A century after the University of Miami’s music school opened its doors and presented its first concert, the Frost School of Music is marking the anniversary the way it knows best: with a season of live performance.
The school’s 2026-27 Frost Music Live season will bring more than 100 performances to the University of Miami beginning Sept. 6 and continuing through April 2027, with a roster that includes jazz saxophonist Branford Marsalis, six-time Grammy-winning vocal group Take 6, Afro-Cuban singer Daymé Arocena and a series of premieres, alumni appearances and collaborations with Frost’s student ensembles and faculty artists.
The centennial reaches back to 1926, when the school opened as the Conservatory of Music, one of the University of Miami’s three original schools. It also staged its first concert that fall.
For Frost, the anniversary is less a retrospective than a framework for a season that moves across jazz, classical music, opera and contemporary work.
“The new Frost Music Live season is an especially significant one for us as we commemorate 100 years of live performances at the Frost School of Music,” interim Vice Dean Serona Elton said in announcing the program. She described the season as an opportunity to connect major artists with South Florida audiences through performances ranging from symphonic repertoire to jazz and new collaborations.
Jazz, alumni and America at 250
The season opens with America@250, a group of concerts commemorating the nation’s 250th anniversary. The series will feature “The President’s Own” United States Marine Band, along with performances by the Frost Wind Ensemble and pianist Mackenzie Melemed.
Some of the season’s biggest names will perform not as stand-alone touring acts but alongside Frost ensembles.
Marsalis, the saxophonist, composer and bandleader, and Take 6 will each appear with the Henry Mancini Institute Orchestra. Arocena will perform with the Frost Latin Jazz Orchestra, directed by MacArthur Fellow Dafnis Prieto, while Canadian jazz vocalist Laila Biali will join Frost’s jazz vocal ensembles for their annual Valentine’s Day concert.
A new cabaret-style series, Jazz at Hormel, will bring vocalists Nicole Henry and Alicia Olatuja together with the Frost Studio Jazz Band under professor Etienne Charles. Pianist Emmet Cohen also returns with Emmet’s Place Live, the concert series that Frost says regularly sells out.
The centennial season also brings several alumni back to perform with current students.
Singer-songwriter Gabe Dixon will appear with the American Music Ensemble. Latin pop producer and songwriter Danny Flores will return with CoastCity, his duo with Jean Rodriguez, to perform with the student ensemble Café Con Leche.
The pairing of established performers with students is one of the season’s recurring threads. Rather than separating visiting artists from the school’s academic program, Frost is building many of its marquee events around collaborations between the two.
Opera, orchestra and music beneath the sea
The classical program is anchored by a six-concert Frost Symphony Orchestra series under conductor Gerard Schwarz.
The season will include music by Mahler, Mozart, Tchaikovsky and Brahms, along with a world premiere by Grammy-winning trumpeter, composer and Frost professor Brian Lynch. Violinist Tessa Lark and Frost percussion professor Svet Stoyanov will perform Christopher Theofanidis’ “Gemini Sun: Concerto for Violin and Percussion.”
Frost Opera Theater will present the Southeast premiere of Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer’s “The Judgment of Paris,” a satirical opera that combines Greek mythology with the famous 1976 blind wine tasting that transformed the reputation of California wines.
One of the season’s more unusual collaborations reaches outside the music school.
Composer Chad Cannon’s multimedia “Music for the Ocean” joins Frost with the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science. Music and projected imagery will be used to explore the beauty and vulnerability of coral reef ecosystems.
It is an apt piece for a centennial season that looks both backward and forward. Frost is celebrating 100 years of live music not by recreating its past, but by putting students beside acclaimed performers, commissioning new work and extending music into disciplines far beyond the concert hall.
If you go…
Frost Music Live’s 2026-27 season begins Sunday, Sept. 6 and runs through April 2027.
