This upcoming season explores Chamber Music in America, marking the country’s 250th anniversary.

Chamber Music Pittsburgh (CMP) announces its 65th annual MainStage Live season, featuring six wide-ranging programs that celebrate all that chamber music can be in America. This season, Voices in Time, embodies CMP’s commitment to producing world-class chamber performances that showcase some of this country’s most singular artistic voices, celebrate shared community, and demonstrate the dynamics and range of this genre. 

“For our 65th season, which happens to coincide with our country’s 250th anniversary, we wanted to celebrate and elevate some of the distinctive voices who have shaped chamber music in America,” says Martha Bonta, Executive and Artistic Director of Chamber Music Pittsburgh. “Whether they belong to some of today’s most original artists, American composers who continue to transform the face of classical music, or canonical composers whose works have been beloved on these shores for centuries, these voices speak of peace and resilience, joy and celebration, tenderness and triumph, and music’s unique power to unite us.”

This season, MainStage Live returns to Chamber Music Pittsburgh’s longtime home, the recently renovated and sonically superior Carnegie Music Hall in Oakland. This season also features CMP’s first performance in collaboration with the August Wilson African American Cultural Center in downtown Pittsburgh, featuring a February 2026 program dedicated to the diverse music of America. In another first, CMP will partner with Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Music in a special holiday concert featuring all six Brandenburg concertos by Bach, performed on modern instruments.

Carnegie Music Hall ( Image by Jeff Totaro, Courtesy of Carnegie Museums)

MainStage Live Season Preview

All concerts at Carnegie Music Hall unless otherwise noted.

Brooklyn Rider • Tuesday, September 16, 2025

Known for “making classical music accessible but also celebrating why it was good in the first place” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette), Brooklyn Rider returns to CMP with “Citizenship Notes,” the opening concert of the season. The multi-century program explores the string quartet as a microcosm of democracy: a project of collaboration and respect among multiple voices.

• Franz Joseph Haydn  String Quartet in F Minor, Opus 20, No. 5
• New works by Don Byron, Ted Hearne, and Angélica Negrón
• Bob Dylan (arr. C. Jacobsen)  The Times They Are A-Changin’
• Ludwig van Beethoven  String Quartet in C Major, Opus 59, No. 3

Left: Sphinx Virtuosi (Image by Titilayo Ayangade); Right: Sterling Elliot (Image by Scott Jackson)

Sphinx Virtuosi with Sterling Elliott • Tuesday, October 21, 2025

“Visions of Peace” celebrates the resilience of the human spirit through works that meditate on conflicts of the past and present, featuring the “soulful beauty” (The Washington Post) of the Sphinx Virtuosi chamber orchestra and rising star cellist Sterling Elliott in an unforgettable performance.

• José White  La Bella Cubana
• Clarice Assad  Perpetual Motion
• Clarice Assad  Danca Brasileira
• Jessie Montgomery  New Commission (World Premiere Tour)
• William Grant Still  Suite for Cello
• Quenton Blache  A Vision for Peace (World Premiere Tour)
• Sergei Prokofiev  Sonata No. 7 “Stalingrad”
• Alberto Ginastera  Concerto For Strings, Op. 33 IV. Finale
• Manuel Ponce  Estrellita

Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos • Monday, November 24, 2025

Enjoy the complete set of Bach’s beloved Brandenburg Concertos, some of the most adored works in all of classical music! Presented in partnership with Carnegie Mellon University School of Music, this special holiday concert features CMU faculty and students, along with soloists from the Grammy Award–winning Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra.

Marc-André Hamelin • Monday, January 12, 2026

Pianist Marc-André Hamelin, “a performer of near-superhuman technical prowess” (The New York Times), presents a concert equal parts intimate and virtuosic. The program ranges from Charles Ives’s “Concord” sonata to Robert Schumann’s contemplative Waldszenen (Forest Scenes) to Maurice Ravel’s evocative “Gaspard de la Nuit.”

• Charles Ives  Piano Sonata No. 2, “Concord, Mass., 1840-1860”
• Robert Schumann  Waldszenen (Forest Scenes), Op. 82
• Maurice Ravel Gaspard de la Nuit, M. 55

Left: Ruckus (Image by Fay Fox) Right: Davóne Tines, (Image by Noah Morrison)

Ruckus with Davóne Tines • Tuesday, February 10, 202 at the August Wilson African American Cultural Center

Traveling through four centuries of reimagined songs, hymns, and ballads, early music band Ruckus and pathbreaking vocalist Davóne Tines offer a meditation on and interrogation of the American legacy through its revolutionary musics. Ruckus makes its Pittsburgh debut, joining forces with bass-baritone Tines, “[one] of the most powerful voices of our time” (Los Angeles Times).

• Doug Balliet  Steps to Compassion
• Traditional (arr. Tines)  Jesus Lover of My Soul
• Georg Friedrich Handel  Convey Me to Some Peaceful Shore (1748)
• Traditional  Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes
• Anonymous  What Mean Ye (1720/1837)
• Julius Eastman  Buddha (1983)
• John Dickinson (arr. Balliett)  The Liberty Song (1768)
• Joshua McCarter Simpson (arr. Tines & Ruckus)  To The White People of America (1854)
• Benjamin Carr (arr. Balliett)  The Federal Overture (1793)
• Georg Friedrich Handel  Why Do the Nations (1741)
• Clyde Otis  This Bitter Earth (1960)
• Doug Balliett Knowledge
• Earl Robinson / Lewis Allan  The House I Live In (1942)
• Davóne Tines / Doug Balliett  What is My Hand in This?\

Juilliard String Quartet (Image by Shervin Lainez)

Juilliard String Quartet • Monday, March 30, 2026

The 2025–26 MainStage Live season concludes with a return of the remarkable Juilliard String Quartet, which opened CMP’s inaugural season 65 years ago. Initially founded in 1946 and described by The Boston Globe as “the most important American quartet in history,” the ensemble engages deeply with the classics while championing new works.

• Benjamin Britten  String Quartet No. 3 in G Major, Op. 94
• J.S. Bach (arr. M Ross)  Prelude in E-flat Major, BWV 852
• Michelle Barzel Ross  Birds on the Moon (2024)
• Antonín Dvořák  String Quintet No. 3 in E-flat major, Op. 97, “American”

TICKETS AND DETAILS

Season subscriptions are on sale now. Individual concert tickets will go on sale August 1st. https://www.chambermusicpittsburgh.org/25-26-mainstage-live-series/

Categories: Arts and Ideas, Season Listings

Tags: Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos, Brooklyn Rider, Carnegie Music Hall Oakland, Chamber Music Pittsburgh, Julliard String Quartet, MainStage Live, Marc-André Hamelin, Martha Bonta, Ruckus with Davóne Tines, Sphinx Virtuosi with Sterling Elliott