Halifax’s Cecilia Concerts will launch their 37th Season with German cellist Leonard Disselhorst and Canadian cellist Bryan Cheng on September 27. The organization will present a remarkable season of 25 chamber concerts between September 2025 and May 2026, featuring 60 acclaimed musicians.
Those musicians include multiple JUNO and GRAMMY Award winners, and the laureates of prominent competitions such as the Honens International Piano Competition and the Paganini Prize.
Their offerings include 16 main stage performances, a nine-concert series of Sensory-Accessible Concerts in partnership with Halifax Public Libraries that are free of charge, along with a full slate of free-of-charge community masterclasses and outreach initiatives.
Here’s a look at their season.
Cecilia Concerts’ 37th Main Stage Concerts
The 2025/26 Musician-in-Residence is Berlin-based Canadian cellist Bryan Cheng, who has curated and will perform in three special concerts.
“We are proud to launch our 37th season with an extraordinary lineup of artists who represent the very best of the international stage,” says Executive Director Greg Morris in a statement. “Welcoming Bryan Cheng as our Musician-in-Residence is an important moment for us, and audiences in Halifax will be treated to performances of the highest calibre that cross cultures, bridge traditions, and speak to every generation.”
“It is a true honour to be named the 2025/26 Musician-in-Residence for Cecilia Concerts in Halifax, a city that has felt like a musical home since my debut there in 2016,” says Bryan Cheng. “I’m thrilled to deepen my long-standing connection with this creative, world-class series that has given me the freedom to present some of my all-time favourite music alongside the finest musicians of my generation and my closest collaborators.”
CelloFellos (September 27, 2025)
German cellist Leonard Disselhorst and Canadian cellist Bryan Cheng are CelloFellos. They’ll be performing music by Béla Bartók, Bobby McFerrin, Herbie Hancock, Astor Piazzolla, Duke Ellington, and Tigran Hamasyan in a program that blends jazz, tango, folk, and classical.
Other Main Stage highlights include:
- Pianist Ilia Ovcharenko, a laureate of the Honens International Piano Competition;
- Violinist Kevin Zhu performing Paganini’s 24 Caprices for Solo Violin;
- Identity, a song cycle by Dinuk Wijeratne featuring Grammy Award–winning baritone Elliot Madore;
- The Isidore Quartet, 14th Banff International String Quartet Competition laureates;
- Prize-Winning Quatuor Cobalt and France’s Illyes Ferfera Quartet;
- Two free-of-charge concerts at the Halifax Central Library featuring jazz quartets from France;
- And many others.
Sensory-Accessible Concerts
The nine Sensory-Accessible Concerts are presented in partnership with Halifax Public Libraries. They’re designed to provide a welcoming space for anyone who may find the conditions of a traditional concert performance a challenge, including autistic, neurodivergent, and senior audiences.
The free Sensory-Accessible concert series kicks off on Sunday, October 5, 2025 at 2:00 p.m. with multi-instrumentalist Mohammad Sahraei, presented as part of the 2025 Prismatic Arts Festival.
- Find more details and tickets for Cecilia Concerts [HERE].
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