Alisa Weilerstein’s summer 2026 highlights
Duos with Inon Barnatan at Ravinia, Aspen, La Jolla, & Minnesota Beethoven
Solo Bach at Bravo! Vail, Edinburgh, & Tivoli
Ortiz Dzonot concerto on tour with OSM & Payare
(June 2026) —MacArthur Award-winning cellist Alisa Weilerstein performs in numerous chamber and orchestral settings across the U.S. and Europe this summer, beginning with duo recitals with her longtime friend and collaborator, pianist Inon Barnatan. Multiple programs focusing on transcriptions of works by Brahms and Shostakovich, as well as repertoire from their acclaimed albums together, are featured at the Ravinia Festival (June 7), the Minnesota Beethoven Festival (July 7), and the Aspen Music Festival and School (July 9). The duo reunites later in the summer at La Jolla SummerFest (July 31–Aug 5), where Barnatan is Music Director. Weilerstein also focuses on Bach’s solo Cello Suites this summer, including the complete set over two performances at Bravo! Vail (July 13 & 14), a complete performance of all six on one program at the Edinburgh International Festival (Aug 22), and the first three suites at Denmark’s Tivoli Festival (Aug 24). Finally, she performs Gabriela Ortiz’s 2026 Grammy-winning Dzonot concerto with her husband, Rafael Payare, and his Orchestre symphonique de Montréal (OSM), first at Montreal’s Festival de Lanaudière (July 18) and a month later on tour to Edinburgh, Aarhus, and Hamburg (Aug 20–28). These festival dates continue a triumphant season for Weilerstein that has included a cover feature in The Strad; a yearlong residency at London’s Southbank Centre; the continuation of her groundbreaking six-part multisensory solo cello project, “FRAGMENTS,” at venues on both sides of the Atlantic including Carnegie Hall; and the UK premiere of Ortiz’s Dzonot concerto, a work written for her that she premiered and recorded with Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic that won a Grammy Award for the composer for best Contemporary Classical Composition.
Summer festivals
Weilerstein’s longstanding relationship with chamber partner Inon Barnatan, “one of the most admired pianists of his generation” (The New York Times), has yielded three acclaimed duo albums and more than a decade of live collaborations. This summer at the Ravinia Festival, they present a program comprising de Falla’s Suite populaire espagnole, selected Shostakovich Preludes arranged for cello and piano by Lera Auerbach, and cello sonatas by Chopin and Rachmaninoff, which they recorded on their first duo album in 2015 (June 7).
At the Minnesota Beethoven Festival, they reprise their selection of Shostakovich Preludes in Auerbach’s transcription, and perform Daniil Shafran’s transcription of the same composer’s Sonata for Viola and Piano, Op. 147, his final work. Also on the program is a selection of songs by Brahms, highlighting the cello’s unique ability to cover the full range of the human voice, and they open the program with the last of Beethoven’s five Cello Sonatas, as recorded on their 2022 album that included all five (July 7). Two days later in Aspen, they present a similar program that swaps out the Beethoven for Brahms’s “Regensonate” for Violin and Piano, this time in their own transcription, as recorded on their all-Brahms album in 2024. The disc was named an “Editor’s Choice” by Gramophone, in which Andrew Farach-Colton’s review declared: “Now this is my kind of Brahms playing: open-hearted, elastic and generously phrased. … Weilerstein and Barnatan’s new recording goes straight to the top of my list” (July 9).
Weilerstein has long made individual Bach Cello Suites a feature of her programming, and a few years before she recorded the cycle in 2020 she began performing them as a complete set to hone them in live performance before venturing into the studio. The monumental undertaking has since become a regular part of her schedule, and the suites also form the basis for her ongoing FRAGMENTS project, which weaves together the 36 movements of the cello suites with 27 new commissions to make six unique hour-long programs. At the Bravo! Vail Music Festival this summer, she divides the cello suites into two programs (July 13 & 14), and at the Edinburgh International Festival she performs them all at once (Aug 22). She also reprises the first three of the set at the Tivoli Festival in Copenhagen (Aug 24).
Weilerstein’s chamber concerts this summer are interspersed with multiple performances of Gabriela Ortiz’s Dzonot concerto, along with Rafael Payare and the OSM, as the orchestra celebrates its 60th anniversary at home and on a European tour. Composed for the cellist, Ortiz’s concerto was inspired by the “cenotes,” limestone sinkholes in Mexico which are like underground worlds, with their own rivers, lakes, and plant and animal life. After a performance at Montreal’s Festival de Lanaudière (July 18), they travel to the Edinburgh International Festival (Aug 20), Denmark’s Aarhus Music Hall (Aug 26), and Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie (Aug 28). Payare will also join Weilerstein at the Aspen Music Festival and School, when they collaborate on a performance of Dvořák’s Cello Concerto in B minor with the Aspen Festival Orchestra (July 12).
Recap of 2026 season highlights
Weilerstein’s ongoing FRAGMENTS project both opened and closed her Southbank Centre residency this past season, and she played both Prague and German debuts of the project after giving a performance of the fifth of six parts – FRAGMENTS 5 – Lament – at Carnegie Hall, where she will complete the cycle next season. When she first performed all six parts in one place last summer at Spoleto Festival USA, Classical Voice North America declared her performances to collectively be “the most awesome classical-music event this season,” calling them “a creation you literally had to see.” The cellist discussed the project at length – as well as playing solo pieces from it by Joan Tower and Osvaldo Golijov – with host John Schaefer on WNYC’s “Soundcheck” program this past April.
Weilerstein was also the subject of the cover feature in the October 2025 issue of The Strad, which focused on FRAGMENTS and also detailed two concertos written for her: Richard Blackford’s The Recovery of Paradise, released on the Pentatone label, and Ortiz’s Dzonot. Reviewing the cellist’s performance of the latter on the composer’s Grammy-winning album Yanga, BBC Music Magazine praised her “virtuosic, almost unbelievable playing,” going on to say:
“Weilerstein draws seemingly impossible sounds out of the cello – everything from perfectly tuned double-stopping to violin range interval leaps, to wah-wah pedal hard-rock guitar sounds. These sounds, paired with immensely controlled bowing and dynamics produce emotional responses that don’t settle until the final pieces.”
As powerful an advocate as Weilerstein is for contemporary music, she is no less celebrated for her fresh perspectives on the standard cello repertoire. Her 2025 season-opening performance of Elgar’s Cello Concerto with Nathalie Stutzmann and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra moved ArtsATL to marvel:
“There are times, as with Weilerstein’s performance, where the technical facility disappears into the background because it was only a vehicle to take us into the spiritual core of the player and the music they seek to embody. … That level of theatrical mastery is what was on display in Weilerstein’s performance: It ceased to be the sound of a cello; it ceased to be the sound of music; it was, simply and hauntingly, a pure and undiluted capturing of the human spirit in auditory form.”
Alisa Weilerstein: summer 2026 engagements
June 7
Highland Park, IL
Ravinia Festival
Duo Recital with Inon Barnatan
DE FALLA (arr. Paweł Kochański): Suite populaire espagnole (after Siete canciones populares españolas)
CHOPIN: Cello Sonata in G minor, Op. 65
SHOSTAKOVICH (transc. Lera Auerbach): Selections from 24 Preludes, Op. 34
RACHMANINOFF: Cello Sonata in G minor, Op. 19
July 7
Winona, MN
Minnesota Beethoven Festival
Duo recital with Inon Barnatan
BEETHOVEN: Sonata No. 5, Op. 102, No. 2
SHOSTAKOVICH (transcr. Lera Auerbach): Selections from 24 Preludes, Op. 34
BRAHMS: Selected Songs
SHOSTAKOVICH (transcr. Daniil Shafran): Sonata for Viola and Piano, Op. 147
July 9
Aspen, CO
Duo recital with Inon Barnatan
SHOSTAKOVICH (transcr. Lera Auerbach): Selections from 24 Preludes, Op. 34
BRAHMS (transc. Weilerstein/Barnatan): Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 1 in G, Op. 78, “Regensonate”
BRAHMS: Selected Songs
SHOSTAKOVICH (transcr. Daniil Shafran): Sonata for Viola and Piano, Op. 147
July 12
Aspen, CO
Aspen Festival Orchestra
Rafael Payare, conductor
DVOŘÁK: Cello Concerto in B minor, B. 191, Op. 104
July 13
Vail, CO
Bravo! Vail
BACH:
Suite No. 1 in G, BWV 1007
Suite No. 2 in D minor, BWV 1008
Suite No. 3 in C, BWV 1009
July 14
Vail, CO
Bravo! Vail
BACH:
Suite No. 4 in E-flat, BWV 1010
Suite No. 5 in C minor, BWV 1011
Suite No. 6 in D, BWV 1012
July 18
Montreal, QC
Festival de Lanaudière
Orchestre symphonique de Montréal
Rafael Payare, conductor
Gabriela ORTIZ: Dzonot
July 31–Aug 5
San Diego, CA
La Jolla SummerFest
July 31
Opening Night: An Incomplete History of the World in Ten Pieces
BEETHOVEN: Cavatina from String Quartet No. 13 in B-flat, Op. 130
WAGNER: Prelude from Tristan und Isolde for String Sextet
SHOSTAKOVICH: Adagio from Piano Trio No. 2 in E minor, Op. 67
HEIDRICH: Happy Birthday Variations
Aug 1
Vienna 1900
SCHOENBERG: Verklärte Nacht, Op.4
Aug 2
What If?
ULLMANN: String Quartet No. 3, Op. 46
Aug 5
Reshaping the Past
SCHUBERT: Octet in F, D. 803
Aug 20–28
Orchestre symphonique de Montréal European Tour
Aug 20: Edinburgh
Aug 26: Aarhus
Aug 28: Hamburg
Gabriela ORTIZ: Dzonot
Aug 22
Edinburgh, Scotland
Edinburgh International Festival
BACH: Complete Cello Suites
Aug 24
Copenhagen, Denmark
Tivoli Festival
BACH:
Suite No. 1 in G, BWV 1007
Suite No. 2 in D minor, BWV 1008
Suite No. 3 in C, BWV 1009