Come Together to Listen: Introducing the 2025-26 Season
Spring brings the promise of blooms, new beginnings and a fresh Orchestra season, and our 2025-26 season is shining bright. Music Director Thomas Søndergård’s third season at the helm features some of classical music’s greatest stars, grand opera moments, a cozy January festival and spine-tingling symphonic works all season long. (Ticket packages are on sale now, while single tickets will be available beginning July 29.)
Ticket Packages On Sale Now
Our season is built for all concertgoers—whether your preference is large-scale symphonies, intimate chamber music, high-energy family concerts, heartwarming holiday tunes or the visceral excitement of our film concerts. However you want to experience the Minnesota Orchestra, there’s a program for you to discover. Take a look through the season below.
Classical Concert Highlights
Søndergård’s Third Season
Music Director Thomas Søndergård will take the podium for two celebratory weeks of season opening concerts. In the first set, September 18-19, Grammy Award-winning mezzo Joyce DiDonato—described as “perhaps the most potent female singer of her generation” by The New York Times—interprets Hector Berlioz’s brilliant song cycle Les Nuits d’été. The concerts also feature Richard Strauss’ opulent Der Rosenkavalier Suite.
Søndergård’s second set of concerts, September 26-27, spotlight Principal Cello Anthony Ross in Leonard Bernstein’s exquisite Three Meditations from Mass and close with a great orchestral showpiece by Béla Bartók, the Concerto for Orchestra.
January 2026 will bring a fresh iteration of the Nordic Soundscapes festival, offering three different programs across five concerts in ten days exploring northern Europe’s orchestral music of past and present.
In Minneapolis, a Layer of Hygge Warmth for a Top-Notch Orchestra. With the Nordic Soundscapes Festival, Thomas Søndergård puts his stamp on the Minnesota Orchestra.”
The festival features the wind-swept grandeur of Jean Sibelius’ Violin Concerto performed by James Ehnes; soprano Lauren Snouffer making her Minnesota Orchestra debut with Danish composer Hans Abrahamsen’s song cycle let me tell you, a retelling of Hamlet from Ophelia’s perspective; as well as the First Symphonies of both Nielsen and Sibelius. As in the inaugural 2025 festival, Nordic Soundscapes 2026 will include chamber music and an immersive sampling of pre-concert activities that celebrate Nordic culture, cuisine, cocktails and design.
Søndergård’s affinity for vocal and opera repertoire will come to light in three programs throughout the season: November 21-22 performances of Johannes Brahms’ A German Requiem with the Minnesota Chorale; a May 8-9, 2026, opera-in-concert program of Bartók’s captivating psychological thriller Bluebeard’s Castle, headlined by mezzo Michelle DeYoung and baritone John Lundgren as the doomed couple in a fairytale gone wrong; and June 4-6, 2026, performances of American composer Peter Lieberson’s Neruda Songs spotlighting Jamie Barton—described by The New York Times “as leader of a new generation of opera stars”—in her Minnesota Orchestra debut.
Janai Brugger, another top American vocal talent, will join Søndergård and the Minnesota Orchestra for the latest version of the Listening Project, an initiative the Orchestra launched in 2021 to perform and record the music of underrepresented composers.
Glorious Guests
There is no one who soars higher in the classical music firmament than cellist Yo-Yo Ma and he’ll join Thomas Søndergård and our Orchestra in a special one-night only concert in March 2026, performing the Edward Elgar Cello Concerto.
If piano music is your interest, you’ll want to catch Aaron Diehl performing Made of Tunes, a recent piano concerto written especially for him by American composer Timo Andres (New Year’s Eve/Day). Later in the year, the extraordinary Kirill Gerstein (Mar 2026) will interpret piano concertos by Thomas Adès and Maurice Ravel, and Inon Barnatan (Mar 2026) will offer Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.
We’ll also introduce three pianists in their MinnOrch debuts: Elisabeth Brauss performing Anna Clyne’s Atlas Piano Concerto (Oct 2025); Janice Carissa in the Camille Saint-Saëns Piano Concerto No. 2 (Oct 2025) and Alexander Gavrylyuk in the remarkable First Piano Concerto of Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky.
If it’s the violin that makes your heart soar, take a listen to Benjamin Beilman in Karol Szymanowski’s Violin Concerto No. 1 (Nov 2025) or Leonidas Kavakos who will join as both conductor and violinist with the music of Mozart and Shostakovich (Oct 2025). The indomitable Leila Josefowicz also returns to interpret John Adams’ Violin Concerto, a seminal American work that was originally premiered by the Minnesota Orchestra and former Concertmaster Jorja Fleezanis in 1994.
Sweeping Symphonies
The season is full of great orchestral showpieces that showcase the depth and quality of the Orchestra. Here is just a sampling.
Conductor Andrew Manze will lead performances of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony in October 2025. Thomas Søndergård follows the next month with Hector Berlioz’s riveting Symphonie fantastique (Nov 2025), and Delyana Lazarova offers Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9, From the New World (Dec 2025). Eun Sun Kim leads Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony featuring the Minnesota Chorale and vocal soloists (Mar 2026), while John Storgårds brings the power of Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6, Pathétique, in April.
MinnOrch Spotlight, Musical Premieres
Your favorite Minnesota Orchestra players will enjoy some time in the spotlight in the new season. Concertmaster Erin Keefe will play Sergei Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 2, conducted by Conductor Laureate Osmo Vänskä in a February 2026 program.
A quartet of Orchestra players (violinist Yi Zhao, cellist Erik Wheeler, oboist Kate Wegener and bassoonist J. Christopher Marshall) will be featured in Joseph Haydn’s Sinfonia concertante (Dec 2025), and Principal Oboe Nathan Hughes will play one of the last works of Richard Strauss, his Oboe Concerto (Apr 2026). Violinist Sarah Grimes and Associate Principal Cello Silver Ainomäe will join guest pianist Alessio Bax for Beethoven’s Triple Concerto (July 2026).
And three principal players will offer world, U.S. or Minnesota premieres of recent pieces commissioned or co-commissioned by the Minnesota Orchestra. As part of September season opening concerts, Principal Cello Anthony Ross will offer the world premiere of St. Paul composer Steve Heitzeg’s EcoSaga (Concerto in Three Landscapes). In January 2026, Principal Viola Rebecca Albers will perform the U.S. premiere of South Korean-born composer Donghoon Shin’s Viola Concerto, Threadsuns. Principal Timpani Erich Rieppel will step forward in May 2026 to play New York-based composer Andy Akiho’s Timpani Concerto.
Chamber Music
The talent of individual musicians will also shine in a series of four chamber music concerts programmed and performed by Orchestra musicians. Held in Orchestra Hall, the concerts will take place in January (featuring violinist James Ehnes alongside Minnesota Orchestra musicians), February (featuring the music of Beethoven and Schoenberg), March (spotlighting Pianist Inon Barnatan, Concertmaster Erin Keefe and a string quartet in Chausson’s Concerto in D major) and May (including music by Bolcom, Poulenc and Ravel).
This Is Minnesota Orchestra
We’ll continue to offer livestreamed concerts and digital extras as part of our Emmy Award-winning This Is Minnesota Orchestra series. Stay tuned, we’ll announce those specific broadcasts as we get closer to the season.
LIVE AT ORCHESTRA HALL
Film concerts, holiday performances and collaborations with popular artists—these are all featured under our “Live at Orchestra Hall” umbrella, the popular series that is curated and (primarily) conducted by Sarah Hicks.
Live at Orchestra Hall Concerts
Musical Stars
Singer-rapper-writer Dessa—who has previously commanded the Orchestra Hall stage to tell stories of love, loss and dental work—will return for performances on November 7-8. Conductor Brent Havens will lead Windborne’s The Music of Pink Floyd with vocalist Randy Jackson and the Orchestra in a February 2026 program that features the groundbreaking Dark Side of the Moon concept album. Later in the month, singer-songwriter Ben Rector joins the Orchestra for his “Songs for America.”
U.S. Bank Movies & Music Series
It doesn’t get much better than this. We launch the film series with Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back in four October performances, followed by the 1985 Richard Donner classic The Goonies, presented right before Halloween. Mark Knopfler’s music is a beloved part of The Princess Bride which the Orchestra will present in November. Offered in April 2026, Disney in Concert: The Sound of Magic is a film collage featuring favorite characters and songs from the Disney catalogue. May brings Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets™, and in June 2026, the Twin Cities Gay Men’s Chorus (TCGMC) joins Hicks and the Orchestra for an original program, Disney Pride in Concert that celebrates life, love, family and pride.
Holiday Concerts
Our holiday offerings in December 2025 begin with a Cody Fry Christmas on December 10. Kermit and Gonzo join the Orchestra Hall festivities for performances of Disney’s The Muppet Christmas Carol, on December 12-13, while Minnesota Orchestra trumpet player Charles Lazarus and friends mark the season with their annual big band, jazz- inspired Merry & Bright concert on December 14. Later that week, December 19-20, the acrobats of Troupe Vertigo join the Orchestra for the dazzling, family-friendly Cirque Nutcracker, and the season culminates in a New Year’s Celebration featuring music by Leonard Bernstein and Aaron Copland.
Holiday celebrations are interwoven through the spring season as well. The Orchestra will mark its fifth annual Lunar New Year concert on February 26, 2026, toasting the Year of the Horse in a concert led by Chia-Hsuan Lin and featuring Assistant Concertmaster Rui Du and suona virtuoso Yazhi Guo. Conductor Kedrick Armstrong will make his Minnesota Orchestra debut in the Orchestra’s fourth annual Juneteenth concert on June 18, 2026, spotlighting composer Brian Nabors in his own Concerto for Hammond Organ plus a set of classic R&B-flavored tunes from Broadway powerhouse Melody Betts.
Education and Family Concerts
Relaxed Family Concerts, Sensory Friendly Concerts and Young People’s Concerts are all offerings for our youngest concertgoers. Here is what the 2025-26 season looks like:
Ready for the Season Ahead?
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