Strings in the Garden
Bring your picnic, find a shady spot, and enjoy a program of light string music.
Get Tickets
Bring your picnic, find a shady spot, and enjoy a program of light string music.
Get Tickets
Vivaldi’s Four Seasons has been loved for centuries. Max Richter steps inside that familiar world and hears it anew.
Four Seasons Recomposed keeps Vivaldi close while weaving in Richter’s cinematic, post-minimalist voice, creating music that feels faithful, fresh, and alive in the present. Auburn Symphony Concertmaster Emilie Choi takes center stage as soloist.
Then Mozart’s final symphony, later nicknamed Jupiter, brings the afternoon to a brilliant close with grandeur, wit, and one of the most dazzling finales in classical music.
Program
Max RICHTER–The Four Seasons Recomposed
Wolfgang MOZART – “Jupiter” Symphony No. 41, K. 551
Step inside the warm resonance of St. Matthew San Mateo Episcopal Church for an intimate evening of music, story, and old-world elegance.
Bohemian Tales brings together Auburn Symphony musicians Emilie Choi, Joyce Ramee, and Brian Wharton with pianist Judith Cohen for a chamber concert full of rich color and spirited dance. Brahms’ Piano Quartet No. 1 anchors the evening with sweeping Romantic drama, ending in a fiery finale inspired by Hungarian dance. Haydn’s “all’ongarese” Piano Trio adds charm and wit, while Monti’s Czárdás closes the program with showpiece flair.
This is chamber music at its most personal: close, expressive, and deeply connected to the room around you.
Program
Johannes BRAHMS – Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor, op. 25
Joseph HAYDN – Piano Trio No. 39 in G Major “All’Ongarese”
Vittorio MONTI – Czárdás
Make Auburn Symphony’s Holiday Spectacular part of your family’s season.
This annual tradition brings together the warmth, sparkle, and shared joy people look for in December, with music for longtime symphony fans, first-time concertgoers, and families making memories together. Led by Music Director Wesley Schulz, the evening will fill the Auburn Performing Arts Center with holiday favorites, orchestral color, and a few surprises along the way.
Whether you come every year or are starting a new tradition, the Holiday Spectacular is a bright and joyful way to celebrate the season together.
A puppet comes to life at a crowded fair, but this is no simple children’s tale.
In Petrushka, Stravinsky drops listeners into the noise, color, and danger of a Russian Shrovetide fair, where puppet theater turns strange and deeply human. Before The Rite of Spring shocked Paris, Stravinsky found one of his most vivid voices in this sharp, glittering score, with the piano cutting through the orchestra like Petrushka himself: restless, defiant, and impossible to ignore. NPR notes that Petrushka helped reveal Stravinsky’s own voice after The Firebird, especially in music shaped by physical gesture and psychological tension.
The second half turns from theater to grandeur with Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 2. Pianist David Fung joins Auburn Symphony for a concerto of sweeping scale, elegance, and power, a work the Boston Symphony Orchestra describes as belonging to Brahms’ confident, mature period.
Program
Igor STRAVINSKY - Petrushka (1947 version)
Johannes BRAHMS - Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat Major, op. 83
The films of Studio Ghibli have carried audiences across windswept skies, enchanted forests, seaside towns, bathhouses for spirits, and castles that move.
Now Auburn Symphony brings that music to the concert hall with a symphonic evening celebrating the unforgettable scores of Joe Hisaishi. From Kiki’s Delivery Service and My Neighbor Totoro to Spirited Away and Howl’s Moving Castle, these beloved anime worlds come alive through music full of flight, mystery, humor, tenderness, and adventure.
Often compared to the way John Williams shaped the sound of Steven Spielberg’s films, Hisaishi’s music is inseparable from the stories it serves. Whether you grew up with Studio Ghibli or are hearing this music for the first time, this concert invites you into a sound world where imagination feels close enough to touch.
Some concerts glow more than they thunder.
French Impressions & Beyond brings flute, viola, and harp together for an intimate evening of color, elegance, and quiet radiance at Postmark Center for the Arts. Debussy’s Sonata for flute, viola, and harp anchors the program with music shaped by light, texture, and atmosphere, while Fauré’s Dolly Suite offers warmth, charm, and tender beauty.
The evening reaches beyond France with Arnold Bax’s reflective Elegiac Trio and Arthur Foote’s At Dusk, two works that deepen the program’s sense of twilight and stillness. Featuring Auburn Symphony Principal Flute Wendy Wilhelmi, violist Leslie Faye Johnson, and Auburn Symphony Principal Harpist John Carrington, this concert invites you to listen up close as three distinct voices blend into one shimmering sound.
Program
Claude DEBUSSY–Sonata for flute, viola and harp
Arnold BAX – Elegiac Trio
Gabriel FAURÉ – Doily Suite En Trio, op. 56
Arthur FOOTE – At Dusk
Some forces are invisible, but you feel their pull.
Symphonic Stories begins with Jennifer Higdon’s blue cathedral, a luminous work shaped by memory, grief, and hope. Then Timothy McAllister joins Auburn Symphony for the West Coast Premiere of Gravity at a Distance, Viet Cuong’s new saxophone concerto inspired by celestial bodies and the unseen forces that bind them across space.
The afternoon closes with Rimsky-Korsakov’sScheherazade, where storytelling becomes an act of survival.
Program
Jennifer HIGDON - blue cathedral
Viet CUONG - Gravity at a Distance
Nikolai RIMSKY-KORSAKOV - Scheherazade, op. 35
End the season with music that celebrates, dazzles, and dances.
Rhythm & Revelry opens with Omar Thomas’ Come Sunday, a joyful tribute to the Hammond organ’s role in Black worship. The music moves from the warmth of “Testimony” to the ecstatic celebration of “Shout!,” blending the spirit of worship with the sounds of blues, jazz, R&B, and classical tradition. Thomas describes the work as a tribute to Black musicians and culture.
Then violinist Nathan Amaral joins Auburn Symphony for Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto, one of the great showpieces of the violin repertoire. A 2024 Sphinx Competition winner and Grand Prize winner of the CAG-YCAT Competitions, Amaral has earned praise from Yo-Yo Ma for playing that goes beyond technique and reaches “the heart and soul of musical expression.”
The season closes with the orchestra in full color: Ravel’s Boléro, a single melody and rhythm that build into one of music’s most famous crescendos, and Strauss’ Der Rosenkavalier Suite, filled with sweeping romance, elegant waltzes, and operatic sparkle.
Program
Thomas OMAR - Come Sunday
Pyotr Ilyich TCHAIKOVSKY - Violin Concerto in D Major, op. 35
Maurice RAVEL - Bolero
Richard STRAUSS - Der Rosenkavalier Suite, op. 59