Rafael Payare conducts full seasons in 2025–26 as Music Director of both California’s San Diego Symphony (SDS) and Canada’s Orchestre symphonique de Montréal (Montreal Symphony Orchestra/OSM), while also debuting with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, returning to the Philadelphia and Cleveland Orchestras and Pittsburgh Symphony, and much more.

After last season’s European tour with OSM featuring Berlioz’s Roman Carnival Overture and Symphonie fantastique – culminating in live performances in Montreal that were recorded and will be released on the Pentatone label this fall (Oct 17) – Payare opens his fourth season as OSM Music Director with the same composer’s The Damnation of Faust (Sep 17, 18). Payare then continues the Mahler cycle he launched in 2022 with the composer’s Ninth Symphony (Oct 15, 16), followed by the Fourth Symphony in the new year (Feb 11–13), sharing the bill with Jimmy López’s Perú Negro and Billy Childs’s Diaspora, Concerto for Saxophone and Orchestra.

Payare also conducts a program featuring OSM principal trombonist James Box in Samy Moussa’s “Yericho” Concerto and OSM principal cello Brian Manker in Bloch’s Schelomo (Oct 22, 25); an OSM-commissioned world premiere by British-Canadian composer Isabella Gellis, sharing the bill with Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto featuring Emanuel Ax and Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony (Jan 15, 17); programs featuring virtuoso clarinetist Kinan Azmeh (March 11, 12); a specially narrated version of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro featuring Ildebrando D’Arcangelo in the title role and Anna Prohaska as Susanna (March 18, 20); and much more.

Embarking on his seventh season as Music Director of the San Diego Symphony, Payare opens with a theatrical celebration of France and French music, featuring Debussy’s The Joyful Isle and The Box of Toys, his charming ballet score for children, juxtaposed with a semi-staging of Ravel’s comic fantasy The Child and the Magical Spells (L’enfant et les sortilèges) (Oct 3, 5).

Composer-in-Residence Jimmy López is represented by two works with the SDS this season: his piano concerto Ephemerae, written for and featuring Spanish pianist Javier Perianes (Oct 11, 12); and his Perú Negro, on a program with Mendelssohn’s “Scottish” Symphony and Berg’s Violin Concerto with soloist Jeff Thayer (May 15, 16). The SDS has also co-commissioned, along with OSM, López’s Sixth Symphony, which is inspired by the migratory patterns of Monarch butterflies and will premiere in 2026–27.

In spring of 2026, Payare leads the San Diego Symphony in a two-week Brahms Festival, comprising four programs of iconic works. The festival will feature Brahms’s A German Requiem with soloists Julie Boulianne and Michael Sumuel and the San Diego Symphony Chorus (Feb 27; March 1); Symphonies Nos. 1 and 2 (Feb 28); and Symphonies Nos. 4 and 3 in consecutive performances, each paired with the Violin Concerto featuring Leonidas Kavakos (March 6, 7).

Also in the spring, 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, an allegory of artistic perseverance (Feb 18–19).​​ Following these performances, Payare conducts the Shostakovich by itself in the orchestra’s “Essentials” series (Feb 20).

Payare’s first guest appearance of the season is with Japan’s NHK Symphony, where he conducts soloist Emanuel Ax in Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 25 along with Strauss’s tone poem Ein Heldenleben and Schumann’s incidental music to Manfred (Nov 20, 21). The following week, Payare guest conducts the UK’s Philharmonia in Leicester and London, performing Berlioz’s Roman Carnival Overture and Symphonie fantastique, along with the London premiere of Philharmonia’s Featured Composer Gabriela Ortiz’s trumpet concerto Altar de Bronce. Celebrated Latin Grammy Award-winning Venezuelan trumpeter Pacho Flores, for whom the concerto was composed, is the featured soloist (Nov 26, 27).

Payare’s other guest appearances this season include return engagements with The Cleveland Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, and The Philadelphia Orchestra.

For full season details, visit the calendar.

 

Journalist Clive Paget wrote a substantial profile of Rafael Payare for the July 2025 issue of BBC Music Magazine. 

“It was the Viennese critic Hermann Bahr who likened Mahler’s arrival in a hotel lobby to a gust of wind forcing open a window, or water bursting from a pipe. There’s something similarly elemental about Rafael Payare, though in our case we are meeting in a less-than-glamorous back room at the Royal Opera House. The Venezuelan is in town to rehearse Puccini’s Turandot, and despite having had his nose to the ice princess’s grindstone for seven-or-so hours he shows no signs of flagging.

Animated, turbo-charged even (at one point he apologises, entirely unnecessarily, for his own exuberance), Payare marries charm with thoughtfulness. Beneath the luxuriant shock of hair, there’s a calm, bespectacled profile. He laughs a lot – sometimes uproariously – and he’s a perceptive observer of his peers. To complete the Mahlerian analogy, he’s a noted authority on the late-Romantictradition, as evidenced by recent recordings of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony and Schoenberg’s Pelleas und Melisande.”

Read the full piece in the magazine’s July issue.

The Orchestre symphonique de Montréal unveiled its 2025–2026 season, which is Rafael Payare’s 4th season as Music Director. The OSM will be joined by an array of renowned artists from near and far, including many anticipated return performances and a great diversity of repertoires. This will be a season of symphonic masterworks, symphonic happy hours, music and film concerts, over-the-top éclaté concerts, POP concerts, and concerts for young audiences. Our public will discover, or rediscover works by Mozart, Brahms, Moussa, Stravinsky, Gougeon, Shostakovich, and of course, Mahler, performed by distinguished guests including Barbara Hannigan, Emanuel Ax, Véronique Gens, Joseph Tawadros and James Ehnes.

Presenting a variety of themes and a host of renowned, emerging, and culturally diverse artists, the 2025–2026 season opens a wide window on the world. Continuing the artistic journey begun since my arrival at the OSM, this programming brings together essential classics and new discoveries. The OSM’s educational mission also takes on anew dimension with the Programme El Sistema OSM, inspired by my own educational background and providing young people with rewarding musical training through group practice. This season will beautifully epitomize the joy of playing together and of sharing music that lives. —Rafael Payare, OSM Music Director

After delighting audiences in Europe and at the Maison symphonique with Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique, the OSM and Rafael Payare will open the 25–26 season in grand style with the same composer’s La damnation de Faust, a captivating and powerfully emotional lyrical drama.

In October and in February, Payare will move forward with his Mahler cycle begun in 2022.OSM audiences will first hear the composer’s Symphony no. 9, then his Symphony no. 4.The Shostakovitch cycle also continues, with a performance of the “Leningrad” Symphony no. 7 in April 2026, conducted by Rafael Payare. Beethoven’s Symphony no. 8 will open this concert. Also, under Payare’s direction, on April 22, the Orchestra will perform Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, as well as the world premiere of a work commissioned by the OSM to Denis Gougeon and Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto no. 2 featuring Bruce Liu as soloist. 

In December, Rafael Payare will be joined by the amazing Dutch violinist Simone Lamsmain Korngold’s Violin Concerto in D major, followed by Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra. In January, Emanuel Ax will be the OSM and Payare’s guest for a performance of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto no. 3. This concert will also feature the world premiere of a commissioned work by British Canadian composer Isabella Gellis as well as Prokofiev’s Symphony no. 5. In March, Rafael Payare and the OSM continue their cycle of Mozart operas to libretti by Lorenzo Da Ponte. This season, audiences will hear The Marriage of Figaro. In May 2026, to close the season, Rafael Payare will conduct Wagner’s The Ring Without Words, preceded by Schumann’s Piano Concerto in A minor, performed by the legendary Yefim Bronfman.

To explore the full season, visit osm.ca.

This spring, Rafael Payare returns to London’s Royal Opera House to lead Sondra Radvanovsky in the title role of Puccini’s Turandot (March 19–April 4). The cast also includes SeokJong Baek as Calaf, Anna Princeva and Gemma Summerfield alternating the role of Liù, and Adam Palka as Timur.

After Payare’s 2023 debut at the Royal Opera House conducting Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia, the critics were enthralled, with Bachtrack declaring: “It was light, it was airy, it was enthusiastically accented, it was rhythmically on the nail and it elicited the biggest ovation for an opera overture I can remember – and deservedly so, because it set the scene for an evening of buffa entertainment that never faltered.” The Guardian agreed, finding that Payare’s “perky, pacy reading is full of light and shade, with nimbly sprung rhythms crisp as an iceberg lettuce.”

Find more performance details and tickets here.