Next season in California, Esa-Pekka Salonen will conduct Anton Bruckner’s mighty Fourth Symphony. That performance will be followed by a set of innovative concerts featuring contemporary repertoire.
In a parallel universe, all this would be happening at the San Francisco Symphony. But with Salonen having split from that institution, he is now focusing more of his attention on another Golden State ensemble close to his heart: the Colburn Orchestra.
The Colburn School has announced its 2025–2026 season, and Salonen, who holds the Maestro Ernst H. Katz Chair of Conducting Studies there, will be an important presence. He will lead the orchestra, the conservatory’s flagship ensemble, on Jan. 24, 2026, at UCLA’s Royce Hall. That concert will also feature composer Mert Yalniz conducting one of his own new works.
Then, in June 2026, the orchestra will head north with Salonen for his week as music director of the 80th Ojai Music Festival. Multiple concerts celebrating his longstanding connection to Los Angeles are planned.
The orchestra’s season will kick off Sept. 27 in Zipper Hall on Colburn’s downtown Los Angeles campus, where a major expansion is underway, including the construction of a new concert hall. Nicholas McGegan will conduct a J.S. Bach orchestral suite and Haydn’s “Military” Symphony, and Minkyung Chu will solo in Mozart’s beloved Clarinet Concerto.
Yalniz and Carlos Miguel Prieto will share the podium for a concert of Maurice Ravel, Antonín Dvořák, and Arnold Schoenberg on Oct. 26 at The Soraya in Northridge. On Dec. 6 at The Wallis in Beverly Hills, Kevin John Edusei will lead the orchestra in Bedřich Smetana’s Má vlast, and cellist Sieun Park will solo in Ernest Bloch’s Schelomo.
And the ensemble will return to Walt Disney Concert Hall on March 29, 2026, with Earl Lee conducting Richard Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra.
Outside of the orchestral realm, pianist Jeremy Denk will give two performances in the spring, discussing and performing Beethoven’s 32nd (and final) Piano Sonata on April 23, 2026, in Zipper Hall and also taking part in a chamber concert on April 26, 2026, with quintets by Mozart and Edward Elgar.
Besides Denk, the Colburn Presents series will include pianist Alexandre Dossin playing music by George Walker (Oct. 2), pianist Paul Lewis performing works by Mozart and Francis Poulenc (Feb. 15, 2026), and violinist Randall Goosby with the Sphinx Virtuosi (March 15, 2026).
The Ziering-Conlon Initiative for Recovered Voices, dedicated to reviving music by composers whose lives were disrupted or destroyed by the Nazi regime, will present two concerts. Violinist Adam Millstein and pianist Dominic Cheli will perform on Nov. 6, and outgoing Los Angeles Opera Music Director James Conlon will lead a chamber orchestra in Bohuslav Martinů’s intense Double Concerto on March 7, 2026.
For more information about the upcoming season, go to the Colburn’s website or call 213-621-1050.
