Looking beyond genres to create your custom season experience? Whether you love blurring boundaries, feeling nostalgic for times gone by, or squeezing joy out of concerts with squeezeboxes, our Center for the Arts team has curated some special suggestions for you...
Create a subscription package of 3+ eligible Center for the Arts performances in the 2025–26 season to save 15% on tickets and receive special perks all season long! Subscribers also unlock access to purchase special events before single tickets go on sale to the general public on August 1—including Yo-Yo Ma's performance with the Fairfax Symphony Orchestra and Tony Award winner Darren Criss's headlining performance as part of the ARTS by George benefit! Some additional inspiration for subscription combinations below, or choose any three or more eligible Great Performances at Mason or Family Series performances to create your own package...
Brit Hits
For those feeling a bond with the other side of the pond, check out our concerts with the London-based Academy of St. Martin in the Fields (October 3), known for its “music-making of the highest order” (The Guardian); the also London-based Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (January 23), the UK’s most in-demand orchestra; and Peppa Pig — My First Concert (April 11), our Family Series live-action performance featuring the cartoon credited for giving American children adorable British accents.
Blurring Boundaries
Innovative Center for the Arts performances push boundaries—of geography, genre, and even the limitations of what the human body can do…
For its fourth year in residence at the Center, the GRAMMY Award-winning Silkroad Ensemble with Rhiannon Giddens (March 22) brings its latest project, Sanctuary: The Power of Resonance and Ritual. Exploring the idea of trance, deeply tied to communal music-making in many different cultures, the program highlights connections across the tarantella tradition of Italy, the Tarab tradition of the Middle East, Congolese and Indian traditions, and more. The San Francisco Chronicle noted: “You could hear it in the fluid vibrancy with which the performers allowed their musical ideas to run together, producing one musical hybrid after another that sounded startlingly new.”
The Center Will Not Hold (May 2), a collaboration by Bessie Award-winning choreographer and breakdancer Ephrat “Bounce” Asherie and MacArthur “Genius” Grant awardee Michelle Dorrance, “one of the most imaginative tap choreographers working today” (The New Yorker), is performed to live percussion and deeply rooted in street, club, and vernacular dances: house, breaking, hip hop, tap dance, Chicago footwork, Detroit jit, litefeet, Memphis jookin, and body percussion.
Circa (April 12), known for “push[ing] the boundaries of what circus and acrobatics can be” (Time Out).performs Humans 2.0, a tightly woven choreography of bodies, pushed to their extreme physical limits. The work explores whether we can ever find a perfect balance, or whether adapting to constant change provides the only way forward.
Act Accordion-ly
Accordion to our crack team of researchers, you may squeeze some joy out of the following ensembles which often include squeeze boxes in their instrumentation:
La Santa Cecilia (November 15) including Jose ‘Pepe’ Carlos on accordion/requinto;
Latin Grammy nominee Mariza (November 16), “the world’s most popular contemporary fado singer” (The Guardian) who Rolling Stone credits with "remaking fado’s ancient sadness into a majestic modern sound;”
the traditional Irish ensemble Danú (March 20, seen at left);
and Silkroad Ensemble with Rhiannon Giddens (March 22).
Evoking Eras
For a dose of nostalgia, check out Mark Morris Dance Group and Music Ensemble’s program Dances to American Music (February 7), which includes Dancing Honeymoon, a work featuring timeless songs from the 1920s and ’30s. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer says, “this is vintage Morris and everybody, including the audience, has the time of their lives.”
The Metropolitan Jazz Orchestra (February 28) celebrates bandleader and composer Stan Kenton’s innovative and brassy approach to big band jazz, which in the 1940s became known as “the wall of sound.” This program features guest soloist Vaugn Wiester on trombone.
Hubbard Street Dance Chicago’s program (October 25) includes the fun and joyful work Sweet Gwen Suite by Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon, a trio of dances all originally performed for television in the 1960s (two for a Bob Hope special, and one for The Ed Sullivan Show). Learn more from Hubbard Street Dance Chicago about the fascinating recreation of this work:
Brass Tacks
This season, you can laugh your brass off with the Monty Python of the music world, Mnozil Brass (March 1); slide into the Metropolitan Jazz Orchestra (February 28) performance to hear guest soloist Vaughn Wiester on trombone in a program featuring music of Stan Kenton; or experience the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra’s roaring brass in Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony (January 23), in this 120th anniversary year of the composer’s birth.
Aussie Posse
From Onyx Productions in Brisbane, Australia comes the supercharged urban circus 360 ALLSTARS (November 8). Inspired by street culture, the performance draws its champion cast members from all over the world for a high energy show of breakdancing, beat boxing, BMX biking, acrobatics, and more.
“Arguably the world’s most daring circus company” (The Guardian), Circa (April 12) has also called Brisbane home base since 2004, since touring the world and captivating audiences in more than 45 countries.
Born in Taiwan, violinist Ray Chen grew up in Australia, where he performed as a soloist at the age of eight with the Queensland Philharmonic Orchestra. Profiled as “one to watch” by both The Strad and Gramophone magazines, violinist and global phenomenon Chen’s “tone is silken, his technique faultless, his musicianship persuasive as well as controlled and poetic” (The Guardian), and you can see him perform Tchaikovsky’s thrilling Violin Concerto with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (January 23).
Read more about the perks of subscribing to the 2025–26 season and grab your seats today, before individual tickets go on sale to the general public on August 1.