2025-2026 Season
Orpheus Chamber Orchestra with James Ehnes, violin
credit Neda Navaee
credit Ben Ealovega
Orpheus Chamber Orchestra is a radical experiment in musical democracy, proving for over fifty years what happens when exceptional artists gather with total trust in each other and faith in the creative process. James Ehnes has established himself as one of the most sought-after musicians on the international stage. Gifted with a rare combination of stunning virtuosity, serene lyricism and an unfaltering musicality, Ehnes is a favorite guest at the world’s most celebrated concert halls. At Cornell, they will perform works by Saint-Saëns, Chausson, and Ravel, and New York composer Jessica Meyer.
“The wondrous James Ehnes, a thinker of the violin as well as a supreme virtuoso of the instrument ... an artist of the first order.”
Cécile McLorin Salvant
credit Karolis Kaminskas
Cécile McLorin Salvant, is a composer, singer, and visual artist. The late Jessye Norman described Salvant as “a unique voice supported by an intelligence and full-fledged musicality, which light up every note she sings”. Salvant has developed a passion for storytelling and finding the connections between vaudeville, blues, theater, jazz, baroque and folkloric music. Salvant is an eclectic curator, unearthing rarely recorded, forgotten songs with strong narratives, interesting power dynamics, unexpected twists, and humor.
Winner of the Thelonius Monk competition in 2010, she received Grammy Awards for Best Jazz Vocal Album for three consecutive albums. In 2020, Salvant received the MacArthur fellowship and the Doris Duke Artist Award. She was the 2024–2025 Perspectives artist at Carnegie Hall. Salvant performs at Bailey Hall with her quartet of Sullivan Fortner, Yasushi Nakamura, and Kyle Poole.
“She sang with perfect intonation, elastic rhythm, an operatic range from thick lows to silky highs. She had emotional range, too, inhabiting different personas in the course of a song, sometimes even a phrase—delivering the lyrics in a faithful spirit while also commenting on them, mining them for unexpected drama and wit.”
Garifuna Collective
The Garifuna Collective was co-founded and led by the late Andy Palacio in 2007. Today this group of accomplished, multi-generational Garifuna artists continues to tour and perform in Palacio’s memory and with his commitment to keeping Garifuna tradition and language alive against their threatened extinction. The hybrid culture of the Afro-AmerIndian Garifuna communities, located on the Caribbean coasts of Belize, Guatemala, and Honduras, is influenced by West Africa and indigenous Carib, as well as the Arawak Indian language. Garifuna music has gained a following in the form of a less traditional style known as punta rock, but the Garifuna Collective focuses on the roots of Garifuna tradition, adding contemporary elements to traditional forms to bring the soul of this music into a modern context. Through their music, the Collective aims to portray what it means to be Garifuna. The Collective take their place in a long line of ancestors, maintaining and growing the Garifuna cultural identity, in a conversation between generations and traditions.
“The complex rhythms demand attention and quickly resolve themselves into a completely irresistible groove. When the melodies kick in on top of them, the lushness is overwhelming.”
Tigran Hamasyan
credit Vahan Stepanyan
Tigran Hamasyan is considered one of the most remarkable and distinctive jazz-meets-rock pianists/composers of his generation. A piano virtuoso with groove power, Hamasyan seamlessly fuses potent jazz improvisation and progressive rock with the rich folkloric music of his native Armenia. In addition to awards and critical acclaim, Hamasyan has built a dedicated following worldwide, as well as praise from Herbie Hancock, Brad Mehldau and the late Chick Corea.
“With startling combinations of jazz, minimalist, electronic, folk and songwriterly elements… Hamasyan and his collaborators travel musical expanses marked with heavy grooves, ethereal voices, pristine piano playing and ancient melodies. You’ll hear nothing else like this.”
Sir Stephen Hough, piano
credit Robert Torres
One of the most distinctive artists of his generation, Sir Stephen Hough combines a distinguished career as a pianist with those of composer and writer.
Named by The Economist as one of Twenty Living Polymaths, Hough was the first classical performer to be awarded a MacArthur Fellowship (2001). He was awarded Northwestern University’s 2008 Jean Gimbel Lane Prize in Piano, won the Royal Philharmonic Society Instrumentalist Award in 2010, and in 2016 was made an Honorary Member of RPS. In 2014 he was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) and was knighted in the Queen’s Birthday Honours in 2022.
Since taking first prize at the 1983 Naumburg Competition in New York, Sir Stephen has appeared with most of the major European, Asian and American orchestras and plays recitals regularly in major halls and concert series around the world from London's Royal Festival Hall to New York’s Carnegie Hall. At Cornell, Sir Stephen performs works by Schubert, Brahms, Schoenberg, Beethoven, and more.
“His playing is supremely communicative and persuasive, and his technical fluency had a candour that is simply breathtaking, with a variety of touch and sonority delivering an inexhaustible palette of colour, shade and substance, all deployed with finesse and judgment.”
Flamenco Vivo Carlota Santana
credit Steven Pisano
Founded in 1983, Flamenco Vivo Carlota Santana is one of America’s premier flamenco companies with a mission to promote flamenco as a living art form and a vital part of Hispanic heritage. The universal spirit of flamenco – with diverse influences from Roma, Arabic, Jewish, Spanish, African and Latin American cultures – gives this art form a unique power to build bridges between people. Flamenco Vivo presents QUINTO ELEMENTO (Fifth Element), a new evening-length work choreographed by Patricia Guerrero with an original score by Francis Gomez. The production explores the fifth element of the earth: ether, the essence that makes up the space around us.
“Flamenco Vivo Carlota Santana stands tall as the nation’s most recognized and most enduring flamenco ensembles. Why? Their artistry…rises over all others who devote their creative lives to the savory stew of flamenco.”