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,...
2025-26 Season Highlights
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...
Payare Featured in BBC Music Profile
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,...
Orchestre symphonique de Montréal Announces its 2025–26 Season
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,...
Guest Conducting Engagement with Royal Opera
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...
San Diego Symphony & Payare Announce 2nd Season at Newly Transformed Jacobs Music Center
The San Diego Symphony and Music Director Rafael Payare have announced the detailed programs of the 2025-26 Jacobs Music Center season. This will be the second season in the orchestra’s new indoor home, a nearly 100-year-old theater that underwent a complete renovation before reopening in 2024 with superior acoustics, beautiful aesthetics and a wide array...
Winter & Spring Season Highlights with San Diego Symphony and Orchestre symphonique de Montréal
Rafael Payare continues his season with the San Diego Symphony at the newly renovated Jacobs Music Center this winter and spring, with particular attention given to their ongoing performances of the complete cycle of the symphonies of Shostakovich and Mahler and the tone poems of Richard Strauss. Rising star pianist Alexander Malofeev joins the orchestra...
OSM, Rafael Payare & La musique aux enfants Launch the Programme El Sistema OSM
The Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, its Music Director Rafael Payare, and La musique aux enfants have officially launched their El Sistema-inspired program in Montreal. Over the next 5 years, this program will provide intensive and immersive musical education to more than 600 young people aged 6 to 16. Under the aegis of La musique aux...
