Guest Conducting Engagements

Jan 12, 2026

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 the orchestra’s “Essentials” series (Feb 20).

For a return engagement with The Philadelphia Orchestra, Payare leads Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto with concertmaster David Kim as the soloist, along with Manuel de Falla’s El Amor Brujo – of which The Philadelphia Orchestra gave the U.S. premiere in 1922 – and pioneering Indigenous American composer Louis Wayne Ballard’s Devil’s Promenade (Feb 5–7).

In March, Payare conducts The Cleveland Orchestra in Miami with members of the New World Symphony. The program of Sibelius and Stravinsky comprises the former composer’s Swan of Tuonela and Violin Concerto in D minor with violinist Sergey Khachatryan as soloist, along with Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring (March 27, 28).

For Payare’s last U.S. guest appearance of the season, he joins the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and pianist Yulianna Avdeeva for performances of Prokofiev’s Second Piano Concerto, sharing the bill with a second interpretation of The Rite of Spring and Jimmy López’s Perú Negro (April 10, 12).

After winter performances of Shostakovich’s Eighth Symphony in San Diego and the Tenth with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the same composer’s Symphony No. 7 – which Payare also conducts in Montreal this season – is the vehicle for his return to the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, paired with a reprise of Billy Childs’s Diaspora, Concerto for Saxophone and Orchestra, featuring saxophonist Steven Banks (June 7).