Internationally celebrated cellist Paul Wiancko made his debut last year as the leader of Spoleto Festival USA’s respected Bank of America Chamber Music series.
It was a major transition for the series, shaped by his late predecessor, Geoff Nuttall. It was also a huge personal endeavor for Wiancko, who was already planning next year’s series before the 2025 festival even started.
“The first time around, there were just a lot of unknowns,” said Wiancko, one of four members of the well-known Kronos Quartet.
Now in his second year in charge, Wiancko is just as busy. But with firmer footing, he’s ready to push boundaries.
“I definitely feel like I have a better grasp of what it means to be an artistic director,” he said, “and the honor, weight and respect that come with the role.”
That role consists of 33 chamber music performances during the 2025 season – 11 programs, each performed three times in just over two weeks. He will play cello in almost every one. And when he’s not performing for the series, he’ll appear in a separate program with the Kronos Quartet on June 2 at Charleston Music Hall.
Pushing creative boundaries
This year’s chamber music series will blend eras, genres, instruments and cultures in ways that are nothing short of unconventional.
“It might be fun, it might be weird, it might be a little bit outside of the box,” Wiancko said. “But I think it’s going to work.”
Among those bolder choices are a Barbra Streisand tribute by countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo and a program that mashes up Beethoven with Samuel Barber, Sri Lankan Canadian composer Dinuk Wijeratne and Hildegard von Bingen, the first person ever to put a name on a composition. And for the first time, the schedule also includes two evening performances, a change from the series’ usual afternoon-only format.
One of the evening programs will include a world premiere from this year’s composer-in-residence, internationally acclaimed Iranian singer Mahsa Vahdat. It’s a position Wiancko himself held in 2019. Her name, in fact, really stood out to him.
“She is one of the most legendary artists I’ve ever worked with,” he said.
Wiancko said his experience in that role, which marked his Spoleto debut, continues to shape the way he programs the festival.
“The first step is usually considering the composer-in-residence,” he said. “As a composer myself, I know how long it takes to write a piece of music.”
A voice that transcends borders
Vahdat, an acclaimed Persian singer and composer, has an influence that extends beyond music. Banned from publicly performing solo in her home country of Iran due to restrictive laws, she lives in exile, continuing to resist silence. “I always say that my voice is my home,” she said.
Her world premiere at Spoleto will feature what Wiancko described as “Mahsa’s signature style, with the addition of some Vivaldi Baroque elements.” In fact, he has programmed Vivaldi’s evergreen “Four Seasons” alongside Vahdat’s work. “And I can’t even begin to explain what that’s going to sound like, what it’s going to feel like.”
Her three songs combine 800-year-old text by the Persian poet Rumi with her own words, and blends traditional Persian sounds with her own musical interpretations. It contains themes of love, resistance and freedom, but also of death and longing.
“Working with Persian poets, from old and contemporary times, is a never-ending journey,” Vahdat said. ”They are precious. Like an ocean, you always can find something in them.”
She said her relationship with the audience is special to her. As an international performer, she prides herself on cutting through language barriers with the emotion conveyed beyond the words themselves. “You don’t need to know the language. You don’t need to know the culture,” she said. “When it comes from the heart, it goes to the heart.”
Amid all of this year’s changes, Wiancko said, Vahdat’s gifts as a composer, singer and activist embody everything the series has always represented. “It’s all about being human,” he said. “We’re all weird and wonderful creatures doing this strange thing called music.”
IF YOU WANT TO GO: Bank of America Chamber Music, through -June 8 at various times, Dock Street Theatre, 135 Church St.
Olivia Meier is a journalism graduate of the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University.
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