Emi Ferguson, Principal Flute of the distinguished Handel & Haydn Society and recipient of the 2023 Avery Fisher Career Grant, joins early music specialist Arthur Haas (harpsichord), Philip Setzer (violin) and the MMF Young Artists Strings to open the season with Bach’s lively Brandenburg Concerto No. 5. Music inspired by Shakespeare, Dryden, and Milton shapes […]

Beethoven’s complex ninth sonata reverberates to the present day. Originally written for his friend, George Bridgetower, the two fell out and the piece was rededicated to another notable violinist of the time, Rudolphe Kreutzer. Against this backdrop, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Rita Dove conjured a narrative for the biracial Bridgetower in her poetry collection Sonata Mulattica: […]

Few instruments evoke the human voice with such range and nuance as the clarinet, and even fewer performers achieve the distinction of Anthony McGill, Principal Clarinetist of the New York Philharmonic. Recipient of the 2020 Avery Fisher Prize and named 2024 Instrumentalist of the Year by Musical America, McGill is a musician whose “trademark brilliance, […]

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Powers’ sextet of poems from 2013 forms the basis of composer Perry Goldstein’s song cycle, “Birding by Ear.” Baritone Randall Scarlata, admired for his “compelling desire to bring texts to life” (The New York Times), will be joined by the musicians with whom he premiered the work in 2022—violinist Philip Setzer, […]