Carnegie Hall

(NEW YORK, NY; October 1, 2025)—In its 19th season, Ensemble Connect welcomes 12 new young professional musicians to take part in its celebrated fellowship program over the next two years. The new cohort offers concerts at Carnegie Hall and The Juilliard School, as well as residencies and performances at Skidmore College and in schools and community venues throughout New York City.

 

Highlights of Ensemble Connect’s 2025–2026 season include three concerts in Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall, the first of which features Da pacem Domine and Quintettino by Arvo Pärt as part of his Carnegie Hall’s Deb’s Composers Chair appointment (Oct. 28). Ensemble Connect offers the New York premiere of a new Carnegie Hall-commissioned work by George Lewis (Feb. 17) following its world premiere by the group on February 13 at Skidmore College. This season’s final performance in Weill Recital Hall features works by American composers Joan Towers, Michael Tilson Thomas, Wynton Marsalis, and Leonard Bernstein as part of the Hall’s United in Sound: America at 250 festival (Apr. 13). Alongside these concerts at Carnegie Hall, the group offers two performances at The Juilliard School’s Paul Hall featuring works by Reena Esmail, Schoenberg, Gabriella Smith, Mozart, and others, including a Juilliard-commissioned work by Emily Liushen.

Ensemble Connect Up Close—an innovative concert series presented in the Weill Music Room that experiments with concert format, audience engagement, and multimedia—returns for a seventh season, featuring a collaboration with Marin Alsop, as part of her Perspectives series (Jan. 31). Clarinetist David Krakauer joins Ensemble Connect as its artistic partner for its second Up Close performance (May 6). More details will be announced later this season.

From October 21–25, Ensemble Connect continues its biannual residency at Skidmore College by connecting with the students and Saratoga Springs community. During the residency, fellows engage with Skidmore College students as well as students in local elementary, middle, and high schools offering master classes, lessons, class demonstrations, and interactive performances. The residency culminates with a performance in Skidmore’s Arthur Zankel Music Center, Helen Filene Ladd Concert Hall, on Friday, October 24 at 7:30 p.m. Ensemble Connect returns to Skidmore College for a second residency this season from February 10–14, 2026.

In addition to their performances this season, Ensemble Connect begins partnerships with 12 New York City public schools, with each musician working alongside a New York City instrumental music teacher. The musicians bring their expert musicianship—as well as their professional performer’s perspective and creative approaches—to band, keyboard, and string programs across four New York City boroughs.

Ensemble Connect presents approximately 50 interactive performances in schools this season. Fellows develop these programs to explore a musical piece or concept and incorporate listening activities and audience participation. Ensemble Connect also partners with community venues in New York City in the spring, bringing interactive performances to incarcerated populations, senior community centers, homeless shelters, and for organizations supporting people with disabilities.

Over the course of their fellowship, Ensemble Connect musicians participate in professional development sessions to shape purposeful, personally rewarding career paths that redefine the role of the 21st-century musician. The cohort meets weekly to learn from artists, composers, and industry professionals in the fields of performance, teaching artistry and music education, arts management, entrepreneurship, and others. These sessions help the musicians gain new skills and experiment with new approaches to music performance and education while building a strong community within the ensemble. Ensemble Connect alums also play an important role in leading professional development workshops.

Ensemble Connect is an inspirational collective of young professional musicians created in 2007 by Carnegie Hall, The Juilliard School, and the Weill Music Institute in partnership with the New York City Department of Education. The program prepares exceptionally talented musicians for careers that combine musical excellence with teaching, community engagement, advocacy, leadership, and entrepreneurship. It offers them top-quality performance opportunities, partnerships with New York City public schools, and rigorous professional development. Ensemble Connect’s 158 alums have gone on to join more than 100 professional ensembles and teach at prestigious universities across the United States. To find out more about the impact of Ensemble Connect worldwide and to learn about projects led by alums, follow this link.

Ensemble Connect 2025–2027 Fellows & Partnerships

Elena Ariza, Cello (Cupertino, CA)

Education: Columbia University / The Juilliard School

Partnered with PS 58 The Carroll School, Brooklyn

Cameron Cullen, Flute (Carlisle, England)

Education: Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama / Yale School of Music / The University of Miami’s Frost School of Music

Partnered with PS21Q Edward Hart, Queens

Laurel Gagnon, Violin (Hooksett, New Hampshire)

Education: Park University / Indiana University / Yale School of Music

Partnered with Brooklyn Technical High School, Brooklyn

Nicole Martin, Clarinet (Westbrook, Maine)

Education: Cleveland Institute of Music / Case Western Reserve University / Yale School of Music

Partnered with Lower Manhattan Arts Academy, Manhattan

Coco Mi, Violin (Princeton, NJ)

Education: The Juilliard School

Partnered with Frank Sinatra High School, Queens

Grace O’Connell, Trumpet (Madison, WI)

Education: Middle Tennessee State University / Yale School of Music

Partnered with PS 130 The Parkside School, Brooklyn

Anoush Pogossian, Clarinet (Glendale, CA)

Education: Columbia University / The Juilliard School

Partnered with IS78 Roy H. Mann, Brooklyn

Will Sands, Horn (Pittsburgh, PA)

Education: Eastman School of Music / University of Rochester / Yale School of Music

Partnered with Robert F. Wagner Middle School 167, Manhattan

David Seder, Trombone (Lexington, KY)

Education: University of Kentucky / Yale School of Music

Partnered with Celia Cruz Bronx High School of Music, Bronx

JJ Silvey, Oboe (Walkerton, IN)

Education: Indiana University / Mannes School of Music / The Juilliard School

Partnered with Midwood High School, Brooklyn

Abby Smith, Viola (Salt Lake City, Utah)

Education: Colburn School / Yale School of Music

Partnered with MS 180 Dr. Daniel Hale Williams, Bronx

Joseph Vaz, Piano (Blue Ash, Ohio)

Education: Indiana University / University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music / CUNY Graduate Center

Partnered with Edward R. Murrow High School, Brooklyn

 

Ensemble Connect 2025–2026 Concert Season

Performances: During the 2025–2026 season, Ensemble Connect presents nine concerts at several venues, including Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall and Weill Music Room; The Juilliard School’s Paul Hall; and Skidmore College’s Arthur Zankel Music Center, Helen Filene Ladd Concert Hall.

2025–2026 concerts include:

• Friday, October 24 at Helen Filene Ladd Concert Hall in Skidmore College’s Arthur Zankel Music Center – Ensemble Connect visits Skidmore College for its biannual residency, presenting a concert that features the luminous sounds of Arvo Pärt alongside Janáček’s evocative Mládí and Shostakovich’s emotionally rich Piano Quintet, offering audiences a journey through some of the most compelling voices of chamber music.
   
• Tuesday, October 28 at Weill Recital Hall – Ensemble Connect kicks off its 2025–2026 season at Carnegie Hall with a program that includes music by the singular Arvo Pärt, joining in the worldwide celebration of the composer’s 90th year.
   
• Wednesday, November 12 at The Juilliard School’s Paul Hall – Ensemble Connect presents an evening of captivating chamber music. The program opens with Reena Esmail’s The Light is the Same, a radiant and immersive work. Schubert’s Notturno in E-flat Major for Piano Trio follows, offering a serene and lyrical journey through one of the composer’s most intimate pieces. The concert culminates with Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire, a landmark of expressionist chamber music that continues to challenge and inspire audiences.
   
• Saturday, January 31 at Weill Music Room – Up Close performances invite a visionary artistic partner to create a cross-disciplinary experiment in collaboration Ensemble Connect. The ensemble’s artistic partner for this performance is world-renowned conductor, music director, and 2025–2026 Carnegie Hall Perspectives artist Marin Alsop, who curates a program of new music and participates as a conductor.
   
• Friday, February 13 at Helen Filene Ladd Concert Hall in Skidmore College’s Arthur Zankel Music Center – In Ensemble Connect’s second residency at Skidmore College this season, their program highlights the work of notable American composers, including the world premiere of George Lewis’s Carnegie Hall–commissioned piece. Also featured is Valerie Coleman’s Portraits of Langston, Barber’s Adagio for Strings, selected rags by Joplin arranged for string quartet, and Ives’s String Quartet No. 1, “From the Salvation Army,” offering a thoughtful survey of American chamber music.
   
• Tuesday, February 17 at Weill Recital Hall – In their second Weill Recital Hall performance of the season, Ensemble Connect features selections by extraordinary American composers as part of Carnegie Hall’s United in Sound: America at 250 festival, including Ives, Barber, and the visionary George Lewis, whose new Carnegie Hall–commissioned work receives its New York premiere.
   
• Thursday, March 19 at The Juilliard School’s Paul Hall – Returning to The Juilliard School, the program opens with Gabriella Smith’s Tessellations, a unique piece on patterns and how they can reform in surprising ways. Emily Liushen's Juilliard-commissioned new work follows alongside Nelhybel’s bold Brass Trio and Mozart’s Quintet for Piano and Winds in E-flat Major, K. 452.
   
• Monday, April 13 at Weill Recital Hall – Echoes of Stravinsky resound in a unique performance by Ensemble Connect. Joan Tower’s “Petroushskates” is inspired—as its name suggests—by both Stravinsky’s Pétrouchka and the flowing motions of figure skating. Wynton Marsalis’s A Fiddler’s Tale reimagines Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale suite, adding further emphasis to the composer’s characteristic early-jazz ingredients.
   
• Wednesday, May 6 at Weill Music Room – In their second Up Close performance, Ensemble Connect’s artistic partner is clarinetist David Krakauer, who blends genres so seamlessly “you’d almost think that there’s no appreciable difference between jazz, klezmer, and formal classical music” (The Wall Street Journal). This event celebrates 100 years of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.

 

Ensemble Connect

Ensemble Connect is made up of extraordinary professional classical musicians residing in the US who take part in a two-year fellowship program created in 2007 by Carnegie Hall, The Juilliard School, and the Weill Music Institute in partnership with the New York City Department of Education. The program prepares fellows for careers that combine musical excellence with teaching, community engagement, advocacy, entrepreneurship, and leadership by offering top-quality performance opportunities, intensive professional development, and partnerships throughout the fellowship with New York City public schools.

On the concert stage and in schools and communities, Ensemble Connect has earned accolades from critics and audiences alike for the quality of the concerts, the fresh and open-minded approach to programming, and the ability to actively engage any audience.

Exemplary performers, dedicated teachers, and passionate advocates of music throughout the community, the forward-looking musicians of Ensemble Connect are redefining what it means to be a musician in the 21st century.

Ensemble Connect is a program of Carnegie Hall, The Juilliard School, and the Weill Music Institute in partnership with the New York City Department of Education.

Lead funding has been provided by Max H. Gluck Foundation, the Hearst Foundations, The Kovner Foundation, Phyllis and Charles Rosenthal, Edmond de Rothschild Family Philanthropy, Beatrice Santo Domingo, and Hope and Robert F. Smith.

Global Ambassadors: Michael ByungJu Kim and Kyung Ah Park, Hope and Robert F. Smith, and Maggie and Richard Tsai.

Additional support has been provided by the Kathi and Peter Arnow Foundation, Ronald E. Blaylock and Petra Pope, E.H.A. Foundation, Barbara G. Fleischman, Clive and Anya Gillinson, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Susan and Elihu Rose Foundation, The Morris and Alma Schapiro Fund, Sarah Billinghurst Solomon and Howard Solomon, and Carlos Tome and Theresa Kim.

Ensemble Connect is also supported, in part, by endowment grants from The Kovner Foundation and the Estate of Eleanor Doblin Unger.

Public support is provided by the New York City Department of Education.

Ticket Information

Ticket Information for Carnegie Hall Tickets can be purchased at carnegiehall.org, by calling 212-247-7800, and at the Carnegie Hall Box Office. For more information on discount ticket programs, including those for students, Notables members, and Bank of America customers, visit carnegiehall.org/discounts. Ticket Information for The Juilliard School’s Paul Hall Tickets for Ensemble Connect’s concerts at Juilliard’s Paul Hall are free and no tickets are required. Concertgoers should arrive 30–60 minutes in advance of the performance to sign in to the Juilliard building and receive a visitor badge. The Juilliard Box Office may be reached at 212-769-7406 or via email at boxoffice@juilliard.edu. Ticket Information for Skidmore College’s Arthur Zankel Music Center The event is free and open to the public; tickets required. For more information, please visit skidmore.edu/zankel or call the box office at 518-580-5321.