Maya Beiser: Terry Riley’s In C

Maya Beiser performs Terry Riley’s iconic work In C as recorded on her bestselling 2024 album, with percussionists Jamey Haddad and Matt Kilmer. Beiser recreates the composition as a series of ever-evolving cello loops, constructing a hypnotic, rapturous soundscape that reenvisions this classic 1964 minimalist masterpiece.  As NPR puts it, “This album is a musical journey for mind and body—both a stimulant and a sedative. It offers many engaging stopovers, from an oasis of calm where the pulse evaporates, to Led Zeppelin–like headbanging reminiscent of ‘Kashmir,’ to moments where the cello loops interleave with the sweet delicacy of Vivaldi. If you have a spare hour to let this singular, hypnotic music wash over you, the world might just seem a little brighter.” Hailed by The Washington Post as “the reigning queen of avant-garde cello,” Maya Beiser is a cellist, sound artist, and musical innovator whose work has redefined the scope of contemporary classical performance. Raised on a commune in the Galilee Mountains of Israel by her Argentinean father and French mother, Beiser grew up immersed in the music and rituals of Jews, Muslims, and Christians—an early fusion of worlds that continues to shape her boundary-defying artistic vision. A Yale graduate and United States Artists Distinguished Fellow, Beiser has performed on the world’s most iconic stages, from Carnegie Hall to the Barbican, challenging norms and reinventing the solo cello as an expansive sonic canvas. Her fifteen solo albums—many topping classical charts—span reimagined masterpieces, original works, and cinematic collaborations.

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum: Borromeo String Quartet

Boston’s beloved Borromeo String Quartet pays a visit to the Gardner Museum with a program built around Schubert’s monumental “Death and the Maiden” quartet, one of his supreme late masterpieces and a paragon of the Romantic spirit. The Borromeos also bring a quartet by jazz pianist and composer Vijay Iyer, who is Harvard’s Franklin D. and Florence Rosenblatt Professor of the Arts and a MacArthur Fellow. Nicholas Kitchen has arranged a pair of preludes and fugues from Bach and Shostakovich, while Entr’acte by Museum-favorite Caroline Shaw and Jessie Montgomery’s Source Code round out this adventurous and eclectic program that showcases the quartet’s remarkable range. The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s Winter/Spring 2026 Weekend Concert Series features a fifteen-concert season curated by Abrams Curator of Music George Steel running from January 25 through May 17, 2026. The winter/spring season showcases world-class artists in the Museum’s extraordinary Calderwood Hall—a 300-seat “sonic cube” with three levels of balconies designed so that 80% of seats are front row, creating a uniquely intense and intentional listening experience. Dating to 1927, the Gardner’s Weekend Concert Series is the longest running museum music program in the country.

Calderwood Hall

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum: Castle of Our Skins with Daniel Bernard Roumain and Val-Inc

The Gardner’s longtime collaborators, Castle of Our Skins, perform a portrait concert of violinist, composer, and musical firebrand Daniel Bernard Roumain, joined by the composer himself on electric violin along with Val-Inc as sound chemist. This concert includes three string quartets from Roumain’s cycle of musical portraits of major Black figures: String Quartet No. 1, “X” (1993); String Quartet No. 2, “King” (2001); and String Quartet No. 4, “Angelou” (2004). Roumain’s music thrillingly mixes classical American music, jazz, and hip-hop, all transformed through his own unique voice. His quartets are powerful testimonies to the lives and legacies of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., and Maya Angelou. The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s Winter/Spring 2026 Weekend Concert Series features a fifteen-concert season curated by Abrams Curator of Music George Steel running from January 25 through May 17, 2026. The winter/spring season showcases world-class artists in the Museum’s extraordinary Calderwood Hall—a 300-seat “sonic cube” with three levels of balconies designed so that 80% of seats are front row, creating a uniquely intense and intentional listening experience. Dating to 1927, the Gardner’s Weekend Concert Series is the longest running museum music program in the country.

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum: Paul Galbraith, guitar

The Gardner Museum presents superstar Paul Galbraith, one of the great guitarists of our time and a superb interpreter. With the music of J.S. Bach and Albéniz at the heart of his program, Galbraith will perform on his remarkable eight-string “Brahms Guitar,” which he holds like a cello. His instrument and his artistry are sui generis. There is simply no one else doing what Galbraith does. The program ranges from Dowland’s Elizabethan gems through J.S. Bach’s French Suites and Partitas, to a sonata by Haydn, Albéniz’s masterpieces Suite Española and España, Ravel’s Menuet sur le nom d’Haydn, and Lennox Berkeley’s Quatre pièces. There is no better place to hear Galbraith’s miraculous playing than in the superb acoustics of Calderwood Hall. The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s Winter/Spring 2026 Weekend Concert Series features a fifteen-concert season curated by Abrams Curator of Music George Steel running from January 25 through May 17, 2026. The winter/spring season showcases world-class artists in the Museum’s extraordinary Calderwood Hall—a 300-seat “sonic cube” with three levels of balconies designed so that 80% of seats are front row, creating a uniquely intense and intentional listening experience. Dating to 1927, the Gardner’s Weekend Concert Series is the longest running museum music program in the country.

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum: Randall Goosby, violin with Zhu Wang, piano

Virtuoso violinist Randall Goosby returns to the Gardner Museum with pianist Zhu Wang for an intimate recital of epic music. Two major sonatas bookend the program: Debussy’s elusive and gorgeous sonata is paired with Beethoven’s sunny F major essay in the form. The concert also includes Southland Sketches by Harry Burleigh, who was key in forging a quintessential American musical language, modifying the gorgeous modal inflections of spirituals with the chromatic ambiguities of Wagner’s harmony. Romance by Boston’s Amy Beach, the best of the Second New England School of composers, gorgeously drinks from a similar Wagnerian well. Dvořák’s Four Romantic Pieces provide a bridge between these worlds, showing how Romanticism and folk traditions can be seamlessly interwoven. The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s Winter/Spring 2026 Weekend Concert Series features a fifteen-concert season curated by Abrams Curator of Music George Steel running from January 25 through May 17, 2026. The winter/spring season showcases world-class artists in the Museum’s extraordinary Calderwood Hall—a 300-seat “sonic cube” with three levels of balconies designed so that 80% of seats are front row, creating a uniquely intense and intentional listening experience. Dating to 1927, the Gardner’s Weekend Concert Series is the longest running museum music program in the country.

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum: Boston Children’s Chorus

Boston Children’s Chorus honors the remarkable legacy of Melnea Cass, the “First Lady of Roxbury,” presented by the Gardner Museum. A tireless advocate for justice, Cass championed women’s suffrage, Black employment, early childhood education, care for the elderly, and civil rights leadership as president of Boston’s NAACP. Her lifelong commitment to equity shaped generations in Boston and her influence continues to resonate today. Audiences are invited to celebrate the enduring impact of this powerful yet often unsung Boston icon through a program of music that reflects her spirit of activism, community, and hope. The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s Winter/Spring 2026 Weekend Concert Series features a fifteen-concert season curated by Abrams Curator of Music George Steel running from January 25 through May 17, 2026. The winter/spring season showcases world-class artists in the Museum’s extraordinary Calderwood Hall—a 300-seat “sonic cube” with three levels of balconies designed so that 80% of seats are front row, creating a uniquely intense and intentional listening experience. Dating to 1927, the Gardner’s Weekend Concert Series is the longest running museum music program in the country.

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum: Imani Winds

The celebrated wind quintet Imani Winds returns to the Gardner Museum with a typically wide-ranging program showcasing works by composer-performers. Including the great American ‘oud player Simon Shaheen, Turkish pianist Fazil Say, the nonpareil Stevie Wonder, and Imani’s own Valerie Coleman, this program demonstrates the quintet’s commitment to expanding the wind repertoire with music that crosses cultural and stylistic boundaries. From Wonder’s jubilant Overjoyed to Coleman’s evocative Red Clay &amp; Mississippi Delta, from Finnish composer Kalevi Aho’s substantial Wind Quintet No. 1 to Paquito D’Rivera’s A Little Cuban Waltz, this wonderful program is full of color and invention. The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s Winter/Spring 2026 Weekend Concert Series features a fifteen-concert season curated by Abrams Curator of Music George Steel running from January 25 through May 17, 2026. The winter/spring season showcases world-class artists in the Museum’s extraordinary Calderwood Hall—a 300-seat “sonic cube” with three levels of balconies designed so that 80% of seats are front row, creating a uniquely intense and intentional listening experience. Dating to 1927, the Gardner’s Weekend Concert Series is the longest running museum music program in the country.

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum: Butter Quartet

Butter Quartet, a period-instrument string quartet, presents a program exploring the origins of the Classical period string quartet. The four composers on this program—Haydn, Mozart, Vaňhal, and Dittersdorf—are reported to have performed together as a string quartet at private gatherings. At the core of this program is a musical tip-of-the-hat between two of them: Hadyn’s Opus 20 “Sun” quartets number among his greatest works—witty, erudite, profound. Dazzled by Haydn’s fusion of counterpoint and gallant gesture, Mozart dedicated his most learned set of quartets to Haydn. The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s Winter/Spring 2026 Weekend Concert Series features a fifteen-concert season curated by Abrams Curator of Music George Steel running from January 25 through May 17, 2026. The winter/spring season showcases world-class artists in the Museum’s extraordinary Calderwood Hall—a 300-seat “sonic cube” with three levels of balconies designed so that 80% of seats are front row, creating a uniquely intense and intentional listening experience. Dating to 1927, the Gardner’s Weekend Concert Series is the longest running museum music program in the country.

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum: Isata Kanneh-Mason, piano

The stellar pianist member of the great English Kanneh-Mason family of musicians, Isata Kanneh-Mason, takes a moment away from the concerto stage to bring this thoughtfully constructed program to Calderwood Hall: two of Beethoven’s best-loved sonatas, the “Moonlight” and the “Waldstein;” Ravel’s astonishing three-movement tour-de-force Gaspard de la nuit, inspired by the dark poetry of Aloysius Bertrand; and pair of shorter works, Halo and Nocturne, by Bulgarian-British composer Dobrinka Tabakova. The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s Winter/Spring 2026 Weekend Concert Series features a fifteen-concert season curated by Abrams Curator of Music George Steel running from January 25 through May 17, 2026. The winter/spring season showcases world-class artists in the Museum’s extraordinary Calderwood Hall—a 300-seat “sonic cube” with three levels of balconies designed so that 80% of seats are front row, creating a uniquely intense and intentional listening experience. Dating to 1927, the Gardner’s Weekend Concert Series is the longest running museum music program in the country.

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum: Renaissance String Quartet

The Gardner Museum is thrilled to present the Renaissance String Quartet for the closing performance of the Winter/Spring 2026 Weekend Concert Series. These four terrific musicians (violinists Randall Goosby and Jeremiah Blacklow, violist Jameel Martin, and cellist Daniel Hass) find time in their busy touring lives as soloists and chamber musicians to perform together as a quartet. Brahms’ String Quartet No. 2 in A minor anchors the program with its characteristic blend of passion and intellectual rigor. The concert also includes the great American composer Florence Price’s String Quartet No. 1 in G Major. Price had a special gift for quartet writing; the exquisite and eloquent slow movement of her first quartet shows her love of American song, especially Black spirituals. The program closes with String Quartet No. 1, “Love and Levity,” by Daniel Hass, the cellist in the Renaissance String Quartet. He describes the piece as “Beethovenian in its thematic and structural tautness, but even more so in its motion towards excess.” The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s Winter/Spring 2026 Weekend Concert Series features a fifteen-concert season curated by Abrams Curator of Music George Steel running from January 25 through May 17, 2026. The winter/spring season showcases world-class artists in the Museum’s extraordinary Calderwood Hall—a 300-seat “sonic cube” with three levels of balconies designed so that 80% of seats are front row, creating a uniquely intense and intentional listening experience. Dating to 1927, the Gardner’s Weekend Concert Series is the longest running museum music program in the country.

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum: Paul O'Dette

The outstanding Paul O’Dette comes to Calderwood Hall, one of Boston’s best venues to hear the lute. He will perform a recital in celebration of John Dowland, the great Elizabethan composer and lutenist who died 400 years ago. O’Dette will perform dances and laments of exquisite Tudor melancholy. Come celebrate the life and intimate music of this master musician! The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s Winter/Spring 2026 Weekend Concert Series features a fifteen-concert season curated by Abrams Curator of Music George Steel running from January 25 through May 17, 2026. The winter/spring season showcases world-class artists in the Museum’s extraordinary Calderwood Hall—a 300-seat “sonic cube” with three levels of balconies designed so that 80% of seats are front row, creating a uniquely intense and intentional listening experience. Dating to 1927, the Gardner’s Weekend Concert Series is the longest running museum music program in the country.

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum: Goldmund Quartet with Gloria Chien

Boston piano star Gloria Chien returns to the Gardner Museum to join the young German stars of the Goldmund Quartet in composer Amy Beach’s Piano Quintet, one of the finest works by the greatest of Boston’s “Second New England School” of composers. The Goldmunds will offer Haydn’s String Quartet in E-flat major, nicknamed his “Joke” quartet, from his astonishing Opus 33 set of quartets, along with the fourth quartet of Polish mid-century modernist Grażyna Bacewicz. Her music, only now finding a wider audience, balances Baltic intensity and Mendelssohnian wit. The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s Winter/Spring 2026 Weekend Concert Series features a fifteen-concert season curated by Abrams Curator of Music George Steel running from January 25 through May 17, 2026. The winter/spring season showcases world-class artists in the Museum’s extraordinary Calderwood Hall—a 300-seat “sonic cube” with three levels of balconies designed so that 80% of seats are front row, creating a uniquely intense and intentional listening experience. Dating to 1927, the Gardner’s Weekend Concert Series is the longest running museum music program in the country.

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum: Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum kicks off its bold new concert series, Thursday Night Music, with Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians performed by Ensemble Signal conducted by Co-Artistic Director Brad Lubman. Massively ambitious, the hour-long Music for 18 Musicians features four grand pianos, three full-size marimbas, two xylophones, three singers, clarinet, violin, and cello. In this work, Reich drew influences from a wide variety of sources including Balinese gamelan, plainchant, and jazz. It premiered 50 years ago in 1976 and continues to loom large in today’s musical landscape; David Bowie included the 1978 ECM New Series recording of Music for 18 Musicians among his 25 favorite albums of all time. The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum invites you to escape the ordinary in a magical setting where art and community come together to inspire new ways of envisioning our world. Embodying the fearless legacy of its founder, the Museum offers a singular invitation to explore the past through a contemporary lens, creating meaningful encounters with art and joyful connections for all. Modeled after a Venetian palazzo, unforgettable galleries surround a luminous Courtyard and are home to masters such as Rembrandt, Raphael, Titian, Michelangelo, Whistler, and Sargent. The Renzo Piano Wing provides a platform for contemporary artists, musicians, and scholars and serves as an innovative venue where creativity is celebrated in all of its forms.

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum: Attacca Quartet

The impossibly talented Attacca Quartet returns to Calderwood Hall, bringing Bartók’s masterful fourth quartet, which mixes Hungarian folk music and modernism with foot-stomping ferocity. Mendelssohn’s Apollonian musicianship will be on display in his elegant String Quartet in E minor. The program is balanced by the Boston premiere of a Museum-commissioned work by David Lang, daisy, from the composer who created his “in-ear opera” true pearl for the Gardner Museum’s Tapestry Room in 2018. Lang’s music continues to surprise and delight with its inventive approaches to texture and form. The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s Winter/Spring 2026 Weekend Concert Series features a fifteen-concert season curated by Abrams Curator of Music George Steel running from January 25 through May 17, 2026. The winter/spring season showcases world-class artists in the Museum’s extraordinary Calderwood Hall—a 300-seat “sonic cube” with three levels of balconies designed so that 80% of seats are front row, creating a uniquely intense and intentional listening experience. Dating to 1927, the Gardner’s Weekend Concert Series is the longest running museum music program in the country.

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum: Claremont Trio

The celebrated Claremont Trio returns to the Gardner Museum, joined by violist Rosemary Nelis and bassist Bradley Aikman, for a performance of 19th-century French composer Louise Farrenc’s Piano Quintet No. 1 in A minor, Op. 30. Farrenc, whose music is only now receiving the attention it deserves, was a formidable pianist and composer whose piano quintet stands alongside the finest chamber works of her era. The trio will also take on Ravel’s luscious piano trio and Shulamit Ran’s yearning Soliloquy, which grew out of her work on an operatic adaptation of The Dybbuk by S. An-sky. The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s Winter/Spring 2026 Weekend Concert Series features a fifteen-concert season curated by Abrams Curator of Music George Steel running from January 25 through May 17, 2026. The winter/spring season showcases world-class artists in the Museum’s extraordinary Calderwood Hall—a 300-seat “sonic cube” with three levels of balconies designed so that 80% of seats are front row, creating a uniquely intense and intentional listening experience. Dating to 1927, the Gardner’s Weekend Concert Series is the longest running museum music program in the country.

S22: conversations

Wondering what to do in Boston? Places to eat? Free activities? Good for a group? Date night spot? Girls night out? The best things to do? Ask Joyraft!

Best places to go in Boston? Things to do? Places to eat?

Questions & answers about things to do in Boston

Recs 💬

Community recs 💬

S4: top picks

The most fun, cool and unique things to do in Boston. Can’t miss events, shows and experiences. Concerts, restaurants, bars, free things in Boston and beyond.

The most fun and cool events happening around Boston

Hot and new things to do in Boston

Hot & new

Hot & new 🔥

S11: happening this weekend

What to do in Boston this weekend? From festivals, concerts, performances, free events, screenings and more, Joyraft has the best things to do in Boston.

25+ things to do in Boston/Cambridge/Somerville this weekend

Things to do in Boston this weekend

This wknd

This weekend for you

S21: roundups

Our top picks: outdoor dining, free events, spring festivals, best bars, upcoming concerts, museum parties - the latest in and around Boston.  Slug: joyraft-top-picks-best-things-to-do-boston-ma

Top picks of the best things to do in and around Boston

Joyraft picks: Boston’s best things to do

Roundups ⭐️

Curated by Joyraft ⭐️

S28: calendar experiences

This week in Boston

This week in Boston 📆

This week 📆

S20: c+d experiences

Discover new, unique events and experiences happening in and around Boston. Perfect for date night, good for a group or with a friend. Be the first to know.

The newest events happening in and around Boston

The newest events on Joyraft

Just added

Just added to Joyraft

S16: editor picks

The most unique and can’t miss things coming up in Boston / Cambridge / Somerville and beyond. Festivals, food, drinks, fairs, concerts, art and free activities.

Unique and Can’t Miss Things to Do in Boston

Can’t-miss things to do in Boston 🚨

Can't-miss things to do 🚨

S2 (A): top experiences

The most popular things to do on Joyraft. Concerts, restaurants, bars, events, parties, openings, kid friendly, date ideas, free things in Boston and beyond.

Top 20 things to do in Boston

Top 20: Joyraft’s most popular

Top 20

Top 20 on Joyraft

S3 (A): trending experiences

Discover can’t miss events and things to do in Boston. The most fun, unique and cool events coming to the Boston area this spring and summer.

The hottest events happening in Boston

Trending events on Joyraft

Trending 📈

S17: interest based

Your guide to everything free in and around Boston. From events, to fairs, to festivals, to outdoors. Joyraft has all the free events happening near you.

100+ free things to do in Boston and beyond

Free things to do in Boston

Free things to do

S19: interest based

Kid-friendly events in Boston

S18: interest based

Where to eat and drink in Boston? Joyraft has Boston’s newest bars, restaurants and specials. Drinks and pre fixe dinner menus. Cambridge & Somerville too.

Where

jensenartists

Experiences