The Philadelphia Orchestra kicks off its 2026–27 season next week with a run of concerts that doubles as a milestone celebration: it’s Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s 15th year as Music and Artistic Director, and the Orchestra’s 25th at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts.
Opening Night lands on Thursday, September 24 at 7:00 PM in Marian Anderson Hall. The centerpiece is Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, with soloists Leah Hawkins (soprano), J’Nai Bridges (mezzo-soprano), Issachah Savage (tenor), and Ryan Speedo Green (bass-baritone), alongside the Philadelphia Symphonic Choir under director Joe Miller. The evening opens with the U.S. premiere of Joe Hisaishi’s Orbis, a choral work written as a companion piece to the Ninth — making this more than a standard season opener.
A New Life for Bernstein’s MASS
The weekend concerts — Friday, September 25 at 2:00 PM; Saturday, September 26 at 8:00 PM; and Sunday, September 27 at 2:00 PM — center on a world-premiere orchestral arrangement: Symphonic Rituals from MASS, drawn from Leonard Bernstein’s sprawling 1971 theatrical work and newly arranged by Sunderland on commission from the Orchestra. Fifty-five years after MASS first premiered, and eleven years after Nézet-Séguin led the only complete Philadelphia Orchestra performances and recording of the piece, this new arrangement distills what the ensemble calls the “stunning musical heart” of the work into a purely orchestral form.
Opening the same program is Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 1, performed by Alexandre Kantorow — making his Philadelphia Orchestra debut. The New York Times has called the French pianist a “rising star in the classical world,” and this will be his first appearance with the ensemble.
All performances take place at Marian Anderson Hall, Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts. Tickets and full season details are available on the Philadelphia Orchestra’s official website.
