands of piano and strings.
Fri Feb 12 – Sat Feb 13
Fri Feb 12 · 8pm / Sat Feb 13 · 2pm & 8pm
The Limón Dance Company's first Boston visit since 2005, in its 80th-anniversary season: José Limón's bright, Chopin-set Mazurkas (1958) alongside a new Akram Khan work — his first made on an American company — inspired by Limón's The Moor's Pavane.
Sat Feb 13 · 8:00pm
Beethoven's "Ghost" Trio, Op. 70 No. 1, opens; a new work by Andrew Norman, co-commissioned by Vivo and given here in its New England premiere, follows; and Shostakovich's wartime Second Piano Trio, Op. 67, closes. Violinist Stefan Jackiw, cellist Jay Campbell and pianist Conrad Tao are the Junction Trio.
Wed Feb 17 · 8:00pm
The new-music percussion quartet Sō Percussion joins avant-pop artist Helado Negro and indie-folk songwriter Kate Stables (This Is the Kit) for a spontaneous collision of rhythm, song and invention — one of four February nights Vivo programs at Davis Square's Crystal Ballroom, and the one anchored by a chamber ensemble.
Sat Feb 20 · 8:00pm
Beethoven's "Appassionata," Op. 57, and Ravel's Gaspard de la nuit anchor a recital that also takes in Henry Cowell's "Aeolian Harp," a Saint-Saëns Prelude and Fugue, and Brahms's F-minor Sonata, Op. 5. Zlata Chochieva returns after her 2025 Vivo debut.
Thu Feb 25 – Sat Feb 27
Thu Feb 25 · 8pm / Fri Feb 26 · 8pm / Sat Feb 27 · 2pm & 8pm
Taiwanese choreographer Huang Yi has danced with KUKA, an industrial robot arm, for over a decade; their duet turns the push and pull between humanity and technology into something startlingly tender. Presented with the Museum of Science in its new Public Science Common.
Thu Feb 25 · 7:30pm
Bach's Goldberg Variations, BWV 988, arranged for two guitars by the players themselves and performed on instruments a single luthier built from one tree. Thibaut Garcia and Antoine Morinière, longtime friends, pass Bach's counterpoint back and forth between them rather than dividing it in two.
Sun Feb 28 · 3:00pm
Marking Philip Glass's ninetieth birthday, Ólafsson interleaves Glass's études and "Opening" from Glassworks with keyboard suites by Rameau and Children's Corner pieces and preludes by Debussy, placing Glass in a long line of French keyboard writing rather than apart from it. Víkingur Ólafsson plays.
Fri Mar 5 · 8:00pm
Baroque sonatas for violin and harpsichord, Bach's BWV 1014, 1015 and 1016 among works by Froberger, Westhoff, Matteis and Biber, tracing the violin's rising expressive power and the harpsichord's shift from accompanist to partner. Isabelle Faust and Kristian Bezuidenhout play, in association with the Boston Early Music Festival.
Sat Mar 6 · 3:00pm
Boston's Modern Connections Collective dances excerpts from four works by Jenny Oliver, the choreographer who founded the company. The pieces take moments of empowerment as their starting point and work through relationship and resilience. Vivo presents the programme at the Roxbury Community College Media Arts Center rather than downtown.
Sun Mar 7 · 3:00pm
Widmann's Sonatina facile, ten pieces from Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet, Op. 75, and Mozart's C-minor Fantasia, K. 396, before Prokofiev's Eighth Sonata, Op. 84, the last of his three wartime sonatas, ends the evening. Seong-Jin Cho returns to Symphony Hall.
Thu Mar 11 · 7:30pm
The London Symphony Orchestra makes its first Symphony Hall appearance since 2009, under its chief conductor Sir Antonio Pappano. Maxim Vengerov is the soloist in Beethoven's Violin Concerto, Op. 61, and Strauss's Ein Heldenleben, a tone poem with a substantial solo-violin part of its own, closes the programme.
Fri Mar 19 · 8:00pm
An all-Czech programme: Pavel Haas's gathering Third Quartet, Op. 15, written as war approached; Janáček's First, after Tolstoy's The Kreutzer Sonata; and Dvořák's "American," Op. 96, written among Czech immigrants in Iowa. The Pavel Haas Quartet, named for the composer who died at Auschwitz, plays.
Fri Apr 2 · 8:00pm
The 2022 Cliburn silver medallist opens with Brahms's four Ballades, Op. 10, the first shadowing the old Scottish ballad "Edward," and closes with Beethoven's Eroica Variations, Op. 35, taking in Bartók's Scherzo, Chopin's Variations brillantes and Liszt's three Valses oubliées along the way. Anna Geniushene plays.
Wed Apr 14 · 7:30pm
Haydn's D-major Quartet, Op. 76 No. 5, and Mendelssohn's grief-stricken F-minor, Op. 80, frame Anthem, a 2026 work Sauli Zinovjev wrote for the ensemble. The Leonkoro Quartet, whose name is Esperanto for lionheart, took nine prizes at the 2022 Wigmore Hall competition, the youngest group in the field.
Fri Apr 30 – Mon May 3
Fri Apr 30 · 8pm / Sat May 1 · 8pm / Sun May 2 · 2pm & 8pm / Mon May 3 · 3pm
Ailey's annual Boston residency, in its second season under artistic director Alicia Graf Mack: new works, revivals from the Ailey repertory, and Revelations, the 1960 masterwork the company has closed with for six decades. A spring tradition at the Wang.
Sat Jun 5 · 12:00pm
The Dominican-born pianist Carlos Vargas joins the Rasa String Quartet for a midday programme of chamber music, the last of this season's four free Roxbury Concert Series dates. Vivo Performing Arts presents the concert in association with the Roxbury Concert Series as part of its Neighborhood Arts programme, and admission requires an RSVP through the series.
