Community Calendar

Lauded as “exquisite” by The Philadelphia Inquirer and “a pianist of sterling artistry” by Gramophone, GRAMMY® Award winning pianist Michelle Cann is one of the most sought-after artists of her generation. Her honors include the Sphinx Medal of Excellence and the Andrew Wolf Chamber Music Award. In 2024, she was named the inaugural Christel DeHaan Artistic Partner of the American Piano Awards, responsible for artistic oversight of the competition.

PROGRAM: “Women of Chicago’s Black Renaissance”
Nora Holt: Negro Dance Op. 25, No. 1
Betty Jackson King: Four Seasonal Sketches
Florence Price: Fantasie nègre No. 2
Florence Price: Fantasie nègre No. 1
Irene Britton Smith: Variations on a Theme by MacDowell
Margaret Bonds: Spiritual Suite
Part of the M@A Subscription Series sold through amherst.universitytickets.com or please contact concerts at amherst dot edu.

Single tickets are on sale at amherst.universitytickets.com fourteen days before this performance, beginning Friday, September 5 at 12 AM.

Single ticket pricing: General Public: $28; Senior Citizens (65+): $22; Students with valid ID and children: $12

For more information and other MUSIC DEPARTMENT EVENTS, please visit: https://www.amherst.edu/music/events

The Amherst Symphony Orchestra (ASO) opens its 2025-2026 series with the annual concert welcoming Amherst College's entering first year class. Mark Lane Swanson, director. General seating, no tickets required. FREE.
The Amherst Symphony Orchestra (ASO) launches its 2025-2026 season with classical music referencing social themes still relevant today. This event also celebrates and welcomes the incoming Amherst College class of 2029.

The ASO opens with Leonore Overture #3, Ludwig van Beethoven's 1806 curtain-raiser for his only opera, Fidelio, in which a woman disguises herself as a male prison guard to rescue her husband from death in a political prison.

It next performs March & Benediction from Margaret Bonds' masterful Montgomery Variations, inspired by the Civil Rights movement, dedicated to Martin Luther King, Jr., and based on the spiritual "I Want Jesus to Walk With Me."

The ASO continues with the overture to Giuseppe Verdi's opera Nabucco, about the 586 B.C.E. Babylonian captivity of the Israelites and featuring the immortal chorus "Va, pensiero," in which exiles yearn to return to their homeland; it served as Italy's anthem during its struggle for unification during the Risorgimento.

Next, Amherst College senior Charlie Odulio '26 is trumpet soloist in John Williams' moving With Malice Towards None from the Steven Spielberg film Lincoln, and the concert concludes with Finlandia by Jean Sibelius, a musical protest against censorship and domination by the Russian Empire.

Celebrated for creating diverse, timely and relevant opera, White Snake Projects (WSP) returns to Boston’s Strand Theatre, September 26-28, 2025, for the world premiere of White Raven, Black Dove, in a season dedicated to addressing the climate crisis through art. Composed by Jacinth Greywoode and Andrew Lynch, and written by librettist Cerise Lim Jacob, White Raven, Blake Dove is an original work of science fiction fantasy exploring two issues consuming America today – race and climate change. An early adopter of innovative technology, WSP continues to lead the vanguard in shaping new operas with tech advancements. This groundbreaking production comprises a live performance by some of today’s leading opera singers, an orchestra with electronics and chorus, augmented by computer generated imagery and animation created in the video game platform, Unreal Engine.

The legendary Czech vocalist and violinist is coming to Montague!

“Iva Bittová is an extraordinary artist. Raw and refined, passionate and contained, she has the soul of a gypsy, the voice of a troubadour, and the mind of a genius.”
– NPR/All Things Considered

“… a forward thinking composer who sings and plays violin simultaneously… Her sound is invigorating, urgent, and also soothing; it is a fusion of Old World and new-music sensibilities, infused with the spirit and language of Czech, Slovak, and Moravian music.”–New York Magazine

At times it feels like channeling. There is never any artifice, like you are drinking straight from the source. She's really like no one else. It's often hard to know where compositions end and improvisations begin.

Workshop info: If you're a vocalist you should DEFINITELY go, but instrumentalists are also invited to attend. All levels are welcome. (If you like to sing, go!) It won't focus on technique as much as on improvisation, being present, and finding your authentic voice.

Celebrated for creating diverse, timely and relevant opera, White Snake Projects (WSP) returns to Boston’s Strand Theatre, September 26-28, 2025, for the world premiere of White Raven, Black Dove, in a season dedicated to addressing the climate crisis through art. Composed by Jacinth Greywoode and Andrew Lynch, and written by librettist Cerise Lim Jacob, White Raven, Blake Dove is an original work of science fiction fantasy exploring two issues consuming America today – race and climate change. An early adopter of innovative technology, WSP continues to lead the vanguard in shaping new operas with tech advancements. This groundbreaking production comprises a live performance by some of today’s leading opera singers, an orchestra with electronics and chorus, augmented by computer generated imagery and animation created in the video game platform, Unreal Engine.

Celebrated for creating diverse, timely and relevant opera, White Snake Projects (WSP) returns to Boston’s Strand Theatre, September 26-28, 2025, for the world premiere of White Raven, Black Dove, in a season dedicated to addressing the climate crisis through art. Composed by Jacinth Greywoode and Andrew Lynch, and written by librettist Cerise Lim Jacob, White Raven, Blake Dove is an original work of science fiction fantasy exploring two issues consuming America today – race and climate change. An early adopter of innovative technology, WSP continues to lead the vanguard in shaping new operas with tech advancements. This groundbreaking production comprises a live performance by some of today’s leading opera singers, an orchestra with electronics and chorus, augmented by computer generated imagery and animation created in the video game platform, Unreal Engine.

Music at Amherst Series presents Karen Slack, soprano; Casey Robards, piano and the Pacifica Quartet on Friday, October 3, 2025 at 7:30 PM in Buckley Recital Hall, Amherst College at 53 College Street, Amherst, MA.

Praised for her “sizeable voice that captured all of the vacillating emotions” by The New York Times, 2025 GRAMMY® Award and Sphinx Medal of Excellence winner soprano Karen Slack isa sought-after collaborator, curator and artistic advisor. She is joined by GRAMMY®Award-winning Pacifica Quartet, Quartet-in-residence at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music, known for its virtuosity, exuberant performance style, and often-daring repertory choices.
— “...nothing short of phenomenal...” – The Telegraph

Program:
Florence Price: String Quartet No. 1 in G Major (string quartet)
Florence Price: Soprano/piano
Beyond The Years
Bright Be the Place
There Be None
Pittance
Winter Idyl
James Lee III: A Double Standard (soprano + string quartet)
Shawn Okpebholo: Oh! Freedom! (soprano\piano)
Moses Hogan: Crucifixion (soprano/piano)
Hall Johnson: Le’s Have a Union (soprano /piano)
Margaret Bonds: You Can Tell the World from Five Creek-Freedman Spirituals (soprano/piano)
Antonin Dvořák: String Quartet No. 12 in F major, Op. 96

“New Songs for an Old Poet” is a series of four concerts that will span the remainder of 2025. Organized by long-time Valley vocalist Peter W. Shea, who is also the principal performer, the series presents a very wide variety of songs, all of them musical settings of the great nineteenth-century German-Jewish poet Heinrich Heine, whose verses have been set to music more than any other poet. All are works that Peter has in some way helped to bring into the world, either by suggestion, commission, or premiere, as part of his thirty-year project on Heine and the music he continues to inspire. All but one of the sixty-plus songs have been composed since the turn of this century, with two-thirds of the composers being from New England.

This concert, “Heinrich Heine, Far and Near,” features sixteen songs by thirteen composers who hail from as far away as Germany and as close at hand as the Pioneer Valley. The songs range in style from cabaret to classical, in mood from witty to tragic, and in tonality from Baroque to twelve-tone. Nearly all display some aspect of Heine’s characteristic irony, and several will be sung in English translation. Peter will be joined by mezzo-soprano and guitarist Justina Golden, pianist and guitarist Clifton J. Noble, Jr., and soprano Junko Watanabe.