The St. Paul Chamber Orchestra will perform 82 concerts across nine Twin Cities venues in its newly announced 2024-25 season.
Season ticket packages are on sale now via thespco.org or by phone at 651-291-1144. Prices start at $13 per concert for adults and are free for children and students. Individual tickets, priced from $61 to $13, will go on sale in August.
Highlights of the season:
A wide range of SPCO musicians will be featured as soloists and arrangers, with four musicians serving as “creative leads,” each curating a special program that showcases their individual, musical interests and passions. “Our musicians develop an even deeper engagement with the creative process and the performances through being creative leads,” said SPCO artistic director and principal violin Kyu-Young Kim in a news release. “It has been heartening to hear from audience members how much they appreciate the ability to hear directly from the creative leads about their repertoire choices and their passion for the music.”
The orchestra will use the season to explore “themes of change and transformation through the prism of the four seasons.” In addition to new arrangements of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Seasons and Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel’s Das Jahr (The Year), the orchestra will tackle Antonio Vivaldi’s Four Seasons in three ways.
First launched during the 2022-23 season, the composer residency program Sandbox will continue with Valerie Coleman as the featured composer-in-residence. She will workshop a new composition ahead of its premiere on May 16-18, 2025. Future Sandbox composer-in-residence Gabriela Lena Frank will also begin developing her new Sandbox works for the 2025-26 season.
Returning SPCO artistic partners Tabea Zimmermann, Abel Selaocoe and Richard Egarr will lead several performances with the orchestra, including the 66th opening weekend performances Sept. 13-15.
Returning and debut guest artists include vocalists Clara Osowski and John Moore; pianist Roman Rabinovich; violinist and conductor Dmitry Sinkovsky; flutist Jasmine Choi; and conductors William Eddins and Gabor Takacs-Nagy.
The Arts Partnership (The SPCO, Minnesota Opera, Ordway Center for Performing Arts and Schubert Club) will present the opera “Fire Shut Up in My Bones” with the Grammy Award-winning Turtle Island Quartet on Feb. 23. With music by Terence Blanchard and libretto by Kasi Lemmons, the production opened at New York’s Metropolitan Opera in 2021, the first opera by a Black composer ever performed there.
In a move similar to Netflix or a monthly gym membership, the SPCO’s concert membership program gives access to all of the orchestra’s regular concerts throughout the season for a recurring monthly payment. There are three tiers that start at $5 per month for new members. The other options are $9 and $20 per month, with the latter offering more desirable seats.
