The 2024 season opener on July 20 at Music@Menlo is titled Baroque Tableau. Festival chamber players will perform music of the late Baroque, from Buxtehude and F. Couperin to Rameau and Rebel. Telemann and J.S. Bach make an appearance too. https://musicatmenlo.org/cp/?evt=1745
Constantinople, an ensemble whose slogan is “Itinerant music, myriad encounters,” will perform on July 22 at Toronto Summer Music. The program is entitled Breathings, and it’s described as a concert that places the breath at the center of the musical act and a celebration of our intimate relationship with nature. Instrumentation includes Mi’kmaq drums, ney […]
Finnish guest conductor Santtu-Matias Rouvali makes his Bravo! Vail debut, leading the Philharmonic in Rossini’s Semiramide Overture, Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 5, and Shostakovich’s virtuosic Violin Concerto No. 1, performed by Augustin Hadelich. (July 23) https://www.bravovail.org/performances/orchestral-series/new-york-philharmonic-2/augustin-hadelich-plays-shostakovich/
Haitian-American composer Nathalie Joachim loves to use the musical concepts from her heritage to inform her works. The world premiere of her latest composition is sure to bring fresh energy to the Grant Park Festival on July 24. Eric Jacobsen also conducts Grieg Holberg Suite and Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. https://www.grantparkmusicfestival.com/music/2024-season-1/beethovens-fifth-symphony
July 25 is opening night of Tanglewood’s Festival of Contemporary Music. The program includes Leila Adu-Gilmore’s United Underdog, Valerie Coleman’s Portraits of Josephine, and Tania León’s Indigena, along with works by Miya Masaoka, Trevor Weston, Nathalie Joachim, and Steven Mackey. https://www.bso.org/events/tmc-fcm-july-25-2024
The July 26 program at Ottawa ChamberFest will feature four new commissions written for avant-garde string quartet Brooklyn Rider and soprano Ariadne Greif. Those five musicians will perform those new works by Clarice Assad, Gabriel Kahane, Giovanni Solima, and Tyshawn Sorey, as well as Schoenberg’s Quartet in F-sharp Minor, Op. 10 and Colin Jacobsen’s Suite […]
A space-themed concert complete with visuals and interviews with NASA specialists and world-leading experts continues the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's 2024 season at Ravinia. On July 26, chief conductor Marin Alsop leads the orchestra in Holst's The Planets followed by Amanda Lee Falkenberg's The Moons, a symphonic suite with visuals. Audiences will see science come alive to the sounds […]
To open the 40th season of Sun Valley Music Festival, Timothy Higgins has composed Fanfare, which will receive its world premiere on July 29. Then soprano Meechot Marrero returns to Sun Valley to sing a few of her favorite arias. The concert closes with Prokofiev’s Classical Symphony. https://www.svmusicfestival.org/event/opening-night-with-meechot-marrero/
The Danish String Quartet returns to Ottawa ChamberFest Aug. 2 for the fourth and final installment of their innovative Doppelgänger project, in which they pair one of Schubert’s string compositions with a newly commissioned work inspired by its Schubert original. This year’s new work is Thomas Adès’ Wreath for Franz Schubert, while the Schubert offering will be the […]
The Sun Valley Music Festival commissioned a new cello concerto from Andy Akiho, which will be given its world premiere on Aug. 2. The soloist will be Jeffrey Zeigler, the former cellist of the famed Kronos Quartet, for whom the concerto was written. Handel’s Music for the Royal Fireworks completes the program, conducted by Alasdair Neale. […]
Two 20th-century anti-war works anchor the Aug. 8-10 program at Music@Menlo: George Crumb’s Black Angels and Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time. The chamber concert opens with two late works by Bach. https://musicatmenlo.org/cp/?evt=1753
Premiered in 2020, Echo Chamber Ensemble’s A World Transformed tells the story of Matthew Sheppard, a young gay university student who was beaten, tortured, and left to die in 1998, bringing national attention to hate crime legislation. The piece combines new choreography with pre-existing chamber music by the likes of Britten, Vaughan Williams, and Amy […]
Mozart’s thrilling Idomeneo will get a lavish concert treatment on Aug. 9 at Ravinia as the Chicago Symphony joins forces with conductor James Conlon. Matthew Polenzani takes the title role, with Andrea Carrol as Ilia, Alexandria Shiner as Elettra, and Samantha Hankey as Idamante. https://ravinia.org/Online/Article/080924-CSOIdomeneo
The Sun Valley Festival Orchestra will take on Mahler’s Symphony No. 6, which the composer himself nicknamed Tragic, saying it contained passages of “shadowy memories.” Music director Alasdair Neale conducts this Aug. 11 program. https://www.svmusicfestival.org/event/mahler-symphony-no-6/
Stratford Summer Music 2024 comes to an exciting conclusion on Aug. 11 when soprano Measha Brueggergosman-Lee performs Zombie Blizzard. In this new song cycle, poems by Margaret Atwood have been set to music by Aaron Davis. Brueggergosman-Lee will be joined by members of the Hannaford St. Silver Band, who commissioned the work. https://stratfordsummermusic.ca/event/zombie-blizzard/
Jeremy Denk, in an Aug. 11 solo piano recital at Tanglewood, will perform The Battle of Manassas by Thomas “Blind Tom” Wiggins (1849-1908), a pianist and composer born into slavery who became a hugely popular performer in his day. Ives’ Concord Sonata completes the program. https://www.bso.org/events/tli-presents-jeremy-denk-piano
The Aspen Opera Theatre and VocalARTS program presents a fully-staged performance of Mozart’s comic masterpiece Le nozze di Figaro, directed by Sara Erde and conducted by Matthew Aucoin, an award-winning opera composer himself. Only on the first night of the Aug. 12-17 will the performance include all the Act 4 arias commonly cut from the […]
To inaugurate the Project Pipeline initiative at Glimmerglass, the opera-in-progress The House on Mango Street will have its first public performance on Aug. 12. The Pipeline’s purpose is to help composers—in this case, composer Derek Bermel and librettist Sandra Cisneros—develop new works while allowing opera-lovers to witness the process. https://glimmerglass.org/events/pipeline-preview-the-house-on-mango-street/
Talk about going out with a bang! The Grant Park Music Festival closes its 2024 season with Mahler’s mighty Symphony No. 8, Symphony of a Thousand, so named because of the many forces required to perform it. Carlos Kalmar, marking the end of his 25-year tenure as the festival’s artistic director, will lead the Grant […]
The Boston Early Music Chamber Opera Series will present two masterworks by Telemann, interwoven into one theatrical fabric, on Nov. 20-Dec. 1. Enjoy a rare staged performance of Telemann’s lovely serenata, Don Quichotte auf der Hochzeit des Comacho, interspersed with movements from Telemann’s delightful orchestral suite Burlesque de Don Quichotte. Paul O'Dette and Stephen Stubbs will serve […]
