Boston Symphony Chamber Players to Perform at MIT’s New Edward and Joyce Linde Music Building

Massachusetts Institute of Technology will present a free concert by the Boston Symphony Chamber Playerss on Sunday, March 2, 2025, at 5 p.m. The performance is part of the inaugural season of concerts in the new Edward and Joyce Linde Music Building at MIT and will be among the first performances to take place in the new Thomas Tull Concert Hall. The concert is also a highlight of Artfinity, a large-scale campus-wide celebration of the arts at MIT featuring 80 free arts events open to the public. The program will include Keeril Makan’s Portal, Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring, and Johannes Brahms’s String Sextet No. 1 in B-flat, Op. 18. Makan is a composer and MIT’s Associate Dean for Strategic Initiatives, School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences and the Michael (1949) and Sonja Koerner Music Composition Professor, Music and Theater Arts at MIT. He wrote his brief Portal for wind quintet in 2012 concurrently with his opera Persona, resulting in the quintet’s focus on melody and line.

The concert, to be led by BSO Assistant Conductor Anna Handler includes principal players from the BSO as well as guest pianist Vytas Baksys. The Boston Symphony Chamber Players, established in 1964 by Erich Leinsdorf, is made up of BSO principal string and woodwind players, enhanced via guest performers and other members of the orchestra.

Other performances among the 25 concerts in the new Thomas Tull Hall this inaugural season and part of the Artfinity arts festival include a public open house and concert celebrating the building opening featuring four world premieres of works composed by MIT faculty Harbison, Makan, Shadle, and Zenón, (Feb. 15); Kinetic Ensemble (Feb. 22); Grammy-winning saxophonist and MIT Professor Miguel Zenón (Mar. 14); Artfinity faculty co-lead and Institute Professor Marcus Thompson in the Boston Chamber Music Society (Mar. 16); and Grammy-winning rapper and MIT Visiting Scholar Lupe Fiasco with the MIT Jazz Ensemble (May. 2). 

This concert marks the first by the Boston Symphony Chamber Players at MIT. Ties between the two institutions are strong with MIT students among the largest college attendees of BSO concerts at Symphony Hall with over 700 MIT students attending BSO concerts each year. The BSO’s ongoing MIT associations include Institute Professor Emeritus John Harbison, many of whose orchestral works were commissioned by the BSO, and composer Tod Machover of MIT’s Media Lab. Both Harbison and Machover will present work at Artfinity.

“With over 1500 students per year, music is deeply interwoven into the fabric of MIT. The new Linde Music Building enables the Music program to take partnerships with local institutions, such as the BSO, to new levels of impact for the Cambridge community,” says Keeril Makan, MIT Associate Dean of the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences. 

“We are honored to partner with MIT in offering a free performance by the Boston Symphony Chamber Players as one of the first public concerts in its new Linde Music Building. The addition of a state-of-the-art building on the MIT campus dedicated to music study and performance will create more opportunities for us to collaborate with each other and to serve the community, values that are at the heart of our mission,” says Chad Smith, BSO president and CEO. “Performing in this iconic new venue has special meaning to the BSO community, as Joyce and Ed Linde both served on our board of trustees (Ed as board chair) and were among our most devoted and visionary supporters. Our own Linde Center of Music and Learning, which opened in 2019 at Tanglewood, has immeasurably enhanced our ability to serve the Berkshires community and to offer year-round concerts and events just as this new building surely will do for MIT, Cambridge, and beyond.”