Pasadena Symphony Unveils Its 2025-26 Season: Bold Classics and New Voices
Brett Mitchell will lead his second season as Music Director of the Pasadena Symphony at the Ambassador Auditorium from November 2025 through May 2026. (Photo by Tim Sullens)
PASADENA — The Pasadena Symphony has announced its 2025-26 season, Brett Mitchell’s second as Music Director. Pasadena Now has published an extensive article about this announcement:
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PASADENA SYMPHONY UNVEILS ITS 2025-26 SEASON: BOLD CLASSICS AND NEW VOICES
Brett Mitchell's sophomore season as Music Director promises a delicate balance of orchestral staples and contemporary voices
In Southern California’s classical music scene, the Pasadena Symphony has long occupied a position of understated elegance—neither flashy nor provincial, but rather a thoughtful custodian of orchestral tradition. Now, with Brett Mitchell entering his second season as Music Director, the orchestra appears poised for a subtle yet significant transformation. The recently announced 2025-26 season suggests a conductor and ensemble seeking to establish a dialogue between the canonical and the contemporary, between European tradition and American innovation.
The season opens on November 8th with the appropriately titled “Symphonie Fantastique!” program, featuring Berlioz’s hallucinatory masterpiece alongside Ravel’s effervescent Piano Concerto in G Major, performed by Orion Weiss, a pianist whose interpretive choices often bring fresh perspective to familiar works.
The inclusion of Jim Self’s “Tour de Force” signals Mitchell’s interest in expanding the orchestral repertoire beyond the expected, though one wonders if this particular piece will offer substantive musical rewards or merely serve as an obligatory nod to living composers.
The January program pairs Mendelssohn’s evocative “Scottish” Symphony and “Hebrides Overture” with Edgar Meyer’s Violin Concerto, to be performed by Tessa Lark. Meyer, whose compositional voice bridges classical formalism with American vernacular traditions, represents a shrewd programming choice—familiar enough to avoid alienating subscription-base conservatives while still offering something beyond the standard repertoire.
February 21st brings a program featuring Tchaikovsky’s profound “Pathétique” Symphony, Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23 performed by Michelle Cann, and Jeffrey Nytch’s “Beacon”—another example of Mitchell’s commitment to showcasing contemporary voices alongside canonical masterworks.
Perhaps most intriguing is the March 21st concert featuring Juan Pablo Contreras as both composer and special guest for his Symphony No. 1, a co-commission by the orchestra.
Contreras, whose work often explores his Mexican heritage through classical forms, will share the program with Bernstein’s “Three Variations from Fancy Free” and Dvořák’s perennial “New World” Symphony—a pairing that seems designed to invite reflection on musical representations of American identity across different eras and cultural perspectives.
April 25th presents Beethoven’s revolutionary “Eroica” Symphony alongside Quinn Mason’s thematically related “Heroic Overture (Overtura Eroica)” and Jennifer Higdon’s Cello Concerto, performed by Julian Schwarz in its West Coast première—further evidence of Mitchell’s interest in creating meaningful dialogues between established masterpieces and contemporary compositions.
The season concludes with “America @ 250” on May 30th, a program that reads initially like a Fourth of July concert displaced to Memorial Day weekend. Yet the inclusion of Jonathan Leshnoff’s “Rhapsody on ‘America'” (receiving its West Coast première and co-commissioned by the orchestra) alongside selections from John Williams’ “American Journey,” Copland’s “Appalachian Spring Suite” and “Lincoln Portrait” suggests a more thoughtful engagement with national musical identity than mere patriotic spectacle. Pianist Joyce Yang joins the orchestra for this exploration of American musical vernacular.
Throughout the season, Mitchell has assembled an impressive roster of soloists and programming that consistently pairs orchestral warhorses with works by living composers.
What emerges is a portrait of an orchestra and conductor navigating the perennial challenge facing American symphonic institutions: how to honor the European classical tradition while establishing a distinct and contemporary American orchestral identity. Mitchell’s approach appears to be one of gentle evolution rather than radical reinvention—introducing new works alongside familiar masterpieces, inviting audiences to discover connections between centuries and continents.
Whether Mitchell’s vision will ultimately lead to a distinctive institutional identity remains to be seen, but his sophomore season suggests a promising direction: neither hidebound by tradition nor recklessly innovative, but attentive to both the past and future of orchestral music in America.
Music Director Brett Mitchell onstage at the Pasadena Symphony’s home of the Ambassador Auditorium, the “Carnegie Hall of the West.” (Photo by Tim Sullens)