*A subscription to our 2008-09 season guarantess you a place in a season as deep and diverse as it is historic.
We’ll start out the year in the warm and acoustically excellent Concert Hall at the New York Society for Ethical Culture, praised by David Finckel and Wu Han as an extraordinary venue in which to listen to chamber music. Located on West 64th Street at Central Park West, this venue is just one block from the Plaza at Lincoln Center.
Opening Night and two programs from the Baroque Festival—the Brandenburg Concertos and the Baroque Collection—will be performed at the Rose Theater, Frederick P. Rose Hall, Home of Jazz at Lincoln Center in the Time Warner Center on Columbus Circle.
In February, 2009, we return to our permanent, and beloved, home at Alice Tully Hall—freshly renovated and ready to take its position as New York’s most important concert venue! Two special CMS concerts are part of a larger celebration, then we continue our season at home through to its magnificent conclusion.
The Concert Hall at Ethical Culture is a lovely facility with superb acoustics and is a landmark building that holds an important place in New York’s architectural history. Listeners and performers alike enjoy music in this historic and gracious space. Being an older building, it has some physical challenges that we want you to know about:
It will reopen in February, 2009.
Many of the changes will not be apparent to visitors. But some—its wonderful new facade, the sparkling new donor room and larger lobby—will be readily apparent. Most people are intensely curious about the legroom, and rightly so, as Alice Tully Hall had a well-deserved reputation as the most comfortable hall in this and many cities. And we’re happy to report that the legroom will be exactly the same!
We’ve had the same number and style subscription packages since at least 1991. But in that time, your buying patterns have changed a lot, and as a result, we made some changes. What hasn’t changed, however, is the splendid music and attentive customer service to which you grown accustomed!
Subscriptions are seated in the order in which they are received – with one exception: All Chamber Collections packages (i.e. same-day or theme series) are seated first, followed by Make Your Own Series orders.
Subscribers are always seated in the best available seats. However, because certain concerts sell more heavily than others, your seats will move around as we choose for you the best seats we have available.
The process of assigning seats is a complicated one… seat availability at any given moment is dependent on which subscribers choose to renew their current seats, as a benefit of being a returning subscriber is the change to retain or upgrade their current seats for a Chamber Collection package. We always do our best to honor your requests, however—we want you to be happy in your seats, as we understand how important this in the overall enjoyment of your concerts. So if you aren’t quite happy with where your seat assignment is, we will work with you until you are happy!
We make it easy to exchange or donate your subscription tickets if conflicts arise.
Subscribers enjoy easy and free ticket exchanges. Call 212-875-5788 up to two hours prior to the concert for which you have tickets, and we will arrange an exchange, pending availability. (At this time, the following concerts will not be available to request on exchange: Dec 9, Dec 16, Mar 16.) Exchange seats most likely will not be your regular subscription seats. Alternatively, you may donate your tickets, which qualifies as a tax-deductible contribution to CMS. There are no refunds of purchased tickets and subscriptions.
Under both circumstances, we’ll ask you to mail your tickets back to us. Send tickets to the Subscription Office, CMS, 70 Lincoln Center Plaza, New York, NY 10023. As soon as we receive the tickets, we either process your exchange request, or send you a printed acknowledgment.