Season
Finale
A Night of Premieres & Provocation at Carnegie Hall
& Vartan Mailiantz
ew York has always rewarded audacity — and few acts in the city's current cultural life are more audacious than what Salon Aux Chandelles has accomplished in a single year. Founded by Siberian-born award-winning violist and entrepreneur Alexandra Andreeva — also the creative force behind How to New Yorker, reaching over 2 million monthly visitors — and Armenian virtuoso violinist Vartan Mailiantz, husband and wife, both alumni of the Moscow State Conservatory, The Juilliard School, and Mannes School of Music — the series has traveled, in twelve months, from an intimate debut in a chandeliered Midtown ballroom to a Season Finale at Carnegie Hall.
On Thursday, April 2, 2026, Weill Recital Hall will host an evening of uncommon ambition: two United States premieres, a program spanning Rachmaninoff to Bernstein, Schnittke to a Gen Z Danish opera composer, Rebecca Clarke to Offenbach — and a room filled with some of the most distinguished names in New York's arts, fashion, finance, and cultural life. Only a handful of seats remain.
An Immigrant Story.
Award-winning violist, cultural entrepreneur, and the creative intelligence behind Salon Aux Chandelles' identity. A graduate of the Tchaikovsky Moscow State Conservatory and Mannes School of Music, she has performed at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Madison Square Garden, the Kennedy Center, and Kaseya Center. Winner of the International Competition "The Pearl of Russia" and "Young Performers," she also holds a Professional Studies Diploma from Mannes and pursued Arts Management at NYU and The New School. Her digital platform How to New Yorker reaches over 2 million monthly visitors — bridging classical culture with the texture of contemporary New York life.
Award-winning virtuoso violinist whose trajectory was defined early: by age 16, more than ten national and international competition victories. Trained at the Moscow State Conservatory, The Juilliard School, and the Mannes School of Music, he carries the great Russian-Armenian violin lineage with both scholarly rigor and restless vitality. A soloist at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and the Kennedy Center, his programming instincts are shaped by a lifelong devotion to the rarest corners of the violin and viola repertoire — unearthing works of startling beauty that deserve far wider audiences than they have yet received.
Past Meets Present.
The United States premiere of Amanda Drew and Faun Vium's Dronning Annabell — a Gen Z Danish operatic voice arriving on American soil for the first time — sits at the heart of the first half, in direct conversation with Offenbach, Rachmaninoff, and the 20th-century British modernism of Rebecca Clarke, whose Duo Concertante receives a rare and luminous outing under the hands of Andreeva and Mailiantz.
The program closes with Leonard Bernstein's "America" from West Side Story — a choice that is not ironic, not nostalgic, and not accidental. It is a declaration: that the cultural inheritance of immigrants is not a relic to be preserved behind glass. It is living, performed, and unapologetically present.
Joined by an extraordinary ensemble of award-winning artists, all performing alongside Andreeva and Mailiantz:
Produced by an immigrant-artist-led nonprofit in direct collaboration with a student-led orchestra nonprofit — two communities whose creative futures are inseparably intertwined.
The Luxury of Depth.
A generation that grew up with infinite content on demand has, in surprising numbers, begun to hunger for something that cannot be streamed in the background: the unrepeatable, unrewindable experience of live performance. Salon Aux Chandelles has understood this from the start — building events that feel less like concerts and more like cultural initiations, where the music elevates the room and the hour after becomes, as Alexandra Andreeva puts it, "where the magic happens."
For the luxury market, the shift is already underway. A new generation of highly sought-after performers — technically elite, visually compelling, socially fluent — is redefining what a classical musician looks like in 2026. Salon Aux Chandelles has built this room in just one year.
to Carnegie Hall.
The canon that fills the world's great concert halls bears the unmistakable imprint of Eastern European training, tradition, and temperament. The conservatories of Russia, Ukraine, the Baltic states, and the broader Soviet sphere produced generations of musicians whose technical rigor and interpretive depth became the invisible infrastructure of Western classical culture. The great violin schools of Moscow and Odessa — the pedagogical lineages running from Auer through Heifetz, from Neuhaus through Richter — are not footnotes to the Western musical story. They are its spine.
Vartan Mailiantz and Alexandra Andreeva, trained at the Moscow State Conservatory, The Juilliard School, and the Mannes School of Music, carry that lineage with both reverence and a distinctly contemporary restlessness. Together they represent something rarer than virtuosity: an artistic vision that is simultaneously rooted and radical, steeped in tradition and entirely of the present moment.
The Season Finale has drawn a rare gathering of luminaries across music, arts, fashion, finance, and tech:
to Witness It Yourself
Salon Aux Chandelles is extending a limited number of exclusive complimentary tickets to credentialed journalists and cultural media representatives covering the arts, luxury lifestyle, music, or entertainment. Space is extremely limited. Please write to us with your name, outlet, and area of coverage.
info@salonauxchandelles.orgSalon Aux Chandelles is a New York City-based, immigrant-artist-led 501(c)(3) nonprofit performing arts organization dedicated to championing women composers and performers, and to fostering genuine human connection through classical and contemporary music. Founded and directed by award-winning string players Alexandra Andreeva and Vartan Mailiantz, the organization has produced 18 concerts in its debut year, secured $50,000+ in philanthropic funding, and established itself as one of New York City's most talked-about new cultural voices