Join us for a joyful concert honoring the heroes who work to protect and restore our local waterways. This special performance celebrates Lynnhaven River Now, a nonprofit dedicated to restoring and protecting Virginia Beach waters and natural areas, ensuring clean and healthy waterways for wildlife and our community.

Experience the beauty and inspiration of music that reflects the flow, life, and vitality of rivers and water. Featuring music performed by talented Musicians of the Virginia Symphony Orchestra, this family-friendly event will uplift your spirits while highlighting the importance of preserving our natural treasures. 

Bring your friends and family, enjoy the sounds of river-inspired music, and support the mission of Lynnhaven River Now. Together, we can celebrate the environment, our community, and the joy of music! 

Program

Praised by the New York Times for his “smart, unusual programming,” Ian Niederhoffer stands out as a “charismatic, enthusiastic and articulate” leader, which, “together with his undeniable skills as a musician, makes for a winning combination” (New York Classical Review). Niederhoffer founded Parlando in 2019 with the vision of every concert telling a story.

A recipient of the 2025 Georg Solti Career Assistance Award and a BBC Music Magazine Rising Star for January 2024, Niederhoffer — the winner of three prizes at the 2021 Khachaturian International Conducting Competition — is a confident and expressive communicator of music, context, and ideas. Writing about his performance with Parlando of Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge, arranged for string orchestra, The Strad praised “the lyrical moments, [which were] played with shape and character.”

Niederhoffer has displayed a knack for curating unique and fascinating programs, through which Parlando audiences have come to expect and look forward to the delightful elucidations about the pieces. As a charismatic pre-concert speaker, Niederhoffer has a relaxed yet persuasive anecdotal style that takes inspiration from the stories and composers behind the music, and invites audiences to engage with curiosity in programs of widely diverse selections. The goal is to make all classical music feel familiar to the audience, no matter the composer, era, or style.

Niederhoffer has long been an entrepreneur dedicated to commissioning new music. Under his leadership, Parlando has commissioned new works by inti figgis-vizueta, Jerod Impichchaachaaha' Tate, Mason Bynes, and Anna Roberts-Gevalt. As a student at Yale University, Niederhoffer founded the Yale Undergraduate Chamber Orchestra, commissioning six new pieces and presenting a world premiere at every concert over his three-year tenure as music director. Yale honored Niederhoffer with the Wrexham Prize and the Joseph Lentilhon Selden Memorial Award for his “verve, idealism, and constructive interest in music.”

In June 2024, Niederhoffer participated in the Tonhälle Zurich Conducting Academy with Paavo Järvi, and in 2021 Niederhoffer was named Artist of Promise at the Conducting Academy of the Verbier Festival, where he was assistant conductor for Lahav Shani, Daniel Harding, Antonio Pappano, and Gábor Takacs-Nágy. In 2019 and 2022 Niederhoffer participated in the Järvi Conducting Academy at the Pärnu Music Festival, an international conducting masterclass led by the world-famous family of conductors Paavo Järvi, Neeme Järvi, and Kristjan Järvi. His principal teachers include Leonid Grin, Toshiyuki Shimada, and William Boughton.

Lynnhaven River Now is a 501(c)(3) organization. Their work centers on restoring and protecting Virginia Beach’s waterways and natural resources. Virginia Beach has a very complex system of eight watersheds that make up 3 major watersheds: Little Creek, Lynnhaven River, Atlantic Ocean, Rudee and Owl Creek, Back Bay, North Landing River, the Eastern Branch of the Elizabeth River and the Northwest River.