Around the U.S.

NEW YORK – Some of the summer's most exhilarating music-making emanated from 700 young musicians from five continents and 35 countries forming seven orchestras, a joyful meeting of minds at World Orchestra Week.

CENTRAL CITY, Colo. – In this historical mining town, Central City Opera's 92nd summer season brought together Kurt Weill's 1947 "Broadway opera" Street Scene and Puccini's La fanciulla del West, both presented in inspiring productions.

COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. – In its first summer season devised by new artistic and general director Rob Ainsley, the festival mixes a vaudevillian Pirates of Penzance with potent accounts of Pagliacci, La Calisto (pictured) and the grisly Elizabeth Cree.

PORT ANGELES, Wash. – Situated on the edge of Olympic National Forest, a ferry ride from Victoria, B.C., the thriving two-week Music on the Strait festival featured pianist Jeremy Denk in music of Beethoven and parts of Ives' Concord Sonata.

NEW YORK – August in New York City is hot and humid. That may be one reason why the esoteric offerings at the TIME:SPANS festival draw so well. The ninth edition unfolds Aug. 10-24 at the air-conditioned DiMenna Center for Classical Music.

LENOX, Mass. – The Boston Symphony Orchestra led by Andris Nelsons saluted the 150th birthday of Russian-born composer-conductor Serge Koussevitzky, the BSO's longtime music director and progenitor of the Tanglewood Music Festival.

LENOX, Mass. – In six concerts, Tanglewood's Festival of Contemporary Music, curated by veteran composers Tania León and Steven Mackey, offered works by two dozen composers embracing a wide array of distinctive styles.

HOLLYWOOD – Conductor Zubin Mehta was back on the Hollywood Bowl stage after a 31-year absence, leading the Los Angeles Philharmonic. With him in the refurbished venue was a friend and familiar partner, violinist Pinchas Zukerman.

BREAKING NEWS – The work by composer Rene Orth and librettist Hannah Moscovitch, based on an exposé of asylum abuses, is the winner of the 2024 Award for Best New Opera conferred by the Music Critics Association of North America.

INDIANOLA, Iowa – In an adventurous 52nd season, Des Moines Metro Opera also caught the nightmarish quality of Pelléas et Mélisande (pictured) and offered the world premiere of composer Damien Geter's American Apollo.

BELLINGHAM, Wash. – The seemingly complicated business of finding a new music director for the Bellingham Festival of Music turned out to be an easy task. In his first summer here, Brazilian-born Marcelo Lehninger has proved to be a fine fit.

MOUNT ANGEL, Ore. – Though dogged by a seven-year interlude without an artistic director, the 54-year-old festival reveled once again in joyful performances of the music of Bach and a generous display of audience enthusiasm.

PORTLAND, Ore. – The great composer's enduring influence is being explored in works by a wide range of his musical descendants, with concerts across the city through July 28, all part of the Chamber Music Northwest 2024 Summer Festival.

KATONAH, N.Y. – At the Caramoor Festival, the ensemble Roomful of Teeth offered a genre-ignoring, playfully provocative program with titles like Psychedelics, On Stochastic Wave Behavior, and "GaNaDaRaMaBaSa AJaChaKaTaPaHa."

CHARLOTTE – The Charlotte Bach Festival not only went conductor-less for its nine-day run, but also capped this year's spurt of offbeat programming by turning away from the traditional grand Bach finale in favor of Monteverdi's Vespers of 1610.

PORTSMOUTH, N.H. – The Halcyon Music Festival, founded here by Heng-Jin Park in 2014, narrowly weathered the pandemic, but the intimate event has found a base of chamber-music buffs who have braved both Covid and high heat sans relief.

ATLANTA – In Atlanta Opera's annual festival, composers and librettists vie with 10-minute scenes staged before judges and a live audience. The winning team gets a premiere; this year's event began with a work by the 2022 winners.

LOS ANGELES – The latest gambit from opera director Yuval Sharon juxtaposes Monteverdi's The Coronation of Poppea with George Lewis’ new opera The Comet, based on an Afro-futurist short story by W.E.B. Du Bois. To a degree, it works.

OJAI, Calif. – After a 20-year absence, the Japanese-born British pianist-conductor Mitsuko Uchida, 75, returned to the Ojai Music Festival as director and performer, playing three Mozart concertos with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra.

NEW YORK – Composer Jeff Beal has created new music for the 1920 German film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. The fresh musical overlay had its U.S. premiere screening at Carnegie Hall played live by a pick-up group of top-notch jazz musicians.