Carnegie Hall

Celebrating 50 years during the 2024–2025 season, New York City’s Orchestra of St. Luke’s (OSL) and its acclaimed concert musicians make their artistic home at Carnegie Hall, where OSL has performed more than any other orchestra since making its debut there in 1983. Bernard Labadie, an internationally renowned specialist in 18th-century music, was named OSL’s principal conductor in 2018 and will step down in 2025, concluding an expansive and critically acclaimed tenure. OSL’s annual season features a concert series in each of Carnegie Hall’s three venues as well as the Visionary Sounds and DeGaetano Composition Institute programs, which focus on contemporary composers at The DiMenna Center for Classical Music—a rehearsal, recording, and performance facility that OSL built in 2011 in Manhattan’s Hudson Yards neighborhood. OSL proudly collaborates with the Paul Taylor Dance Company in its Lincoln Center season each year and performs with a variety of artistic partners at venues throughout the city and beyond. Founded in 1974 when a group of virtuoso chamber musicians began performing together in Greenwich Village at The Church of St. Luke in the Fields, the ensemble later expanded into an orchestra before catching fire in New York’s classical music scene. OSL has participated in 120 recordings, four of which have won Grammy Awards; has commissioned more than 75 new works; and has given more than 200 world, US, and New York premieres. OSL champions composers from groups historically underrepresented in classical music. In recent seasons, it has presented works by Kinan Azmeh, Margaret Bonds, Valerie Coleman, Julius Eastman, Wynton Marsalis, Florence Price, Rita Dove, and Chen Yi, among others. Central to OSL’s mission is the Education and Community Engagement program, which presents free concerts to thousands of New York City public school students each year; offers the 120-student–strong Youth Orchestra of St. Luke’s (YOSL), the city’s only youth orchestra under the umbrella of a professional group; provides a mentorship program for pre-professional musicians; and brings accessible concerts to all five boroughs. To learn more, visit OSLmusic.org and follow @OSLmusic on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Spotify, and TikTok.

Raphaël Pichon began his musical apprenticeship on violin, piano, and voice, training at various Paris conservatories. As a young professional singer, he performed under the baton of leading figures such as Jordi Savall, Gustav Leonhardt, and Ton Koopman, as well as with Les Cris de Paris. In 2006, he founded Pygmalion, a choir and orchestra that performs on period instruments. J. S. Bach’s Missae breves, late versions of Rameau’s great lyric tragedies, and Mozart rarities all form the basis of Pygmalion’s identity, as do works that are centered on the fusion between choir and orchestra and feature a dramaturgical approach to concert performance.

Mr. Pichon’s recent engagements include his debuts at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence with the premiere of Trauernacht, directed by Katie Mitchell, and the rediscovery of Luigi Rossi’s Orfeo at Opéra National de Lorraine and in Versailles; Monteverdi’s Vespro della Beata Vergine with Pierre Audi; a cycle of J. S. Bach’s cantatas at the Philharmonie de Paris; J. S. Bach’s complete motets and Mass in B Minor; a staged version of Brahms’s Ein Deutsches Requiem by Jochen Sandig in Bordeaux; and Mozart’s Requiem in a staged production by Romeo Castellucci.

Mr. Pichon created the Pulsations festival, an eclectic and polymorphous celebration that features exceptional concerts in unexpected venues, in 2020 in Bordeaux. As a guest conductor, he made debuts at the Salzburg Festival in 2018 alongside the Mozarteum Orchestra, and at the Berlin Philharmonie leading the Deutsches Symphonies-Orchester Berlin. He has also conducted the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, Les Violons du Roy, Freiburger Barockorchester, SWR Symphonieorchester, Boston’s Handel and Haydn Society, and Vienna Philharmonic, among other ensembles. In 2024–2025, he conducts Orchestra of St. Luke’s at Carnegie Hall and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra on tour to Germany and Austria.

Mr. Pichot’s recordings for the harmonia mundi label include the imaginary opera Enfers with baritone Stéphane Degout; Libertà!, an homage to little-known masterpieces by Mozart; J. S. Bach’s motets and St. Matthew Passion; Mein Traum; Monteverdi’s Vespro della Beata Vergine; and Mozart’s Requiem. He is an Officer of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

German baritone Christian Gerhaher attended the Opera School of the Academy of Music in Munich, where he studied lied interpretation with Friedemann Berger and also received instruction from Paul Kuen and Raimund Grumbach. While completing his medical studies, Mr. Gerhaher perfected his vocal training in master classes given by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, and Inge Borkh. Together with his regular accompanist, Gerold Huber, Mr. Gerhaher leads a class in lied interpretation at Munich’s University of Music and Theater, and he also teaches at the Royal Academy of Music in London. Mr. Gerhaher has devoted himself to lied interpretation during more than 30 years of concerts and recordings with Mr. Huber, and over the years they have been awarded several major prizes, Gramophone and BBC Music Magazine awards, and the Royal Philharmonic Society Music Award.

Mr. Gerhaher has received the prestigious Laurence Olivier Award as well as the theater prize Der Faust, and he regularly performs with world-renowned conductors and orchestras. Singing his signature roles of Wolfram and Wozzeck, he is a regular guest at the world’s most prestigious opera houses and festivals, including the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden; Bavarian State Opera; Salzburg Easter Festival; and Festival d’Aix-en-Provence. In 2023, he made his debut at the Metropolitan Opera, and he has served as artist in residence at the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Berliner Philharmoniker, Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna, and Wigmore Hall in London. He lives in Munich with his wife and three children.

Celebrated soprano Ying Fang began the 2024–2025 season with her house debut at the Royal Opera, Covent Garden, as Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro in a production by Sir David McVicar, followed by a return to Lyric Opera of Chicago for the same role. She debuts at the Bavarian State Opera as Pamina in Die Zauberflöte and makes her role debut as Marzelline in Fidelio at the Metropolitan Opera opposite Lise Davidsen, conducted by Susanna Mälkki and broadcast as part of the Met’s Live in HD series. She also sings Ilia in Idomeneo for her house debut at San Francisco Opera. On the concert stage, she sings Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 and Richard Strauss songs with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and Sir Donald Runnicles; Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Andris Nelsons; Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with Montreal’s Orchestre Métropolitain and Yannick Nézet-Séguin; and a program of Schubert, R. Schumann, and Weber at Carnegie Hall with Orchestra of St. Luke’s and Raphaël Pichon. In addition, she tours with Ensemble Pygmalion and Mr. Pichon, bringing J. S. Bach’s St. John Passion to venues that include Teatro alla Scala, Notre-Dame de Paris, Vienna Konzerthaus, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, and Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie, and also tours with the NHK Symphony Orchestra and Fabio Luisi, bringing Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 to the Concertgebouw, Vienna Konzerthaus, Kulturpalast Dresden, and Queen Elizabeth Hall in Antwerp.

A native of Ningbo, China, Ms. Fang is the recipient of the Martin E. Segal Award, Hildegard Behrens Foundation Award, The Sullivan Foundation’s Rose Bampton Award, and Opera Index Award; in addition, she received First Prize in the Gerda Lissner Foundation Vocal Competition. She holds a master’s degree and an artist diploma in opera studies from The Juilliard School, and a bachelor’s degree from the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. She is a former member of the Metropolitan Opera’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program.

Led by internationally celebrated countertenor Christopher Lowrey, Ensemble Altera has quickly become known for thoughtful programming, passionate performances, and tireless advocacy for the importance of ensemble singing in the broader music culture. Recent programs include Feminine Voices (available on Alpha Classics in 2025), a celebration of music written by women across the ages arrayed around Benjamin Britten’s timeless Ceremony of Carols; A New Song: Psalms for the Soul, an exploration of the Biblical Psalm texts in all their dizzying variety; and A Christmas Present, a sumptuous collection of seasonal music written in the new millennium. Ensemble Altera is now beginning to undertake tours throughout the US, including repeat visits to Carnegie Hall, and expands this work over the coming season. Upcoming projects include The Four Elements, a contemplation of the awesome beauty and terrifying power of the natural world, through the prism of sky, earth, fire, and water. Additionally, the group offers new performances of its acclaimed chamber version of Handel’s Messiah in its native home of Rhode Island.

Deeply committed to championing new works and lifting up new voices from around the globe, over the past few seasons Ensemble Altera has premiered works by Ian Gabriel Corpuz, Motshwane Pege, Toby Young, Joanna Marsh, Daniel Gledhill, Zuzanna Koziej, and Michael Garrepy, and is currently collaborating with young composer Piers Connor Kennedy in a major work titled Declarations, to mark the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in 2026. Alongside its busy performing and recording schedule, Ensemble Altera undertakes an extensive education and outreach program. Such activities include clinics and interactive presentations with school students in a variety of settings, with a particular focus on opening musical horizons to those from underserved backgrounds. Additionally, the ensemble has a profound faith in the healing power of music, both in and out of the concert hall, and is proud to offer its complete recorded music library free of charge in collaboration with selected partners in music therapy. For more information, visit ensemblealtera.com.