The 2025/26 season of live performance programming at Koerner Corridor, the venue’s seventeenth, presents a spread of experiences for viewers members from worldwide stars to homegrown expertise. Famous person soprano Renée Fleming performs at a particular occasion, Iván Fischer and the Budapest Competition Orchestra come to go to — and Toronto’s personal The Happenstancers headline a live performance on the annual 21C Music Competition.
The season will function new works by composers Danilo Pérez, Gabriela Montero, Osvaldo Golijov, Stewart Goodyear, Vincent Ho, Katharine Petkovski, Dean Burry, and Scott Tixier.
“The Royal Conservatory’s 2025-26 live performance season is a vibrant celebration of musical excellence, offered throughout our three levels — Koerner Corridor, Mazzoleni Live performance Corridor, and Temerty Theatre,” mentioned Alexander Brose, Michael and Sonja Koerner President & CEO of The Royal Conservatory of Music in an announcement.
“This 12 months, we’re particularly proud to honour the one hundredth birthday of legendary jazz pianist and RCM alumnus Oscar Peterson with particular programming that celebrates his enduring legacy. We’re additionally extraordinarily excited to launch our new Orchestrated sequence that showcases our Glenn Gould College college students side-by-side with genre-bending performers. From internationally acclaimed artists to rising voices, our rigorously curated season displays The Royal Conservatory’s deep dedication to transformative cultural experiences that encourage and join us all.”
Right here’s a take a look at the season highlights for classical music lovers.
RCM 2025/26 at Koerner Corridor
Govt Director of Performing Arts Mervon Mehta feedback, “As we embark on our seventeenth season (are you able to consider it!) of presenting nice artists for a discerning viewers, I’m struck by what number of supremely gifted artists are desperate to play in our magnificent Koerner Corridor. It permits us to substantiate a singular reality that, as a species, we are going to all the time have the necessity to collect for shared experiences.
“It’s a primal want. This isn’t something new… Greeks and Romans knew this and constructed their spectacular amphitheatres for that goal. Research present that experiencing music, or artwork or sports activities or faith, as a gaggle is a vastly totally different and extra satisfying expertise than watching alone on a display. A part of that’s the validation of these round you. We additionally know that when teams collect and are engaged with their entire selves — thoughts, physique, and soul — human connections occur, serotonin and endorphins are launched, pleasure and generally unhappiness abound, and coronary heart charges synchronize between us and with the artists who invite us into their worlds. Briefly, it creates group. In these difficult occasions, we stay up for creating a phenomenal group with you.”
Season Hightlights
Unique Signature Occasion
Famous person soprano Renée Fleming presents An Intimate Night with Renée Fleming: Voice of Nature: the Anthropocene Recital accompanied by the Royal Conservatory Orchestra on November 1. This system is impressed by Fleming’s 2023 Grammy Award-winning album, with repertoire that ranges from Handel to Björk tonThe Lord of the Rings.
Worldwide Orchestra Sequence
Iván Fischer and the Budapest Competition Orchestra, with mezzo-soprano Gerhild Romberger, the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir, and the Toronto Kids’s Refrain, carry out Mahler’s monumental Symphony No. 3 for orchestra, mezzo-soprano, girls’s choir, and youngsters’s choir on February 12.
Orchestrated
This new sequence with the Royal Conservatory Orchestra blends sound and elegance in a full-immersion expertise for the viewers that may embrace an evening of specialty cocktails and meet-ups at pre-concert receptions, spotlighting new sounds from three artists who blur the strains between genres:
- Cory Wong
- Kishi Bashi
- Dragonette with Tiny Solar
Pianist Gabriela Montero improvises with the viewers in Hong Kong:
21C Music Competition
The thirteenth iteration of the 21C Music stretches from January to Could of 2026, and highlights music composed throughout the twenty first century, typically with a fluid sense of style.
- The Happenstancers: At all times Darkest … Daybreak At all times: This program traces a single night time, from Arnold Schoenberg’s Transfigured Night time, with the up and down tensions of two lovers as a sort of thread working via it. This system additionally contains three settings of Josquin de Prez’s Renaissance track Mille Regretz (1000 Regrets) with modern chamber works, every reimagined as similar to totally different moments throughout the night time.
- Gabriela Montero explores the migration of Japanese European composers to Los Angeles for work within the movie trade, together with Montero’s signature classical improvisations as she accompanies Charlie Chaplin’s movie The Immigrant. The primary half of this system contains works by Prokofiev, Rachmaninov, and Stravinsky.
- Tony Yike Yang, the youngest-ever laureate within the historical past of the Worldwide Chopin Piano Competitors in Warsaw, celebrates Chinese language New Yr with the Ontario premieres of choices from Vincent Ho’s The Twelve Chinese language Zodiac Animals, Ebook 2: Preludes and Fugues.
- 21C Afterhours: GGS New Music Ensemble, curated and performed by Brian Present. This system, titled The Damaged Mirrors of Time, contains Alison Yun-Fei Jiang brand-new piano concerto commissioned by The Glenn Gould College, Christopher Mayo’s saxophone concerto in its world premiere, and The Damaged Mirrors of Time by acclaimed South African composer Andile Khumalo.
- New Worlds: Music of Golijov: Affiliate Dean of The Glenn Gould College and Director of The Taylor Academy, Barry Shiffman leads a live performance of works by Argentine-American composer Osvaldo Golijov, together with Tintype, a brand new work co-commissioned by The Royal Conservatory for viola and string quintet.
- Brad Mehldau with Kirill Gerstein in a live performance that brings classical music and jazz collectively. Mehldau is each improviser and formalist, and each side resonate with pianist curator and educator Kirill Gerstein.
Pop & Past
- Sofiane Pamart, one of many high 10 most streamed classical music artists on the earth, makes his Koerner Corridor debut.
- Chris Thile, a Grammy Award-winning mandolinist, singer, songwriter, composer, and MacArthur Fellow recipient of the distinguished “Genius Grant” performs.
- Loreena McKennitt: Beneath A Winter’s Moon is a vacation celebration of carols and tales that blends Celtic, Indigenous, and Welsh cultures.
Classical Music Concert events
Piano Recitals
- Stephen Kovacevich performs piano sonatas by Beethoven, Schubert, and Berg on October 5.
- Sir András Schiff — after a protracted and illustrious profession, Sir András Schiff is not offering precise recital packages upfront and prefers to announce his repertoire from the stage on November 2.
- Jan Lisiecki, the Juno Award successful UNESCO Ambassador, and alumnus of The Royal Conservatory’s Glenn Gould College, performs Preludes by Chopin, Bach, Messiaen, and Rachmaninov on November 16.
- Canadian pianist Tony Siqi Yun, Gold Medalist on the First China Worldwide Music Competitors, performs works by Bach, Schumann, Liszt, and Brahms at his Koerner Corridor debut on November 23.
- Seong-Jin Cho, First Prize winner on the Chopin Worldwide Competitors in Warsaw returns to Koerner Corridor with a program of Bartók, Beethoven, Chopin, and Liszt on November 29.
- Víkingur Ólafsson, dubbed “Iceland’s Glenn Gould” by The New York Occasions, returns to Koerner Corridor on February 1 with a program centred round Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 30.
- Yefim Bronfman, the GRAMMY Award-winning, Uzbekistan-born classical pianist, performs a program that may embrace Debussy, Prokofiev, Schumann, and Brahms’s Piano Sonata No. 3 on February 22.
- Marc-André Hamelin with Charles Richard-Hamelin, in a live performance that brings collectively two of Canada’s biggest pianists to carry out repertoire for 2 pianos by Mozart, Chopin, Gershwin, and others on March 29, the Worldwide Piano Day.
Vocal
- Matthias Goerne with Daniil Trifonov carry out their rendition of Schubert’s iconic Winterreise on October 16.
- Isabel Bayrakdarian: Ancestral Songs, Prayers, and Lullabies with particular visitor Kevork Mourad, who will probably be drawing reside throughout the live performance of beloved kids’s songs, lullabies, and prayers from her native Armenia on November 22.
- On November 22, the Armenian-Canadian soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian provides new life to beloved kids’s songs, lullabies, and prayers which have been handed down technology after technology from her homeland, accompanied by
- VOCES8 , the GRAMMY-nominated a cappella octet, return to Koerner Corridor to assist rejoice the vacations on December 21.
- Chanticleer, the GRAMMY Award-winning vocal ensemble return to Toronto on March 1 with a program of a cappella choral music that vary from the Renaissance masterworks to spirituals.
String and Chamber Music Concert events
- Kyung Wha Chung with Kevin Kenner, piano, carry out works by Debussy, Schubert, Schoenberg, and Franck on November 9.
- Ray Chen with Julio Elizalde carry out Bach, Bazzini, Beethoven, Dvořáok, Saint-Saëns, in addition to Chick Corea on November 19. Chen performs on the 1715 “Joachim” Stradivarius violin, as soon as owned by the famed Hungarian violinist, Joseph Joachim.
- An Night with Nicola Benedetti spotlights the Grammy Award-winning Scottish violinist on February 4 in a live performance of works by Bloch, Ponce, Paganini, Sarasate, and others, together with new commissions and preparations of conventional Scottish music organized for violin, guitar, and accordion.
- Luka Coetzee with Jon Kimura Parker carry out works from Omar Daniel and George Gershwin to Brahms and Rachmaninov on February 20. Coetzee is an excellent gifted RCM alumni who made her skilled debut at age 11.
- Danish String Quartet, made up of three Danes and one Norwegian, return to Koerner Corridor on February 28 to carry out a program that ranges from Ravel’s String Quartet to Jonny Greenwood’s Suite for String Quartet from the movie There Will Be Blood.
- Lisa Batiashvili with Giorgi Gigashvili carry out works by Beethoven, Bartók, Franck, and fellow Georgian Ioseb Bardanashvili on Could 24.
- Hilary Hahn with Tom Poster, in a protracted awaited return by the celebrity violinist, carry out works by Lili Boulanger, Debussy, Fauré, and Ravel, in addition to Bun-Ching Lam and a North American premiere by Scott Tixier on Could 21. Three-time Grammy Award-winning violinist Hilary Hahn is at the moment artist-in-residence at each the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and London’s Wigmore Corridor.
And Extra…
James Anagnoson, Dean of The Glenn Gould College, feedback, “The Glenn Gould College will as soon as once more current an array of expertise in performances of the Royal Conservatory Orchestra, the Glenn Gould College Opera, the Mazzoleni Masters Sequence, the Discovery Sequence, The Phil and Eli Taylor Efficiency Academy for Younger Artists, and The Rebanks Household Fellowship Live performance sequence — which function the scholars, school, and pals of The Glenn Gould College.”
The Royal Conservatory Orchestra will probably be performed by JoAnn Falletta, Mei-Ann Chen, Peter Oundjian, and Earl Lee throughout the season.
The Glenn Gould College Operas embrace Menotti’s The Phone and Canadian composer Dean Burry’s Child Kintyre, offered by college students from The Glenn Gould College’s vocal program on November 7 and eight, performed by Jennifer Tung and directed by Liza Balkan.
For the GGS Spring Opera: Serenata Italiana on March 18 and 20, the artists of The Glenn Gould College’s vocal program and the Royal Conservatory Orchestra current an Italian comedic double invoice of Rossini’s La cambiale di matrimonio and Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi, performed by Gordon Gerrard and directed by Robert McQueen.
Together with Koerner Corridor, some RCM live performance sequence happen in Mazzoleni Live performance Corridor and Temerty Theatre, and there are different sequence (jazz, world music), we simply couldn’t match on this checklist.
- Discover full live performance particulars, subscriptions and tickets [HERE].
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Anya Wassenberg is the Toronto Metropolis Editor at Ludwig Van. Beforehand, she was a contract author with a specialty in tradition and journey for 3 a long time, and a artistic writing teacher for Ontariolearn.
