The Tampa Bay area is spoiled for choice when it comes to affordably priced, quality classical music concerts.
My pick to top such a list: the Palladium Chamber Series. Its tickets start at just $15, and $45 will secure one of the best seats in the house — with the house being the historic Palladium Theater’s 750-seat Hough Hall.
The concert series, now in its 13th year, launched its latest season in December and rolls into the new year with four fetching offerings scheduled through April.
The first of those 2026 concerts boasts a top-drawer chamber sextet performing works by Brahms and Tchaikovsky on Jan. 14. On Feb. 11, it will be piano quartets by Mozart, Richard Strauss and Schumann. Then on March 25, the program is packed with works by Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms, Stravinsky and Rabl.
That March concert features two married couples — guest violinist Stefan Jackiw and clarinetist Yoonah Kim, along with series stalwarts Edward Aaron on cello and Jeewon Park on piano. The latter duo is also part of the prior month’s program, along with Jeffrey Multer — The Florida Orchestra’s virtuosic and hugely popular concertmaster — and longtime series violist Danielle Farina.
With the season’s final concert on April 15, we get piano trios from Schubert, Shostakovich (a personal favorite) and Mendelssohn, with Julliard-trained Marika Bournaki as pianist and TFO’s cello principal, Yoni Draiblate.
All series concerts are set for 7:30 p.m.
Multer, who’s set to fiddle fabulously in four of this season’s five concerts, is a co-founder of the series, along with Palladium impresario Paul Wilborn. He remains a key part of the series’ recruiting efforts, partnering on administrative duties with Palladium project manager Laurel Borden.
Violinist Stefan Jackiw
Clarinetist Yoonah Kim
Best of both worlds
Multer was appointed TFO concertmaster back in 2006, when he confessed to being a bit worn out by the year-round travel of a fulltime quartet itinerant. But he still loves the small-group repertoire, so I recently asked him if being a part of the chamber series allows him to enjoy the best of both worlds.
“I always loved the orchestra repertoire, and I always loved the chamber repertoire, so this is a great balance,” Multer said just ahead of the latest Palladium season. “There is a lot of the time-consuming administrative stuff you have to do to run your chamber career and that’s not my job anymore. The small amount I have to do feels like a vacation for me.”
As for recruiting musicians for the series to supplement the core Palladium Chamber Players, he added: “We all kind of know each other from playing around the country, so there’s sort of a network. Ed Aaron is helpful in (brainstorming) that. The people we are playing with are so busy and they play so much that we have to be flexible about when they can come and perform.”
Multer said he’s gratified at the series’ longevity and popularity, with concerts regularly drawing two-thirds capacity prior to the pandemic and now showing a clear return to good times. Yet he hopes for further growth in support.
“I’d love to enlarge our subscriber base,” he said. “A chamber series never sells out — chamber music is not flashy like that — but I do think there is room for growth.”
St. Petersburg College, which owns the Palladium, plans a major renovation later this year, something that can only serve to bolster the chamber series. Improvements will include some work on the hall’s acoustics, which already are highly rated.
“For a chamber music hall, this is really one of the best ones,” Multer said. “It has a good mix of intimacy and sonics, and all unamplified music is entirely dependent on the room that it’s played in and how it sounds.”
Busy, busy
Meanwhile, I should mention that the Palladium series isn’t Multer’s only extracurricular. He’s a fellow who seems happiest when his musical plate is full, and it has seldom been otherwise.
Multer’s career hit an early high when he debuted in a Kennedy Center concert in 1993, and over the years he has performed in recital and as a soloist with orchestras and chamber ensembles in North and South America, Europe and Asia. He keeps busy each summer with lots of festival work and is approaching a full decade as artistic director of chamber music at the Eastern Music Festival in North Carolina, where he also teaches. He also takes an annual seat in the Mainly Mozart Festival orchestra in San Diego under the baton of TFO music director Michael Francis.
His prior positions as a chamber player include several years with a pair of New York-based ensembles. Multer was appointed first violin of the Oxford Quartet at age 28 and went on to join Elements Quartet in 2001.
Gallo gets extension
In an unrelated bit of TFO news, let me also share for her many area fans this happy development: Resident Conductor Chelsea Gallo has been awarded a two-year contract extension.
That will carry the charismatic young maestra through the 2026-27 season with the orchestra, where she serves as the lead conductor for its Morning Matinees series, among other podium responsibilities.
Carl DiOrio is a Tampa Bay area journalist and a lifelong music lover. He can be reached at
carldiorio@gmail.com
