A recap of the 2025-2026 season,
FOCM’s 70th Anniversary season!
A milestone, and a wider footprint
The 70th season expanded where our audiences could hear us. Alongside our longtime homes at FIU's Wertheim Performing Arts Center and Coral Gables Congregational Church, the season added two venues: the University of Miami's Knight Center for Music Innovation and Bet Shira Congregation. That reach is the point. A presenting organization in its eighth decade should be widening the room, not settling into it.
The programming ran deliberately broad. A Cuban-song recital opened the season inside the FIU Music Festival; a classical saxophonist brought Gershwin and Piazzolla to a concert hall that rarely hears either; the New York Philharmonic Quartet, the Goldmund Quartet, and the Balourdet Quartet each brought a different century's idea of what four strings can do. It was a season built to show range, and it did.
Friends of Chamber Music of Miami marked our 70th anniversary season with nine concerts across four South Florida venues, presenting an unusually wide range of artistry: solo piano, classical saxophone, soprano, clarinet chamber works, and three of the finest string quartets performing today. Seventy years after our founding in 1955, the season made the case that chamber music in Miami is not a tradition being preserved so much as one still being built.
With gratitude
Our 70th anniversary season was made possible by the support of the City of Coral Gables and by the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs, the Cultural Affairs Council, the Miami-Dade County Mayor, and the Board of County Commissioners, and by the artistic leadership of interim co-directors Alexander Fiterstein and Abram Kreeger.
We are grateful to the sustainers, benefactors, advisors, and friends whose generosity carries this organization forward, and to every audience member who filled these rooms across the season. Seventy years on, FOCM remains one of South Florida's most enduring presenters of chamber music, and the season just past suggests the most interesting chapters are still ahead.
Looking Ahead
The 70th season was an anniversary, a celebration of the legacy of Julian Kreeger, and an evolution of South Florida’s historically prestigious chamber music series.
As we launch our 71st season, here are some highlights:
Our expansion of programming to feature a Summer Series kicks off with a partnership with the UM Frost Chopin Festival to co-present two free concerts featuring the Apollon Musagète Quartet and the festival’s winning performers.
The main season opens October 2, 2026 with the return of the Ehnes Quartet. Other returning ensembles include the New York Philharmonic Quartet and Balourdet Quartet. Sir Stephen Hough, Valentin Kovalev, Asiya Korepanova and FIU alum Laura Leon will also return to the FOCM stage.
FOCM will also present two award winning ensembles the Viano Quartet and Verona Quartet for the first time.
Community engagement events, master classes and exclusive online content.
Recap of Our 70th Season
Laura León (soprano) with Robert Koenig (piano)
Oct. 24, 2025 — FIU Wertheim Performing Arts Center
We opened inside the FIU Music Festival with An Evening of Cuban Song, soprano and FIU alumna Laura León in a program of Cuban coloratura and Spanish art song: Delibes, Turina, and a second half given over to Lecuona, Sánchez de Fuentes, and Vives. Robert Koenig stepped in at the piano for the originally scheduled Ken Noda. León's path from Cuba to the international stage gave the evening its particular warmth.
Benjamin Beilman (violin) with Gloria Chien (piano)
Nov. 18, 2025 — Coral Gables Congregational Church
Violinist Benjamin Beilman and pianist Gloria Chien built a program around the violin sonata's range, from Ysaÿe's solo "Ballade" through Bartók and Szymanowski to the Franck A-major sonata, and including the Florida premiere of Chris Rogerson's Arietta. A demanding pairing of repertoire, delivered with the rapport the music needs.
Benjamin Grosvenor (piano)
Dec. 4, 2025 — FIU Wertheim Performing Arts Center
Grosvenor returned with one of the season's most demanding programs: Chopin's Second Sonata, Ravel's Gaspard de la nuit, and Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition. Writing in Miami Clásica, Sebastian Spreng called the recital the final jewel of the city's musical year, citing the young British pianist's maturity and his growth into a major artistic voice. A frequent guest of FOCM, Grosvenor again gave Miami a reason to pay attention.
Drew Petersen (piano)
Dec. 20, 2025 — UM Knight Center for Music Innovation
The Keys to Romance: An Evening with Drew Petersen moved from Mozart's K. 330 through Wang Jie and Ravel's Sonatine to a second half of Liszt, the Études de Concert and the Réminiscences de Don Juan. A recital built to show off both lyricism and bravura, and a first visit to FOCM for the American pianist.
Valentin Kovalev (saxophone) with Yoni Levyatov (piano) Jan. 10, 2026 — UM Knight Center for Music Innovation
The Dazzling Classical Saxophone did exactly what its title promised. Kovalev and pianist Yoni Levyatov ranged from Debussy and Schumann through Villa-Lobos to a second half of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue and Piazzolla, including Kovalev's own arrangement of La Muerte del Ángel. The classical saxophone is a rare guest on a chamber series; this was a strong argument for inviting it more often.
New York Philharmonic Quartet with
Alexander Fiterstein (clarinet)
February 9, 2026 — Coral Gables Congregational Church
Players from the New York Philharmonic joined FOCM co-artistic director and clarinetist Alexander Fiterstein for Mozart's Adagio and Fugue, K. 546, Mendelssohn's String Quartet Op. 44 No. 1, and the Brahms Clarinet Quintet, Op. 115. The Brahms alone is a summit of the repertoire, and the evening met it.
Goldmund Quartet
Mar. 29, 2026 — Bet Shira Congregation
The Munich-based Goldmund Quartet made an impressive Miami debut with FOCM, pairing Brahms's String Quartet Op. 51 No. 2 with Schubert's Death and the Maiden. Miami Clásica praised the performance as precision met with incandescence, calling the ensemble one of the most lucid and consistent of its generation, and closing with a "Bravo" to FOCM for bringing them to Miami. A debut that earned its return invitation.
Balourdet Quartet with Asiya Korepanova (piano)
April 14, 2026 — Coral Gables Congregational Church
The Balourdet Quartet, joined by pianist Asiya Korepanova, took on two of the great piano quintets back to back: Shostakovich's Op. 57 in G minor and Dvořák's Op. 81 in A major. A program with no easy moments, and a quartet equal to it.
Alexander Fiterstein (clarinet) with
Nokuthula Ngwenyama (viola) and
Michael Stephen Brown (piano)
May 19, 2026 — UM Knight Center for Music Innovation
We closed the 70th season with Fiterstein returning alongside violist and composer Nokuthula Ngwenyama and pianist-composer Michael Stephen Brown. The program reached from Mozart's "Kegelstatt" Trio through Rebecca Clarke and Max Bruch to new work by Brown, Fiterstein, and Ngwenyama themselves, a finale that put living composers on the same stage as the canon. A fitting close to an anniversary season, and a pointer toward where the next seventy years go.
Remembering Stephen Margulis
This season also brought a loss. Stephen Margulis, a member of our board and a steady force behind the scenes of this organization who was critical to helping FOCM obtain grant support from government agencies and foundations, passed away suddenly on April 25, 2026.
His work for FOCM was the kind that often isn’t seen by the audience, but is foundational to everything that takes place on stage. Stephen’s contributions to FOCM and the South Florida music and arts communities go back more than 40 years and will be missed dearly.
A new way to connect with the artists
This season we launched FOCM on Instagram, and with it the Artist Spotlight series featuring short video excerpts drawn from full interviews with the artists from each concert conducted by our co-artistic directors. Each spotlight featured performers talking about the music, the instruments, and the choices behind a program before they ever took the stage, giving the audience rare insights from the performers.
The effect was to shorten the distance between artist and audience. A Brahms quintet or a Piazzolla arrangement means more when you've heard the player describe why it's on the program, and the series brought new faces into the FOCM community in the process. For a 70-year-old organization, it was a reminder that the way people find chamber music keeps changing, and that meeting them where they are is part of our important work.
Beyond the concert hall
The 70th season also pushed FOCM further into the community than a concert series alone can reach. At the University of Miami, we presented two masterclasses with visiting artists: Benjamin Beilman, the violinist who performs internationally and teaches at the Curtis Institute, and the Goldmund Quartet. For young musicians, time in the room with artists of that caliber is the kind of education that doesn't happen from the audience.
We also held our first pop-up events, taking the artists out of the concert hall and into the city. Valentin Kovalev appeared at Books & Books and Alexander Fiterstein at Panther Coffee, each event mixing live playing with conversation in a setting where people could encounter chamber music without a ticket or a concert hall between them. They were a first experiment in meeting new audiences on their own ground, and a model worth building on.
