Boston Modern Orchestra Project Announces 2026-27 Season

Gil Rose, Artistic Director/Conductor of the GRAMMY Award-winning Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP), announced its 2026-27 season. As the nation's premier ensemble dedicated to performing, commissioning, and recording modern orchestral repertoire, BMOP continues bridging the conservative and progressive traditions of American classical music from the past century. This season features four live performances at Boston's historic Jordan Hall including the season-opening concert with the acclaimed American soprano Julia Bullock weaving poetry and voice with music by Samuel Barber and Matthew Aucion. Other performances include premieres of two saxophone-centric works by Pulitzer Prize-winning composers Tyshawn Sorey and Paul Moravec, the East Coast premiere of David T. Little's opera JFK, and a special revival of Be Glad Then America, the 1976 bicentennial opera by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer John La Montaine.

'Continuing to shine in overlooked music from the last century (Gramophone),' BMOP's in-house record label, BMOP/sound, will release world premiere recordings including Eric Moe: No Time Like the Present, Richard Danielpour: The Celestial Circus, Ulysses Kay: Frederick Douglass, Shelley Washington: Both, Evan Ziporyn: Hard Drive, and more.

'This season we continue to be fueled by the same exact energy and dedication that has guided us for decades. We look forward to sharing this passion both on stage and on record, bringing audiences unforgettable performances that honor our past while fearlessly championing the future of symphonic music.' - Gil Rose, artistic director/conductor of BMOP

BMOP in Concert

11.06.26 at 7:30 p.m. | NEC's Jordan Hall, Boston
DELIGHT OF THE MUSES
Anthony De Ritis Jiggedy Jingle Jaunty Jaunty (2026) world premiere
Samuel Barber Knoxville Summer of 1915 (1947) — Julia Bullock, soprano
Matthew Aucion Selections from The No One's Rose (2021) — Julia Bullock, soprano
Charles Wuorinen Delight of the Muses (1991)

Anthony De Ritis's Jiggedy, Jingle, Jaunty, Jaunty, a world premiere for orchestra and electronics, pays homage to two 20th-century giants, James Joyce and Luciano Berio, through a dialogue that stretches across time. BMOP welcomes soprano Julia Bullock for Samuel Barber's iconic Knoxville: Summer of 1915, a setting of James Agee's 1938 prose text whose childlike recollection of a summer evening remains one of Barber's most beloved creations. In addition, Ms. Bullock also performs two movements from Matt Aucoin's The No One's Rose, settings of poems by Paul Celan that explore memory, language, and loss. The evening concludes with Charles Wuorinen's Delight of the Muses, a homage to Mozart based on material from Don Giovanni. Outlandish, sentimental, and a rousing good time, this ballet shows this iconic American composer at his irreverent best.

03.13.27 at 7:30 p.m. | NEC's Jordan Hall, Boston
JFK w. ODYSSEY OPERA
David T. Little / libst. Royce Vavrek JFK (2016) East Coast premiere

In collaboration with its sister opera company, Odyssey Opera, BMOP brings a semi-staged production of David T. Little's grand opera JFK (2016) with libretti by Royce Vavrek. This marks the East Coast premiere in JFK's home state of Massachusetts. JFK delves into the hours President John F. Kennedy spent in Fort Worth, Texas, immediately before his assassination in Dallas, exploring the inner life of the President and Mrs. Kennedy during their final day together.

04.09.27 at 7:30 p.m. | NEC's Jordan Hall, Boston
AFTERTONES OF INFINITY
Joseph Schwantner Aftertones of Infinity (1978)
Tyshawn Sorey Adagio (2022) New England premiere — Tim McAllister, saxophone
Paul Moravec Saxophone Concerto (2027) world premiere — Tim McAllister, saxophone
Lukas Foss Baroque Variations (1967)

Joseph Schwantner's Pulitzer-winning Aftertones of Infinity premiered in 1979 to great acclaim and has long been admired for its otherworldly effects and evocative sound world. Brilliant saxophonist Timothy McAllister joins BMOP for the New England premiere of Tyshawn Sorey's 2024 Pulitzer Prize–winning Adagio (for Wadada Leo Smith), a 20-minute work for alto saxophone and orchestra that unfolds in luminous textures at an exceptionally slow tempo. In contrast, McAllister will premiere a new Saxophone Concerto by another Pulitzer Prize winner and longtime BMOP collaborator, Paul Moravec. The program concludes with Lukas Foss's iconic Baroque Variations, based on Handel, Scarlatti, and Bach. Instead of composing traditional variations on a short theme, Foss takes entire Baroque works—fracturing, bending, and distorting them as though heard from another room or drifting across a radio dial. Its wild, collage-like approach famously provoked a mix of boos and cheers at its New York premiere.

06.20.27 at 7:30 p.m. | Location TBA, Boston
BE GLAD THEN AMERICA
John La Montaine Be Glad Then America (1976)

In collaboration with its sister opera company, Odyssey Opera, BMOP brings a semi-staged production of John La Montaine's Be Glad Then America. Written for the American Bicentennial, Be Glad Then America is a large-scale statement on national identity and will be an uplifting tribute to America's 250th anniversary. It is a vivid pageant that blends narration, solo voices, chorus, and orchestra into a sweeping musical portrait of the nation's founding spirit. Drawing on historical texts and La Montaine's bold orchestral writing, the work moves between reflection and celebration, creating a theatrical tour de force that evokes the ideals, conflicts, and aspirations of early America. The original 1976 production was conceived and directed by Boston icon Sarah Caldwell.

About Gil Rose

GRAMMY Award winner and seven-time GRAMMY nominee Gil Rose is one of today's most innovative conductors, praised as 'amazingly versatile' (The Boston Globe) with 'a sense of style and sophistication' (Opera News). Equally comfortable performing core repertoire, new works, and lesser-known historic symphonic and operatic works, 'Gil Rose is not just a fine conductor, but a peerless curator, sniffing out—and commissioning—off-trend, unheralded, and otherwise underplayed repertoire that nevertheless holds to unfailingly high standards of quality. In doing so, he's built an unmistakable, yet indefinable, personal aesthetic' (WXQR).

A leader in American contemporary music, Rose is the founder of the performing and recording ensemble the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP), which 'brings an endlessly curious and almost archaeological mind to programming… with each concert, each recording, an essential step in a better direction' (The New York Times), as well as the founder of Odyssey Opera, praised by The New York Times as 'bold and intriguing' and 'one of the East Coast's most interesting opera companies.'

Beyond Boston, Gil Rose keeps a busy schedule as a guest conductor and educator. Equally skilled with both symphonic and operatic repertoires, Rose has led performances by the Netherlands Radio Symphony, the American Composers Orchestra, the National Symphony of Ukraine, the Matsumoto Festival in Japan, the New York City Opera, and the Juilliard Symphony, among others. He has served as the Director of Opera and Sonic Exploration at Artpark in Lewiston, NY, as well as the Artistic Director of the Monadnock Music Festival in historic Peterborough, NH. He is a visionary curator of new music, having inaugurated the Ditson Festival of Music at Boston's Institute of Contemporary Art and programmed three seasons for the Fromm Concerts at Harvard. Along with serving on the faculty at Tufts University and Northeastern University, Rose has also worked with students nationwide at institutions like Carnegie Mellon University, MIT, New England Conservatory, and the University of California at San Diego, among others.

About BMOP

The Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP) is the premier orchestra in the United States dedicated exclusively to commissioning, performing, and recording music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. A unique institution of crucial artistic importance to today's musical world, BMOP exists to disseminate exceptional orchestral music of the present and recent past via performances and recordings of the highest caliber. Founded by Artistic Director Gil Rose in 1996, GRAMMY Award-winning BMOP has championed the works of composers whose careers span nine decades. Each season, Rose brings BMOP's award-winning orchestra, renowned soloists, and influential composers to the stage of New England Conservatory's historic Jordan Hall in a series that offers orchestral programming of unrivaled eclecticism. Musical America's 2016 Ensemble of the Year, BMOP was awarded the 2021 Special Achievement Award from Gramophone Magazine as 'an organization that has championed American music of the 20th and 21st century with passion and panache.' The musicians of BMOP are consistently lauded for the energy, imagination, and passion with which they infuse the music of the present era.

Photo Credit: Steven Pisano