The Orchestra Now Announces 10th Anniversary Season

The Orchestra Now launches its 10th anniversary season on September 14, 2024, through May 18, 2025. Hailed for presenting innovative combinations of both well-known and less-familiar repertoire, TŌN offers 14 programs and a total of 24 concerts, including two at Carnegie Hall, three at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, three free concerts in Manhattan at Peter Norton Symphony Space and the Talent Unlimited High School, and 16 at the Orchestra's home at Bard College's Fisher Center, including three special events.

The Orchestra welcomes 18 new members this season, for a total of 70 musicians from 14 countries around the globe.

“As The Orchestra Now celebrates the milestone of its 10th anniversary season, I am deeply gratified by what we've achieved,” said Music Director and founder Leon Botstein. “What began as an idealistic vision in 2015 has fully blossomed and taken root around the world. The program now provides an ever-expanding, international collection of talented young musicians with the skills to bridge the gap from music student to professional musician, as well as the opportunity to perform both classic and non-traditional repertoire in multiple venues.”

Highlights of the 2024-25 season

Leon Botstein conducts two concerts at Carnegie Hall, including a Charles Ives sesquicentennial program and a concert of orchestral transcriptions of works by Beethoven, Chopin, and Smetana. The popular Sight & Sound series at The Metropolitan Museum of Art returns with three programs investigating the links between fine arts and music through a focus on Wagner's Parsifal and Sienese painters during the Italian Renaissance; on Schumann's music, the artist Caspar David Friedrich, and the reflection of nature in music and art at the rise of the German Romantic movement; and on the parallel ascending careers of Gabriel Fauré and John Singer Sargent in Paris. The Fisher Center series at Bard College offers 16 performances of eight different programs. Of special note are three special events at Bard: a screening of E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial with a live performance of the film score by TŌN; A Celebration of Sondheim & Friends featuring Metropolitan Opera mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe and vocalists from Bard Conservatory's Graduate Vocal Arts Program; and a collaboration with the students of American Ballet Theatre Studio Company. There are also three free concerts in Manhattan led by TŌN resident conductor Zachary Schwartzman and assistant conductor Andrés Rivas at Peter Norton Symphony Space and the Talent Unlimited High School.

Broadcasts and Recordings

This year marks the 8th season of TŌN's popular broadcast series on WMHT-FM, the classical music radio station of New York's Capital Region, and the 7th season on WWFM, the Classical Network station serving New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania, both featuring programs from the Orchestra's Fisher Center series. TŌN's performances are also heard regularly on American Public Media's Performance Today, a program on which the Orchestra has appeared more than 100 times. TŌN's latest album, The Lost Generation, was just released on AVIE Records in May 2024, and the album Exodus—featuring Josef Tal's Exodus, Walter Kaufman's Indian Symphony, and Marcel Rubin's Symphony No. 4, Dies Irae—will be released on September 20, 2024. An upcoming album with acclaimed violinist Gil Shaham will be released in Spring 2025 on Canary Classics, and the Orchestra will be recording February's Carnegie Hall program for a 2025 release.

For detailed information about the 2024-25 season, visit ton.bard.edu.