The conductorless ensemble's season will also include world premieres by Joan Tower and Marc Mellits. Pianist Leon Fleisher, violinist Vadim Repin, and percussionist Evelyn Glennie will all appear with Orpheus for the first time.
On December 3, Orpheus will perform Bach's Magnificat with the Bach Choir of New York, in the orchestra's first-ever collaboration with the chorus. Appropriately enough, the Bach Choir, which is directed by Kent Tritle, performs without a conductor.
Mellitts' new work, commissioned by the Cheswatyr New Music Initiative, will be performed at a concert on February 4, 2006. The event, which will be broadcast live on New York's WNYC radio and then repeated on other NPR stations, will also include the Prokofiev Violin Concerto No. 2 with Repin as soloist. Glennie is featured in James MacMillan's Veni, Veni Emmanuel on March 28.
Fleisher appears on May 6 in the final concert of the season, performing Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 5 ("Emperor"); the concert also includes Tower's new work, which was commissioned through the Meet the Composer organization.
Orpheus will also perform twice at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; last month, the group gave two free concerts at at Trinity Church in lower Manhattan.