Festivals, firsts and fiestas

Assembling an orchestra season is like a puzzle — “a little bit of this and that,” says Andreas Delfs, music director of the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra.

The puzzle of Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra’s 2025-2026 season has been solved, and Delfs and others are confident its variety will lure audiences to Kodak Hall.

The orchestra hasn’t presented a festival in many years, but the upcoming season offers two such events. In the fall, a Beethoven festival will feature some RPO soloists in favorite repertoire, and in 2026, a dance festival with Garth Fagan Dance and Rochester City Ballet will take place.

“Our audiences want memorable events, and these festivals will be memorable,” says Delfs. “When I conducted in Milwaukee, we had a Beethoven festival that was one of our most popular events. It’s a sampler of everything we love about Beethoven: four concerts of the great symphonies, concertos, and overtures, with wonderful soloists.”

Besides the “Eroica,” fifth, sixth, and seventh symphonies, there will be concertos with pianists Jon Nakamatsu and Jonathan Biss and violinist Benjamin Beilman. Beethoven’s rarely performed Triple Concerto will bring three RPO musicians front and center: concertmaster Juliana Athayde, principal cellist Ahrim Kim, and pianist Chiao-Wen Cheng.

 “We’re blessed with two world-class dance ensembles in Rochester, and collaborating with them in a festival is a wonderful idea,” says Delfs of the orchestra’s second scheduled festival. 

Rochester City Ballet’s “Nutcracker” returns in late November for the 26^th year, and January’s Dance Festival offers the chance to see RCB dancers in another classic.“Romeo and Juliet” will be danced to a suite, arranged by Delfs, that follows Shakespeare’s story (as Prokofiev’s own “Romeo and Juliet” suites do not, Delfs points out). Garth Fagan Dance last performed a spectacular interpretation of Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring” with the RPO; this time the group will premiere a new work based on Philip Glass’ Brazilian-inspired “Days and Nights in Rocinha.”

That dance piece is far from the only first performance on the RPO’s schedule, which includes world premieres of music by some very in-demand American composers. Superstar pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet will unveil a concerto by Aaron Jay Kernis (planned for the RPO’s centennial but postponed) as part of the RPO’s Voices of Today commissioning series. Cellist Julian Schwartz premieres a concerto by Jennifer Higdon in April, and soprano Jasmine Habersham sings a new vocal work by Lowell Liebermann in January, along with Mahler’s fourth symphony, the last movement of which includes a soprano solo.

More outstanding soloists include husband-and-wife violinists Gil Shaham and Adele Anthony in a new, baroque-inspired concerto by Israeli-American composer Avner Dorman; Wu Man, undoubtedly the orchestra’s first guest soloist on the pipa, a Chinese lute-like instrument; and trumpet virtuoso Pacho Flores in “Salsamundo” by Roberto Sierra, whose music appears frequently on RPO programs. (The orchestra premieres his “Sinfonia Concertante” on March 20.)

There will be plenty of other beloved symphonies and concertos from the standard repertoire by Mozart, Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky, Brahms and Schumann (his piano concerto, with another star pianist, Yefim Bronfman). Additional color is provided by two major Russian symphonies—Prokofiev’s Third (never played by the orchestra) and Shostakovich’s First—and by the season’s conclusion, Carl Orff’s raucous choral raveup “Carmina Burana.”

During the past two years, the RPO’s four-concert Sunday matinee series in Beston Hall at Nazareth University has become a hot ticket. As Delfs points out, “We hadn’t offered these kinds of informal concerts since Christopher Seaman was music director. And the location is perfect for many of our subscribers, who live nearby.”

The programming is attractive, too. The intimacy of Beston Hall is ideal for performing Mozart concertos and Haydn symphonies, for example. Those are the focus for the 2025-2026 season, along with appealing 20th-century works such as Britten’s “Serenade for Tenor, Horn, and Strings,” Prokofiev’s “Classical” Symphony, and Poulenc’s “Sinfonietta.”

“Performing this kind of music is good orchestral vitamins,” says Delfs. “The music fills certain gaps in our repertoire. We use the core orchestra [about 60 players] and can have additional soloists from the RPO. And it enables the musicians to focus on their chamber-music abilities—very important in orchestra building.”

The other longstanding pillar of the RPO lineup is its Pops series, which has been guided by Jeff Tyzik since 1993, when he was named principal pops conductor. That position was pretty rare for orchestras 30 years ago. Now it’s rare to find an orchestra that does not have a pops series, and 

Tyzik knows why: “They generate income. Without pops concerts, it would be difficult for most orchestras to survive.”  

He notes that pops concerts bring different audiences to hear the orchestra, whether they enjoy Broadway songs or oldies radio hits. 

“At last fall’s concert of new wave hits from the eighties,” Tyzik recalls, “I had never seen so many 30- and 40-somethings in an RPO audience. It’s a way to keep capturing new generations to hear the orchestra.”

Tyzik says he has retired as a jazz trumpet soloist, but leading the RPO Pops also calls on his talents as conductor, composer, and arranger. He has also guest-conducted RPO classical concerts, led the orchestra in a chart-topping disc of Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue,” and written concertos for a number of RPO musicians.

With 20 years of creating theme concerts, Tyzik estimates that he has written at least 400 arrangements of pop hits, with about 40 new ones on the way for these concerts. He’s not bored yet.

“‘Sailing’ and ‘Ride Like the Wind’ by Christopher Cross, Toto’s ‘Africa,’ music by the Eagles or Joni Mitchell—these are just great songs, with fantastic details that an orchestration can bring out,” he says. “Obviously, the originals had no symphonic instrumentation, but the songs still have I try to imagine what the band or the composer might have done if they’d been able to write for an orchestra.”

Tyzik will also conduct a “Space!” concert inspired by the RPO’s “Eclipse” concert from last year with the Cirque Vertigo troupe, Madrigalia, and Tyzik’s own “Star Suite;” a “Fiesta Sinfonica” celebration of Latin music with the Mambo Kings and Eastman-trained soprano Camille Zamora; and, in December, the enduringly popular Holiday Pops concert featuring the hand-picked Festival High School Chorale, including students from 37 different Western New York high schools.

This concert was an instant classic when Tyzik introduced it in his first year as pops conductor, 32 years ago. 

“We have now had generations taking part in the chorale, children of the early singers,” he says. “It’s such an uplifting tradition – the best idea I ever had.”

The Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra’s 2025-2026 subscription season begins Sept. 27 and 28 in Kodak Hall, with music director Andreas Delfs and violinist Anne Akiko Meyers in music of Mason Bates, Barber, and Dvořák. 

The Sunday Matinée Series begins September 21 at Beston Hall, Nazareth University, with Andreas Delfs conducting music of Adams, Mozart, and Poulenc.

The Rochester Pops season opens on October 3 and 4 in Kodak Hall with “Summer Breeze: Yacht Rock Classics,” led by Principal Pops Conductor Jeff Tyzik.

Information on the RPO’s 2025-2026 season is available here.

David Raymond is a Rochester Beacon contributing writer.

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