The Eastman School of Music presents more than 700 performances annually. Faculty, students, and ensembles perform in venues on campus and in locations throughout the Rochester community. Eastman performance are open to the general public; most have no admission charge. Discounted tickets for U/R faculty, staff, and students are always available for ticketed Eastman School of Music events.
Eastman’s orchestras, wind ensembles, choruses, contemporary music groups, and jazz bands perform annual concert cycles in Kilbourn Hall, Kodak Hall at Eastman Theatre, and in local churches. The Eastman Opera Theatre season typically opens with a Kilbourn Hall performance in the fall, and culminates in a spring semester production in Kodak Hall. Student recitals and chamber music performances take place throughout the year, primarily in Kilbourn Hall and Hatch Recital Hall.
The school presents four concert series each season: 1) the Kilbourn Concert Series features guest recitalists and chamber groups, 2) the Eastman-Ranlet Series, which presents concerts by guest string quartets and by Eastman’s resident Ying Quartet, 3) the Faculty Artist Series, featuring Eastman faculty in recital, and 4) the World Music Series, which brings performers of traditional music from different cultures across our globe, and which traditionally closes with a Kilbourn Hall performance by Eastman’s own Gamelan Lila Muni.
The Eastman Community Music School coordinates a free lunchtime concert series of student and faculty performers at the downtown Unitarian Universalist church, and occasionally at noontime concerts at Rochester’s David Hochstein Memorial Music School. Main Hall concerts initiated by students occur throughout the year. One of these, the traditional Holiday Sing, takes place on the fall semester’s last day of class, and features students and faculty from across the School playing serious and not-so-serious seasonal selections.
Kodak Hall at Eastman Theatre is Rochester’s pre-eminent concert hall. In addition to concerts by Eastman ensembles, it also is home to the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, which performs there more than fifty times each season. The RPO features a number of ESM faculty and alumni among its members, and current students pursuing the Orchestral Studies Diploma program regularly perform with the orchestra, as well. Rush tickets to select RPO concerts are often available to ESM students the week of the concert. Information regarding these tickets is available in the Student Life Office.