Caramoor announces 80th anniversary season in summer 2025 (June 15–Aug 3)
Operas by Telemann and Monteverdi; Rafael Payare leading Beethoven 9; Emanuel Ax, Leonidas Kavakos, and Yo-Yo Ma; piano recitals from Daniil Trifonov, Timo Andres, and George Li; Arturo O’Farrill headlines Jazz Festival; much more
(March 2024) — This summer, in the welcoming environs of its idyllic Westchester grounds and gardens, Caramoor celebrates 80 years as a haven for musical and artistic discovery with an exceptional roster of world-renowned artists, spectacular open-air venues, intimate indoor spaces, and sound art throughout the grounds, all testifying to the enduring dynamic power of music and the arts as a collective cultural heritage. The 2025 summer season features two early operas: Telemann’s Pimpinone paired with his dramatic cantata Ino from Boston Early Music Festival; and Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea from Cappella Mediterranea, marking the ensemble’s New York debut and only U.S appearance this season. Orchestra of St. Luke’s (OSL) opens the season with Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony led by “electrifying” (Los Angeles Times) conductor Rafael Payare making his Caramoor debut; subsequent performances with Anna Rakitina and Teddy Abrams on the podium feature soloists Christian Tetzlaff and Garrick Ohlsson. Emanuel Ax, Leonidas Kavakos, and Yo-Yo Ma team up to perform the latest iteration of their “Beethoven for Three” project; Daniil Trifonov, Timo Andres, and George Li give solo piano recitals; new music includes the Grammy-winning team of Sō Percussion and composer and vocalist Caroline Shaw, as well as a free performance of Terry Riley’s seminal In C produced by Bang on a Can; and The Knights return, featuring mandolinist Chris Thile. The outstanding lineup of chamber performances includes the Takács and Escher Quartets, the latter with pianist Alessio Bax; a solo recital from violinist Claire Bourg accompanied by Jinhee Park in the Rosen House Music Room; a performance by the Terra String Quartet, this season’s Ernst Stiefel String Quartet-in-Residence; and the return of Bay Area vocal ensemble Chanticleer with their ecology-themed program “Music of a Silent World.” Caramoor’s perennially popular all-day Jazz Festival – presented in collaboration with Jazz at Lincoln Center – features a headlining performance by Arturo O’Farrill and the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra. The all-day American Roots Music Festival, presented in collaboration with City Winery, is complemented by two major American Roots artists performing later in the summer: Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway and Lyle Lovett and His Large Band. Added to this is a free Juneteenth celebration with The Legendary Ingramettes; a dance performance from tap and live music company Music From The Sole; a celebration of Broadway Pride hosted by Seth Rudetsky; Music and Meditation in the Garden performances from viola duo Tallā Rouge, the duo of flutist Alex Sopp and violinist Austin Wulliman, and a solo performance by cellist Gabriel Cabezas; more Concerts on the Lawn from Endea Owens and the Cookout, Ranky Tanky, La Excelencia, and The Garifuna Collective; the annual Pops, Patriots, and Fireworks concert with guest vocalist Mimi Hilaire; and more. Caramoor’s long-held philosophy of offering premium programming that runs the gamut of genres and styles ensures not only something for every audience, but a world of new discoveries and old favorites for the entire family.
Kathy Schuman, Caramoor’s Artistic Director, adds:
“As we look forward to our 80th summer season, Caramoor continues to celebrate the transformative power of live music performances. Through eight decades, including periods of seismic societal change, our programming has continued to grow and evolve while remaining true to our founders’ vision of a creative oasis where audiences can pause, dream, and be inspired. With each season, Caramoor seeks to offer a broad spectrum of today’s most exciting artists in a broad range of genres, presented in a variety of formats at unique venues on our beautiful grounds.”
Orchestras: Orchestra of St. Luke’s led by Rafael Payare, Anna Rakitina, and Teddy Abrams; The Knights with Chris Thile
Caramoor’s 80th anniversary season kicks off with a gala concert featuring the Orchestra of St. Luke’s (OSL) and the Caramoor debut of conductor Rafael Payare, music director of both the San Diego Symphony and the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal. In a profile of San Diego’s newly renovated Jacobs Music Center last fall, The Wall Street Journal declared: “Exuding a podium manner of extreme, yet unforced, exuberance … Mr. Payare puts a high premium on bringing joy to concert audiences.” Payare and OSL perform Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, featuring soprano Gabriella Reyes, mezzo-soprano Tamara Mumford, tenor Viktor Antipenko, and bass-baritone Joseph Parrish – an alumnus of Caramoor’s Schwab Vocal Rising Stars program – as soloists, along with the Caramoor Festival Chorus (June 21).
Conductor Anna Rakitina – praised by fellow conductor Andris Nelsons for her “sensitivity and deep psychological understanding of our work” – makes her Caramoor debut with OSL and violinist Christian Tetzlaff in Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, on a program with Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5. Tetzlaff recorded the Beethoven concerto for the second time in his career in 2019, prompting Classical Review to declare that “his artistry as a musician, poet and communicative artist have matured into something highly distinguished.” When Rakatina conducted the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin in the Tchaikovsky last spring, Seen and Heard International found that the performance “evoked a voyage that commenced in the shadows and concluded with the soaring light of redemption.” The conductor will also be on hand for a pre-concert conversation (July 13).
OSL winds up its summer at Caramoor under the baton of Louisville Orchestra Music Director, 2022 Musical America Conductor of the Year, and Grammy winner Teddy Abrams making his Caramoor debut. They are joined by celebrated pianist Garrick Ohlsson, lending his “incredible technique with razor-sharp accuracy” (The Seattle Times) to a performance of Beethoven’s First Piano Concerto, while Abrams also conducts the orchestra in Brahms’s First Symphony and Caroline Shaw’s Entr’acte. A conversation with Abrams will precede the performance (Aug 3).
The Knights, under the baton of co-Artistic Director and conductor Eric Jacobsen, are joined at Caramoor this summer by mandolinist and vocalist Chris Thile for a performance of Thile’s ATTENTION!, subtitled “a narrative song cycle for extroverted mandolinist and orchestra.” Jacobsen and Thile are longtime friends, and it was the conductor who instigated the composition of ATTENTION!, premiering the piece with Thile and The Knights at Tanglewood in 2023. Also on the program at Caramoor are excerpts from Philip Glass’s Symphony No. 3, Thile’s transcription of Bach’s D minor Concerto for Two Violins, and Caroline Shaw’s “And So” from the song cycle Is a Rose(July 20).
Opera: Telemann’s Pimpinone/Ino and Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea
Returning to Caramoor after a 2023 production of Caccini’s Alcina, the Boston Early Music Festival presents an evening of Telemann: his opera Pimpinone and dramatic cantata Ino. The comic opera Pimpinone was written as an intermezzo, serving as light relief between the acts of a more serious piece. The characters, a rich and foolish older gentleman and an ambitious chambermaid who convinces him to marry her, are familiar partly because the success of Pimpinone paved the way for later works with similar characters like Pergolesi’s La serva padrona and Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro. Musical directors Paul O’Dette and Stephen Stubbs and stage directors Gilbert Blin and Marie-Nathalie Lacoursière sandwich the two parts of the dramatic cantata Ino between the three scenes of Pimpinone, maintaining the traditional alternation between serious and comic works. Written when Telemann was 84, two years before his death, Ino has a story drawn from Ovid’s Metamorphoses in which a desperate woman, trying to save herself and her son from her mad husband, eventually throws herself off a cliff and is transformed into a goddess. Soprano Danielle Reutter-Harrah – praised by The Boston Globe for her “warm, glowing tone” – and “technically, musically and stylistically consummate” (Klassik Heute) baritone Christian Immler star in Pimpinone, while Inofeatures soprano Amanda Forsythe, whom The Boston Globe praised as “marvelous – clear, florid and warm at the same time” (June 29).
Monteverdi‘s L’incoronazione di Poppea is presented at Caramoor this summer by Cappella Mediterranea, a European Baroque ensemble founded and led by Argentinian harpsichordist and conductor Leonardo García Alarcón. When the staged version was presented at the Aix-en-Provence Festival in 2022, The New York Times found that “Leonardo García Alarcón conducted a small but potent group from his ensemble, Cappella Mediterranea, with almost improvisatory spikiness, but without losing polish.” Caramoor’s concert presentation marks Cappella Mediterranea’s second appearance in New York following their debut in 2017, and features Belgian soprano Sophie Junker – described by Opera magazine as “irresistibly charming” – in the title role and countertenor Nicolò Balducci, lauded by Gramophone as “a singer of a remarkably sweet sound and distinct vocal agility,” as Nerone. An hour before the performance will be a pre-concert lecture with Wendy Heller, Scheide Professor of Music History at Princeton University (July 12).
New music and dance
With works programmed this summer by both OSL and The Knights, Caroline Shaw also visits Caramoor in person for an evening-length theatrical performance with Sō Percussion called WHO TURNS OUT THE LIGHT. Shaw and the four members of Sō have released three albums together in the last few years, including the Grammy Award-winning Narrow Sea. WHO TURNS OUT THE LIGHT is built on music from their recent “hypnotically beautiful” (BBC Radio 3) album, Rectangles and Circumstance – which also won a Grammy Award – augmented by songs from their previous collaboration, Let the Soil Play its Simple Part, as well as an interlude performed by Ringdown, a “cinematic pop duo” comprising Shaw and Danni Lee. Recent compositions by Sō members round out the program (July 10).
In a free, site-specific event designed for Caramoor’s grounds, the Bang on a CanFestival Ensemble, including members of the Bang on a Can All-Stars and fellows from their Summer Music Festival at MASS MoCA, will celebrate composer Terry Riley’s 90th birthday with an outdoor spatial performance of his minimalist classic In C. This landmark piece, written in 1964, introduced the musical style now known as Minimalism to a mainstream audience. The piece inspired many classical composers including Philip Glass, Steve Reich, and John Adams, as well as rock musicians like John Cale and Brian Eno. Preceding the event will be a conversation with members of Bang on a Can (July 27).
Caramoor welcomes back Grammy-winning vocal ensemble Chanticleer this summer, for a performance of their program Music of a Silent World in the Spanish Courtyard. The ecology-themed program centers on Majel Connery’s The Rivers are our Brothers, an ode to the natural beauty of California that the group also released on Chanticleer Records in fall of 2024. Each movement personifies a different element of the Sierra Nevada’s majestic terrain, from its towering trees to its rushing rivers and snow-capped peaks. Connery comments: “The goal is to give nature a voice. I wanted to allow these vibrant things to speak on their own behalf.” Also on the program is I miss you like I miss the trees, on the subject of wildfires, by 2023–24 Chanticleer composer-in-residence Ayanna Woods, and works by Heinrich Isaac, Joni Mitchell, Max Reger, Stephen Sondheim and Kurt Weill (July 18).
Music From The Sole, a tap dance and live music company that blurs the line between concert dance and music performance and celebrates tap’s roots in the African diaspora, performs their evening-length work I Didn’t Come to Stay at Caramoor this summer. Led by Brazilian tap dancer and choreographer Leonardo Sandoval and composer and bassist Gregory Richardson, the performance explores themes of immigration and family, influenced by Afro-Brazilian, jazz, soul, house, rock, and Afro-Cuban music. After a New York performance of the work early in 2024, The New York Times painted the scene in glowing terms: “The Joyce Theater has rarely felt as electric as it did on Tuesday, when 14 musicians burst through a door at the back of the house, singing and drumming as they paraded through the audience toward the stage. Within seconds, the crowd was clapping and cheering, some people on their feet” (July 17).
Chamber music and recitals: Emanuel Ax, Leonidas Kavakos, and Yo-Yo Ma; piano recitals from Daniil Trifonov, Timo Andres, and George Li; Takács and Escher Quartets; more
Pianist Emanuel Ax, violinist Leonidas Kavakos, and cellist Yo-Yo Ma first played together as a trio at Tanglewood in 2014, and three years later released an album of Brahms Piano Trios to universal acclaim. In 2021, again at Tanglewood, they first performed Beethoven’s Symphony No. 2 in trio format, and soon thereafter began a series of Beethoven for Three recordings. At Caramoor they perform the latest chapter of the project, pairing the “Leonore” Overture with the “Eroica” Symphony, the latter with violist Nicholas Cords – an alumnus of Caramoor’s Evnin Rising Stars program – in arrangements for piano quartet by pianist Shai Wosner. With the Beethoven for Three series, the artists pursue the essential elements of Beethoven’s musical language, transporting listeners to the turn of the nineteenth century, when audiences would likely have first heard new orchestral works in arrangements for piano trio, string quartet, or four-hands piano. Ma comments: “We feel that one of the things that is really important to do today is to actually go back to the first principles of music, the simple interaction between friends who want to do something together” (July 30).
Russian pianist Daniil Trifonov has long been fascinated by the works of Frédéric Chopin. He released Chopin: Evocations in 2017, pairing a selection of the composer’s works with others from his century and beyond that were influenced by him, including pieces by Samuel Barber and Tchaikovsky. His current recital program again juxtaposes the three composers, with Chopin waltzes alongside Barber’s sole Piano Sonata and two Tchaikovsky works: the C-sharp minor Sonata and Concert Suite from The Sleeping Beauty, in the arrangement by Mikhail Pletnev (June 27).
Pianist and composer Timo Andres wrote his solo piano piece It takes a long time to become a good composer in 2010, intending it to be a companion piece to Schumann’s Kreisleriana, which he had been studying for several years. At Caramoor, the pianist juxtaposes his work with another set by Schumann, the Canonic Etudes, composed for an unusual pedal-piano with a row of organ-like foot pedals. Admirers of the work included Bizet, who arranged it for one piano, four hands, and Debussy, who made an arrangement for two pianos. Andres will perform his own solo arrangement on a conventional instrument. Also on the program is Copland’s Piano Sonata, which was commissioned by and dedicated to the American playwright Clifford Odets. Copland said of the work: “I think of the sonata as dramatic—a kind of play being acted out with plenty of time for self-expression. It seems to me that my Piano Sonata follows that idea. It is a serious piece that requires careful and repeated study” (July 24).
Recitals in the Music Room comprises hour-long programs on Saturdays in the late afternoon that feature young classical instrumentalists on the rise, with an opportunity to meet the artists after each performance. Pianist George Li, a silver medalist at the 2015 Tchaikovsky Competition, plays Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, Ravel’s Valses nobles et sentimentales, and Schumann’s youthful Arabeske in C, the latter two recently released on Li’s album Movements. Gramophone had high praise for Li’s “uncannily adroit” handling of Schumann, while declaring of the Valses: “I can’t think of another pianist who portrays Ravel’s aesthetic with greater relish or sympathy” (July 19). Violinist Claire Bourg, an alumna of Caramoor’s Evnin Rising Stars mentoring program, recipient of the prestigious 2021 Luminarts Fellowship, and second-prize winner at the 2020 Barbash J.S. Bach Competition, presents Mozart’s Violin Sonata in A, Ravel’s First Violin Sonata (published posthumously), Brahms’s Scherzo from the F-A-E Sonata, and Juno Award winner Vivian Fung’s Birdsong, alongside pianist Jinhee Park(Aug 2).
The Takács Quartet, now entering its 50th anniversary season, performs Haydn’s “Rider” quartet and Beethoven’s “Razumovsky” quartet as bookends to Nokuthula Ngwenyama’s Flow. Flow was commissioned for the Takács Quartet, inspired by what the composer calls “a common flow to existence tying us to the initial outburst of energy and matter at the birth of our universe.” Boston Classical Review declared the work to be as “immediate, ingratiating, and accessible a musical argument as they come … gloriously, radiantly sincere and affecting.” The quartet released Flow on the Hyperion label in November 2024 (July 25).
The Escher String Quartet – a previous Ernst Stiefel String Quartet-in-Residence at Caramoor – is joined by pianist Alessio Bax for a performance of Dvořák’s A-major Piano Quintet, on a program with Barber’s String Quartet in B minor and Florence Price’s Quartet No. 2 in A minor. After the quartet’s 2021 release of the Barber quartet, which included the substantial third movement that Barber discarded before the work’s publication, The Strad praised the recording’s “immediate colour and dynamism” before concluding: “brilliantly detailed, this is a first-rate release all round” (July 6).
Caramoor’s 2024-25 Ernst Stiefel String Quartet-in-Residence, the Terra Quartet, completes its yearlong residency of community engagement and concerts with a performance that includes the world premiere of a Caramoor commission by Korean-born Princeton-based composer Juri Seo. Prizewinners at both the 2023 Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition and 2023 Osaka International Chamber Music Competition, the quartet is composed of graduates of The Juilliard School, the New England Conservatory, Harvard University, and the Curtis Institute of Music. Praised for their “remarkable maturity and musicality” and “superb ensemble playing” (Hyde Park Herald, Chicago), the quartet’s name is a nod to their multicultural origins – together, this foursome represents four continents and speaks six languages. Their program also includes works by Haydn, Purcell, and Britten (June 22).
American Roots Music Festival; Molly Tuttle; Lyle Lovett
Caramoor’s American Roots Music Festival, an all-day celebration throughout the Caramoor grounds of the best in Americana, blues, folk and bluegrass, returns in June, presented in collaboration with City Winery. Daytime acts this summer include The Rumble featuring Chief Joseph Boudreaux Jr., devoted to past and present New Orleans musical culture; Washington, DC-based indie-soul band Oh He Dead; Asheville, North Carolina-based country roots band Amanda Anne Platt and The Honeycutters; urban Americana band Rebecca Haviland and Whiskey Heart; and progressive acoustic band The Barefoot Movement; with additional acts to be announced (June 28).
Guitarist and banjoist Molly Tuttle, along with her band Golden Highway, last appeared at Caramoor in 2022. Billboard called her 2023 album, City of Gold, “a vibrant blend of bluegrass with flashes of Old West, anchored by Tuttle’s earthy-yet-angelic vocal and the entire group’s ace musicianship.” The album was a follow-up to 2022’s Crooked Tree, and both albums won Grammys for Best Bluegrass Album, with the first one also contributing to Tuttle’s nomination for Best New Artist and her win as Female Vocalist of the Year at the 2022 International Bluegrass Music Awards (July 19).
Four-time Grammy winner Lyle Lovett and His Large Band make their debut at Caramoor this summer (Aug 2). Lovett’s 2022 album 12th of June, titled for the birthday of his twin son and daughter and his first release since 2012, was called a “welcome return to form” by PopMatters, which continued: “The ten-year gap didn’t apply any rust to Lyle Lovett and his merry band of collaborators. At this point, Lovett has polished this amalgamation of styles to a near-flawless sheen.”
Jazz Festival with Arturo O’Farrill
Caramoor’s annual Jazz Festival, presented in collaboration with Jazz at Lincoln Center– as it has been for more than a decade – is headlined by Arturo O’Farrill and the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra. Praised by Downbeat as “one of our greatest living pianists,” the multi-Grammy-winning O’Farrill was born in Mexico and raised in New York. His professional career began with the Carla Bley Band and continued as a solo performer with a wide spectrum of artists including Dizzy Gillespie, Lester Bowie, Wynton Marsalis, and Harry Belafonte. In 2007, O’Farrill founded the Afro Latin Jazz Alliance as a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the performance, education, and preservation of Afro Latin music. In 2010 he traveled with his father’s band, the original Chico O’Farrill Afro Cuban Jazz Orchestra, to Cuba, and continues to travel to Cuba regularly as an informal cultural ambassador, working with Cuban musicians, dancers, and students (July 26).
Daytime Jazz Festival artists include the Dabin Ryu Trio, fronted by South Korean pianist Dabin Ryu, semifinalist in the 2023 Herbie Hancock Jazz Piano Competition; vocalist Imani Rousselle; and drummer Obed Calvaire; with other daytime acts to be announced.
Broadway/Cabaret/Pops: Seth Rudetsky’s Broadway Pride; Pops, Patriots & Fireworks
Caramoor celebrates Pride and the best of Broadway, in collaboration with The LOFT LGBTQ+ Community Center, with SiriusXM host Seth Rudetsky presenting an evening of Broadway songs by the genre’s greatest gay artists, sung by two Broadway stars, with Rudetsky at the piano. A veteran Broadway performer himself, who has played piano for more than a dozen shows, Rudetsky also co-wrote and starred in Disaster!, which earned a five-star review from Adam Feldman in Time Out New York (June 26).
To celebrate Independence Day, conductor and music director Curt Ebersole and the Westchester Symphonic Winds return to Caramoor’s Venetian Theater for their annual Pops, Patriots and Fireworks concert. Soprano Mimi Hilaire is the guest vocalist, and the concert includes Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture and Sousa’s Stars and Stripes Forever. The evening concludes with a fireworks display on the Caramoor grounds (July 4).
Concerts on the Lawn: The Legendary Ingramettes, La Excelencia, Ranky Tanky, The Garifuna Collective
Caramoor’s “Concerts on the Lawn” are casual, BYOS (bring-your-own-seats) performances on Friends Field, with picnics and dancing encouraged. This season’s roster for the series bridges world music, jazz and American Roots. A free event celebrating Juneteenth opens the series, featuring African American gospel quintet The Legendary Ingramettes. Founded by Maggie Ingram to keep her family together through hardship and taken up by her daughter Almeta Ingram-Miller to continue Maggie’s legacy after her passing in 2015, the all-female group is known for electrifying performances that work audiences into a gospel fervor. Family-friendly activities round out this annual Caramoor celebration (June 15).
Next up on Friends Field is Grammy and Emmy Award-winning Endea Owens, a Detroit-raised recording artist, bassist, and composer, presented in collaboration with Jazz at Lincoln Center. She has performed with Wynton Marsalis, Jennifer Holliday, Diana Ross, Solange, Jazzmeia Horn, Dee Dee Bridgewater, and Steve Turre, and was a member of Jon Batiste’s band, Stay Human, as well as appearing on his Grammy-winning album We Are. Performing with her band, The Cookout, Owens blends infectious jazz rhythms with a powerful message of community and activism (July 3).
Award-winning, 11-piece New York City salsa dura band La Excelencia takes the Friends Field stage for a set of music equally inspired by the sounds of the ‘70s and the sociopolitical landscape of the present day that blends traditional salsa with a modern edge. As The New York Times says: “La Excelencia emphasizes hard-driving brass and percussion, just like a Fania Records band from salsa’s heyday in the 1970s” (July 5).
Presented in collaboration with City Winery, Grammy-winning Charleston, South Carolina-based quintet Ranky Tanky plays music born from the Gullah culture of the southeastern Sea Islands, as well as their own original songs inspired by the Gullah tradition. The group’s first album, Ranky Tanky, was featured in 2017 on NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross and reached #1 on the Billboard, Amazon, and iTunes Jazz Charts. Their album Good Time won the 2020 Grammy Award for Best Regional Roots Music Album, and in 2023 they won a second Grammy in the Best Regional Roots Music Album category, for Live at the 2022 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival (July 11).
The Garifuna Collective closes out the Concerts on the Lawn series. Stopping at Caramoor as part of their 20th anniversary world tour, the multi-generational collective performs soulful and vibrant music originating from the Garifuna people of the Caribbean and Central America, characterized by lively rhythms, call-and-response vocals, traditional instruments like the drum and maracas, and storytelling lyrics that preserve their cultural heritage and history. They have performed in over 30 countries on five continents, and their critically acclaimed album Wátina was a recipient of the Womex and BBC World Music Award and voted by Amazon as the Number One World Music Album of All Time (Aug 1).
Music & Meditation in the Garden
Promoting mindful listening, each “Music & Meditation in the Garden” concerts – held on three Saturday mornings in July in the Sunken Garden – begins with a meditation led by Jennifer Llewelyn, followed by a performance. The unique experience combines deep listening to beautiful music with the surrounding sounds of nature. Performing this summer are Persian-Cajun viola duo Tallā Rouge (violists Aria Cheregosha and Lauren Spaulding), whom Gramophone described as exemplifying “the porous borders that lie between classical, contemporary, folk, pop and non-Western musics” (July 5). The second performance features two of New York’s finest musicians: flutist Alex Sopp – a member of yMusic, the NOW ensemble, and The Knights – and JACK Quartet violinist Austin Wulliman (July 12); and the third is a solo show by “nothing short of brilliant” (Chicago Tribune) cellist Gabriel Cabezas (July 19).
Sonic Innovations
The annual Sonic Innovations sound art exhibition, spread throughout Caramoor’s idyllic property, this season comprises seven diverse sound installations that aim to re-interpret the Caramoor grounds and inspire alternative ways of listening. Premiering in 2025 isShadow Essays by Lisa Coons, a site-specific sound walk comprising five audiovisual portraits of twined memory and place. Each essay combines a sonic element (to be experienced via headphones) with a physical one (collage-style musical “scores” in resin) and each belongs to a particular locus within the Caramoor grounds. Returning works this summer are Stephan Moore’s Promenade; Dyning in the Dovecote by Liz Phillips, an interactive sound installation stirred into subtle action by the presence and activity of its audience, as well as sunlight and wind; In“C”, a site-specific sound-sculpture commissioned from MacArthur Grant recipient Trimpin; Taylor Deupree’s t(ch)ime; Ranjit Bhatnagar’s Stone Song; and Annea Lockwood and Bob Bielecki’s Wild Energy, which takes visitors on a fantastical tour of sounds occurring outside the range of human hearing.
About Caramoor
Caramoor is a cultural arts destination located on a unique 80-plus-acre estate with Italianate architecture and gardens in Northern Westchester County, NY. Its beautiful grounds include the historic Rosen House, a stunning mansion listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Besides enriching the lives of its audiences through innovative and diverse musical performances of the highest quality, Caramoor mentors young professional musicians and provides music-centered educational programs for young children.
Getting to Caramoor
Getting to Caramoor is simple by car or public transportation. All parking is free and close to the performance areas. Handicapped parking is also free and readily available. By car from New York City, take the Henry Hudson Parkway north to the Saw Mill River Parkway north to I-684 north to Exit 6. Go east on Route 35 to the traffic light (0.3 miles). Turn right onto Route 22 south, and travel 1.9 miles to the junction of Girdle Ridge Road where there is a green Caramoor sign. At the junction, veer left and make a quick right onto Girdle Ridge Road. Continue on Girdle Ridge Road 0.5 miles to the Caramoor gates on the right. Approximate drive time is one hour. By train from Grand Central Station, take the Harlem Division Line of the Metro-North Railroad heading to Southeast, and exit at Katonah. Caramoor is a 3.5-mile drive from the Katonah station.
A FREE shuttle from Metro North’s Katonah station to and from Caramoor runs before and after every afternoon and evening concert.
Click here to download high-resolution photos, and here to download Caramoor’s summer brochure.
Caramoor: 2025 summer season
All artists and dates are subject to change.
Sun, June 1
Caramoor grounds and Sonic Innovations open
Sun, June 15 at 4pm
Friends Field
Celebrating Juneteenth
The Legendary Ingramettes
Sat, June 21 at 7pm
Venetian Theater
Opening Night: Orchestra of St. Luke’s
Orchestra of St. Luke’s
Rafael Payare, conductor
Gabriella Reyes, soprano
Tamara Mumford, mezzo-soprano
Viktor Antipenko, tenor
Joseph Parrish, bass-baritone
Ludwig van BEETHOVEN: Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125
Sun, June 22 at 4pm
Rosen House – Music Room
Terra String Quartet (2024–25 Ernst Stiefel String Quartet-in-Residence)
Frank BRIDGE: Phantasy Quartet in F-sharp minor
Juri SEO: New Work (world premiere, Caramoor commission)
Henry PURCELL: Chacony in G minor, Z. 730
Benjamin BRITTEN: String Quartet No. 2 in C, Op. 36
Thu, June 26 at 7pm
Friends Field
Celebrating Pride
Seth Rudetsky & Friends
Presented in Collaboration with The LOFT LBGTQ+ Community Center
Fri, June 27 at 7:30pm
Venetian Theater
Daniil Trifonov, piano
Pyotr Ilyich TCHAIKOVSKY: Piano Sonata in C-sharp minor, Op. 80
Frédéric CHOPIN:
Waltz in E, Op. Posth.
Waltz in F minor, Op. 70, No. 2
Waltz in A-flat, Op. 64, No. 3
Waltz in D-flat, Op. 64, No. 1
Waltz in A minor, Op. 34, No. 2
Waltz in E minor, Op. Posth.
Samuel BARBER: Piano Sonata in E-flat minor, Op. 26
Pyotr Ilyich TCHAIKOVSKY: The Sleeping Beauty Suite, Op. 66a (arr. Mikhail Pletnev)
Sat, June 28 at 12:30pm
Caramoor Grounds
American Roots Music Festival
Presented in Collaboration with City Winery
The Rumble feat. Chief Joseph Boudreaux Jr.
Amanda Anne Platt and The Honeycutters
Oh He Dead
The Barefoot Movement
Rebecca Haviland and Whiskey Heart
Additional artists TBA
Sun, June 29 at 4pm
Venetian Theater
Telemann’s Pimpinone & Ino
Boston Early Music Festival
Paul O’Dette, music director
Stephen Stubbs, music director
Gilbert Blin, director
Amanda Forsythe, soprano
Danielle Reutter-Harrah, mezzo soprano
Christian Immler, bass-baritone
Georg Philipp TELEMANN:
Ino: Cantata for Soprano and Orchestra
Pimpinone
Thu, July 3 at 7pm
Friends Field
Endea Owens and The Cookout
Presented in collaboration with Jazz at Lincoln Center
Fri, July 4 at 8pm
Venetian Theater
Pops, Patriots, and Fireworks
Westchester Symphonic Winds
Curt Ebersole, conductor
Mimi Hilaire, vocalist
Sat, July 5 at 11am
Sunken Garden
Tallā Rouge
Music and Meditation in the Garden
Jennifer Llewellyn, meditation coach
Sat, July 5 at 7:30pm
Friends Field
La Excelencia
Sun, July 6 at 4pm
Venetian Theater
Escher String Quartet & Alessio Bax, piano
BARBER: String Quartet in B minor, Op. 11
PRICE: Quartet No. 2 in A minor
DVORAK: Piano Quintet in A, Op. 81
Thu, July 10 at 7pm
Venetian Theater
Caroline Shaw & Sō Percussion featuring Ringdown
Sō Percussion
Caroline Shaw, vocals
Ringdown
WHO TURNS OUT THE LIGHT
Fri, July 11 at 7:30pm
Friends Field
Ranky Tanky
Presented in Collaboration with City Winery
Sat, July 12 at 11am
Sunken Garden
Alex Sopp, flute & Austin Wulliman, violin
Music and Meditation in the Garden
Jennifer Llewellyn, meditation coach
Sat, July 12 at 7pm
Venetian Theater
Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea
Cappella Mediterranea
Leonardo García Alarcón, conductor
Sophie Junker, Poppea
Nicolò Balducci, Nerone
Mariana Flores, Ottavia, Virtù
Christopher Lowrey, Ottone
Samuel Boden, Arnalta, Nutrice
Edward Grint, Seneca
Lucía Martin-Cartón, Fortuna, Drusilla
Valerio Contaldo, Lucano
Claudio MONTEVERDI: L’incoronazione di Poppea (semi-staged concert performance)
Sun, July 13 at 4pm
Venetian Theater
Orchestra of St. Luke’s & Christian Tetzlaff
Orchestra of St. Luke’s
Anna Rakitina, conductor
Christian Tetzlaff, violin
Ludwig van BEETHOVEN: Violin Concerto in D, Op. 61
Pyotr Ilyich TCHAIKOVSKY: Symphony No. 5
Thu, July 17 at 7pm
Venetian Theater
Music From The Sole
I DIDN’T COME TO STAY
Fri, July 18 at 7:30pm
Spanish Courtyard
Chanticleer: Music of a Silent World
Chanticleer
Majel CONNERY: The Rivers are our Brothers
Ayanna WOODS: I miss you like I miss the trees
Works by Heinrich Isaac, Hoagy Carmichael, Joni Mitchell, Max Reger, Ann Ronnell, Stephen Sondheim, Kurt Weill
Sat, July 19 at 11am
Sunken Garden
Gabriel Cabezas, cello
Music and Meditation in the Garden
Jennifer Llewellyn, meditation coach
Sat, July 19 at 5pm
Rosen House – Music Room
George Li, piano
Robert SCHUMANN: Arabeske
Maurice RAVEL: Valses nobles et sentimentales
Modest MUSSORGSKY: Pictures at an Exhibition
Sat, July 19 at 7:30pm
Venetian Theater
Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway
Presented in Collaboration with City Winery
Sun, July 20 at 4pm
Venetian Theater
The Knights & Chris Thile
The Knights
Eric Jacobsen, conductor
Chris Thile, mandolin and vocals
Colin Jacobsen, violin
Philip GLASS: Symphony No 3 (mvts I and III)
Caroline SHAW: “And So” from Is a Rose
J.S. BACH: Concerto for Two Violins in D minor, BWV 1043 (transcr. Thile)
Chris THILE: ATTENTION! A narrative song cycle for extroverted mandolinist and orchestra
Thu, July 24 at 7pm
Spanish Courtyard
Timo Andres, piano
Robert SCHUMANN: Canonic Etudes Op. 56 (arr. Timo Andres)
Timo ANDRES: It takes a long time to become a good composer
Aaron COPLAND: Piano Sonata
Fri, July 25 at 7:30pm
Spanish Courtyard
Takács Quartet
Joseph HAYDN: String Quartet in G minor, H.III:74, “Rider”
Nokuthula NGWENYAMA: Flow
Ludwig van BEETHOVEN: String Quartet No. 9 in C, Op. 59, No. 3, “Razumovsky”
Sat, July 26 at 12:30pm
Caramoor Grounds and Venetian Theater
Jazz Festival
Presented in Collaboration with Jazz at Lincoln Center
HEADLINER:
Arturo O’Farrill & the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra
DAYTIME ARTISTS:
Dabin Ryu Trio
Imani Rousselle
Obed Calvaire: 150 Million Gold Francs
Additional Artists TBA
Sun, July 27 at 4pm
Sunken Garden
Bang on a Can plays Terry Riley’s In C
Bang on a Can Festival Ensemble
Terry RILEY: In C
Wed, July 30 at 7pm
Venetian Theater
Emanuel Ax, Leonidas Kavakos, Yo-Yo Ma
Emanuel Ax, piano
Leonidas Kavakos, violin
Yo-Yo Ma, cello
Nicholas Cords, viola
Ludwig van BEETHOVEN:
“Leonore” Overture (arranged for piano quartet by Shai Wosner)
Symphony No 3 “Eroica” (arranged for piano quartet by Shai Wosner)
Fri, Aug 1 at 7:30pm
Friends Field
The Garifuna Collective
Sat, Aug 2 at 5pm
Rosen House – Music Room
Claire Bourg, violin & Jinhee Park, piano
Wolfgang Amadeus MOZART: Violin Sonata in A, K. 526
Vivian FUNG: Birdsong
Maurice RAVEL: Violin Sonata, Op. Posth.
Johannes BRAHMS: Scherzo in C minor for Violin and Piano, from F-A-E Sonata
Sat, Aug 2 at 7:30pm
Venetian Theater
Lyle Lovett and His Large Band
Presented in collaboration with City Winery
Sun, Aug 3 at 4pm
Venetian Theater
Orchestra of St. Luke’s & Garrick Ohlsson
Orchestra of St. Luke’s
Teddy Abrams, conductor
Garrick Ohlsson, piano
Caroline SHAW: Entr’acte
Ludwig van BEETHOVEN: Piano Concerto No. 1
Johannes BRAHMS: Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op. 68
All concerts made possible, in part, by ArtsWestchester with funds from the Westchester County Government.
All concerts made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature.