Conductor Rafael Payare’s winter/spring 2026 includes Brahms Festival with San Diego Symphony, Jimmy López works in San Diego and Montreal, debut with Royal Concertgebouw, much more

“Payare carefully planted the hero’s churning obsession into Berlioz’s seething textures, giving a brooding energy that tied the whole sprawling work together.”
– The Times on OSM’s recent release of Symphonie fantastique

(January 2026) — Conductor Rafael Payare – “a conductor of considerable grace and considerable swagger, making the two go unusually yet inexorably together” (Los Angeles Times) – continues his full 2025–26 season as Music and Artistic Director of both California’s San Diego Symphony (SDS) and Canada’s Orchestre symphonique de Montréal (Montreal Symphony Orchestra/OSM) this winter and spring, while also debuting with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and returning as a guest conductor to major orchestras on both sides of the Atlantic. Payare leads the San Diego Symphony this winter in a two-week Brahms Festival, featuring Brahms’s A German Requiem (Feb 27; March 1); Symphonies Nos. 1 and 2 (Feb 28); and Symphonies Nos. 4 and 3 (in that order), each paired with the Violin Concerto featuring Leonidas Kavakos (March 6, 7). California-based Peruvian composer Jimmy López is serving as Composer-in-Residence with both the SDS and OSM for the next two seasons, and Payare leads his Perú Negro in upcoming programs in Montreal (Feb 11, 12) and San Diego (May 15, 16). The conductor’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra debut features music of Frank Martin, Shostakovich, and Sofia Gubaidulina (Feb 18–20), and his season is rounded out by returns to the podiums of the Philadelphia Orchestra (Feb 5–7), Cleveland Orchestra (March 27, 28), Pittsburgh Symphony (April 10, 12), and Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin (June 7).

Orchestre symphonique de Montréal (Montreal Symphony Orchestra/OSM)

Winter/spring highlights with OSM include the continuation of the Mahler cycle Payare launched in 2022. After conducting the Ninth Symphony this past fall, he turns to the Fourth Symphony in the new year, with rising South African soprano Vuvu Mpofu as soloist. Also on the program is Jimmy López’s Perú Negro and Billy Childs’s Diaspora, Concerto for Saxophone and Orchestra. Saxophonist Steven Banks – “endowed with an easy virtuosity and a joyful presence” (Cincinnati Business Courier) – is the soloist and dedicatee for the Childs concerto (Feb 11, 12).

Later in the spring, Payare also conducts two programs featuring virtuoso clarinetist Kinan Azmeh, with both programs including Azmeh’s own Suite for Improvisor and Orchestra and the first of the two performances also featuring OSM principal flute Timothy Hutchins in C.P.E. Bach’s D-minor Flute Concerto (March 11, 12). A week later, Payare conducts a specially narrated version of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro featuring Ildebrando D’Arcangelo in the title role and Anna Prohaska as Susanna (March 18, 20). Other spring highlights in Montreal include Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 7 (April 15, 16), the world premieres of OSM commissions from composers Isabella Gellis (Jan 15, 17) and Denis Gougeon (April 22, 23), soloist Yefim Bronfman performing Schumann’s Piano Concerto (May 27, 28), and much more.

San Diego Symphony (SDS)

Now in his seventh season as Music and Artistic Director of the San Diego Symphony, Payare follows up his fall performances of Composer-in-Residence Jimmy López’s piano concerto Ephemerae with the same composer’s Perú Negro, on a program with Mendelssohn’s “Scottish” Symphony and Berg’s Violin Concerto with soloist Jeff Thayer (May 15, 16). The SDS has also co-commissioned, along with OSM, López’s Sixth Symphony, which is inspired by the migratory patterns of Monarch butterflies and will premiere in 2026–27.

Other highlights of Payare’s upcoming SDS concerts include Mahler’s Seventh Symphony (Jan 31; Feb 1) and Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra (May 22, 24), continuing Payare’s focus on both composers in recent seasons; and Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony, paired with Beethoven’s Leonore Overture No. 3 and Gabriela Ortiz’s new cello concerto, Dzonot, written for and featuring Alisa Weilerstein (May 9, 10).

This winter, Payare leads the San Diego Symphony in a two-week Brahms Festival, comprising four programs of iconic works. Payare’s way with Brahms was recently praised by San Francisco Classical Voice for its “extroverted, high-energy heroism” and as being reminiscent of “the young Michael Tilson Thomas back in the day.” The festival will feature Brahms’s A German Requiem with soloists Julie Boulianne and Michael Sumuel and the San Diego Symphony Chorus (Feb 27; March 1); Symphonies Nos. 1 and 2 (Feb 28); and Symphonies Nos. 4 and 3 in consecutive performances, each paired with the Violin Concerto featuring Leonidas Kavakos, whose 2017 recording of the Brahms Piano Trios with Yo-Yo Ma and Emanuel Ax was lauded by The Guardian as “faultless, larger-than-life music making” (March 6, 7).

Guest conducting engagements

In the spring, Payare makes his Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra debut leading violinist Frank Peter Zimmermann in Frank Martin’s Violin Concerto, on a program with Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony and his younger colleague Sofia Gubaidulina’s Fairytale Poem, inspired by Miloš Macourek’s The Little Piece of Chalk, an allegory of artistic perseverance (Feb 18, 19)​.​​ When Payare conducted the New York Philharmonic’s first performance of Fairytale Poem this past spring, The New York Times praised it as being “played with evocative regard to piquant details.” Following these performances, Payare conducts the Shostakovich by itself in the orchestra’s “Essentials” series (Feb 20).

For a return engagement with The Philadelphia Orchestra, Payare leads Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto with concertmaster David Kim as the soloist, along with Manuel de Falla’s El Amor Brujo – of which The Philadelphia Orchestra gave the U.S. premiere in 1922 – and pioneering Indigenous American composer Louis Wayne Ballard’s Devil’s Promenade (Feb 5–7).

In March, Payare conducts The Cleveland Orchestra in Miami with members of the New World Symphony. The program of Sibelius and Stravinsky comprises the former composer’s Swan of Tuonela and Violin Concerto in D minor with Armenian violinist Sergey Khachatryan as soloist, along with Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring (March 27, 28).

For Payare’s last U.S. guest appearance of the season, he joins the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and Russian pianist Yulianna Avdeeva for performances of Prokofiev’s Second Piano Concerto, sharing the bill with a second interpretation of The Rite of Spring and Jimmy López’s Perú Negro (April 10, 12).

After winter performances of Shostakovich’s Eighth Symphony in San Diego and the Tenth with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the same composer’s Symphony No. 7 – which Payare also conducts in Montreal this season – is the vehicle for his return to the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, paired with a reprise of Billy Childs’s Diaspora, Concerto for Saxophone and Orchestra, featuring saxophonist Steven Banks (June 7). When Payare recorded Shostakovich’s Eleventh Symphony with the San Diego Symphony in 2022, Gramophone found the recording to be “right up there with the best we have,” continuing: “Payare is on top of the work’s filmic atmospherics and graphic excitement … marking its territories with icy silences and visceral percussion.”

Rafael Payare: winter/spring 2026 engagements

Jan 15, 17
Montreal, QC
Orchestre symphonique de Montréal
Emanuel Ax, piano
Isabella GELLIS: New Work (world premiere of OSM commission)
BEETHOVEN: Concerto for Piano No. 3, Op. 37
PROKOFIEV: Symphony No. 5, Op. 100

Jan 24, 25
San Diego, CA
Jacobs Music Center
San Diego Symphony
BEETHOVEN: Symphony No. 1 in C, Op. 21
SHOSTAKOVICH: Symphony No. 8 in C minor, Op. 65

Jan 31; Feb 1
San Diego, CA
Jacobs Music Center
San Diego Symphony
MAHLER: Symphony No. 7

Feb 5–7
Philadelphia, PA
The Philadelphia Orchestra
David Kim, violin
BALLARD: Devil’s Promenade
TCHAIKOVSKY: Violin Concerto
DE FALLA: El amor brujo (first version, 1915)

Feb 11, 12
Montreal, QC
Orchestre symphonique de Montréal
Steven Banks, saxophone
Vuvu Mpofu, soprano
Jimmy LÓPEZ: Perú Negro
Billy CHILDS: Diaspora, Concerto for Saxophone and Orchestra
MAHLER: Symphony No. 4

Feb 18–20
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra (debut)
Frank Peter Zimmermann, violin
GUBAIDULINA: Fairytale Poem (Feb 18, 19)
MARTIN: Violin Concerto (Feb 18, 19)
SHOSTAKOVICH: Symphony No. 10

SDS BRAHMS FESTIVAL
   Feb 27; March 1
   San Diego, CA
Jacobs Music Center
San Diego Symphony
Julie Boulianne, soprano
Michael Sumuel, bass-baritone
BRAHMS: A German Requiem (Ein deutsches Requiem), Op. 45

   Feb 28
   San Diego, CA
Jacobs Music Center
San Diego Symphony
BRAHMS: Symphony No. 1
BRAHMS: Symphony No. 2

   March 6
   San Diego, CA
Jacobs Music Center
San Diego Symphony
Leonidas Kavakos, violin
BRAHMS: Violin Concerto in D, Op. 77
BRAHMS: Symphony No. 4

   March 7
   San Diego, CA
Jacobs Music Center
San Diego Symphony
Leonidas Kavakos, violin
BRAHMS: Symphony No. 3
BRAHMS Violin Concerto in D, Op. 77

March 11
Montreal, QC
Orchestre symphonique de Montréal
Timothy Hutchins, principal flute
Kinan Azmeh, clarinet
Dinuk Wijeratne, piano
BARTÓK: Six Romanian Folk Dances
C.P.E. BACH: Concerto for Flute in D minor, H. 425, W. 22
Kinan AZMEH: Suite for Improvisor and Orchestra
MOZART: Symphony No. 39, K. 543

March 12
Montreal, QC
Orchestre symphonique de Montréal
Kinan Azmeh, clarinet
Dinuk Wijeratne, piano
BARTÓK: Six Romanian Folk Dances
Dinuk WIJERATNE/Kinan AZMEH: After Béla, for clarinet and piano
Kinan AZMEH: Suite for Improvisor and Orchestra
KODÁLY: Dances of Galánta

March 18, 20
Montreal, QC
Orchestre symphonique de Montréal
Anna Prohaska, soprano (Susanna)
Masabane Cecilia Rangwanasha, soprano (Countess Almaviva)
Avery Amereau, mezzo-soprano (Cherubino)
Luca Pisaroni, baritone (Count Almaviva)
Ildebrando D’Arcangelo, baritone (Figaro)
OSM Chorus (Andrew Megill, chorusmaster)
MOZART: The Marriage of Figaro, K. 492

March 27, 28
Miami, FL
The Cleveland Orchestra
Sergey Khachatryan, violin
With members of the New World Symphony
SIBELIUS: The Swan of Tuonela, Op. 22, No. 2
SIBELIUS: Violin Concerto in D minor, Op. 47
STRAVINSKY: The Rite of Spring

April 10, 12
Pittsburgh, PA
Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra
Yulianna Avdeeva, piano
Jimmy LÓPEZ: Perú Negro
PROKOFIEV: Piano Concerto No. 2
STRAVINSKY: The Rite of Spring

April 15, 16
Montreal, QC
Orchestre symphonique de Montréal
BEETHOVEN: Symphony No. 8, Op. 93
SHOSTAKOVICH: Symphony No. 7, Op. 60 (“Leningrad”)

April 22, 23
Montreal, QC
Orchestre symphonique de Montréal
Bruce Liu, pianist
Denis GOUGEON: New Work (world premiere of OSM commission)
TCHAIKOVSKY: Concerto for Piano No. 1, Op. 23
STRAVINSKY: The Rite of Spring

May 9, 10
San Diego, CA
Jacobs Music Center
San Diego Symphony
Alisa Weilerstein, cello
BEETHOVEN: Leonore Overture No. 3, Op. 72b
Gabriela ORTIZ: Dzonot
PROKOFIEV: Symphony No. 5 in B-flat, Op. 100

May 15, 16
San Diego, CA
Jacobs Music Center
San Diego Symphony
Jeff Thayer, violin
Jimmy LÓPEZ: Perú Negro
BERG: Violin Concerto
MENDELSSOHN: Symphony No. 3, “Scottish” in A minor, Op. 56, MWV N 18

May 22, 24
San Diego, CA
Jacobs Music Center
San Diego Symphony
Karen Cargill, mezzo-soprano
Christopher Purves, baritone
R. STRAUSS: Also sprach Zarathustra, Op. 30
BARTÓK: Bluebeard’s Castle

May 27, 28
Montreal, QC
Orchestre symphonique de Montréal
Yefim Bronfman, piano
SCHUMANN: Concerto for Piano, Op. 54
WAGNER: The Ring Without Words

June 7
Berlin, Germany
Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin
Steven Banks, saxophone
Billy CHILDS: Diaspora, Concerto for Saxophone and Orchestra
SHOSTAKOVICH: Symphony No. 7