CLASSICALLY UNTRAINED:
OCTOBER 2025, SYMPHONIC AND ART MUSIC CALENDAR FOR NEW ORLEANS
By David S. Lewis
The Classically Untrained Calendar
(Extra listings by Paul Oswell)
Your ONLY guide to symphonic art music in New Orleans! This is the only calendar of its kind in the region!
With brilliant offerings from the Louisiana Philharmonic and the Crescent City Chamber Music Festival in full swing, this is a busy week in symphonic music for the New Orleans area, with concerts given in settings from the lakefront to the brewery, and composers from Stravinsky to Schubert.
Wednesday, 15th October
Crescent City Chamber Music Festival (crescentcitychambermusicfestival.com)
Tenth Anniversary Season, Free Public Concert No. 4
Chamber music in a fun, informal setting at a great New Orleans brewery, and a CCCMF tradition from the very first season. Special, one-evening-only beer flights, pairings just for this performance! How cool is that? The music to be performed is exclusive to this show, and a portion of proceeds from drink sales will be donated to the Crescent City Chamber Music Festival.
Urban South Brewery (1645 Tchoupitoulas St.), urbansouth.com, 7 PM
Thursday, 16th October
Crescent City Chamber Music Festival
Free Public Concert No. 5
New York’s incredible Escher Quartet returns to CCCMF to perform masterworks of the string-quartet canon. (When a composer wants to impress the country, they will write a symphony; when they want to impress themselves or fellow musicians, they will often use the pared-down string quartet…more on that later.) The night opens with Seth Grosshandler’s gorgeous neo-romantic Dances for String Quartet* (2024); five movements that feel at once contemporary and vintage. Grosshandler and festival organizer Luke Fleming have a history; click here to watch him performing a suite for clarinet (and you can also listen to “Dances” ahead of time…it won’t spoil anything, only enhance the live experience!) The program will also include Mozart’s String Quartet in D Major, K. 575. (What does that K number mean? Give this a look:), and the night will conclude with the legendary “Death and the Maiden” String Quartet No. 14 in D minor (1824) by Franz Schubert.
Rayne Memorial United Methodist Church, Doors: 6:30 PM, Pre-Concert Talk and Q&A: 6:30 PM, Concert: 7:30 PM
Friday, 17th October
CCCMF presents: Stravinsky’s “A Soldier’s Tale” (1918)
This one stands to be something else altogether: a collaboration between the Manhattan Chamber Players and members of the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, this perhaps stretches the definitional boundaries of chamber music (it’s a lot of musicians to pack into your living room, for example!) but what an incredible ensemble playing this wild, rarely performed piece of music from modernist auteur Igor Stravinsky. “Quirky, macabre, and virtuosic” is an apt description – complete with narration and chamber ensemble, all led by conductor Joshua Gersen (unusual for a chamber piece, but necessary with this kind of group!) For those who know Stravinsky in an abstract way, his music pushed the boundaries of what would be considered “classical” music in the early day of the Modernist movements, so you would think of it in the same breath as you would think of Picasso’s Cubism, or Salvador Dali’s surrealist movement. They were contemporaries, influenced by the same marvels in war, aeronautics and technology, and artist freedom. This will be an unforgettable concert, and is the editor’s pick for the week.
Free, Trinity Episcopal Church, Doors: 6 PM, Pre-Concert Talk and Q&A: 6:30 PM, Music: 7 PM
Saturday, 18th October
Sunset Symphony at the Mandeville Lakefront
LSU School of Music’s Scott Terrell conducts the LPO in a free outdoor pops concert, featuring instantly recognizable pieces from John Williams, Englebert Humperdinck, and John Phillips Sousa and Joe Hisaishi. Mandeville Lakefront Park hosts New Orleans’ Grammy-award winning orchestra for an evening of favorites. Bring a blanket, snacks, friends and family…this concert is open to the public and free.
Free, 6:00 PM 9:00 PM, Mandeville Lakefront Park, 1545 Lakeshore DriveMandeville, LA, 70448
Sunday, 19th October
Crescent City Chamber Music Festival Finale Concert
The Escher Quartet is joined by CCCMF founder Luke Fleming and LPO Principal Clarinetist Shaquille Southwell for recent works by American composers. The night will open with Miniatures (2025), another Seth Grosshandler composition for clarinet, cello, and piano, followed by Chris Rogerson’s six-part quintet. Rogerson’s acclaim is growing nationwide, performed by top orchestras and soloists such as Yo-Yo Ma; lyrical and haunting, this promises to be a powerful and compelling work. After the intermission, Johannes Brahms’ famous muscular String Quintet No. 2 in G major closes out the evening. In our interview, festival founding artistic director Luke Fleming said this was a piece he was eagerly anticipating.
Free, Pre-Concert Talk and Q&A: 3:30 PM, Music: 4 PM, Rayne Memorial United Methodist Church, Doors: 3 PM,
Tuesday 21st October
Planned Obsolescence
The Polymnia String Quartet premieres Tucker Fuller’s Planned Obsolescence with paintings by Miriam Lilje—music & art in vivid dialogue. Written in 2025, Planned Obsolescence reimagines the business concept of intentionally limited product lifespans in an organic, natural context. Each movement—bloom, wither, shed, and root—traces a stage in the life of living things, evoking reflections on human growth, fading, release, and renewal. This premiere is presented in collaboration with visual artist Miriam Lilje, who has created eight large-scale paintings corresponding to the quartet’s four movements. (PO)
7.30PM, New Marigny Theatre, Ticketing and info
Wednesday, 22nd October
An American in Paris
Matthew Kraemer, Conductor; Jeffrey Biegel, piano
JAMES LEE III: Concerto in A*
The undercard is a world premiere from James Lee III, with his Concerto in A. Lee, the composer-in-residence for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, will have debuted seven major works this year. A bright young star and someone to catch early. The orchestra will also play Duke Ellington's New World A-Comin'; Leonard Bernstein's On the Town and Karena Ingram's heady work of new music RAINN (meant to musically represent the alarming statistic that, in America, a sexual assault occurs every 68 seconds). The evening will conclude with George Gershwin's An American in Paris (1928), an iconic work from an American composer who understood that the music known as “jazz” is essentially American art music. With Lee and fellow Baltimoran Ingram sharing the bill with Duke Ellington, the LPO continues its tradition of centering African American composers in a way that feels really good. This is not a pops concert, exactly; it’s thematically too pointed and self-aware, and even the Duke’s New World is not exactly in the regular rotation. This is part of why I love this orchestra so much, and it’s noteworthy that LPO director Matthew Kraemer, new last year, didn’t merely continue the tradition of including subtlety subversive programming, but has doubled down on it. What a night this will be!
Doors at 6:00 p.m.; music at 7:30, 7:30 PM (pre-concert talk at 6:30), The Orpheum Theater, Tickets available here at lpomusic.com
Monday 27th October
A Little Direction Music
Local composer and arranger Neal Todten plays his album 'A Little Direction Music' in full with six collaborating musicians. (PO)
9pm / Altar Space / 1222 Decatur St / $15
An interview with Luke Fleming, artistic director of the New Orleans Chamber Music Festival
More Classically Untrained features
The Classically Untrained Calendar
(Extra listings by Paul Oswell)
Your ONLY guide to symphonic art music in New Orleans! This is the only calendar of its kind in the region!
With brilliant offerings from the Louisiana Philharmonic and the Crescent City Chamber Music Festival in full swing, this is a busy week in symphonic music for the New Orleans area, with concerts given in settings from the lakefront to the brewery, and composers from Stravinsky to Schubert.
Wednesday, 15th October
Crescent City Chamber Music Festival (crescentcitychambermusicfestival.com)
Tenth Anniversary Season, Free Public Concert No. 4
Chamber music in a fun, informal setting at a great New Orleans brewery, and a CCCMF tradition from the very first season. Special, one-evening-only beer flights, pairings just for this performance! How cool is that? The music to be performed is exclusive to this show, and a portion of proceeds from drink sales will be donated to the Crescent City Chamber Music Festival.
Urban South Brewery (1645 Tchoupitoulas St.), urbansouth.com, 7 PM
Thursday, 16th October
Crescent City Chamber Music Festival
Free Public Concert No. 5
New York’s incredible Escher Quartet returns to CCCMF to perform masterworks of the string-quartet canon. (When a composer wants to impress the country, they will write a symphony; when they want to impress themselves or fellow musicians, they will often use the pared-down string quartet…more on that later.) The night opens with Seth Grosshandler’s gorgeous neo-romantic Dances for String Quartet* (2024); five movements that feel at once contemporary and vintage. Grosshandler and festival organizer Luke Fleming have a history; click here to watch him performing a suite for clarinet (and you can also listen to “Dances” ahead of time…it won’t spoil anything, only enhance the live experience!) The program will also include Mozart’s String Quartet in D Major, K. 575. (What does that K number mean? Give this a look:), and the night will conclude with the legendary “Death and the Maiden” String Quartet No. 14 in D minor (1824) by Franz Schubert.
Rayne Memorial United Methodist Church, Doors: 6:30 PM, Pre-Concert Talk and Q&A: 6:30 PM, Concert: 7:30 PM
Friday, 17th October
CCCMF presents: Stravinsky’s “A Soldier’s Tale” (1918)
This one stands to be something else altogether: a collaboration between the Manhattan Chamber Players and members of the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, this perhaps stretches the definitional boundaries of chamber music (it’s a lot of musicians to pack into your living room, for example!) but what an incredible ensemble playing this wild, rarely performed piece of music from modernist auteur Igor Stravinsky. “Quirky, macabre, and virtuosic” is an apt description – complete with narration and chamber ensemble, all led by conductor Joshua Gersen (unusual for a chamber piece, but necessary with this kind of group!) For those who know Stravinsky in an abstract way, his music pushed the boundaries of what would be considered “classical” music in the early day of the Modernist movements, so you would think of it in the same breath as you would think of Picasso’s Cubism, or Salvador Dali’s surrealist movement. They were contemporaries, influenced by the same marvels in war, aeronautics and technology, and artist freedom. This will be an unforgettable concert, and is the editor’s pick for the week.
Free, Trinity Episcopal Church, Doors: 6 PM, Pre-Concert Talk and Q&A: 6:30 PM, Music: 7 PM
Saturday, 18th October
Sunset Symphony at the Mandeville Lakefront
LSU School of Music’s Scott Terrell conducts the LPO in a free outdoor pops concert, featuring instantly recognizable pieces from John Williams, Englebert Humperdinck, and John Phillips Sousa and Joe Hisaishi. Mandeville Lakefront Park hosts New Orleans’ Grammy-award winning orchestra for an evening of favorites. Bring a blanket, snacks, friends and family…this concert is open to the public and free.
Free, 6:00 PM 9:00 PM, Mandeville Lakefront Park, 1545 Lakeshore DriveMandeville, LA, 70448
Sunday, 19th October
Crescent City Chamber Music Festival Finale Concert
The Escher Quartet is joined by CCCMF founder Luke Fleming and LPO Principal Clarinetist Shaquille Southwell for recent works by American composers. The night will open with Miniatures (2025), another Seth Grosshandler composition for clarinet, cello, and piano, followed by Chris Rogerson’s six-part quintet. Rogerson’s acclaim is growing nationwide, performed by top orchestras and soloists such as Yo-Yo Ma; lyrical and haunting, this promises to be a powerful and compelling work. After the intermission, Johannes Brahms’ famous muscular String Quintet No. 2 in G major closes out the evening. In our interview, festival founding artistic director Luke Fleming said this was a piece he was eagerly anticipating.
Free, Pre-Concert Talk and Q&A: 3:30 PM, Music: 4 PM, Rayne Memorial United Methodist Church, Doors: 3 PM,
Tuesday 21st October
Planned Obsolescence
The Polymnia String Quartet premieres Tucker Fuller’s Planned Obsolescence with paintings by Miriam Lilje—music & art in vivid dialogue. Written in 2025, Planned Obsolescence reimagines the business concept of intentionally limited product lifespans in an organic, natural context. Each movement—bloom, wither, shed, and root—traces a stage in the life of living things, evoking reflections on human growth, fading, release, and renewal. This premiere is presented in collaboration with visual artist Miriam Lilje, who has created eight large-scale paintings corresponding to the quartet’s four movements. (PO)
7.30PM, New Marigny Theatre, Ticketing and info
Wednesday, 22nd October
An American in Paris
Matthew Kraemer, Conductor; Jeffrey Biegel, piano
JAMES LEE III: Concerto in A*
The undercard is a world premiere from James Lee III, with his Concerto in A. Lee, the composer-in-residence for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, will have debuted seven major works this year. A bright young star and someone to catch early. The orchestra will also play Duke Ellington's New World A-Comin'; Leonard Bernstein's On the Town and Karena Ingram's heady work of new music RAINN (meant to musically represent the alarming statistic that, in America, a sexual assault occurs every 68 seconds). The evening will conclude with George Gershwin's An American in Paris (1928), an iconic work from an American composer who understood that the music known as “jazz” is essentially American art music. With Lee and fellow Baltimoran Ingram sharing the bill with Duke Ellington, the LPO continues its tradition of centering African American composers in a way that feels really good. This is not a pops concert, exactly; it’s thematically too pointed and self-aware, and even the Duke’s New World is not exactly in the regular rotation. This is part of why I love this orchestra so much, and it’s noteworthy that LPO director Matthew Kraemer, new last year, didn’t merely continue the tradition of including subtlety subversive programming, but has doubled down on it. What a night this will be!
Doors at 6:00 p.m.; music at 7:30, 7:30 PM (pre-concert talk at 6:30), The Orpheum Theater, Tickets available here at lpomusic.com
Monday 27th October
A Little Direction Music
Local composer and arranger Neal Todten plays his album 'A Little Direction Music' in full with six collaborating musicians. (PO)
9pm / Altar Space / 1222 Decatur St / $15
An interview with Luke Fleming, artistic director of the New Orleans Chamber Music Festival
More Classically Untrained features