This fall, the Colburn School brings an extraordinary range of artistry to downtown LA, from intimate recitals to sweeping orchestral works.
French guitarist Virgile Barthe, winner of the 2025 Guitar Foundation of America competition, opens the season with a journey across centuries, from Buxtehude to Michael Abels. The Colburn Chamber Players follow with a program of invention and lyricism, pairing faculty artists with Conservatory students in works by Britten, Martinů, Balch, and Mendelssohn.
October brings a wealth of chamber and orchestral highlights. Yu-Chien (Benny) Tseng and Orion Weiss perform all three Brahms violin sonatas, and cellist Karen Ouzounian premieres Mayrig, an immersive tribute to three generations of women woven from family recordings and Armenian melodies. The celebrated Modigliani Quartet joins pianist Fabio Bidini for Kurtág, Schumann, and Schumann’s Piano Quintet, and the Colburn Orchestra, led by Dame Jane Glover, performs Ravel, Crusell, and Mozart. As the month draws to a close, Music Restored welcomes artists from Vienna’s Exilarte Center to reclaim music silenced under the Third Reich.
Strings Across Centuries: Guitarist Virgile Barthe
Friday, September 18 at 7 pm
Thayer Hall
Tickets start at $25
Winner of the 2025 Guitar Foundation of America International Concert Artists Competition, French guitarist Virgile Barthe is a rising classical guitar star. Blending traditional technique with fresh, modern interpretations, his performances are both compelling and distinctive.
This concert program traces a vivid journey across centuries and styles, revealing the guitar’s remarkable expressive range. Buxtehude’s Suite in E Minor unfolds with Baroque elegance and clarity while Scarlatti’s Three Sonatas bring brilliance, wit, and Iberian fire to the fore and Michael Abels’s Yarn offers a striking and cinematic contemporary contrast. Mendelssohn’s Lieder ohne Worte distills Romantic lyricism into intimate, song-like reflections before Nicholas Maw’s Music of Memory closes the program with a meditative, searching sound world that lingers long after the final note.
Passion and Phantasy: Britten, Mendelssohn, and More
Sunday, September 27 at 4 pm
Thayer Hall
Tickets start at $30
Colburn faculty artists Martin Beaver, Jonathan Brown, Eugene Izotov, and Ben Ullery bring their internationally acclaimed artistry to the intimate setting of Thayer Hall, joined by students of the Conservatory for an afternoon of chamber music at its most immediate and expressive.
Britten’s Phantasy Quartet opens with the striking inventiveness that announced a major new voice to the world. Martinů’s Piano Quartet No. 1 combines driving musical drama with Bohemian folk melodies. Katherine Balch’s musica spolia conjures the mischief of childhood. Mendelssohn’s String Quartet No. 2 closes with passionate, love-infused lyricism that lingers long after the final note.
Yu-Chien (Benny) Tseng and Orion Weiss
Friday, October 2 at 7 pm
Thayer Hall
Tickets $20
Top prizewinner at the 2015 Tchaikovsky International Violin Competition Yu-Chien (Benny) Tseng takes the stage with sought-after piano soloist Orion Weiss to perform all three Brahms violin sonatas. Experience music of lyrical beauty, warmth, and passion performed by two exceptional musicians whose artistry brings depth, intimacy, and brilliance to this unforgettable recital.
In collaboration with Olympia Philharmonia.
Opening Notes: Discover the Magic of Music, featuring the 12 String Trio
Saturday, October 10 at 10 am
Zipper Hall
Tickets $15
Designed for children ages 13 and under but open to all, the Opening Notes concerts spark imagination and make learning about music feel easy and exciting. Led by Conservatory students, this lively 40-minute performance combines music, storytelling, and theatrical adventure as performers bring characters and an engaging story to life onstage.
These performances feature lighting effects and sudden noises. A sensory-friendly breakout space will be available for children who wish to step away from the performance as needed. No prior musical experience is required. Just come ready to listen and explore!
This series is generously supported by Peter Chang and Betty Hsu.
Mayrig: A Mother’s Voice
Sunday, October 18 at 3 pm
Thayer Hall
Tickets start at $30
Mayrig (“mother” in Armenian) is an immersive, intimate program centered on the human voice that pulses with passion and celebration, resilience and rage. This 60-minute show created by Karen Ouzounian and Lembit Beecher for cello with electronics, piano, and vocals weaves the voices of Ouzounian’s mother and grandmother with original arrangements of Armenian music from her family’s past home of Anatolia, songs and stories drawn from their post-genocide home of Lebanon, and the beloved music of Charles Aznavour. New compositions by Lembit, Layale Chaker, Nathalie Joachim, and Niloufar Nourbakhsh expand upon themes of generational transmission, rootedness, and uprootedness. Opening and closing the program is Marin Marais’s Les Voix Humaines, music from hundreds of years ago providing a window into the present. Through the specifics of family history, Mayrig creates an absorbing world of memory and association, leading the audience to an experience that is universal and shared, allowing space to consider the layers of meaning and history contained within music and the twisting paths that have led us all to this time and place.
In collaboration with Ravinia’s Steans Institute.
The Modigliani Quartet with Pianist Fabio Bidini
Thursday, October 22 at 7 pm
Zipper Hall
Tickets start at $35
The Modigliani Quartet, hailed by BBC Music Magazine as “one of the greatest string quartets of the last 100 years,” brings its precision and warmth to a program built on contrast. They open with Kurtág’s 12 Microludes, twelve brief, tightly concentrated movements that shift through contrasting musical moods in just a few measures each, then turn to Schumann’s lively First String Quartet, a Romantic masterpiece of deep lyricism and virtuosic energy. Pianist Fabio Bidini, Carol Colburn Grigor Piano Chair, joins them for a vibrant finale of Schumann’s Piano Quintet, a work full of heart that revolutionized the genre by treating piano and strings as equal partners in dialogue.
Colburn Orchestra. Classical Reflections: From Mozart to Ravel
Friday, October 23 at 7 pm
Zipper Hall
Tickets start at $27
Renowned Classical specialist Dame Jane Glover leads this time-traveling exploration of Classical-era music. First, Ravel’s Le tombeau de Couperin blends 18th-century melodies with 20th-century rhythms in a woodwind-rich tribute to those lost in World War I. A late-Classical bassoon concertino by Bernhard Crusell then showcases the instrument’s warm sound and impressive versatility. Mozart’s unapologetically Classical Symphony No. 38 closes the concert with a dramatic flourish.
The Colburn Orchestra is generously underwritten by Eva and Marc Stern.
Music Restored and Exileart in Concert
Friday, October 30 at 7 pm
Thayer Hall
Tickets: $20
Music Restored: The Ziering-Conlon Center for Exiled and Suppressed Composers at Colburn welcomes musicians and scholars from the Exilarte Center, a renowned program at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna. Colburn Conservatory students join artists from Exilarte for a series of performances that feature the music of Viennese composers exiled to Los Angeles. This artistic collaboration honors composers silenced as “degenerate” under the Third Reich, bringing their string quartet music to life with urgency and care.
Music Restored is generously supported by Marilyn Ziering alongside the many donors who are inspired by this important work. This concert is made possible by Erica Clark in recognition of the extraordinary Music Restored initiative, and the equally extraordinary musicians who bring it to life.