The Frick Collection in New York City presents its 2026–27 concert season, the second annual season in the Stephen A. Schwarzman Auditorium since the museum’s April 2025 reopening. Building on the extraordinary response to its inaugural year, the series continues to establish the Frick as one of New York’s most distinctive stages for chamber music, vocal recital, and early music, deepening the dialogue between live performance and the museum’s permanent collection and special exhibitions.
This season also broadens access to the series through phased ticketing sales, continued lunchtime concerts, and a pair of free pop-up concerts in the Garden Court, giving a wider range of visitors the opportunity to experience music at the Frick.
“Our first season after the museum’s reopening reinforced just how much appetite there is for live music at the Frick,” stated Jeremy Ney, Head of Music and Performance. “This season, we are pleased to answer that call with a wide-ranging slate of musical explorations and collaborations, offering ever more ways for audiences to connect with music, art, and history. The 2026–27 season invites some of the world’s preeminent artists to perform in the Frick’s intimate, acoustically superb Stephen A. Schwarzman Auditorium, whether for the first time or in long-awaited returns.”
The season opens on Sunday, October 18, with Goya’s Musical World, in which violinist and musical curator Francisco Fullana, joined by the Dolphins Quartet, Viano Quartet, and guitarist Rafael Aguirre, imagines the music that animated artist Francisco de Goya’s world — from the courtly refinement of Boccherini to the folk songs of working-class Madrid, culminating in a striking contemporary work by Spanish composer Mauricio Sotelo. Other ensembles include early-music group Ruckus, reflecting on the sounds of the early American republic with New England hymn repertoire; the Frick debut of the Isidore String Quartet, with star pianist Conrad Tao; and an exploration of Bach’s musical influences led by cellist Jay Campbell, violinist Geneva Lewis, and keyboardist Jonathan Cohen.
Renowned vocalist and leader of Opera Philadelphia Anthony Roth Costanzo, who performed in the Stephen A. Schwarzman Auditorium’s inaugural concert, returns in November with a special recital previewing his project “Countertenor” — a forthcoming book and companion album illuminating the history of the high male voice — ranging from Baroque laments to traditional Hawaiian song, the New Wave avant-garde of Klaus Nomi, and Philip Glass’s Einstein on the Beach. A highlight in the spring is a pair of concerts featuring composer Matthew Aucoin as both creator and curator: One evening spotlights four UK–based contemporary composers, while the other marks the world premiere of a new work by Aucoin commissioned by the Frick, written for and performed by cellist Coleman Itzkoff alongside the composer. Students from London’s Royal Academy of Music will take part in Aucoin’s curated programs and present a weekday lunchtime concert — continuing the series that launched last season along with three performances by period-instrument ensemble Juilliard415.
The Frick’s fall exhibition “Siena: The Art of Bronze, 1450–1500″ is the inspiration for two weekends of programming in November: Early-music specialists Jasper Snow, Georgia Burashko, Joshua Cheatham, and Richard Pittsinger bring to life surviving fragments of Sienese polyphony, while the Antwerp-based ensemble Graindelavoix performs a program centered on the ceremonial motet Sena vetus, composed in honor of the Tuscan city. This season also introduces a new, informal way for visitors to connect with music: pop-up performances in the Frick’s iconic Garden Court, offered free with museum admission. The inaugural Garden Court concerts, on the afternoons of November 14 and 22 (ahead of Sunday evening performances in the Stephen A. Schwarzman Auditorium), will bring the rarely heard sounds of fifteenth-century Siena drifting into the garden’s surrounding galleries as an experiential extension of the exhibition itself.
Two esteemed early-music ensembles will make their Frick debuts in spring 2027, also lending musical color to art history with inspiration from “Painting with Fire: Susanne de Court and the Art of Enamel,” the first exhibition dedicated to the only known woman enamel artist of the French Renaissance. Twelfth Night, led by violinist Rachell Ellen Wong and harpsichordist David Belkovski, complements the mythic and sacred influences of De Court’s creations through works by Couperin and Bach. And New York’s flagship Baroque orchestra, the Helicon Ensemble, presents Handel’s dramatic cantata Apollo e Dafne with rising star soprano Song Hee Lee — a 2026 Grand Finals winner of the Metropolitan Opera’s prestigious Laffont Competition — and the Frick debut of acclaimed baritone Tyler Duncan.
Other recitals spotlight some of today’s leading soloists and artist-collaborators from around the world. Tunisian-Canadian mezzo-soprano Rihab Chaieb and pianist Ammiel Bushakevitz juxtapose two ways of hearing the Middle East and North Africa: as imagined by European composers via French art song, and as lived and sung by its own people through traditional songs as well as anthems of the Lebanese Civil War and the Tunisian revolution. Renowned English tenor Ian Bostridge and pianist Julius Drake bring their decades of musical partnership to the songs of Robert Schumann, while two of France’s foremost chamber musicians, cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras and pianist Alexandre Tharaud, mark thirty years of playing together with repertoire from across their career. Another duo, Pavel Kolesnikov and Samson Tsoy, share a program — and a keyboard — for their Frick debut, with a mix of solo and four-hands repertoire for piano. Famed soloist Paul Lewis pairs Mozart piano sonatas with works by later composers across two evenings, while rising star pianists Federico Colli and nineteen-year-old Alexandra Dovgan make their Frick debuts.
For tickets and a full schedule, visit frick.org.