Orchestra of St. Luke’s presents fifth annual Bach Festival in Carnegie’s Zankel Hall (June 3–24); gives three summer performances at Caramoor (June 21, July 13, Aug 3)
Row 1: Angela Hewitt (photo: Lorenzo Dogana); Teddy Abrams & LSO (photo: O’Neil Arnold); Rafael Payare (photo: Gerard Collett); Théotime Langlois de Swarte (photo: Marco Borggreve); Row 2: Gemma Nha (photo: Michael Hull); Anna Rakitina (photo: Julia Piven); Reginald Mobley (photo: Richard Dumas); Lionel Meunier (photo: Jennifer Taylor)
(May 2025) — Orchestra of St. Luke’s (OSL) – lauded as “an organization willing to seize the moment” (The New York Times) – wraps up its 50th anniversary season in Carnegie’s Zankel Hall this spring with the fifth annual Bach Festival (June 3–24). The all-star lineup of guest artists includes conductors Lionel Meunier, Théotime Langlois de Swarte, and Angela Hewitt, with countertenor Reginald Mobley and soprano Gemma Nha joining in the first performance. Programs focus on Bach’s arrangement of Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater (June 3), an exploration of Bach’s love of French music (June 10), Bach’s influence on Mozart (June 17), and a performance of the complete Brandenburg Concertos (June 24). OSL also gives three performances at Caramoor this summer, all featuring major works by Beethoven. San Diego Symphony and Orchestre symphonique de Montréal music director Rafael Payare conducts Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony (June 21); conductor Anna Rakitina makes her Caramoor debut with Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, played by Stella Chen, and Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony (July 13); and Louisville Orchestra music director Teddy Abrams leads Garrick Ohlssonin Beethoven’s First Piano Concerto along with Brahms’s First Symphony and Caroline Shaw’s Entr’acte (Aug 3). Also this summer, the 2025 DeGaetano Composition Institute, under the guidance of composer mentor Augusta Read Thomas, culminates with a performance of world premieres by four composers – Lukáš Janata, Paul Novak, Sofia Jen Ouyang, and Zihan Wu. OSL performs the new works under the baton of conductor Brad Lubman in Cary Hall at The DiMenna Center for Classical Music (July 29).
OSL Bach Festival in association with Carnegie Hall (June 3–24)
In June 2025, OSL returns to Carnegie’s Zankel Hall to celebrate J. S. Bach’s musical legacy with its annual OSL Bach Festival. Lionel Meunier, founder and artistic director of the Belgian early music ensemble Vox Luminis, conducts the first program, “J.S. Bach’s Stabat Mater,” with soprano Gemma Nha and countertenor Reginald Mobley. The program centers on Bach’s arrangement of the music from Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater, which uses a German paraphrase of Psalm 51 as the text. Also on the program are two vocal works by Vivaldi: the motet “Nulla in mundo pax sincera” and the psalm setting “Nisi Dominus” (June 3).
The second program, “J.S. Bach and the French Baroque,” is led by French violinist and conductor Théotime Langlois de Swarte. Included on the program is the Concerto in A minor, Op. 7, No. 5 by Jean-Marie Leclair, which Langlois de Swarte included on a 2022 album of Baroque concertos that Gramophone raved was “excellence itself.” The review went on: “His playing is joyful; it is wild and beautiful, inventive and efficient. … These are performances so special that I feel a changed man from listening to them.” The Leclair concerto is juxtaposed with Bach’s concerto in the same key, BWV 1041, along with other Bach works, and the program is rounded out by music of Nicola Matteis, Jean-Féry Rebel, and Jean-Baptiste Lully (June 10).
The third of the four performances features pianist and conductor Angela Hewitt, who has been renowned as a Bach interpreter since her first prize win in the1985 Toronto International Bach Piano Competition, held in memory of Glenn Gould. Her award-winning cycle for Hyperion Records of all Bach’s major keyboard works has been described as “one of the record glories of our age” (The Sunday Times). The program comprises two of Bach’s keyboard concertos, in G minor and D minor, along with Mozart’s Concerto No. 17 in G and the same composer’s Quintet for Piano and Winds(June 17). OSL takes center stage for the final performance without a conductor, playing all six of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos (June 24).
OSL at Caramoor
Caramoor’s 80th anniversary season kicks off with a gala concert featuring the Orchestra of St. Luke’s 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 as soloists, along with the Caramoor Festival Chorus (June 21).
Rising star conductor Anna Rakitina – Assistant Conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 2019 to 2023 and only the second woman in the orchestra’s history to hold that position – makes her Caramoor debut with OSL and violinist Stella Chen in Beethoven’s Violin Concerto. Chen was the first prize winner of the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels, Belgium in 2019; won the Avery Fisher Career Grant in 2020; and was named the Young Artist of the Year at the Gramophone Classical Music Awards in 2023. Also on the program is Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5, which Rakitina performed with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin last spring, when Seen and Heard International found that her interpretation “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 Grammy winner, Louisville Orchestra music director, and 2022 Musical America Conductor of the Year Teddy Abramsmaking 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 conversationwith Abrams precedes the performance (Aug 3).
About Orchestra of St. Luke’s
Celebrating 50 years during the 2024-2025 season, Orchestra of St. Luke’s (OSL) features New York City’s most talented concert musicians and makes its artistic home at Carnegie Hall, where it has performed more than any other orchestra since its premiere there in 1983. Bernard Labadie, an internationally renowned specialist in 18th-century music, was named Principal Conductor in 2018 and steps down in 2025, concluding an expansive and critically acclaimed tenure. OSL’s annual season features concert series in each of Carnegie Hall’s three venues as well as the Visionary Sounds and DeGaetano Composition Institute programs focused on contemporary composers at The DiMenna Center for Classical Music, the rehearsal, recording, and performance facility OSL built in 2011 and continues to operate in Manhattan’s Hudson Yards neighborhood. OSL proudly collaborates with Paul Taylor Dance Company for their Lincoln Center season each year and performs with a variety of artistic partners at venues throughout the city and beyond. Founded in 1974 when a group of virtuoso chamber musicians began performing together in Greenwich Village at The Church of St. Luke in the Fields, the ensemble later expanded into an orchestra before catching fire on New York’s classical music scene. OSL has participated in 120 recordings, four of which have won Grammy Awards, has commissioned more than 75 new works, and has given more than 200 world, U.S., and New York City premieres. OSL champions composers from historically underrepresented groups in classical music. In recent seasons, it has presented works by Kinan Azmeh, Margaret Bonds, Valerie Coleman, Julius Eastman, Wynton Marsalis, Florence Price, Rita Dove, and Chen Yi, among others. Central to OSL’s mission, the Education and Community Engagement program presents free concerts for thousands of New York City public school students each year; offers the 120-student strong Youth Orchestra of St. Luke’s (YOSL), the city’s only youth orchestra under the umbrella of a professional group; provides a mentorship program for pre-professional musicians; and brings accessible concerts to all five boroughs. To learn more, visit OSLmusic.org or follow @OSLmusic on YouTube, Spotify, Instagram, Facebook, or TiKTok.
Orchestra of St. Luke’s: spring/summer 2025
June 3
New York, NY
Carnegie Hall (Zankel Hall)
OSL Presents: OSL Bach Festival
“J.S. Bach’s Stabat Mater”
Orchestra of St. Luke’s
Lionel Meunier, conductor
Gemma Nha, soprano
Reginald Mobley, countertenor
VIVALDI: Nulla in mundo pax sincera, RV 630
VIVALDI: Nisi Dominus
BACH: “Tilge, Höchster, meine Sünden,” BWV 1083 (arr. of Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater)
June 10
New York, NY
Carnegie Hall (Zankel Hall)
OSL Presents: OSL Bach Festival
“Bach & the French Baroque”
Orchestra of St. Luke’s
Théotime Langlois de Swarte, violin & conductor
Program to include:
MATTEIS: Fantasia No. 2
BACH: Air from Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D, BWV 1068
REBEL: Les Caractères de la danse
BACH: Auf meinen lieben Gott, B.A 37,212
BACH: Badinerie from Orchestral Suite No. 2 in B minor
LULLY: Suite from Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme
BACH: Violin Concerto in A minor, BWV 1041
LECLAIR: Violin Concerto in A minor, Op. 7, No. 5
June 17
New York, NY
Carnegie Hall (Zankel Hall)
OSL Presents: OSL Bach Festival
“J.S. Bach and Mozart”
Orchestra of St. Luke’s
Angela Hewitt, piano & conductor
BACH: Concerto in G minor, BWV 1058
MOZART: Concerto No. 17 in G, K. 453
MOZART: Quintet for piano and winds, K. 452
BACH: Concerto in D minor, BWV 1052
June 24
New York, NY
Carnegie Hall (Zankel Hall)
OSL Presents: OSL Bach Festival
“J.S. Bach’s Complete Brandenburg Concerti”
Orchestra of St. Luke’s (unconducted)
BACH: Brandenburg Concertos 1-6
June 21
Katonah, NY
Caramoor
Venetian Theater
Orchestra of St. Luke’s
Rafael Payare, conductor
Gabriella Reyes, soprano
Tamara Mumford, mezzo-soprano
Viktor Antipenko, tenor
Joseph Parrish, bass- baritone
BEETHOVEN: Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125
July 13
Katonah, NY
Caramoor
Venetian Theater
“Orchestra of St. Luke’s and Stella Chen”
Orchestra of St. Luke’s
Anna Rakitina, conductor
Stella Chen, violin
BEETHOVEN: Violin Concerto in D, Op. 61
TCHAIKOVSKY: Symphony No. 5
July 29
New York, NY
The DiMenna Center for Classical Music (Cary Hall)
“World Premieres for Chamber Orchestra”
Brad Lubman, conductor
Augusta Read Thomas, composer mentor
New works by 2025 DeGaetano Composers Lukáš JANATA, Paul NOVAK, Sofia Jen OUYANG, and Zihan WU
Aug 3
Katonah, NY
Caramoor
Venetian Theater
“Orchestra of St. Luke’s & Garrick Ohlsson”
Orchestra of St. Luke’s
Teddy Abrams, conductor
Garrick Ohlsson, piano
Caroline SHAW: Entr’acte
BEETHOVEN: Piano Concerto No. 1 in C minor, Op. 15
BRAHMS: Symphony No. 1 in C, Op. 68