The Boston Philharmonic has announced that the 2026-27 performance season will be the last one for both the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra and Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra.
The philharmonic will then become the Zander Center, a “legacy-focused organization” serving as a headquarters for the endeavors of founding conductor Benjamin Zander, 87, the organization said.
Zander, who was born in England and trained first as a cellist and composer, has lived primarily in the Boston area since 1965. He founded the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra in 1979, and the Boston Youth Philharmonic Orchestra in 2012, and has been the sole conductor of both ensembles since their establishment.
His conducting has long run in parallel with an international career as a public speaker on leadership. Together with his former wife and longtime creative partner, the late psychotherapist Rosamund Stone Zander, he wrote the self-help book “The Art of Possibility.”
In a phone interview, Boston Philharmonic managing director Sean Lewis said that while the specifics of the planned Zander Center were still in development, it would be home to “all of [Zander’s] projects post-BPO and post-BPYO,” including audio and visual recordings from concerts and interpretation classes, as well as possibly presenting “the occasional one-off concert.”
While the organization’s administration and board never truly ruled out finding a successor who could continue leading the orchestras, Lewis said, the Boston Philharmonic is at heart a “founder’s organization.” Through the marketing and programming, including its concerts at Symphony Hall, “the identity of the BPO has been inextricably linked to Ben’s own identity,” he said.
Zander served on the faculty of New England Conservatory for 45 years, conducting the school’s Youth Philharmonic Orchestra for over three decades of that time while also heading up the BPO. His time at NEC abruptly ended in early 2012, when he was dismissed after school officials discovered he had knowingly hired a registered sex offender as a videographer for the youth orchestra’s concerts, rehearsals and classes. Later the same year, he founded the BPYO under the Boston Philharmonic umbrella, and a handful of young musicians who had played under him at NEC followed him to his new organization.
The BPYO, which includes musicians between the ages of 12 and 21, has embarked on an international tour most summers since its founding with recent destinations including Mexico, central Europe, and Greece. The planned June 2027 tour to “the major European centers of music” is intended to be the last for the youth orchestra,
While Boston Philharmonic’s announcement did not include full details of the upcoming seasons, it indicated the orchestras would perform Zander’s “signature repertoire,” including Mahler’s Symphonies Nos. 2 (“Resurrection”) and 9, and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9. ”
A.Z. Madonna can be reached at az.madonna@globe.com. Follow her @knitandlisten.