Alisa Weilerstein’s winter/spring 2026 highlights: FRAGMENTS at Southbank Centre, across Europe, and in Carnegie Hall; performances of Gabriela Ortiz, Joan Tower, and Unsuk Chin concertos; collaborations with Payare and Gilbert; much more
(January 2026) —MacArthur Award-winning cellist Alisa Weilerstein presents her groundbreaking six-part multisensory solo cello project, “FRAGMENTS,” at venues on both sides of the Atlantic this winter and spring. Back-to-back performances on the same day of FRAGMENTS 3 & 4 mark the culmination of her 2025–26 residency at London’s Southbank Centre (May 17), which also includes a reprise with Marin Alsop and the Philharmonia Orchestra of Gabriela Ortiz’s Dzonot concerto (March 12). Further upcoming FRAGMENTS dates include the Prague premiere of FRAGMENTS 1 & 2 (March 8), the German premiere of FRAGMENTS 3 at the stARTfestival in Leverkusen (May 19), and a FRAGMENTS program to be determined at the Dresden Music Festival (May 21). In the midst of these, Weilerstein performs FRAGMENTS 5 – Lament in Carnegie’s Zankel Hall (April 14), returning to the venue the following month to perform chamber music with an all-star quintet that includes violinists Leonidas Kavakos and Gil Shaham (May 15). Upcoming high-profile concerto appearances for the cellist in the U.S. include Ortiz’s Dzonot with Weilerstein’s husband, Rafael Payare, leading the San Diego Symphony (May 9, 10); a return to the co-commissioning Detroit Symphony for performances of Joan Tower’s A New Day, conducted by Music Director Jader Bignamini (Feb 13–15); a return to The Cleveland Orchestra under the baton of Alain Altinoglu for performances of Unsuk Chin’s Cello Concerto (Feb 26–28), after performing the same piece with the same conductor on the podium of the Frankfurt Radio Symphony (Feb 20); Shostakovich’s First Cello Concerto with the Palm Beach Symphony (Jan 13); and Shostakovich’s Second with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Ryan Bancroft (April 17–19). In Europe, Weilerstein plays the Britten Cello Symphony with Alan Gilbert leading his own NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra (Jan 22–25) and performs the Lutosławski Cello Concerto with the Spanish National Orchestra under the baton of Krzysztof Urbański (Jan 30–Feb 1). A duo performance of Brahms cello sonatas with Inon Barnatan in California, following up on their 2024 recording of the works (April 26), and a recital of Brahms and Prokofiev with Russian pianist Pavel Kolesnikov in Wigmore Hall (Jan 26), round out the cellist’s season.
“FRAGMENTS” and Southbank Centre residency
Weilerstein’s FRAGMENTS project weaves together the 36 movements of Bach’s solo cello suites with 27 new commissions to make six unique multisensory programs, each an hour long, for solo cello. The cellist launched her 2025–26 residency at London’s Southbank Centre with performances of FRAGMENTS 1 – Wonder and FRAGMENTS 2 – Tumult this past fall, and she closes the residency in May with FRAGMENTS 3 – Emergence and FRAGMENTS 4 – Labyrinth (May 17). Meanwhile, after playing the Carnegie Hall debut of FRAGMENTS 4 this past fall, she gives the first performance at that venue of FRAGMENTS 5 – Lament (April 14). Weilerstein will perform FRAGMENTS 6, the final part of what will then be a complete Carnegie Hall cycle, on a date to be determined next season. Other performances of the innovative cycle this winter and spring include the Prague premiere of FRAGMENTS 1 & 2 (March 8); the German premiere of FRAGMENTS 3 at Leverkusen’s stARTfestival (May 19); and a FRAGMENTS program to be determined at the Dresden Music Festival (May 21). When the cellist first performed all six parts of the project 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.”
Weilerstein’s season-long Southbank Centre residency also includes a performance with Marin Alsop and the Philharmonia Orchestra of Gabriela Ortiz’s Dzonot concerto (March 12), as part of a UK tour that also takes in Canterbury and Manchester (March 11, 13). 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; Weilerstein premiered the piece last season with Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. A recording of the live premiere was released in July 2025 on the Ortiz’s Grammy-nominated album Yanga, when Gramophone reported: “Weilerstein and the Los Angelenos play Dzonot with such conviction and technical mastery that I did a double take when I read in the booklet that this recording is taken from the premiere performances.” Weilerstein reprises the work once again in the spring, with Rafael Payare conducting the San Diego Symphony (May 9, 10).
More concerto performances in the U.S. and Europe
Another concerto written for Weilerstein, Joan Tower’s 2021 A New Day, will be the vehicle this winter for the cellist’s return to the Detroit Symphony, which co-commissioned the work (Feb 13–15). Written while Tower’s husband was struggling with severe illness – he passed away a year later – the concerto was premiered by Weilerstein at the Kennedy Center in 2022, at which time The Washington Post found it to be “one of the most exciting works of the season.” The review continued:
“Early on, Weilerstein introduced a vocabulary of arcing glissandos and serrated harmonics that would slice through the surface of the ‘day’ like recurring anxieties. But her playing also drew a fully formed figure, a personality, the presence of a protagonist moving through the whirl of the world painted by the orchestra.”
Also this winter, the cellist follows up on her “awe-inspiring” (San Diego Story) spring 2025 performance of Unsuk Chin’s Cello Concerto – with Payare and the San Diego Symphony – with two more performances of the work, both under the baton of French conductor Alain Altinoglu: with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony (Feb 20) and then in a return to The Cleveland Orchestra (Feb 26–28).
Weilerstein’s upcoming U.S. concerto engagements are completed by performances in California of both of Shostakovich’s Cello Concertos: the First with the Palm Beach Symphony (Jan 13) and the Second with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Ryan Bancroft (April 17–19). As The Strad said of Weilerstein’s 2016 recording of these works: “She imbues these scores with such a compelling sense of emotional narrative that it seems as though one were hearing the music for the first time.”
In Europe this winter and spring, Weilerstein performs two works originally composed for Mstislav Rostropovich: Britten’s Cello Symphony, for which she reunites with Alan Gilbert leading his own NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra in Hamburg (Jan 22, 25) and Lübeck (Jan 23) after performances with Staatskapelle Berlin this past fall; and the Lutosławski Cello Concerto, which she performs with the Spanish National Orchestra under the baton of Krzysztof Urbański (Jan 30–Feb 1).
Season recap to date
These engagements come on the heels of a banner fall for the cellist. When she performed the Elgar Cello Concerto with Nathalie Stutzmann and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra on their season-opening program, ArtsATL raved:
“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.”
Weilerstein was also the subject of the cover feature in the October issue of The Strad, which focused on her FRAGMENTS project and also detailed two concertos written for her: Richard Blackford’s The Recovery of Paradise, recently released on the Pentatone label, and Gabriela Ortiz’s Dzonot. Reviewing Weilerstein’s performance of the latter on the composer’s Grammy-nominated 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.”
“FRAGMENTS” for solo cello
Alisa Weilerstein, project creator & performer
Elkhanah Pulitzer, director
Hanako Yamaguchi, artistic producer & advisor
Seth Reiser, set & lighting design
Molly Irelan, costume design
Featured composers:
Andy Akiho, J.S. Bach, Courtney Bryan, Chen Yi, Alan Fletcher, Gabriela Lena Frank, Osvaldo Golijov, Joseph Hallman, Gabriel Kahane, Daniel Kidane, Thomas Larcher, Tania León, Allison Loggins-Hull, Missy Mazzoli, Gerard McBurney, Jessie Montgomery, Reinaldo Moya, Jeffrey Mumford, Matthias Pintscher, Gity Razaz, Gili Schwarzman, Caroline Shaw, Carlos Simon, Gabriella Smith, Ana Sokolović, Joan Tower, Mathilde Wantenaar, Paul Wiancko
Leadership support for “FRAGMENTS” is generously provided by Joan and Irwin Jacobs. Patron support for “FRAGMENTS” is provided by Judy and Tony Evnin, Clara Wu Tsai, and Paul Sekhri. “FRAGMENTS” has been made possible with commissioning support from the San Diego Symphony, UC Santa Barbara Arts & Lectures, Carnegie Hall, Celebrity Series of Boston, and the Royal Conservatory of Music for the 21C Festival. Special thanks to Martha Gilmer for her leadership and counsel, and to Celebrity Series of Boston and Aspen Music Festival and School for their in-kind contributions.
Alisa Weilerstein: winter/spring 2026 engagements
Jan 13
Palm Beach, FL
Palm Beach Symphony
SHOSTAKOVICH: Cello Concerto No. 1
Jan 22, 25
Hamburg, Germany
NDR Elbphilharmonie
Alan Gilbert, conductor
BRITTEN: Symphony for Cello and Orchestra, Op. 68
Jan 23
Lübeck, Germany
NDR Elbphilharmonie
Alan Gilbert, conductor
BRITTEN: Symphony for Cello and Orchestra, Op. 68
Jan 26
London, UK
Wigmore Hall
Pavel Kolesnikov, piano
PROKOFIEV: Cello Sonata in C Op. 119
BRAHMS: Cello Sonata No. 1 in E minor, Op. 28
Jan 30–Feb 1
Madrid, Spain
Spanish National Orchestra
Krzysztof Urbański, conductor
LUTOSŁAWSKI: Cello Concerto
Feb 13–15
Detroit, MI
Detroit Symphony Orchestra
Jader Bignamini, conductor
Joan TOWER: A New Day concerto for cello (DSO co-commission)
Feb 20
Frankfurt, Germany
Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra
Alain Altinoglu, conductor
Unsuk CHIN: Cello Concerto
Feb 26–28
Cleveland, OH
The Cleveland Orchestra
Alain Altinoglu, conductor
Unsuk CHIN: Cello Concerto
March 8
Prague, Czechia
FRAGMENTS 1 – Wonder (Prague premiere)
FRAGMENTS 2 – Tumult (Prague premiere)
March 11–13
UK tour with Philharmonia Orchestra
Marin Alsop, conductor
Gabriela ORTIZ: Dzonot
March 11: Canterbury (The Marlowe; UK premiere)
March 12: London (Royal Festival Hall; London premiere)
March 13: Manchester (The Bridgewater Hall)
April 14
New York, NY
Carnegie Hall – Zankel Hall
FRAGMENTS 5 – Lament
April 17–19
Los Angeles, CA
Los Angeles Philharmonic
Ryan Bancroft, conductor
SHOSTAKOVICH: Cello Concerto No. 2
April 26
Palm Desert, CA
McCallum Theatre
Duo with Inon Barnatan
May 9 & 10
San Diego, CA
San Diego Symphony
Rafael Payare, conductor
Gabriela ORTIZ: Dzonot
May 15
New York, NY
Carnegie Hall – Stern Auditorium
Great Artists I
Leonidas Kavakos, violin
Gil Shaham, violin
Antoine Tamestit, viola
Pablo Ferrández, cello
BEETHOVEN: Violin Sonata No. 9 in A, Op. 47, “Kreutzer” (arr. for string quartet)
SCHUBERT: String Quintet in C, D. 956
May 17
London, UK
Southbank Centre
FRAGMENTS 3 – Emergence (3 pm)
FRAGMENTS 4 – Labyrinth (5 pm)
May 19
Leverkusen, Germany
stARTfestival
FRAGMENTS 3 – Emergence (German premiere)
May 21
Dresden, Germany
Dresden Music Festival
FRAGMENTS TBC