The 2025 Fall Arts Preview: Our picks in Music

This fall, Atlanta will be blessed with a bounty of chamber music, from classic to contemporary, and one of our most venerable choral groups celebrates a homecoming.

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Atlanta’s chamber music scene is a treasure trove of fresh and fascinating ensembles that aren’t afraid to challenge audiences. Ensemble Vim and the Atlanta Contemporary Music Collective (ATLCMC) explore modern and unconventional musical territory, most of which is composed by living, working musicians. The all-women Ensemble Vim will begin its seventh season at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church at 7:30 p.m. October 28 with Mystery & Transformation, featuring music by Caroline Shaw, Kaija Saariaho, Majid Araim and others, along with a dance performance by Wabi Sabi Terminus. The group is also planning to release its debut studio album in the coming months.

ATLCMC has an adventurous musical journey planned for the coming season. The September 7 season opener at the Supermarket will include the world premieres of new works by The Collective and guest composers for solo, duo and trio combinations, each celebrating Christian Wolff’s piece For 1, 2, or 3 People. The Ocarina Festival on October 17 will offer a concert of new works for ocarina, ocarina ensembles and mixed chamber ensembles.

There’s no shortage of more familiar work among Atlanta’s chamber ensembles, too, and some of the works you can hear from these groups are beloved classics for good reason. The Emory Chamber Music Society of Atlanta will present the Vega Quartet, with guest artists cellists Zuill Bailey and Edward Arron. The opening concert of the season will feature violist Yinzi Kong and pianist William Ransom joining Bailey and the quartet for music of Boccherini, Beethoven and Brahms on September 6 at the Schwartz Center for Performing Arts. They’ll bring in Arron for Schubert’s timeless Quintet for Strings on November 7 at Emory’s Oxford College and November 9 at Emerson Concert Hall.

The Atlanta Chamber Players’ 50th season opener will blend the contemporary and the classic. ASO Concertmaster David Coucheron is among the players for Tchaikovsky’s string sextet Souvenir de Florence, and the ensemble will also deliver a premiere by composer Che Buford, the winner of the Cross-Country Chamber Consortium’s 2024 Emerging Black, Latinx and Indigenous Composer Commission. The performance happens at Peachtree Christian Church on November 9.

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Musicians who got their start in the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s and ’90s are everywhere this fall. There are far too many of them to list, so here’s a quick sampling. The peerless Dionne Warwick will bring her timeless catalog of hits, a list that starts with 1962’s “Don’t Make Me Over,” to Atlanta Symphony Hall on October 11. Representing the ’70s, Sparks returns to Atlanta. They put on a spectacular show at the Eastern in 2022, and this year they’re at the Tabernacle on September 5. Ice Cube, hip-hop pioneer and actor, brings his Truth to Power: 4 Decades of Attitude tour to State Farm Arena on October 14. Even during their most successful days in the mid-’90s, Pulp didn’t spend a lot of time touring the U.S. Now, after a long hiatus, the thoroughly British band led by Jarvis Cocker is back in action with a new album and a tour that comes to the Tabernacle on September 4.

There’s one more to note, and this one has a history that stretches all the way back into the 1950s. State Farm Arena will play host to four women who deserve the billing “The Queens! 4 Legends. 1 Stage.” Georgia’s own Gladys Knight, whose first recordings with the Pips were released in the late ’50s, will be joined by Chaka Khan, Patti Labelle and Stephanie Mills for a night of spectacular vocal power. The show takes place on September 20, and it’s likely to be legendary.

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It’s a big year for the Atlanta Master Chorale. The ensemble began as the Gwinnett Festival Singers in 1985, so 2025 marks 40 years since the group’s founding. In 2000, Dr. Eric Nelson joined as artistic director, so they’ll also be celebrating his 25 years at the helm. The chorale’s first show in the 2025-26 season is titled Homecoming, and for good reason. Nelson was on leave both from his position as the group’s director and his position as professor of music and director of choral studies at Emory University for the 2024-25 season and school year. He’s back behind the podium for the upcoming season. Homecoming will be performed at Emory’s Schwartz Center for Performing Arts at 8 p.m. on October 10-11.

More Music Highlights . . .

• The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s Delta Classical series gets started with a one-night-only appearance by piano megastar Lang Lang, taking on Beethoven’s Emperor concerto with guest conductor Gemma New. At the September 19 concert at Symphony Hall, she’ll also lead the orchestra in two works by Mozart, Eine Kleine Nachtmusik and the Haffner Symphony.
• ASO Music Director Nathalie Stutzmann makes her season debut with performances of Copland’s iconic Fanfare for the Common Man, Elgar’s Cello Concerto (with cellist Alisa Weilerstein) and the Richard Strauss tone poem Ein Heldenleben. The concerts take place from October 3 through October 5
• In addition to a co-production of Fiddler on the Roof with the Alliance Theatre, the Atlanta Opera will take on the Philip Glass opera La Belle et la Bete (November 15, part of the Discoveries series) and Verdi’s La Traviata (November 8, November 11, November 14 and November 16) at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre.
• The Miró Quartet and Isidore String Quartet join forces to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the youthfully exuberant Mendelssohn Octet at Spivey Hall on November 9. The piece, the first of its kind, was composed when Mendelssohn was just 16 years old.
• The Grammy Award-winning Harlem Quartet is joined by Cuban pianist and composer Aldo López-Gavilán for Schumann’s beloved Piano Quintet in E-flat Major, followed by a journey through Cuba’s myriad musical traditions with works by López-Gavilán. It’s at the Schwartz Center for Performing Arts on September 26.
• Composer and pianist Ludovico Einaudi, whose solo piano track “I Giorni” became a hit single in the United Kingdom in 2011, will bring The Summer Portraits Tour to the Fox Theatre on October 10.
• Enduring Georgia duo Indigo Girls team up with Melissa Etheridge for the Yes We Are Tour, which heads to Synovous Bank Amphitheatre at Chastain Park on September 26.
• The Ridibund Chamber Music Society, the classical/contemporary fusion group led by acclaimed composer and Atlanta Symphony Orchestra bassist Michael Kurth, returns for a Sunday afternoon concert at Eddie’s Attic in Decatur on September 28.
• Jazz at All Saints’ kicks off its second season with Grammy-winning drummer Robert Boone Jr. and his quartet paying tribute to jazz legend Max Roach on September 12 at All Saints Episcopal Church. On November 14, they’ll welcome jazz vocalist Nnenna Freelon.
• On November 7, the Alpharetta Symphony will perform Dvořák’s Symphony No. 8 at Innovation Academy Auditorium. The program also includes Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with Dr. Alexander Wasserman as soloist.
• The DeKalb Symphony Orchestra’s season begins with a program of works by Copland, Bernstein and Rachmaninoff at the First Baptist Church of Decatur on September 16. The second concert of the season offers works by Rachmaninoff, Ravel and Tchaikovsky on November 4.
• Johns Creek Symphony Orchestra’s first season with new Music Director Henry Cheng begins on September 20. The orchestra will be joined by violinist Holly Mulcahy, who will perform acclaimed film composer George S. Clinton’s Violin Concerto, a work composed for her.

More 2025 Fall Picks