Last season, Weilerstein introduced her major new multisensory performance series, “FRAGMENTS,” in Toronto, Southern California, Carnegie Hall, Cleveland, and Tanglewood. The series weaves together the 36 movements of Bach’s solo cello suites with 27 new commissions to make six unique programs, each an hour long, for solo cello. Tracing a powerful and wholly original emotional arc, each program embraces a wide variety of compositional voices, the composers being diverse with respect to age, race, gender, geography, compositional approach, musical style and stage of career (see below for complete list). All six programs are performed without pauses, applause or program details in a multisensory production by director Elkhanah Pulitzer and artistic producer and advisor Hanako Yamaguchi, with responsive lighting and architectural elements by Seth Reiser and original costumes by Carlos J Soto. Click here to watch a preview of “FRAGMENTS.”

This fall, the series continues with performances of FRAGMENTS 1 at Boston’s Celebrity Series (Nov 5); FRAGMENTS 1 & 2 at the Maison symphonique de Montréal (Nov 10); FRAGMENTS 2 at the California Festival in Walt Disney Hall (Nov 15) in Los Angeles and the La Jolla Music Society (Nov 16);Previewing last season’s Carnegie Hall performance, the New York Times observed: “It is hard to think of many soloists of a similar stature who would dare to bring anything like it to the stage.”

Recognized as one of the leading exponents of Bach’s six suites for unaccompanied cello, Weilerstein gave rapturously received live accounts of the complete set of suites on three continents prior to using them as part of the FRAGMENTS series. At New York’s 92NY in April she pairs Bach’s first and third suites with Kodály’s B-minor Sonata for solo cello and Joan Tower’s For Alisa. Tower composed the cello concerto A New Day for Weilerstein in 2021, and For Alisa is one of the new works featured in FRAGMENTS. Another set of chamber performances takes place this fall, when Weilerstein joins longtime recital partner Inon Barnatan and Canadian violinist James Ehnes, Artistic Director of the Seattle Chamber Music Festival, for “Schubert’s Swan Song” performances in Richmond, Virginia and Seattle that highlight the brilliant compositions of the composer’s last years.