Performance Calendar

This digital concert, to be recorded November 18 at Roxbury Community College, premieres on YouTube November 30, 2023. It will be available to watch for three months.

Violinist Chelsey Green makes a return to the Series (and a Neighborhood Arts debut) with her quartet for an afternoon of electrifying and innovative jazz that will make you hear the violin and viola in a whole new way!

Now an in-demand performing artist and professor, Chelsey Green grew up as a standout on the classical viola, soloing at Carnegie Hall while still in high school. As she has grown as a musician and a bandleader, she has created her own sound. The Green Project tears down stereotypes about the violin and the viola, blending jazz, soul, pop, funk, R&B, gospel, and more. The band will perform popular classics, originals, standards, and more, with their unique voice and style!

Lakecia Benjamin, whose Phoenix album was just nominated for three 2024 Grammy Awards, was voted Rising Star Alto Saxophonist in the 2020 DownBeat Critics Poll and selected among 2020’s “25 for the Future” by the same publication. Her work fuses traditional conceptions of jazz, hip hop, and soul to create electrifyingly danceable grooves.  

Castle of our Skins, nationally renowned collective dedicated to Black musical artistry, celebrates the holiday season with Brian Raphael Nabors’ Kwanzaa Suite, as well as chamber music with African roots and Pan-African ideals. 

From 2022: A six-piece band led by Malian percussionist Balla Kouyaté and cellist Mike Block comes together to create a program of joyous, effervescent music that blends West African beats and vocals with bluegrass, funk, and rock.

Armenian violinist Diana Adamyan is quickly gaining an international reputation as one of her generation’s most outstanding violinists. After winning First Prize at the 2018 Yehudi Menuhin International Competition, the world’s most prestigious prize for young violinists, she went on to receive First Prize in the 2020 Khachaturian International Competition. Adamyan takes the Pickman Hall stage alongside Boston-based pianist Renana Gutman, a faculty member at Longy School of Music, for her Boston recital debut. 

Our Stringfest concerts give young string players the chance to learn from and perform alongside top professional musicians. Violin and viola innovator Chelsey Green, a jazz virtuoso and committed music educator, and her quartet share a program of jazz, funk, pop, and more with talented young players from local string ensembles. Green, an Associate Professor at Berklee, enjoys a busy career as a performer and academic. Chelsey Green and the Green Project also appear this season in concert at Roxbury Community College’s Media Arts Center on November 18. 

Acclaimed pianist and author Jeremy Denk curates a program that unites female composers across the centuries, telling a story of women’s genius, whether celebrated, neglected, remembered, or forgotten. He lends his insight, technical panache, and uniquely expressive style to this era-spanning program. 

Armenian violinist Diana Adamyan is quickly gaining an international reputation as one of her generation’s most outstanding violinists. After winning First Prize at the 2018 Yehudi Menuhin International Competition, the world’s most prestigious prize for young violinists, she went on to receive First Prize in the 2020 Khachaturian International Competition. Adamyan takes the Pickman Hall stage alongside Boston-based pianist Renana Gutman, a faculty member at Longy School of Music, for her Boston recital debut. 

Acclaimed pianist and author Jeremy Denk curates a program that unites female composers across the centuries, telling a story of women’s genius, whether celebrated, neglected, remembered, or forgotten. He lends his insight, technical panache, and uniquely expressive style to this era-spanning program. 

From 2022/23: Boston String Academy players perform Aristides Rivas’ Suite Boricua, orchestrated for strings and percussion.  Cellist Rivas also performs in a trio alongside Venezuelan cuatro innovator Carlos Capacho and harpist Eduardo Betancourt. A Stringfest performance.