San Diego Symphony’s winter/spring 2026: Rafael Payare leads two-week Brahms Festival; Composer-in-Residence Jimmy López’s Perú Negro; monumental works of Mahler, Strauss, and Shostakovich; much more
(January 2026) — The San Diego Symphony (SDS) looks forward this winter and spring to 14 masterworks programs – nine of them with Music and Artistic Director Rafael Payare in the orchestra’s reimagined indoor home at the Jacobs Music Center. The nearly 100-year-old theater underwent a complete three-year renovation before reopening in 2024 with superior acoustics and beautiful aesthetics. The venue will be showcased when Payare conducts the orchestra in a two-week Brahms Festival, highlighted by A German Requiem (Feb 27 & March 1); all four of the composer’s Symphonies (Feb 28; March 6 & 7); and the Violin Concerto featuring Leonidas Kavakos, making his SDS debut (March 6 & 7).
The orchestra also continues to highlight the works of renowned Composer-in-Residence Jimmy López – who is in the midst of a two-year residency with both SDS and Payare’s Orchestre symphonique de Montréal (Montreal Symphony Orchestra/OSM) – following up their fall performance of his piano concerto Ephemerae with his Perú Negro, on a program with Mendelssohn’s “Scottish” Symphony and Berg’s Violin Concerto with soloist Jeff Thayer (May 15 & 16).
Other highlights of Payare’s SDS winter and spring include a pairing of Beethoven’s First Symphony with Shostakovich’s Eighth (Jan 24 & 25); Mahler’s Seventh Symphony (Jan 31 & Feb 1); and Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony along with Beethoven’s Leonore Overture No. 3 and Gabriela Ortiz’s new cello concerto, Dzonot, written for and featuring Alisa Weilerstein (May 9 & 10). The masterworks season finale is a performance of Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra on a program with Bartók‘s Bluebeard’s Castle, sung by mezzo-soprano Karen Cargill and baritone Mark Stone (May 22 & 24).
The 2025–26 season also marks the inaugural year of the San Diego Symphony’s Conducting Fellowship Program, an initiative inspired in part by Payare’s own experiences working with such conductors as Lorin Maazel and that is designed to cultivate the next generation of orchestral leaders. Seven current fellows receive mentorship from Payare and conduct performances at the two venues, as well as across the region through education and community engagement programs. Payare comments:
“Mentorship is at the heart of what makes music flourish. With this new Conducting Fellowship, we’re giving gifted young conductors the opportunity to grow artistically, to collaborate with extraordinary musicians and administrators, to experience how a wonderful institution runs, and to find their own voice on the podium. It’s deeply inspiring to welcome this next generation of leaders into our musical family.”
Brahms Festival
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 that order) 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.” The performances also mark Kavakos’s SDS debut (March 6 & 7).
Composer-in-Residence Jimmy López
Payare and the San Diego Symphony are notably enthusiastic about cultivating and performing 21st-century music, and this winter and spring they continue to feature the works of Composer-in-Residence Jimmy López. Following up the fall performances of his piano concerto Ephemerae, this spring they perform his Perú Negro, on a program with Mendelssohn’s “Scottish” Symphony and Berg’s Violin Concerto with soloist Jeff Thayer (May 15 &16). Payare elaborates:
“Jimmy López is a composer of extraordinary imagination and humanity. From his unique background – Peruvian born and raised with advanced education in Finland and California—he brings many different things together. His music is filled with a phenomenal panache of colors, Latin and African rhythms along with a ‘language of the moment,’ and he uses the orchestra in a magnetic and approachable way with an amazing ability to draw the audience into his world. I am thrilled to bring his voice to our orchestra and community.”
Other winter/spring highlights
The versatile Payare is also “a noted authority on the late-Romantic repertoire” (BBC Music Magazine), and is equally eager to program large, dramatic works of the late 19th and early 20th centuries that allow the full orchestra to soar, aided by the newly renovated concert hall that The San Diego Union-Tribune declared “permits [the SDS] to sound like the world-class orchestra they’ve been since Payare took over.” The renovation was spearheaded, like the construction of the Rady Shell on San Diego’s waterfront to serve as the orchestra’s summer home and the hiring of Payare, by San Diego Symphony President and CEO Martha Gilmer, who was honored last month as the 2026 “Impresario of the Year” by Musical America.
The SDS’s late-Romantic expertise is currently taking the shape of an ongoing exploration of Bruckner, Mahler, and tone poems by Richard Strauss. This winter and spring see performances of Mahler’s Seventh Symphony (Jan 31; Feb 1), and Strauss’s Nietzsche-inspired Also sprach Zarathustra, the latter closing the season along with a concert presentation of Béla Bartók‘s one-act opera Bluebeard’s Castle, featuring mezzo-soprano Karen Cargill and baritone Mark Stone (May 22 & 24).
Payare’s SDS concerts are rounded out with a pairing of Beethoven’s First Symphony with Shostakovich’s Eighth (Jan 24 & 25); and Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony on a program with Beethoven’s Leonore Overture No. 3 and Gabriela Ortiz’s new cello concerto, Dzonot, written for and featuring Alisa Weilerstein (May 9 & 10).
In the spring, under the baton of Robert Spano, the SDS will perform a special California-themed program celebrating 175 years of statehood through works by three composers, all of whom came from elsewhere to live in the state. The program opens with Adam Schoenberg’s Cool Cat, written in honor of P-22, the world-famous mountain lion who lived for a decade in the hills above Los Angeles. John Adams’s piano concerto Century Rolls – featuring pianist Conrad Tao – recalls the great age of American player-piano recordings, and Rachmaninoff’s Third Symphony draws inspiration from the Hollywood sound (April 10 & 11). The month of April also features more programs with piano soloists: following Conrad Tao’s performance, conductor Anna Sułkowska-Migoń leads the orchestra in Borodin’s Symphony No. 2 and Chopin’s Second Piano Concerto featuring Ingrid Fliter as soloist (April 18 & 19), before an all-Beethoven concert under the direction of Trevor Pinnock – with rising star pianist Alexandra Dovgan performing the “Emperor” Concerto – wraps the month (April 24 & 25).
San Diego Symphony and Rafael Payare winter/spring 2026
All concerts take place at the Jacobs Music Center in San Diego, California, and are conducted by Rafael Payare unless otherwise noted.
Jan 24 & 25
BEETHOVEN: Symphony No. 1 in C, Op. 21
SHOSTAKOVICH: Symphony No. 8 in C minor, Op. 65
Jan 31 & Feb 1
MAHLER: Symphony No. 7
Feb 27–March 7: SDS Brahms Festival
Feb 27 & March 1
Julie Boulianne, soprano
Michael Sumuel, bass-baritone
San Diego Symphony Chorus
BRAHMS: A German Requiem (Ein deutsches Requiem), Op. 45
Feb 28
BRAHMS: Symphony No. 1
BRAHMS: Symphony No. 2
March 6
Leonidas Kavakos, violin (SDS debut)
BRAHMS: Violin Concerto in D, Op. 77
BRAHMS: Symphony No. 4
March 7
Leonidas Kavakos, violin
BRAHMS: Symphony No. 3
BRAHMS Violin Concerto in D, Op. 77
April 10 & 11
Robert Spano, conductor
Conrad Tao, piano
Adam SCHOENBERG: Cool Cat
John ADAMS: Century Rolls
RACHMANINOFF: Symphony No. 3
April 18 & 19
Anna Sułkowska-Migoń, conductor
Ingrid Fliter, piano
KILAR: Orawa
CHOPIN: Piano Concerto No. 2 in F minor, Op. 21
BORODIN: Symphony No. 2
BORODIN: “Polovtsian Dances” from Prince Igor
April 24 & 25
Trevor Pinnock, conductor
Alexandra Dovgan, piano (SDS debut)
BEETHOVEN: Coriolan Overture, Op. 62
BEETHOVEN: Piano Concerto No. 5, “Emperor”
BEETHOVEN: Symphony No. 7 in A, Op. 92
May 9 & 10
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
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
Karen Cargill, mezzo-soprano
Mark Stone, baritone
R. STRAUSS: Also sprach Zarathustra, Op. 30
BARTÓK: Bluebeard’s Castle