The Five for Fighting with String Quartet tour features John Ondrasik, who is responsible for such songs as “Superman (It’s Not Easy),” “100 Years,” and “The Riddle,” playing his music in a more intimate setting at smaller venues. The format lets him tell stories, take a deeper dive into his catalog, and slip in a few surprises.
Complete List of 2026/27 Tour Dates
East Coast Dates (ticket links below)
| Sat., Sept. 19, 2026 | Clayton, NY | The Clayton Opera House |
| Sun., Sept. 20, 2026 | Newton, NJ | The Newton Theatre |
| Tue., Sept. 22, 2026 | Rutland, VT | Paramount Theatre |
| Thur., Sept. 24, 2026 | Portsmouth, NH | The Music Hall |
| Fri., Sept. 25, 2026 | Concord, NH | Capitol Center for the Arts Bank of New Hampshire Stage |
| Sat., Sept. 26, 2026 | Stowe, VT | Spruce Peak Performing Arts Center |
| Sun., Sept. 27, 2026 | Natick, MA | The Center for Arts in Natick |
| Tue., Sept., 29, 2026 | Fall River, MA | Narrows Center for the Arts |
| Thur., Oct. 1, 2026 | Gardiner, ME | Johnson Hall Opera House |
| Fri., Oct. 2, 2026 | Brownfield, ME | Stone Mountain Arts Center |
| Sat., Oct. 3, 2026 | Rockport, MA | Shalin Liu Performance Center |
| Sun., Oct. 4, 2026 | Hartford, CT | Infinity Hall Hartford |
| Tue., Oct. 6, 2026 | Troy, NY | Troy Savings Bank Music Hall |
| Thur., Oct. 8, 2026 | Tarrytown, NY | Tarrytown Music Hall |
| Fri., Oct. 9, 2026 | Riverhead, NY | The Suffolk Theater |
| Sat., Oct. 10, 2026 | Port Washington, NY | Landmark on Main Street |
| Sun., Oct. 11, 2026 | New York, NY | City Winery |
| Tue., Oct. 13, 2026 | Red Bank, NJ | Count Basie Center for the Arts – The Vogel |
| Wed., Oct. 14, 2026 | Fairfield, CT | Sacred Heart Community Theatre |
| Fri., Oct. 16, 2026 | York, PA | Appell Center for the Performing Arts |
| Sat., Oct. 17, 2026 | Sellersville, PA | Sellersville Theater |
| Sun., Oct. 18, 2026 | Annapolis, MD | Rams Head On Stage |
| Tue., Oct. 20, 2026 | Alexandria, VA | The Birchmere |
| Wed., Oct. 21, 2026 | Richmond, VA | Tin Pan |
Canada Tour Dates (ticket links below)
| Tue., Dec. 8, 2026 | St. Catharines, ON | FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre |
| Wed., Dec. 9, 2026 | North Bay, ON | The Capitol Centre |
| Thur., Dec. 10, 2026 | Kitchener, ON | Centre In The Square |
| Fri., Dec. 11, 2026 | Richmond Hill, ON | RHCPA |
West Coast Tour Dates (ticket links below)
| Tue., Jan. 12, 2027 | Port Angeles, WA | Field Arts & Events Hall |
| Wed., Jan. 13, 2027 | Vashon, WA | Vashon Center for the Arts |
| Thur., Jan. 14, 2027 | Portland, OR | Aladdin Theater |
| Fri., Jan. 15, 2027 | Bend, OR | Tower Theatre |
| Sun., Jan. 17, 2027 | Modesto, CA | Gallo Center For the Arts |
| Tue., Jan. 19, 2027 | Napa, CA | Uptown Theatre Napa |
| Thur., Jan. 21, 2027 | Saratoga, CA | Montalvo Arts Center |
| Fri., Jan. 22, 2027 | Livermore, CA | Livermore Valley Performing Arts Center |
| Sat., Jan. 23, 2027 | Thousand Oaks, CA | Fred Kavli Theatre – Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza |
| Sun., Jan. 24, 2027 | San Luis Obispo, CA | Fremont Theater |
| Tue., Jan. 26, 2027 | Solana Beach, CA | Belly Up |
| Wed., Jan. 27, 2027 | San Juan Capistrano, CA | Coach House Concert Hall |
| Thur., Jan. 28, 2027 | Solana Beach, CA | Belly Up |
How to Buy Five for Fighting Concert Tickets
Whether you’re on the East Coast, in Canada, or on the West Coast, the best place to get tickets for the String Quartet tour is at the Tickets link on the official Five for Fighting website.
Who Are the Members of the String Quartet?
Katie Kresek (Violin)
Katie is an accomplished performer, creator, and educator. She is comfortable across a broad spectrum of musical genres, and has recorded with artists such as Norah Jones, James Taylor, and Paul Simon. Katie is the first American woman to win a Tony Award for Best Orchestrations.
Melissa Tong (Violin)
Melissa is a seasoned Broadway performer with credits that include such timeless productions as Ain’t Too Proud to Beg and Some Like It Hot. She served as violinist and assistant conductor on the Hadestown First National Tour, and has toured with Post Malone.
Chris Cardona (Viola)
Chris has been a performer for over a quarter of a century. His instruments of choice are the violin and the viola. Over his expansive career, he has worked on many illustrious Broadway productions, such as Show Boat, Fiddler on the Roof, 9 to 5, and Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark.
Peter Sachon (Cello)
Peter is a phenomenal cellist who worked on a vast assortment of Broadway productions, including South Pacific, My Fair Lady, High Fidelity, and Legally Blonde. He has toured with Cirque du Soleil and as a member of Pink Martini. Besides John Ondrasik, Chris has worked with artists such as Audra McDonald, Dee Snider, Stephen Schwartz, and James Taylor.
John Ondrasik Interview: What Drives the Man Behind Five for Fighting?
What made you who you are? From my perspective, at least, you’re a little different from the average star. There’s a depth and a caring, something internal that’s driving you as much as the music.
Well, thank you. I guess I’d probably have to start with my parents. I’ve been blessed to have wonderful parents who supported their son who had this passion for the arts, but made sure that he understood that it’s not a guarantee, you have to go to college, and you have to get some fallback positions. They also let me work at the family business so I could go on auditions. My parents have been very important, like all of us, in who we are.
I know it might sound a little cheesy, but I have a great love for our country and the freedom that provides all of us the ability to do what we want to do — to pursue our dreams, whether we fail or succeed.
Also, when it comes to the music business, I had success very late. I was in my late 20s, early 30s before I had a hit song. I struggled for a long time, so I think I have maybe a little more gratitude for just being able to do this than somebody who had hits in their early 20s. I understand that there’s a lot more than me that goes into making this thing happen.
Those are some of the things. But I’d have to say, it’s mostly my parents.
Did they instill this strong sense of right and wrong in you?
My mom was a piano teacher, and my dad was an astrophysicist. She gave me the music start and my dad was the science guy. My dad is a very moral person. He has no problem doing the right thing, even when there’s a cost. To this day, he’s never said a curse word. He’s never had a drink. He’s something I will never live up to, but he’s been a real good role model.
Also, throughout my whole career, I’ve had great respect for our military, our military families, and their sacrifices. I don’t have any military in my family, but at a very young age, I started singing songs and playing for the military and learning their stories and seeing their sacrifice firsthand.
You seem to respect other people, whoever they are or whatever their situation might be. I don’t feel that every musician is genuinely that way.
The thing about having a song like “Superman” is that it’s used in so many situations where there’s tragedy, so I’m around a lot of very kind of tragic events. Seeing people go through things like that makes me grateful for what I have. Maybe it’s given me a perspective that some other musicians might not have? I don’t know. I was just looking for things to answer your question. I don’t think I’m doing anything special to be honest with you. I just think I have a certain common sense and I say it out loud.
I have to admit, there are a lot of good, humanitarian things that you do and have done that I didn’t realize until I started researching you for this article. Are these things that someone pitches to you or do you look at the world and say, “Hey, there needs to be some help here?”
Kind of both. When it comes to the world, like the recent songs for Afghanistan, Ukraine, and Israel, I was like, “Somebody’s got to say something.” Music can shine the spotlight on people and events in a way like nothing else can.
But other times, it’s just circumstance. For example, one of my greatest mentors is a guy named Augie Nieto. His story is amazing. He was the face of Life Fitness, he ran the company and made hundreds of millions of dollars, married his high school sweetheart, he was the face on all the fitness magazines, and then he got ALS. I was hired to perform at one of his fundraisers because “100 Years” was one of his and his daughter’s favorite songs. I met him at that fundraiser, and he was so funny. He read a top 10 list called “The Top 10 Reasons Why It’s Cool to Have ALS.” He was just a wonderful guy, and he decided to spend all of his resources to attack ALS. He knew it wasn’t going to save him, but he knew it could save others. When you meet people like that. It’s easy to become a member of their army. So a lot of it comes with your circumstances.
When I was at Columbia Records, my project manager had an autistic child, so that kind of led to doing a lot of work early in my career in the autism community. That’s the nice thing about having songs; you can use them not just to shine the spotlight on causes, but to give people who feel abandoned some solace and some energy that they’re not alone.
Do you think music has the power to change lives?
Performing at The Concert for New York City [the October 20, 2001 benefit concert to honor and support the victims and first responders of the September 11 attacks], I saw very quickly how music can transcend and matter in ways like nothing else can. And it wasn’t my performance. It was watching The Who come out. People forget that virtually everybody who was in Madison Square Garden for that concert had been down at Ground Zero weeding through the rubble and seeing horrific things, and they had not had a chance to release. When I saw The Who come out and start blowing the roof off that place, and I looked into the audience… People were crying and hugging each other and singing the song, and I’m like, “Okay, this is what music can do.”
I had another similar experience when I went to Ukraine to sing the song with the Ukrainian orchestra. We’re in the middle of this blown-up airport and we’re filming some takes and some generals walk over and everybody’s kind of nervous and excited. Then we play the song, and I sing the song, and everybody’s crying and hugging each other. That’s when I realized that nobody knew the words! They don’t speak English. It’s only music that can do that. Only music can transcend and break through borders and touch people’s hearts. It is the magic elixir of the universe. And I’ve seen that often in my career.
This last story really proves this point. Early in my career, a lot of families would bring their autistic children to my shows. At one particular gig, I was walking off the stage, and I heard some parents say, “Hey, come over here. Here’s John.” They brought over a boy who was clearly very far on the spectrum, and he was not in great shape that day. He was very rambunctious, to say the least. But they finally got him over and told him, “This is the ‘Superman’ guy.” I started to sing a little bit of the song to kind of remind him, and all of a sudden he stopped struggling. He calmed down, looked me right in the eye a foot from my face, and sang the whole song to me! I’m like, “There’s a magic here that we have to tap for a lot of things in the medical and mental health space.” You have experiences like that, and you realize it is a magical thing.
You’re going to make me cry. I apologize for steering this interview away from your upcoming String Quartet tour, which starts on September 19 in Clayton, NY, at the Clayton Opera House. Thank you for talking about some of the deeper aspects of your music and your career. Before you have to go, is there anything you’d like to bring up that we didn’t cover?
We started with symphony shows and we reduced it to the string quartet to be able to play smaller markets like Sellersville, Pennsylvania, and Clayton, New York. They’re all just amazing people, all Broadway players. Katie [Kresek (violin)] won a Tony Award [concertmaster and co-orchestrator of Moulin Rouge! The Musical]. She’s my MD [Music Director]. They’re all just amazing [Melissa Tong (Violin), Chris Cardona (Viola), and Peter Sachon (cello)]. To watch them every night is just a gift. It allows me to pull songs from my catalog that I wouldn’t do with the rock band. And we’re always adding new songs. We have surprises. Also, my daughter, Olivia, is opening for me with her folk duo, Lace and Lee. They always bring the house down, so daddy’s always a proud pop watching that.
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Featured photo: Carpe Tempus Photography.
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