Boston Conservatory at Berklee Announces Center Stage Performances for 2024–2025 Season
Boston Conservatory at Berklee’s curated performance collection Center Stage returns with a 2024–2025 season featuring innovative new works and dynamic stagings of beloved favorites in dance, music, and theater. Audiences will be treated to a remarkable range of student performances, from the 21st-century electropop opera Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 to Mozart’s classic Cosí fan tutte, and from to AI interpretations of Bach to cutting-edge dance works. This year’s lineup also includes a special orchestra concert at Symphony Hall, a production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s masterwork Jesus Christ Superstar, and creations by notable guest artists and performers.
The fall series opens on Thursday, September 26 with Jesus Christ Superstar, the beloved first musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice to be produced for the professional stage. The performance will run through Sunday, September 29 at Boston Conservatory Theater. A timeless work that has wowed audiences around the world for more than 50 years, the rock opera is set against the backdrop of a universally known series of events but seen, unusually, through the eyes of Judas Iscariot. Boston Conservatory’s production of Jesus Christ Superstar will be directed by Dawn Simmons with music direction by Associate Professor David Coleman.
On Saturday, September 28, Professor Lynn Chang will present Hemenway Strings: Music of the Past, Present, and Future at Seully Hall, located at 8 Fenway in Boston. This free performance will feature works composed and inspired by Bach, as well as a special AI-composed piece based on Bach’s BWV 668, Vor deinen Thron tret' ich hiermit. In addition, Hemenway Strings will perform works by Jean Sibelius, Felix Mendelssohn, Samuel Coleridge Taylor, and Sofia Gubaidulina.
Boston Conservatory will present its annual fall dance concert, From the Ground Up, from October 24 through 27 at Boston Conservatory Theater. This year’s performance will feature senior, junior, and sophomore contemporary dance students performing a vibrant lineup of stylistically diverse world premieres choreographed by renowned guest artists Hope Boykin, Christina Chan, Norbert De La Cruz III, and Andrew Skeels, and by Boston Conservatory faculty choreographers Junichi Fukuda and Daniel Pelzig, with Dean of Dance Tommy Neblett as artistic director.
On Sunday, October 27, Boston Conservatory Orchestra will present a special concert at Boston’s historic Symphony Hall. Under the baton of Professor Bruce Hangen, Boston Conservatory Orchestra: Telling the Story will showcase a program featuring Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade, the storytelling sultana who saves her own life by recounting a thousand and one tales; the orchestral suite from Richard Strauss’s comic opera Der Rosenkavalier (Cavalier of the Rose), which begins its action-packed story with a ceremonial silver rose; and Quinn Mason’s fun and festive “Toast of Town” Overture.
Center Stage continues this spring with the Commercial Dance B.F.A. Concert on Thursday, January 30 and Friday, January 31 at the Berklee Performance Center. This special performance celebrates seniors of Boston Conservatory’s inaugural commercial dance class, who are graduating in spring 2025. Students will perform an array of incredible new works by leading choreographers.
In April, students will perform the acclaimed electropop opera Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 at an off-campus venue (location and dates to be announced shortly). Composer Dave Malloy’s story is based on Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, and begins when Natasha Rostova arrives in Moscow to await the return of her fiancé from the front lines. When she falls under the spell of the roguish Anatole, it is up to Pierre (a family friend in the middle of an existential crisis) to pick up the pieces of her shattered reputation. The hit musical expands the possibilities for the genre with its daring score and bold storytelling; and during its Tony-nominated run on Broadway, Boston Conservatory alum Shoba Narayan (B.F.A. '12, musical theater) made her Broadway debut, becoming the first South Asian female in a principal role in more than a decade.
From April 10 through 13, students will perform Mozart’s beloved opera Così fan tutte at Boston Conservatory Theater. This comic romp centers on a bet about fidelity that is made among the male characters, propelling the events into a sometimes riotous, sometimes moving escapade. Così fan tutte is an intense character study of its six players, and Boston Conservatory’s production ends with a feminist twist.
The spring Center Stage season will close with Boston Conservatory’s annual Spring Dance Concert: Limitless. The lineup features the captivating works Dvořák Serenade by Lar Lubovitch '24H and SAMA by Andrea Miller, alongside exciting new pieces by Ken Ossola and Aszure Barton, who is in residence this spring as part of her four-year partnership with Boston Conservatory. Performances will take place April 24 through 27 at Boston Conservatory Theater.
Center Stage is a perfect way for audiences to sample a curated selection of Boston Conservatory’s finest performances. In addition to Center Stage, Boston Conservatory offers arts lovers hundreds of free and low-cost events across dance, music, and theater, including musicals, operas, choral concerts, dance shows, ensembles, faculty recitals, student recitals, and several special series. The 2024–2025 Opera Innovators Series—in partnership with Boston Lyric Opera—will engage opera greats Lawrence Brownlee, Morris Robinson, Wendy Bryn Harmer, Anthony Roth Costanzo, and Jamie Barton. Artistry in Action will present Piano Master Series guests Olga Kern, Yukine Kuroki, Corey Hamm, and Soyeon Kate Lee, and String Master Series guests Melissa White (violin), Christopher Costanza (cello), Michael Casimir (viola), and Scott Kluksdahl (cello), as well as Chamber Series concerts featuring Boston Conservatory faculty artists.
Learn more about Boston Conservatory’s full 2024–2025 performance season.
Tickets can be purchased online at any time at bostonconservatory.berklee.edu/events, or in person at the Berklee Box Office at 136 Massachusetts Avenue. The box office is currently operating on reduced summer hours of Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. and will resume regular semester hours of Monday through Friday from 12:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. on Tuesday, September 3. Tickets for spring 2025 performances will be available in December 2024.