As the morning chill starts to pervade the Northeast and we settle into a new season, I sat down to reflect and did the math: over the course of three seasons, I’ve had 22 symphonic engagements—15 of them debuts and 7 immediate return engagements. I am filled with gratitude for these opportunities and the trust that those symphonies (among other incredible organizations) have put in me. This season, there are more halls than ever, so let me tell you where it takes me.

A Season of the Great Oratorios

Here's the shape of it: nearly every weekend, a different city, a different hall—almost always one of the great oratorios. Messiah. The Bach Passions. Carmina Burana. Haydn's Creation. The Mass in B Minor. Mozart's Requiem. This is the repertoire I've dedicated my craft to, and from September through June it carries me coast to coast. From a brand-new orchestra in San Antonio to the Dallas Symphony, from Boston to Southern California, and home to Carnegie Hall, twice!

What I love about oratorio is that I get to be myself and tell the story through my own experience. My hope is always the same: that a long phrase, or a held silence, or something that can only happen live, captivates and resonates with you for a moment, and you leave a little lighter than you came in.

That so many orchestras keep asking me back is the part I'll never take for granted. Some of these are relationships more than a decade in the making; others begin this year. Two of the year's peaks are already close to my heart, and they're where I'll start: Carnegie Hall and the Dallas Symphony.

Brian Giebler - Tenor — *Photo: Tim Dwight* **Handel’s *Messiah* at Carnegie with the Oratorio Society of NY**

A Special Birthday and Homecoming at Carnegie Hall

On December 21, I return to Carnegie Hall for Handel's Messiah with the Oratorio Society of New York, under Kent Tritle. Kent gave me my very first audition in this city back in 2013 when I was fresh out of school. He immediately took a chance on me—a conductor relationship I cherish. This will be my 13th solo appearance on the Perelman Stage in Stern Auditorium at Carnegie, and it falls on the eve of my 40th birthday in the city I call home—I can't think of a better place to be!

Considering Matthew Shepard at Carnegie Hall

On February 15, I return to Carnegie (#14, but whose counting 😄) for Considering Matthew Shepard, Craig Hella Johnson's oratorio-passion about a young man whose murder still asks something of all of us. For the past several years, I have been singing the words of Matt in this work around the country, and as a gay man, I carry this piece differently than anything else in my repertoire. It speaks to what we're still fighting for: kindness, acceptance, the simple dignity of being seen. I've come to know Matthew's parents, Judy and Dennis, and their continued fight through their Matthew Shepard Foundation is truly inspirational. This will be the work’s Carnegie debut, and bringing it to that stage feels like a responsibility and a gift.

Dallas Symphony's First Bach Passion (and my Debut)

In February, I join the Dallas Symphony and Maestro Fabio Luisi for Bach's St. John Passion—the first time this orchestra has ever performed one of the great Bach Passions. To help bring a work like this to a major American orchestra for the first time is a fleeting opportunity, the kind of honor that doesn't come around often.

A Winter of Bach Passions

That St. John opens what becomes a month of Bach for me. On February 17, I return to Trinity Wall Street where, during my formative years, I sang two Bach Cantatas nearly every week and learned this music innately. I sang my first Evangelist in the St. Matthew Passion at Trinity in 2016, and am thrilled that after so many performances of it around the country, I get to bring it back to this space 11 years the wiser. I close February back in San Antonio: Jeffrey Kahane asked me back to Harmonium of Texas, the brand-new orchestra whose very first season I open this fall singing Carmina, to sing the Evangelist in St. Matthew Passion among the likes of Hadleigh Adams and Will Liverman.

Messiah Season

Messiah and Carmina Burana are the pieces I frequent more than any other, but with Messiah what I love is coming to it with a new fresh perspective each season. Beyond the Carnegie performance, I sing it twice more this winter: with the Knoxville Symphony to open the holiday stretch, and with the Pacific Symphony on December 6, where our conductor, Jean-Sébastien Vallée, plans to partly stage the work. I know this piece as well as anything I sing, but without the score as a prop, what's left is just the singer, honest and open, meeting the audience with nothing in between.

From a lad's love to a dad's love

The season opened this past Sunday, September 20 in Pennsylvania, in recital with Steven McGhee — my longtime pianist and dearest collaborator. Steve and I have made music together for years, and this year that work reaches its next chapter: my second solo album, a dad's love, the follow-up to our GRAMMY® nominated debut a lad's love. It's the most vulnerable and personal record I've made—built around a world-premiere song cycle by Clarice Assad I commissioned—and it continues a story many of you have followed since the first album. I'm looking forward to sharing more about the release in my next newsletter. For now I'll just say it's perhaps the thing I am the most proud of.

More This Season

The rest of the year is just as full. I open Jeffrey Kahane's brand-new Harmonium of Texas this fall with Carmina Burana—a piece I've now sung more than 20 times—and I get to bring it back twice in the spring, with the Missoula Symphony and the Fresno Philharmonic. There's Haydn's Creation for my debut with the Bach Society of Saint Louis, a conductorless Bach program with Boston's A Far Cry, Bach's Mass in B Minor with Voices of Ascension, and Mozart's Requiem at Strathmore with the National Philharmonic and The Washington Chorus. A pair of operas frame the year at the Boston Early Music Festival—Pyramus & Thisbe this fall, and Telemann's Emma und Eginhard to close the season in June.

Wherever you are this season—Dallas, San Antonio, St. Louis, Knoxville, Southern California, Boston, or here at home in New York—I'd love to look up from the stage and know you're out there. And whether we've shared a stage already or simply haven't yet, I hope you'll reach out. Hit reply and tell me. I read and reply to each and every one!

With gratitude,
Brian

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My 2026–27 season and a new album