Performing Arts Series

The Performing Arts Series’ 2023–2024 season is a dynamic line-up that continues our mission to highlight diverse programming across performing arts disciplines. Our 104th season champions innovative artists shining a light on climate change and presents world-renowned performers who are celebrated game-changers. 

The Performing Arts Series’ 2023–2024 season is a dynamic line-up that continues our mission to highlight diverse programming across performing arts disciplines. Our 104th season champions innovative artists shining a light on climate change and presents world-renowned performers who are celebrated game-changers. 

Professor Emeritus of Music Larry Hamberlin explores the Tákacs Quartet’s Bartók cycle program.

Professor Emeritus of Music Larry Hamberlin explores Le Consort’s program entitled “Hidden Treasures of the Baroque.”

Award-winning pianist and humanitarian Mahani Teave is a pioneering artist who bridges the creative world with education and environmental activism. She is also the only professional classical musician on her native Rapa Nui (Easter Island).

This ambitiously inventive Nordic trio is one of the world’s most talked-about acts in the acoustic realm. Their hit “The World Was Waiting” feels spot-on, as we’ve been eagerly awaiting their return ever since their joyous, sold-out Middlebury performance in March 2020, just before the pandemic hit.

 

One of the world’s finest chamber ensembles, nine-time Grammy winners, and longtime friends of our Performing Arts Series, the Emerson String Quartet visits our campus on their farewell tour. In this, their 33^rd and final Middlebury appearance, they play quartets by Shostakovich and Ravel, Walker’s Lyric for Strings, and our Music Accord co-commission Drink the Wild Ayre by Sarah Kirkland Snider.

 

Small Island Big Song is a multi-platform project uniting the seafaring cultures of the Pacific and Indian Oceans, a region at the frontline of the climate crisis. Indigenous artists come together with filmmakers and poets to present irresistible oceanic grooves and soulful island ballads collected across 16 countries, all guided by the artists on their respective islands. Experience the concert event that Billboard calls “one coherent jaw-dropping piece.”

The dynamic and charismatic Heath Quartet—our series’ first quartet-in-residence—is one of the most exciting British chamber ensembles of the moment, steadily building a reputation for their upbeat and integrated sound. We celebrate our 20th year of support from the Sunderman Family Concert Fund with this free concert, including works by Bach, Haydn, Henriette Bosmans, and Erick Korngold. 

Applauded by the New York Times for her “eloquent, powerful” interpretations, cellist Sophie Shao has a gift for assembling impromptu chamber ensembles that are brimming with passion and talent. If you’ve never heard her play before, or if you’re a veteran of her concerts, you’ll realize why no season is complete without one of her marvelous performances! The concert program will include Messiaen’s Quartet for The End of Time, and Vermont composer David Ludwig’s Spiral Galaxy.