Payare & OSM Announce 60th and 61st Tours
From August 15 to 29, the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal will undertake its 60th international tour; less than two months later, the OSM will land in California to commence its 61st. After South Korea, Europe, and the United States, these will be the OSM’s fifth and sixth tours under the baton of Rafael Payare. Says...
Payare and OSM Reveal 2026/27 Season
The 2026/27 season marks Rafael Payare’s fifth as Music Director of the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal. They will open OSM’s 93rd season in grand style with the expressive power of Mahler, continuing the cycle begun in 2022. The opening concert on September 16 and 17 will bring together Das klagende Lied (Song of Lamentation), an early...
Payare Featured in Preludium Magazine Ahead of Concertgebouw Orchestra Debut
Rafael Payare is Preludium magazine’s February 2026 cover story ahead of his debut leading the Concertgebouw Orchestra this week. The feature highlights Payare’s musical journey, beginning with his early years as a musician in Venezuela to his rise as leading conductor and music director of both San Diego Symphony and Orchestre symphonique de Montréal. Says...
San Diego Symphony and Payare Announce 2026/27 Season
Next season the San Diego Symphony brings 19 programs of orchestral monuments, guest soloists’s show-stopping performances, and an exploration of a world of music of shimmering color and intoxicating rhythms—all designed to share deeply human storytelling through sound. Programming features 13 symphonies, 15 concertos and five solo features, and 15 works new to the San...
Guest Conducting Engagements
In the spring, Rafael Payare makes his Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra debut leading violinist Frank Peter Zimmermann in Frank Martin’s Violin Concerto, on a program with Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony and Sofia Gubaidulina’s Fairytale Poem, inspired by Miloš Macourek’s The Little Piece of Chalk (Feb 18, 19). Following these performances, Payare conducts the Shostakovich by itself in...
Payare Extends Tenure with the San Diego Symphony
The San Diego Symphony has extended Rafael Payare’s tenure as Music and Artistic Director through the 2028-29 season, marking 10 years of his transformative leadership at the helm. This period has been a historic one for the San Diego Symphony, highlighted by the opening of two landmark venues—the acclaimed Rady Shell at Jacobs Park on the...
Berlioz Album Nominated for International Classical Music Award
The Orchestre symphonique de Montréal and Rafael Payare’s latest album–Berlioz ‘Le carnaval romain’ & ‘Symphonie fantastique,’ released on Pentatone last month–has been nominated for a 2026 International Classical Music Award in the Symphonic Music category. See the full list of nominees here.
Payare and OSM’s New Berlioz Album Out Now on Pentatone
The Orchestre symphonique de Montréal and its Music Director Rafael Payare explore Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique and Le carnaval romain – two works that reveal the composer’s flair for drama, color, and psychological intensity. In Symphonie fantastique, Berlioz charts the delirious inner world of an artist undone by passion, hallucination, and obsession. From dreamy reveries to a diabolical witches’ sabbath,...
