The fall concert season begins not just with the customary Beethoven and Bruckner but also with a great polychrome explosion of music from Latin America. The Venezuelan Gustavo Dudamel conducting a new work by the Mexican composer Gabriela Ortiz; a new chamber opera by Paola Prestini, who grew up on the Arizona side of border, about Mennonites who settled on the other; Lisetta Oropesa singing songs from Cuba; and the Argentinian-born Osvaldo Golijov’s opera Ainadamar at the Met: It’s enough to make you reassess classical music’s lineage. Miller Theatre, September 12 The New Orleans–born pianist and composer, whose music incorporates a wide range of Black and American idioms, gets her own showcase.
David Geffen Hall, September 12, 13, and 15 Every performance led by Michael Tilson Thomas is an unexpected gift now. Although he has drastically cut back on conducting since a diagnosis of glioblastoma in 2021, he’s scheduled to open the Philharmonic season with one of his calling cards: Mahler’s Symphony No. 5.
Alice Tully Hall, September 16 David Robertson anchors the school’s interdisciplinary fall festival, conducting the crackerjack student orchestra in a new work by Katie Jenkins along with Schoenberg’s Piano Concerto and Beethoven’s Fifth. Metropolitan Opera, Opens September 23 The routine of a high-tech remote warrior, steering a lethal drone from a room in Nevada, might not seem operatic, but it is the stuff of Jeanine Tesori’s Met Opera debut. The new .