Parlando Announces 2025-26 Season

New York (July 17, 2025) — Parlando, the New York City-based chamber orchestra praised by the New York Times for its “smart, unusual programming,” announces today its 2025-26 season, its most adventurous yet. Led by conductor and founder Ian Niederhoffer, whose vision is for every concert to tell a story, Parlando presents a series of riveting chamber programs designed to challenge and reward music fans with rarely programmed music. Niederhoffer’s thoughtful introductions make the programs enjoyable for concertgoers unfamiliar with his selective, smart programming; his goal is to make the music feel familiar through a smooth blend of performance, commentary, and historical context.

For the new season, Niederhoffer and Parlando return to Merkin Hall at Kaufman Music Center, on October 7, December 7, February 22, and April 22. Each Parlando program is held together by a unifying theme, blending new or rarely-performed works with more familiar ones. Tickets are available now for single concerts ($30–$40), or as a four-concert subscription ($80–$100). Order yours today at kaufmanmusiccenter.org/mch/series/parlando.

One of the most daring programs Parlando has offered since its 2019 founding — and a rare treat for contemporary music aficionados — is a full performance of in vain, on Feb. 22, by the reigning Austrian avant-gardist Georg Friedrich Haas, one of the most innovative and artistically uncompromising composers at work today. Written as a response to the rise of the far right in Austria and premiered in 2000, in vain is scored for 24 instruments and explores microtonality and the acoustic properties of sound, creating tonalities and sound textures so striking and novel that they sometimes appear to be electronically manipulated. Different levels of low lighting, even darkness, blend with the music over the course of the hour-long performance. The British conductor Simon Rattle declared the piece “one of the first masterpieces of the 21st century.”

“I’m thrilled to bring these programs to the Kaufman Center this season,” says Niederhoffer. “It’s our most narratively dramatic season to date, from the human and heartbreaking arc of 19th-century German Jewry to cabaret’s evolution from social satire to personal storytelling, culminating in a world-premiere orchestration of Zombie Blizzard, a genre-bending song cycle with texts by Margaret Atwood. Our 2025-26 season features a deep connection between the repertoire and the world around us that I can’t wait to share.”

Parlando: 2025-26 season
Merkin Hall, Kaufman Music Center

—The Broken Promise—
October 7, 2025 | 7:30 p.m.

• Felix Mendelssohn – Son and Stranger Overture
• Franz Schreker – The Birthday of the Infanta Suite
• Richard Strauss – Metamorphosen

Can art make you a better person? From promise to heartbreak, this powerful program traces the rise and fall of a culture that once believed art could save it. Parlando explores the story of German-Jewish life and identity through three striking works: Felix Mendelssohn’s bright and joyful Son and Stranger Overture, Franz Schreker’s lush and bittersweet Birthday of the Infanta Suite, and Richard Strauss’s Metamorphosen, a haunting elegy written in the ruins of World War II. Together, they paint a portrait of hope, beauty, and the devastating betrayal of both German Jewry and Germany itself.

—Crossing Over—
December 7, 2025 | 3 p.m.

• Dmitri Shostakovich – Jazz Suite No. 1
• Nikolai Kapustin – Piano Concerto No. 2, ft. Maxim Lando
• Duke Ellington – Nutcracker Suite

How different is classical music from jazz, really? From smoky Soviet salons to mid-century Manhattan, jazz has left its mark on even the most unexpected corners of classical music. Join Parlando for a foot-tapping, genre-crossing evening that explores how classical composers borrowed the rhythms, harmonies, and swing of jazz to create something entirely new. The program features Shostakovich’s sly and stylish Jazz Suite No. 1, Kapustin’s electrifying Piano Concerto No. 2, performed by rising star Maxim Lando, and Duke Ellington’s dazzling transformation of Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite. 

—In Vain—
February 22, 2026 | 3 p.m.

• Georg Friedrich Haas – in vain

What does it mean to make music in complete darkness? Join Parlando for an immersive performance of Georg Friedrich Haas’s in vain, a gripping, hourlong work that bends time, light, and memory. Written in response to the far-right’s resurgence in Austria and described by conductor Simon Rattle as “one of the first masterpieces of the 21st century,” in vain confronts the fragility of democracy through waves of harmony, shimmering stillness, and sudden rupture. As politics around the world grow darker, Haas offers both a warning and a vision: a plea to keep listening, even when the lights go out.

—The Cabaret Project, Part II—
April 22, 2025 | 7:30 p.m.

• Ernst Krenek – Fantasie Jonny spielt auf for Salon Orchestra
• Hanns Eisler – Kleine Sinfonie
• Abel Meeropol – Strange Fruit ft. Measha Brueggergosman-Lee
• Aaron Davis/Margaret Atwood – Zombie Blizzard (World Premiere Orchestration), ft. Measha Brueggergosman-Lee

From smoky Berlin nightclubs to today’s jazz clubs, cabaret walks the line between satire and story. Join Parlando for The Cabaret Project: Part II, the second chapter of a two-season collaboration with soprano Measha Brueggergosman-Lee, exploring cabaret’s blend of sharp-edged social commentary and deeply personal storytelling. This eclectic program features Ernst Krenek’s jazzy Fantasie on Jonny spielt auf, Hans Eisler’s punchy Kleine Sinfonie, and Abel Meeropol’s haunting Strange Fruit, the searing ballad made famous by Billie Holiday. The concert features a world premiere orchestration of Zombie Blizzard by Aaron Davis and Margaret Atwood, a biting, humorous and moving song cycle about gender, loss, and the strange beauty of survival.

More about Ian Niederhoffer and Parlando

Conductor Ian Niederhoffer founded Parlando in 2019 with the vision of every concert telling a story. Through inventive programming, Parlando brings intimate and accessible orchestral experiences to wider audiences. The “razor-sharp chamber orchestra that exudes the joy of music-making” (New York Classical Review) has quickly become an essential player in the New York classical music scene.

A recipient of the 2025 Georg Solti Career Assistance Award and a BBC Music Magazine Rising Star for January 2024, Niederhoffer — the winner of three prizes at the 2021 Khachaturian International Conducting Competition — is a confident and expressive communicator of music, context, and ideas. Writing about his performance with Parlando of Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge, arranged for string orchestra, The Strad praised “the lyrical moments, [which were] played with shape and character.”

“Ian Niederhoffer makes good on [Parlando’s] motto: ‘Every concert tells a story’,” wrote The New York Times about Parlando’s program that featured Kaija Saariaho’s stunning violin concerto Graal Théâtre. “But smart, unusual programming on this level fosters a gripping narrative of its own, too.”

Parlando’s 2024-25 season included a series of performances at Merkin Hall (Kaufman Center, N.Y.), featuring music by Toru Takemitsu, Bela Bartok, Unsuk Chin, Bryce Dessner, Olivier Messiaen, and William Bolcom, among others. In 2025, Parlando released its debut album, Censored Anthems, on DELOS, with a program that explores music from the 20th century as a tool of cultural resilience in the face of censorship, particularly in the Soviet Union. The featured composers are Mieczyslaw Weinberg, Edvard Mirzoyan, and Dmitri Shostakovich.

Every Parlando program is joined by a common theme that forms a larger story arc, blending standard works with new or underrepresented music. When Parlando performs rarely-heard composers or works, the goal is to feature them not as a novelty but rather as part of a thematic program; by connecting each piece through the shared theme, the concert becomes a story. Parlando strives to leave every audience member knowing more about classical music than they did before the concert.

Niederhoffer has long been an entrepreneur dedicated to commissioning new music. Under his leadership, Parlando has commissioned new works by inti figgis-vizueta, Jerod Impichchaachaaha' Tate, Mason Bynes, and Anna Roberts-Gevalt. As a student at Yale University, Niederhoffer founded the Yale Undergraduate Chamber Orchestra, commissioning six new pieces and presenting a world premiere at every concert over his three-year tenure as music director. Yale honored Niederhoffer with the Wrexham Prize and the Joseph Lentilhon Selden Memorial Award for his “verve, idealism, and constructive interest in music.”

In 2021 Niederhoffer was named Artist of Promise at the Conducting Academy of the Verbier Festival, where he was assistant conductor for Lahav Shani, Daniel Harding, Antonio Pappano, and Gábor Takacs-Nágy. In 2019 and 2022 Niederhoffer participated in the Järvi Conducting Academy at the Pärnu Music Festival, an international conducting masterclass led by the world-famous family of conductors Paavo Järvi, Neeme Järvi, and Kristjan Järvi. In 2024, he participated in the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich’s Conducting Academy with Paavo Järvi. His principal teachers include Leonid Grin, Toshiyuki Shimada, and William Boughton. 

### 

Media contact:

Matt Herman
Managing Director
matt@8vamusicconsultancy.com 
8VA Music Consultancy
New York • Los Angeles • Berlin