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...
Payare Returns to Philadelphia Orchestra
Rafael Payare’s first guest conducting appearance in the new year is with the Philadelphia Orchestra, where he conducts German violinist Carolin Widmann in Kaija Saariaho’s Graal théâtre along with Ravel’s Suite No. 2 from Daphnis et Chloé and Tchaikovsky’s “Pathétique” Symphony (Jan 23–26). When the conductor made his debut in Philadelphia in 2021, the Wall Street...
Rafael Payare, OSM, and Guest Soloist Daniil Trifonov Triumph on European Tour
Rafael Payare and his Orchestre symphonique de Montréal received rave reviews for their November 2024 European tour with guest artist Daniil Trifonov. Beginning in London at the Barbican Theatre, Payare and his OSM were joined by soloist Javier Perianes for Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1 on opening night. The program also included Iman Habibi’s Jeder...
