New Century Chamber Orchestra: 2026/27

As was the case last year, the 2026/27 season of the New Century Chamber Orchestra (NCCO) and its Music Director and Concertmaster Daniel Hope will begin this coming November. This season there will be five concerts performed in San Francisco at three different venues. Dates, times, and location specifics are as follows:

Saturday, November 7, 7:30 p.m., Herbst Theatre: Following up on their last collaboration with NCCO, the Marcus Roberts Trio will return for performances of music by Duke Ellington and George Gershwin in a performance entitled GROOVE. Roberts leads the trio on piano, joined by drummer Jason Marsalis and Rodney Jordan on bass. They will join NCCO for a suite of Ellington tunes. The program will also include a string ensemble performance of “Entr’acte,” originally composed for string quartet by Caroline Shaw. The other contributing composer will be Rhiannon Giddens with her “At the Purchaser’s Option.” For those that do not already know, Herbst is in the Civic Center on the ground floor of the Veterans Building, across the street from City Hall at 401 Van Ness Avenue on the southwest corner of McAllister Street.

Saturday, December 12, 2 p.m., Taube Atrium Theatre: Violinist Benjamin Beilman will be the visiting soloist. He will perform the arrangement for violin and string orchestra of Eugène Ysaÿe’s “Rêve d’enfant” and Jean Sibelius’ Opus 117, a suite for violin and string orchestra. The program will begin with Olli Mustonen’s second nonet, which he completed in 2000. The final work on the program will be the oldest: Arnold Schoenberg’s Opus 4 “Verklärte Nacht,” which he originally composed as a string sextet. The venue is located on the top floor of the Veterans Building.

Saturday, January 30, 7:30 p.m., Herbst Theatre: Pianist Lara Downes will join the ensemble for the world premiere of “Beauty Has No Borders,” just composed by Clarice Assad. The earliest work on the program will be Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 201/186a, his 29th symphony composed in the key of A major. (He was eighteen years old at the time.) The program will conclude with the strings-only music for “Apollo,” the ballet choreographed by George Balanchine in 1928 when he was only 24 years old.

Saturday, April 17, 2 p.m., Presidio Theatre: The soloist will be bandoneonist Omar Massa, performing the world premiere of his double concerto for bandoneon and violin. The entire program will present music from “south of the border.” The most familiar work is likely to be Astor Piazzolla’s suite, The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires. The remaining selection will be “La Calaca,” composed by Gabriela Ortiz in 2021. The venue is in the southwest corner of the Presidio at 99 Moraga Avenue.

Thomas Hampson and Daniel Hope (from the NCCO Web site for the San Francisco Rising concert)

Friday, May 14, and Saturday, May 15, 7:30 p.m., and Sunday, May 16, 2 p.m., Herbst Theatre: The title of this program is San Francisco Rising, and it will be jointly curated by Hope and baritone Thomas Hampson. The program has not yet been finalized, but particular attention will be given to Ernest Bloch. Bloch was Director of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music in the 1920s, after which he became Professor Emeritus of Music at the University of California in Berkeley. His compositions will “rub shoulders” with traditional songs from China, Ireland, Mexico, and Africa. Sources will date back to the 1849 California Gold Rush and advance to the 1945 signing of the United Nations Charter (which took place in San Francisco … check out the painting in Herbst).

As of this writing, single tickets do not appear to be on sale. However, there is a Subscriptions Web page which allows for purchases for not only all five concerts but also four, three, and even two concerts. These will all involve 25% discounts from single-ticket purchases, which will probably become available in the coming fall.