Carter Brey, who has been in the role for 30 seasons, will retire at the end of the 2025–26 season
The New York Philharmonic’s long-standing principal cellist, Carter Brey, has announced that he will retire from the orchestra at the end of the 2025–26 season, following 30 seasons with the ensemble.
Brey joined the orchestra in 1996 as the Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels chair. His final solo performances as a member of the orchestra will be Saint-Saëns’s Cello Concerto no. 1 in subscription concerts in David Geffen Hall, conducted by Elim Chan, 27–30 May, and on the Concerts in the Parks, 9–12 June.
Brey said: ’There is an adage among offshore sailors: if you’re thinking about reducing sail, it’s past time to do it. So it is with regard to retirement: better early than late.
’The honour of holding a titled chair with my beloved hometown orchestra has been an extraordinary privilege, and I want to pass that privilege on to a new generation.
’I anticipate a joyous renewal of purpose and connection for them under the guidance of incoming music & artistic director Gustavo Dudamel.’
Dudamel said: ’Carter Brey is a perfect example of everything that I love about the New York Philharmonic players – he is both a true musician and a deeply warm and caring human being.
’I wish him joy in his next chapter, and I know that the magnificent sound of his cello will always continue to resonate in our hall, and in our hearts.’
After joining the orchestra in 1996, Brey made his Philharmonic solo debut in May 1997 performing Tchaikovsky’s Variations on a Rococo Theme, conducted by then music director Kurt Masur.
By the start of the 2025–26 season Brey had appeared with the Philharmonic as soloist 79 times, and was featured during The Bach Variations: A Philharmonic Festival, when he gave two performances of Bach’s complete Suites for Unaccompanied Cello.
Most recently, he was the soloist in performances of Brahms’s Double Concerto, alongside concertmaster Frank Huang and conducted by then music director Jaap van Zweden, in May–June 2024.
Brey is a founding member of the New York Philharmonic Quartet, established in the 2016–17 season, which in its inaugural season performed with the orchestra as the solo ensemble in John Adams’s Absolute Jest in New York and on tour.
Brey studied with Laurence Lesser and Stephen Kates at the Peabody Institute and Aldo Parisot at Yale University, before serving as a member of The Cleveland Orchestra’s cello section for two years.
He was a prizewinner at the 1981 Rostropovich International Cello Competition and won the Young Concert Artists’ Michaels Award the following year.
Brey then enjoyed a successful career as a soloist, appearing with virtually all the major orchestras in the United States, and performing under the batons of prominent conductors including Claudio Abbado, Semyon Bychkov, Sergiu Comissiona and Christoph von Dohnányi.
As a chamber musician, Brey has appeared with the Tokyo and Emerson string quartets, at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and at festivals such as Spoleto (both in the US and Italy) and the Santa Fe and La Jolla Chamber Music festivals.
He and pianist Christopher O’Riley recorded Le Grand Tango: Music of Latin America, a disc of compositions from South America and Mexico released on Helicon Records.
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