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St. Cecilia's Music Center revealed its 2024-25 lineup for the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and Spectacular Jazz Series concerts.
Both series offer outstanding performances by the best chamber music and jazz musicians in the world.
The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center will perform three outstanding concerts during the 2024 – 2025 season:
November 7, 2024 - “Virtuoso Winds”
Virtuoso Winds will feature piano, woodwinds and horn on this opening concert for the CMS series, introducing former Principal Horn of the Berlin Philharmonic, Radek Baborák, to American audiences. The program will include the work of Beethoven, Gliere, Poulenc, Martinu, and Reinecke and will feature duos for clarinet and bassoon in works that span more 100 years. The duos are interspersed with pieces highlighting the soloistic nature of both flute and horn with piano. One of Reinecke’s later works will bring together an unusual combination of oboe, horn, and piano with lyrical melodies in the Romantic style, and all the instruments for Poulenc’s Sextet, which he described as “an homage to the wind instruments I have loved from the moment I began composing.”
March 20, 2025 - “Schubert’s Trout Quintet”
Schubert’s Trout Quintet will feature artists Wu Han, piano, Arnaud Sussman, violin, Julian Rhee, violin, Paul Neubauer, viola, Sterling Elliott, cello, and Tony Manzo, bass. One of the most beloved chamber music works for strings and piano, Schubert’s “Trout” Quintet not only demonstrates his genius for melody and lyricism, but also features a distinct combination of instruments: only one violin and the addition of double bass. The richness of the lowest of the strings can also be heard in Mozart’s Adagio and Fugue, a piece that deepens the string quartet’s tonal range. Original instrumentation is also attributed to Mozart’s set of piano quartets, the first music written for this combination, which inspired future generations of composers.
April 24, 2025 - “Tchaikovsky's Souvenir de Florence”
Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir de Florence will feature artists Paul Huang, violin, Danbi Um, violin, Timothy Ridout, viola, Matthew Lipman, viola, Sihao He, Cello, and David Finckel, cello. CMS Co-Artistic Director David Finckel is joined by colleagues from around the world in a program featuring string sextets, an ensemble comprised of pairs of violins, violas, and cellos. The expansiveness of the sextet provides a distinctive depth of sonority to the ensemble, equally balanced between the instruments, which will be heard in Bach’s ingenious six-voice fugue (on a theme given to him by Frederick the Great) to the sextet from Richard Strauss’s final opera to the ravishing Souvenir de Florence by Tchaikovsky. The multi-dimensional sextet allows for smaller subsets, notably the string trio, which has its own unique sonority and rounds out the program, including one of Schubert’s great early string works, the B-flat major String Trio.
Four stellar concerts are planned for the Spectacular Jazz Series in the 2024 - 2025 season:
October 4, 2024 – Joshua Redman
Joshua Redman, one of the most acclaimed and charismatic jazz artists to have emerged in the decade of the 1990s, was born in Berkeley, California, the son of legendary saxophonist Dewey Redman and dancer Renee Shedroff. Redman has recorded and performed with musicians such as Dave Brubeck, Chick Corea, The Dave Matthews Band, Herbie Hancock, Quincy Jones, B.B. King, YoYo Ma, Branford Marsalis, Christian McBride, The Rolling Stones, Stevie Wonder and so many more. Joshua Redman has been nominated for eight Grammy Awards and has garnered top honors in critics and readers polls of DownBeat, Jazz Times, Village Voice, and Rolling Stone.
February 20, 2025 – Cécile McLorin Salvant
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 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.
March 18, 2025 – Julian Lage
Hailed as one of the most prodigious guitarists of his generation and “highest category of improvising musicians" (New Yorker), Julian Lage has spent more than a decade searching through the myriad strains of American musical history via impeccable technique, free association, and a spirit of infinite possibility. The California-born New York-based musician boasts a prolific resume on his own accord in addition to collaborating with Gary Burton and John Zorn, as well as duo projects with Nels Cline, Chris Eldridge and Fred Hersch, among others.
April 22, 2025 – Christian McBride & Ursa Major
Christian McBride is an eight-time GRAMMY Award winning bassist, composer, and bandleader. He is also the Artistic Director of the historic Newport Jazz Festival, the New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC), the TD James Moody Jazz Festival, and the National Jazz Museum in Harlem. McBride is a respected educator and advocate for youth and serves as Artistic Director of Jazz House KiDS and the Jazz Aspen Snowmass Summer Sessions. In addition to artistic directing and consistent touring with his ensembles, he hosts NPR’s “Jazz Night in America” and "The Lowdown: Conversations With Christian" on SiriusXM. From jazz to R&B, and pop/rock and hip-hop/neo-soul to classical, Christian McBride is a luminary with one hand ever reaching for new heights, and the other extended in fellowship—and perhaps the hint of a challenge—inviting us to join him. For his show at SCMC on April 22, 2025, he is
Joined by four rising young master instrumentalists including saxophonist Nicole Glover, guitarist Ely Perlman, pianist Mike King, and drummer Savannah Harris.
Season subscription tickets for the 2024 – 2025 Spectacular Jazz Series and Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center Series are available at scmcgr.org.
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