Performances + Events
As the Fall 2025 concert season at New England Conservatory settles into memory, the NEC community — from students, faculty, and alumni to audiences in Boston and beyond — looks forward to a second semester of spirited performances by ascendant and acclaimed artists of music that explores and crosses diverse styles.
NEC’s Spring 2026 concert season opens boldly with a cutting-edge electro-acoustic performance by the intrepid duo Transient Canvas, which features bass-clarinetist Amy Advocat ’04, ’06 MM and marimbist and former NEC Prep student Matt Sharrock. Additional guest artists in the Spring 2026 season include Grammy Award-winning quintet Imani Winds, who’ll give a chamber music master class; Avery Fisher Career Grant recipient and Boston Chamber Music Society musician Jennifer Frautschi, whom The New York Times has described as a “sweet-toned but fiery violinist”; composer, educator, and saxophonist Anthony Braxton ’25 hon. DM, the revered NEA Jazz Master who’s received MacArthur and Guggenheim fellowships, among other honors; and conductor and former Emerson String Quartet cellist Paul Watkins, who’ll lead a performance on the First Monday at Jordan Hall series of R. Strauss’s masterly work for string orchestra, Metamorphosen.
The First Monday series, curated by Artistic Co-Chairs Nicholas Cords (viola), Soovin Kim (violin), and HaeSun Paik (piano), also presents performances by NEC’s distinguished faculty, alumni, students, and guests of Bartók’s ever-captivating Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion and works by J.S. Bach, Beethoven, Copland, Dvořák, Enescu, Gershwin, Earl Kim, Kurtag, and alumnus Florence Price, who earned two diplomas from NEC in 1906.
NEC’s groundbreaking Contemporary Musical Arts and Jazz Studies departments come together in the second semester for Synergy, a concert spotlighting the departments’ unique faculty voices. The CMA Department also explores the heart of the 20th century avant-garde in Old Weird America and the Harry Smith Archive, and, through a program titled Genius on the Charts, centers the pop and R&B artists who in the ’60s and ’70s pushed mainstream boundaries. The Jazz Studies Department, which, like the CMA Department, has for a half-century pioneered education in its respective space, presents the African American Cookbook: Music of Randy Weston and Melba Liston and pays tribute to another American icon in Miles Ahead: Miles Davis at 100. Additionally, faculty member Jason Moran curates a residency concert featuring performances by students from the Jazz Studies Department.
The Conservatory’s Piano Department, whose students and alumni have in recent years won the prestigious Chopin and Van Cliburn competitions and received the coveted Diapason d’Or de L’année award, launches a three-year project in which NEC College and Prep pianists will perform all 500 of Domenico Scarlatti’s Piano Sonatas. The department’s 2026 Marion Rubin Berman ’31 Piano Honors Concert celebrates the nation’s 250th birthday with performances of music by American composers from the 18th to the current century including Samuel Barber, Amy Beach, William Brown, John Cage, George Chadwick, Aaron Copland, Lee Hyla, Charles Ives, Leon Kirchner, Edward MacDowell, Donald Martino, Jelly Roll Morton, Florence Price, and Gunther Schuller. Additionally, NEC’s Piano Department presents master classes with Steven Osborne and Jean-Efflam Bavouzet.
Among today’s ascendant luminaries are the exceptional musicians in NEC’s Institute for Concert Artists. Violinist Joshua Brown ’22, ’24 MM, ’26 AD, soprano Dani Jingdan Zhang ’26 AD, and pianist Clayton Stephenson ’23 Harvard/NEC, ’27 AD each perform a recital and appear in showcase concerts in Boston and New York. Trio Eris, NEC’s Piano Trio in Residence, also appears in recital at NEC.
Compelling repertoire ranging from early to new music is highlighted throughout the Spring 2026 concert season, including works by Teagan Faran, Adolphus Hailstork, Jennifer Higdon, Alice Hong, Cindy McTee, Tarik O’Regan, and Frederic Rzewski, among other important composers. Also featured, in recital appearances, are artists from the Conservatory’s extraordinary faculty, including pianist Joel Ayau, pianist Tanya Blaich; horn player Rachel Childers and clarinetist Christopher Elchico; pianist Stephen Drury; violist Kim Kashkashian and pianist Marc-André Hamelin, who’ll appear together alongside renowned NEC alumni; violinist Soovin Kim; pianist Meng-Chieh Liu; violinist Eden MacAdam-Somer, composer Anthony Coleman, and guitarist Joe Morris; mezzo-soprano MaryAnn McCormick; baritone Michael Meraw; and composer and performer Mehmet Ali Sanlıkol.
Guest conductor James Burton and Erica Washburn, NEC’s Director of Choral Activities, lead the NEC Chamber Singers and the Baroque Orchestra in a performance of Handel’s Dixit Dominus; the New Music Ensemble and the Composition Department, led by Stefan Asbury, welcome composer Colin Matthews for a residency during which his works are performed; NEC alumnus Joshua Weilerstein ’09, ’11 MM, whom the Los Angeles Times has called “one of the most promising podium presences of his generation,” returns to the Conservatory to conduct Beethoven’s beloved Symphony No. 5 with the NEC Philharmonia; and Hugh Wolff brings to the orchestra season to a close with a performance of fearless composer Missy Mazzoli’s Holy Roller on a program that also includes Britten’s Violin Concerto No. 1 and Richard Strauss’s epic tone poem Also Sprach Zarathustra.
NEC Opera is featured in a semi-staged production of Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore and fully staged productions of Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro and Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi; NEC’s Black Student Union curates a concert tribute to NEC alumna Coretta Scott King ’54, ’71 hon. DM, who married Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. after meeting him on the Jordan Hall steps; the Borromeo String Quartet, NEC’s Faculty Ensemble in Residence, hosts its annual Guest Artist Award Concert; and the Conservatory honors its most recent graduates in a festive, academic-year-ending Commencement Concert.
Visit NEC’s Performances + Events Calendar for a comprehensive listing of concerts, master classes, seminars, and more.
Preview the Spring 2026 concert season by listening to this Apple Music playlist.
