October 16 7:30 pm

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Tickets

RESERVED SEATING
Adults: $110-$55
Students: $30

The 2026-2027 Season kicks off with a performance of Mozart concertos by the legendary Emanuel Ax and The Knights chamber orchestra. Ax is routinely included on any list of the country’s best classical pianists, while The Knights are an adventurous group of musicians, who have been called the future of classical music in America.

Together, they deliver a program that features two Mozart piano concertos – No. 17 in G Major, and No. 25 in C Major, plus and an overture by Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, a French composer of African descent from the early Classical Era. Enjoy the levity of French Classical music (ornamentation, color, decadence) alongside Mozart’s willingness to stick by, yet stylize the rules. 

Program

Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges – Overture to L’amant anonyme
W.A. Mozart – Piano Concerto No. 17 in G major, K. 453
W.A. Mozart – Piano Concerto No. 25 in C major, K. 503

 

Please note: program, venue, time, and artist are subject to change.

“One of Brooklyn’s sterling cultural products…known far beyond the borough for their relaxed virtuosity and expansive repertory” (The New Yorker)

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Emmanuel Ax

Emmanuel Ax

Born to Polish parents in what is today Lviv, Ukraine, Emanuel Ax moved to Winnipeg, Canada, with his family when he was a young boy. Mr. Ax made his New York debut in the Young Concert Artists Series, and in 1974 won the first Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Competition in Tel Aviv. In 1975 he won the Michaels Award of Young Concert Artists, followed four years later by the Avery Fisher Prize. Emanuel Ax was recently named the 2026 Musical America Artist of the Year.

In recognition of the 50th anniversary of his first appearance with the orchestra, the 2025/26 season begins with the Philadelphia Orchestra in Carnegie Hall on October 31. Fall also includes an Asian tour that will take him to Tokyo, Seoul and Hong Kong. Following the world premiere at Tanglewood in summer 2025, the concerto written for him by John Williams will have its Boston Symphony subscription debut in January with the NY premiere one month later with New York Philharmonic. As a guest artist he will return to orchestras in Dallas, St. Louis, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, Charleston, Madison, Naples and New Jersey. In recital he can be heard in Philadelphia, Baltimore, Santa Barbara, Des Moines, Cedar Falls, Schenectady and Princeton. An extensive European tour will include concerts in Munich, Prague, Berlin, Rome and Torino.

Mr. Ax has been a Sony Classical exclusive recording artist since 1987 and following the success of the Brahms Trios with Kavakos and Ma, the trio launched an ambitious, multi-year project to record all the Beethoven Trios and Symphonies arranged for trio of which the first three discs have been released. He has received GRAMMY® Awards for the second and third volumes of his cycle of Haydn’s piano sonatas. He has also made a series of GRAMMY-winning recordings with Yo-Yo Ma of the Beethoven and Brahms sonatas for cello and piano. In the 2004/05 season Mr. Ax contributed to an International EMMY® Award-Winning BBC documentary commemorating the Holocaust that aired on the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. In 2013, Mr. Ax’s recording Variations received the Echo Klassik Award for Solo Recording of the Year (19th Century Music/Piano).

Mr. Ax is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and holds honorary doctorates of music from Skidmore College, New England Conservatory of Music, Yale University, and Columbia University. For more information about Mr. Ax’s career, please visit EmanuelAx.com.

The Knights

The Knights

The Knights are a collective of adventurous musicians dedicated to transforming the orchestral experience and eliminating barriers between audiences and music. Driven by an open-minded spirit of camaraderie and exploration, they inspire listeners with vibrant programs that encompass their roots in the classical tradition and passion for artistic discovery. The orchestra has toured and recorded with renowned soloists including Yo-Yo Ma, Dawn Upshaw, Béla Fleck, Chris Thile, and Gil Shaham, and has appeared across the world’s most prestigious stages, including those at Carnegie Hall, Tanglewood, Ravinia, The Kennedy Center, and the Vienna Musikverein.

The Knights evolved from late-night chamber music reading parties with friends at the home of violinist Colin Jacobsen and cellist Eric Jacobsen. The Jacobsen brothers, who are also founding members of the string quartet Brooklyn Rider, serve as artistic directors of The Knights, with Eric Jacobsen as conductor. Since incorporating in 2007, the orchestra has toured consistently across the United States and Europe.

The Knights seek to share music with a broad general public regardless of background, and the group designs programs to appeal to both loyal followers and new listeners alike. The Knights perform in traditional concert halls as well as in parks, plazas, and bars, and create unusual and adventurous partnerships across disciplines. Counted among recent highlights are fully staged performances of Bernstein’s Candide at both Tanglewood and Ravinia; the release of the album “Shorthand” with composer Anna Clyne and cellist Yo-Yo Ma, and the 2025 summer season featuring performances at Central Park’s Naumburg Bandshell, Bryant Park, Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts, and the Clark Art Institute.

The orchestra seeks out and prioritizes collaborative partnerships with artists often underrepresented in classical music. Recent seasons have included performances with Brooklyn-based Pan Evolution Steel Orchestra, with African musicians as part of William Kentridge’s The Head and the Load, and with a diverse group of contemporary composers and performers including Vijay Iyer, Kinan Azmeh, Angélica Negrón, and Jessie Montgomery, among others.

Artistic collaborators in the 2024-25 season included GRAMMY-winning singer-songwriter Aoife O’Donovan and Brooklyn Youth Chorus; vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant; Knights violinist and composer Christina Courtin; and genre-shattering pianist/composer Aaron Diehl, with whom The Knights released a GRAMMY-nominated album of Mary Lou Williams’ Zodiac Suite in September 2023.

In the 2025-26 season, The Knights continue our concert series presented by Carnegie Hall, featuring a new work by songwriter and composer Gabriel Kahane for clarinetist Anthony McGill, commissioned as part of the orchestra’s Rhapsody project. Rhapsody is a multi-year initiative inspired by the 2024 centennial of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. The Knights’ Carnegie Hall concerts this season feature poet J. Mae Barizo, pianist Dan Tepfer, and other esteemed collaborators. Learn more.

The Knights are proud to be known as “one of Brooklyn’s sterling cultural products…known far beyond the borough for their relaxed virtuosity and expansive repertory” (The New Yorker). Their roster boasts musicians of remarkably diverse talents, including composers, arrangers, singer-songwriters, and improvisers, who bring a range of cultural influences to the group, from jazz and klezmer to pop and indie rock music. The unique camaraderie within the group retains the intimacy and spontaneity of chamber music in performance. Through the palpable joy and friendship in their music-making, each musician strives to include new and familiar audiences to experience this important art form.

Mechanics Hall

321 Main Street Worcester, MA 01608

Mechanics Hall, built in 1857, is a four-story structure that remains an incredible venue for live music. Renowned for its acoustics, it is located in downtown Worcester just blocks away from Route 290.

SEATING 

Seating in the floor level of the Great Hall is accessible via elevator, by the Waldo St. entrance to the building. The balcony is not accessible by elevator. Read more about accessibility here.

We suggest parties with small children sit in our side balconies whenever possible, as they provide the best view for small children who may not have a clear view from the flat seating on the floor level.

Balcony seating has less leg room. If you’re a taller patron, we recommend floor seating or choosing an aisle seat in the balcony section.

PARKING

The closest parking garage is Pearl Elm Garage (20 Pearl St.) Music Worcester offers free parking for Mechanics Hall presentations – read more here. There is also on-street parking on neighboring streets.

321 Main Street

321 Main Street, Worcester, MA 01608, USA