21C Media Group’s 2026 Summer Highlights Preview
Top left: Aspen Music Festival and School; top right: Fisher Center at Bard (photo: Peter Aaron);
Middle left: Orchestra of St. Luke’s (photo: courtesy of OSL); middle center: Ravinia Festival;
Bottom left: The Atlanta Opera’s 96-Hour Opera Project; bottom right: Arena di Verona (photo: FotoEnnevi)
This summer brings a host of festivals and performances at some of the world’s finest cultural destinations, from San Diego’s spectacular waterfront venue to Verona’s Roman amphitheater, and from the Rocky Mountains to the Tyrolean Alps. See below for upcoming summer highlights from 21C artists and organizations (all listings subject to change).
Festivals (listed alphabetically)
Arena di Verona Opera Festival
June 12–Sep 12, 2026
Verona, Italy
Hosted since its founding in the 10,000-seat, open-air Roman amphitheater at the heart of the Italian city of Verona, the Arena di Verona Opera Festival is the largest, oldest, and most international opera festival in the world. The festival’s 103rd season takes place over 50 nights this summer. Central to the 2026 offerings are six classic Italian operas by Verdi and Puccini: a new Moulin Rouge-themed production of La traviata from Glaswegian director Paul Curran, two contrasting treatments of Aida, and stagings of Nabucco, Turandot, and La bohème. These will be complemented by a performance of Orff’s Carmina Burana, two evenings of ballet, and a pair of immersive multimedia concerts. Roberto Alagna, Erin Morley, Anna Netrebko, Lisette Oropesa, and Ludovic Tézier are among the host of returning stars, while those making festival debuts include Operalia winner Mihai Damian, “indomitable force” Annalisa Stroppa (OperaWire), and LA Opera’s James Conlon.
Aspen Music Festival and School
July 1–Aug 23, 2026
Aspen, CO
Titled “For All,” in a nod to the closing words of the Pledge of Allegiance, the 77th Aspen Music Festival and School (AMFS) commemorates the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. True to this theme, the summer’s programming champions new American composition with the world premiere of Matthew Aucoin’s First Symphony, a new AMFS commission; a focus on the music of Principal Guest Composer Caroline Shaw; and recent AMFS co-commissions from Reena Esmail, Jake Heggie, David Lang, Jessie Montgomery, Joan Tower, and Sarah Kirkland Snider, whose acclaimed first opera, Hildegard, receives its Colorado premiere. The Aspen Festival Orchestra and Robert Spano open the season with a celebration of American greats Ives, Copland, and John Adams and close it with a pairing of Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms and Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, famed for its enduring and apposite vision of fellowship for all. Recognizing the contribution made by visitors and new arrivals to the American sound, other featured works include Dvořák’s “New World” Symphony, Rachmaninoff’s Fourth Piano Concerto, and Varèse’s Amériques. Those making AMFS debuts are María Dueñas, Thomas Hampson, Delyana Lazarova, Erin Morley, Angel Stanislav Wang, and Anthony Roth Costanzo, who headlines a fully staged production of Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, while returning stars include Teddy Abrams, Emanuel Ax, Lawrence Brownlee, James Conlon, Joyce DiDonato, Augustin Hadelich, Marc-André Hamelin, Leonidas Kavakos, Cristian Măcelaru, Edgar Meyer, Abel Selaocoe, Gil Shaham, Daniil Trifonov, Alisa Weilerstein, Yuja Wang, and Aspen vocal program director Renée Fleming.
The Atlanta Opera’s NOW Festival and 96-Hour Opera Project
June 10–14, 2026
Atlanta, GA
The Atlanta Opera’s NOW Festival – this season welcoming Tazewell Thompson as its new Artistic Advisor – includes the 96-Hour Opera Project competition showcase, along with developmental workshops and incubator performances of works by past winners. Now in its fifth season, the 96-Hour Opera Project pairs composers and librettists to write original ten-minute operas. Bringing their completed works to Atlanta, the creative teams are allowed 96 hours to rehearse and develop their productions with guidance from specialists in the field. On June 13, the ten-minute operas will be presented in a public competition showcase at the Ray Charles Performing Arts Center at Morehouse College where a winning team will be selected by a distinguished group of judges. All selected participants receive a $1,000 honorarium. The Atlanta Opera presents the Antinori Grand Prize to the winning team — a $10,000 award and an Atlanta Opera commission for a new work to be produced and performed in an upcoming season as part of the annual NOW Festival. This year’s Festival features Water Memory by 2024 winners Kitty Brazelton and Vaibu Mohan, about a South Asian woman navigating the early stages of dementia.
Bard SummerScape
June 25–Aug 16, 2026
Annandale-on-Hudson, NY
Now in its 23rd season, Bard SummerScape returns to the Fisher Center at Bard College for seven weeks of live music, opera, and dance in New York’s Hudson Valley. The 36th Bard Music Festival offers two weekends of themed concerts and panel discussions devoted to an intensive reexamination of “Mozart and His World,” featuring performances by the American Symphony Orchestra (ASO) (Aug 7–16). Alongside music by Mozart’s predecessors, peers, and musical heirs, the music festival presents a broad sampling of the Classical composer’s own work, including a semi-staged, festival-ending performance of his opera The Abduction from the Seraglio (Die Entführung aus dem Serail). SummerScape also presents a lavish production of Richard Strauss’s seldom-staged opera The Egyptian Helen (Die ägyptische Helena), again anchored by the ASO, and directed – like previous SummerScape productions of Le prophète, The Silent Woman, and The Miracle of Heliane – by visionary German director Christian Räth (July 24–Aug 2). Other 2026 highlights include the world premiere of MacArthur Fellow Courtney Bryan’s Suddenly Last Summer, a new Tennessee Williams-inspired commission directed by Tony nominee Daniel Fish (June 25–July 19) and an original dance program from the venerable Lucinda Childs (June 26–28). To complete the lineup, Bard’s perennially popular Spiegeltent returns throughout the festival for live music and more.
OSL Bach Festival
June 2-23, 2026
New York, NY
The annual Orchestra of St. Luke’s (OSL) Bach Festival in Carnegie’s Zankel Hall examines Bach’s influence on the early Classical period. Performances feature conductor Paul McCreesh, Artistic Director of the Gabrieli Consort & Players, with countertenor Reginald Mobley (June 2); Dutch cellist Pieter Wispelwey performing the complete Bach Cello Suites (June 7) and Haydn’s Cello Concerto No. 1 in C (June 10); violinist Renaud Capuçon, Artistic Director of the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, play-directing a program of Bach and Mozart (June 16); and harpsichordist Jean Rondeau leading works by Bach and his sons from the keyboard (June 23). McCreesh, Wispelway, Capuçon, and Rondeau are all making their OSL debuts with these performances. [June 2, 7, 10, 16, 23: NYC/Carnegie Hall]
Ravinia Festival
June 3–Sep 23, 2026
Highland Park, IL
The Ravinia Festival’s 2026 summer lineup offers more than 90 concerts and 50 artist debuts. At its heart is the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO)’s 90th annual six-week residency, including three weeks with chief conductor Marin Alsop. As well as conducting Mahler’s Sixth Symphony, Dvořák’s “New World” Symphony, and the Midwest premiere of Carlos Simon’s Good News Mass, a Ravinia co-commission, Alsop co-curates the 2026 edition of the “Breaking Barriers” festival with Emmy-winning composer Laura Karpman, and collaborates with soloists including violinist María Dueñas, pianists Emanuel Ax and Yunchan Lim, and spoken-word artist Marc Bamuthi Joseph. Other CSO highlights include a star-studded production of Mozart’s The Abduction from the Seraglio (Die Entführung aus dem Serail), conducted by James Conlon, and a program of Sibelius and Richard Strauss that marks Klaus Mäkelä’s Ravinia debut. The festival’s classical programming also includes chamber recitals by Joshua Bell and Jeremy Denk, Alisa Weilerstein and Inon Barnatan, the Danish String Quartet, and others.
Notable summer performances (listed alphabetically by artist)
Teddy Abrams
July 10, 11: Grammy winner and 2022 Musical America Conductor of the Year Teddy Abrams leads accordionist Vincent Peirani’s Time Reflections – featuring the composer, trombonist Nils Landgren, and pianist Michael Wollny – at the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival. Also on the program, Abrams conducts Richard Strauss’s evocative tone poem Also sprach Zarathustra. [Lübeck, Germany]
July 30; Aug 1: Abrams returns to the U.S. to conduct two performances at the Aspen Music Festival and School (AMFS). On the Meadows Campus lawn he leads a performance of Pulitzer Prize winner Caroline Shaw‘s Brush, an experiential work Abrams premiered in 2021 with the Britt Festival Orchestra on Oregon’s Jacksonville Woodlands Trail system (July 30). Two days later, Abrams conducts the Aspen Chamber Symphony and his longtime friend and Curtis Institute classmate Yuja Wang in Barber’s Piano Concerto, sharing the program with David Lang’s new oratorio the wealth of nations, co-commissioned by AMFS. Lang’s work will feature mezzo-soprano Fleur Barron, baritone Davóne Tines, and Denver’s Kantorei vocal ensemble, led by Joel Rinsema (Aug 1). [Aspen]
Aug 8: From Aspen, Abrams goes to Tanglewood to participate in “An American Journey with Yo-Yo Ma and Friends.” Along with Ma and Abrams, the performance features conductor Ken-David Masur, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, vocalists Aoife O’Donovan and Jennifer Kreisberg, and others to be announced. Curated by Ma, the evening “asks us to consider our relationship to one another and to the land we share, and to imagine a hopeful future.” [Lenox, MA]
Sep 1–8: Abrams reunites with Yuja Wang in September on a tour with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra in Slovenia, Italy, and Austria. With Abrams conducting the first half of the program and Wang play-directing the second, the performances feature Copland’s Appalachian Spring, Barber’s Piano Concerto and Mutations from Bach, Dukas’s “Fanfare” from La Péri, and Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto. [Sep 1: Ljubljana, Slovenia; Sep 3: Cagliari, Italy; Sep 5: Grafenegg, Austria; Sep 7: Merano, Italy; Sep 8: Bergamo, Italy]
* * *
Pierre-Laurent Aimard
July 6, 8: Grammy-winning French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard – “one of the essential keyboard advocates of our era” (The Guardian) – gives solo recitals at three major European festivals this summer. At France’s Aix-en-Provence Festival, he performs two programs. The first combines music by Mozart and Bach with the French premiere of … selig ist …, an hour-long exploration of loss and consolation for piano and electronics by French composer Mark Andre (July 6); the second celebrates György Kurtág’s centennial with a program of short pieces by Beethoven, Schubert, and Schumann juxtaposed with selections from the Hungarian composer’s collection Játékok, of which Aimard’s recent recorded anthology scored multiple five-star reviews (July 8). [Aix-en-Provence, France]
July 31; Aug 2: In the first of two recitals at Austria’s Salzburg Festival, Aimard again features excerpts from Kurtág’s Játékok, this time on a solo program for multiple keyboard instruments alongside short pieces by Austrian composers Mozart, Schubert, Schoenberg, and Webern (July 31). The pianist then completes his Salzburg stay with selections from Catalogue d’oiseaux, Messiaen’s monumental piano collection depicting the birds of Europe (Aug 2). Aimard is “a peerless interpreter of Messiaen’s music” (The Boston Globe), whose recording of the work was one of The Sunday Times’s Best Albums of the Year, a Gramophone Editor’s Choice, and a German Music Critics’ Award winner, while one track from the album was selected as one of The New York Times’s “25 Best Classical Music Tracks of 2018.” [Salzburg]
Aug 26: Aimard completes the summer at Scotland’s Edinburgh Festival, where he honors the late Alfred Brendel, one of his close musical associates, with a characteristically imaginative solo program of composers close to both pianists’ hearts: Beethoven, Schubert, Ligeti, and Kurtág. [Edinburgh]
* * *
Leif Ove Andsnes
June 5–29: Celebrated Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes tours Europe with a solo recital program that complements preludes and more by Chopin with selections from György Kurtág’s Játékok and Beethoven’s final piano sonata (Op. 111). As The New York Times writes: “You go to a recital by the pianist Leif Ove Andsnes to be as surprised as you are awed. His dignified virtuosity is a given.” [June 5: Arnhem, Netherlands; June 6: Groningen, Netherlands; June 26: Schloss Elmau, Germany; June 29: Copenhagen, Denmark]
June 11, 13; Aug 24: Andsnes performs Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto with two major European orchestras: France’s Orchestre national de Lyon under Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider (June 11 & 13) and the Berlin Philharmonic under Kirill Petrenko at Austria’s Salzburg Festival (Aug 24). The pianist recently demonstrated his “innate sympathy” (Chicago Classical Review) with Beethoven’s concerto in collaboration with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and The Beethoven Journey, his recording of the composer’s complete music for piano and orchestra, has been recognized with BBC Music Magazine’s “Recording of the Year Award.” [June 11, 13: Lyon, France; Aug 24: Salzburg]
* * *
Sergei Babayan
July 16: Venerated as a “pianist’s pianist” whose interpretations combine “quiet beauty and emotional fire” (The Times of London), Sergei Babayan performs a solo recital at Montpellier’s Festival Radio France. Titled “Songs of Love and Passion,” his program features Liszt’s transcriptions of Schubert and Schumann lieder, solo piano arrangements of Rachmaninoff romances, and the Russian composer’s own take on Kreisler’s beloved Liebesleid. [Montpellier, France]
Aug 1: Babayan performs Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto with Scott Yoo and the Festival Mozaic Orchestra at the finale concert of California’s San Luis Obispo Summer Music & Arts Festival. Rachmaninoff for Two, Babayan’s most recent Deutsche Grammophon release, was not only chosen among Gramophone’s “Best Classical Music Albums of 2024,” but recognized with the prestigious 2024 Diapason d’Or. [San Luis Obispo, CA]
* * *
Jon Batiste
June 24–28: Eight-time-Grammy-winning pianist and musical polymath Jon Batiste presents “Jon Batiste World Festival,” a four-night residency at North London’s KOKO. Followed by evenings devoted respectively to fan requests, vocal collaborations, and Batiste’s Academy Award-winning score to Disney/Pixar’s Soul, the residency opens with “Batiste Symphonic,” for which he and a full orchestra perform music from his classical catalogue (June 24). This includes his large-scale orchestral work American Symphony, a Carnegie Hall commission hailed as “a joyous and beefy blend of orchestral sounds, funk, Dixieland, Latin, gospel, country, cool jazz, swing, hip-hop, R&B, as well as other styles and genres” (Classical Source). [London]
Aug 20, 21: Batiste returns to the States for live performances with two of the nation’s foremost orchestras. Drawing on musical traditions ranging from classical to jazz, blues, and R&B, he collaborates with conductor Jonathan Taylor Rush, first with The Cleveland Orchestra at the Blossom Music Festival (Aug 20) and then with the National Symphony Orchestra at Wolf Trap (Aug 21). As Classic FM puts it, he “is a once-in-a-generation talent, with a passion for sharing music with the masses and connecting people through a shared love of music-making.” [Aug 20: Cuyahoga Falls, OH; Aug 21: Vienna, VA]
* * *
Joshua Bell
June 5: Grammy-winning violinist Joshua Bell bookends the summer with appearances at two U.S. festivals. First, at Ravinia, he gives a recital of solo works and duo sonatas by Schubert, Grieg, and Ravel with Avery Fisher Prize winner Jeremy Denk, the longtime piano partner with whom Bell shares “the sixth sense that characterizes the closest musical relationships” (The New York Times). [Highland Park, IL]
July 20–23: Next, Bell undertakes a three-program residency at Switzerland’s Verbier Festival. After performing Schumann’s First Piano Trio with fellow superstars Steven Isserlis and Richard Goode (July 20) and chamber works by Schubert and Fauré with Isserlis and others (July 22), he reprises Thomas de Hartmann’s Violin Concerto with Daniel Harding and the Verbier Festival Orchestra (July 23). A leading proponent of rediscovery, Bell played a major part in bringing to light the Ukrainian-born composer’s long-lost work, of which his world premiere recording was recognized with the Diapason d’Or. As the Classical Source writes, De Hartmann’s concerto “could not have wished for a greater champion than Joshua Bell.” [July 20, 22, 23: Verbier, Switzerland]
Aug 2: Bell concludes the summer at the Tanglewood Music Festival, where he joins the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Music Director Andris Nelsons for Bruch’s Scottish Fantasy. His recording of the work drew a five-star review from BBC Music Magazine, while Gramophone found it “utterly irresistible.” [Lenox, MA]
* * *
Julia Bullock
May 15–23: Grammy-winning American classical singer Julia Bullock directs the 2026 Cincinnati May Festival, the oldest choral music festival in the Western Hemisphere, as well as being featured soloist on two programs. This season’s festival includes new visual elements; a collaboration with Cincinnati Ballet on Stravinsky’s Les Noces and Orff’s Catulli Carmina; the Classical Roots Community Choir joining the finale with selections from The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess; Carlos Simon improvising on his own Good News Mass; conductors Cristian Măcelaru, Matthew Swanson, and Anthony Parnther; and the most works by Black Americans and the largest overall diversity of composers in the event’s history. [Cincinnati]
Aug 14, 16: Bullock makes her role debut in the title role of Carmen at Minnesota’s Lakes Area Music Festival. With a cast also featuring Paul Appleby as Don José, Evan Hughes as Escamillo, and recent George and Nora London Foundation Competition winner Katerina Burton as Micaëla, the production is helmed by Dutch-Peruvian director Lisenka Heijboer Castañón. [Brainerd, MN]
* * *
Chanticleer
July 19–26: Multiple Grammy-winning vocal ensemble Chanticleer – about which The New York Times writes: “These men are phenomenal: as fresh as a blade of grass, tightly focused and keenly expressive” – performs in the unique setting of The Caverns in Grundy County, Tennessee this summer (July 19). A few days later the ensemble performs its “Our American Journey” program, an innovative assemblage of homegrown music to celebrate America’s 250th year of independence, in New Hampshire (July 24), before taking it to the Ravinia Festival (July 26). [July 19: Grundy County, TN; July 24: Wolfeboro, NH; July 26: Highland Park, IL]
* * *
Lara Downes
July 1: Visionary American pianist Lara Downes premieres her groundbreaking national initiative titled The Declaration Project at New York’s Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts as part of its Summer for the City festival, with Downes as soloist and the American Composers Orchestra conducted by Eric Jacobsen. Co-commissioned by Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, and the Tejemos Foundation, the project marks the 250th anniversary of the United States by confronting the flaws and failures of its history while celebrating the audacious beauty of the American promise and imagining the next chapter of the national story. Musically, this performance has commissioned a triptych of works – respectively titled Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness – from Grammy Award-winning composers Valerie Coleman, Arturo O’Farrill, and Christopher Tin. These will have their world premieres in the Lincoln Center performance, framed by a mosaic of music, personal narrative, and portraiture Downes has been collecting for more than a year from a broad cross-section of Americans on her travels across the country. [NYC/Lincoln Center]
July 3: Just after The Declaration Project’s premiere, Downes releases an album on the Pentatone label titled Hold These Truths that amplifies the efforts embodied by The Declaration Project with music ranging from before the nation’s founding to new works. The first single, already released, is “Wondrous Free” by composer Shawn Okpebholo, a reimagining of Francis Hopkinson’s 1759 song “My Days Have Been So Wondrous Free.” [Pentatone]
July 5: Downes joins the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, which served as a co-commissioner for The Declaration Project, for the UK premiere of Christopher Tin’s Piano Concerto, under the baton of conductor Kellen Gray, the Artistic Director of Indiana’s Lafayette Symphony Orchestra. [Cardiff, Wales]
July 18: Downes returns to the U.S. for a further Declaration Project performance at MASS MoCA in Massachusetts, where she has done a series of residencies related to the project. Guest artists include Theo Bleckmann, 9 Horses, Simone Dinnerstein, Roomful of Teeth, and Bang on a Can. [North Adams, MA]
* * *
Edward Gardner
June 19: Now completing his second season as Music Director of Oslo’s Norwegian Opera and Ballet, Sibelius Prize winner Edward Gardner leads the company’s Opera Orchestra in a season-closing account of The Ring Without Words, Lorin Maazel’s evening-length synthesis of orchestral music from Wagner’s Ring cycle. Gardner and the Oslo house were recently recognized with the 2025 Gramophone Award for Best Opera for their recording of the German composer’s Der fliegende Holländer. [Oslo, Norway]
July 3, 10, 19: At Austria’s Tyrolean Festival Erl, Gardner – widely recognized as “the finest British opera conductor of his generation” (The Telegraph, UK) – conducts three performances of a double-bill directed by Olivier Award winner Deborah Warner. Supported by the Orchestra and Chorus of the Tyrolean Festival Erl, French soprano Véronique Gens headlines Berlioz’s monodrama La mort de Cléopâtre and American soprano Corinne Winters stars in Suor Angelica, the second opera of Puccini’s Il trittico. [Erl, Austria]
July 9: Gardner joins the WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne at Germany’s Ruhr Piano Festival for a program of fin-de-siècle and early 20th-century classics: Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune, Stravinsky’s Le sacre du printemps, and Bartók’s Second Piano Concerto, featuring Pierre-Laurent Aimard. [Essen, Germany]
July 27: By way of a postscript to his fifth season as its Principal Conductor, Gardner leads the London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO) at London’s BBC Proms. After opening with the UK premiere of Between Trees by Kristine Tjøgersen, their nature-themed program features soprano Louise Alder – soloist at last year’s Last Night of the Proms – in selections from Canteloube’s Songs of the Auvergne, before concluding with Richard Strauss’s epic Alpine Symphony. At previous Proms appearances together, Gardner and the LPO have won praise for “intense and finely focused performances” that “pinned you to your seat” (The Guardian). [London]
* * *
Alan Gilbert
July 26–Aug 5: By way of an upbeat to his eighth season as Chief Conductor of Hamburg’s NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra, Grammy-winning American conductor Alan Gilbert returns to the States for an eleven-day residency at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival. Also a gifted string player and dedicated chamber musician, he joins a stellar instrumental lineup on violin in the Mendelssohn Octet (July 26 & 27), Arensky Cello Quartet (July 29), and Shostakovich Piano Quintet (Aug 2 & 3), and on viola in Dmitry Sitkovetsky’s trio arrangement of Bach’s Goldberg Variations (Aug 1) and in the Beethoven Septet (Aug 5). [Santa Fe, NM]
* * *
Daniel Hope
July 16–Aug 30: Now in his inaugural season as Intendant & Artistic Director of the Menuhin Festival Gstaad, Daniel Hope – the violinist whose “thriving solo career [is] built on inventive programming and a probing interpretive style” (The New York Times) – presides over the Swiss festival’s landmark 70th anniversary season this summer. Appearing variously as soloist, chamber musician, moderator, and Music Director of the conductorless Zurich Chamber Orchestra, Hope also takes part in seven festival programs: opening-night concerts featuring living legends Zubin Mehta and Pinchas Zukerman (July 16 & 17); an all-Classical orchestral evening of Haydn and Mozart (July 18); a celebration of the violin, in styles ranging from Celtic folk to jazz (July 19); chamber masterpieces by Schubert and Brahms (July 25); Elgar’s Violin Concerto with Jaap van Zweden and the Gstaad Festival Orchestra (Aug 5); Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf with London’s Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Vasily Petrenko (Aug 30); and a solo recital embracing more than 300 years of violin music (Aug 30). Under Hope’s auspices, additional festival highlights include performances by the Budapest Festival and Royal Danish Orchestras, and a new production of Puccini’s La bohème. [Gstaad, Switzerland]
July 27, 28: Hope takes time out from the Swiss festival to return to Germany’s Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival, where he joins Swedish R&B, funk, and jazz trombonist Nils Landgren and friends for an eclectic, wide-ranging program of music by Bach, Dvořák, Bernstein, Sting, and Landgren himself. [July 27: Glücksburg, Germany; July 28: Neustadt in Holstein, Germany]
* * *
Paavo Järvi
June 12: Opus Klassik 2019 Conductor of the Year Paavo Järvi, Music Director of the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, leads the closing concert of the sixth edition of the orchestra’s Conductor’s Academy. Repertoire includes Beethoven’s Egmont Overture, Mozart’s Concerto for Flute and Harp, Shostakovich’s First Symphony, and Johann Strauss’s Künstlerleben (“Artist’s Life”) waltz. Each year, the Academy offers six participants from around the world the opportunity to learn from Järvi, working intensively on their technical skills while simultaneously gaining insights into the management of a concert hall and orchestra. After the performance, the audience will vote for the Audience Prize winner and Järvi will award an invitation to his Pärnu Music Festival. [Zürich]
June 17, 18, 19: Järvi closes out his seventh season as Music Director of the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich with a program featuring Igor Levit in Brahms’s Second Piano Concerto paired with Schumann’s First Symphony. [Zürich]
July 11–18: The founder and Artistic Director of the Pärnu Music Festival in his native Estonia, Järvi leads four programs for the festival’s 2026 edition. Following a landmark year dedicated to celebrating Arvo Pärt’s 90th birthday, the 16th Pärnu Music Festival marks 35 years of Estonian Independence. Järvi’s programs include Nielsen’s Third Symphony and Beethoven’s Sixth; premieres of new works by Estonian composers Tõnu Kõrvits, Liisa Hõbepappel, and Evelin Seppar; soloists Rudolf Buchbinder and Alice Sara Ott featured in Beethoven piano concertos; the young Latvian violin-cello duo of Kristīne and Margarita Balanas in Philip Glass’s Double Concerto; and more. The Music Festival runs simultaneously with the Järvi Conducting Academy and instrumental masterclasses, and this summer also sees the launch of a new Young Talents Program mentoring emerging soloists. [July 11, 12, 17, 18: Pärnu, Estonia]
Aug 2: Järvi also conducts at the BBC Proms this summer, leading the BBC Symphony in a program that features the orchestra’s brass section in the world premiere of British composer Dani Howard’s BBC co-commissioned Concerto for Brass, “SIGNAL.” The program continues with two towering works from the Russian repertoire: Tchaikovsky’s emotional Violin Concerto, performed by soloist Leonidas Kavakos, and Scriabin’s Second Symphony. [London]
* * *
Fabio Luisi
July 12: Grammy- and ECHO Klassik Award-winning conductor Fabio Luisi – in his sixth season as Music Director of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra (DSO) – conducts the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood. The program combines What do flowers do at night? by Sophia Jani, who served last season as the DSO’s composer-in-residence, with Brahms’s Second Symphony and Chopin’s Second Piano Concerto, featuring Eric Lu as soloist. [Lenox, MA]
July 26: Later that month, Luisi is in Europe to conduct the world premiere staging of editor Paul Prévost’s new Bärenreiter critical edition of Bizet’s Carmen. Featured are the orchestra and chorus of the Petruzzelli Theatre in Bari, along with the Paolo Grassi Foundation Children’s Chorus, and the production is directed by Denis Krief, who also serves as set and lighting designer. [Martina Franca, Italy]
Aug 19–22: In August, Luisi travels to Beijing to lead performances of Bellini’s Norma at the National Centre for the Performing Arts. [Beijing]
* * *
Anthony Parnther
May 23: “A conductor for the future” with “a flourishing career” (The New York Times), Anthony Parnther leads the Cincinnati Symphony May Festival’s finale concert. In a salute to iconic American music, his program combines selections from the Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess, featuring Festival Director Julia Bullock and bass-baritone Alfred Walker, with Plain-Chant for America by William Grant Still, Prayers & Remembrances by Stephen Paulus, and “Make Our Garden Grow” from Bernstein’s Candide. Finally, Parnther, the orchestra, May Festival Chorus, May Festival Youth Chorus, and Classical Roots Community Choir draw the festival to an uplifting close with the “Hallelujah” chorus from Handel’s Messiah. [Cincinnati]
June 17: Parnther returns to The Philadelphia Orchestra for the world premiere of A Hundred Years On, a new oratorio about Philadelphia’s 1876 Centennial Exposition by Grammy-nominated composer Peter Boyer and Pulitzer-winning librettist Mark Campbell. Commissioned to mark the nation’s 250th anniversary, this will feature vocal soloists Mary Dunleavy, Meredith Lustig, Eve Gigliotti, David Portillo, and Malcolm J. Merriweather with The Crossing chamber choir in a production by Emmy Award winner Tazewell Thompson. [Philadelphia]
Aug 21: Following their sold-out collaboration with the San Diego Symphony last summer, hailed as “a night of pure transcendence” (SanDiegoVille), Parnther reunites with vocalist Cynthia Erivo for an evening of favorite showtunes with the Boston Pops at Tanglewood. An Emmy, Tony, and two-time Grammy Award winner, as well as an Academy Award, Golden Globe, and SAG nominee, Erivo is a stalwart of the West End and Broadway stage. She received Golden Globe, SAG, Critics’ Choice, NAACP, BAFTA, and Academy Award nominations for her starring role as Elphaba in Universal’s record-breaking film adaptation of the hit musical Wicked. [Lenox, MA]
* * *
Rafael Payare
Aug 19–28: Conductor Rafael Payare – “a conductor of considerable grace and considerable swagger, making the two go unusually yet inexorably together” (Los Angeles Times) and Music and Artistic Director of Canada’s Orchestre symphonique de Montréal (Montreal Symphony Orchestra/OSM) – leads the orchestra on its 60th international tour this summer, with destinations in Scotland, Poland, Denmark, and Germany. Performing at the Edinburgh International Festival for only the third time since 1976, the orchestra presents two programs: Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s monumental and seldom-performed cantata trilogy The Song of Hiawatha, with soloists including Scottish tenor Nicky Spence (Aug 19); and a program featuring music by Canadian composers Ana Sokolović and Ian Cusson, Richard Strauss’s tone poem Ein Heldenleben, and Gabriela Ortiz’s recent Dzonot cello concerto, with dedicatee Alisa Weilerstein as soloist (Aug 20). The tour continues with two concerts in Warsaw featuring pianists Kevin Chen and Eric Lu in Chopin’s Second and First Piano Concertos respectively. The first concert opens with Penderecki’s Sinfonietta No. 1 for strings, in tribute to the late composer who was present when OSM last performed in Poland in 2018 with then-Music Director Kent Nagano; and culminates with Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony. The concerto in the second performance is bookended by Debussy’s L’Isle Joyeuse and Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben (Aug 23 & 24). The tour proceeds to Denmark for another milestone: the first time OSM has ever performed in that country. Both the Denmark program and the final concert of the tour in Hamburg reprise the Debussy and Strauss along with Weilerstein’s performance of Gabriela Ortiz’s Dzonot (Aug 26 & 28). [Aug 19 & 20: Edinburgh; Aug 23 & 24: Warsaw; Aug 26: Aarhus, Denmark; Aug 28: Hamburg]
* * *
Nicholas Phan
July 18: Marking the 20th anniversary of California’s Festival Napa Valley, Grammy-winning tenor Nicholas Phan creates the role of Steven Spurrier in the world premiere production of The Judgment of Paris, a new one-act opera commissioned for the occasion from the dream team of Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer. Danielle de Niese and Quinn Kelsey co-star in the original staging by Italian director Jean-Romain Vesperini, under the baton of Kent Nagano. [Napa, CA]
July 25: “One of the world’s most remarkable singers” (The Boston Globe), Phan returns for a fourth consecutive season to the Tanglewood Music Festival. There he joins his regular piano partner, Myra Huang, for his signature recital program “Fellow Citizens,” which delves into stories of immigration and migration through songs by composers ranging from Schubert and Dvořák to Errollyn Wallen and Mohammed Fairouz. Featuring projections of historical images, this iteration of the program will showcase the world premiere of a new song cycle from Grammy-nominated Nigerian American composer Shawn Okpebholo. [Lenox, MA]
Aug 14: Dubbed “the go-to tenor in town for Carmina” (Los Angeles Times), Phan reprises his role in Orff’s Carmina Burana at Austria’s Grafenegg Festival, with Cristian Măcelaru leading London’s Philharmonia Orchestra. [Grafenegg, Austria]
* * *
San Diego Symphony
June 26–Aug 30: Music and Artistic Director Rafael Payare opens the San Diego Symphony’s summer season at the spectacular Rady Shell venue on the waterfront leading an all-Russian program that pairs Prokofiev’s Second Violin Concerto with Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony. The soloist for the concerto is Stefan Jackiw, called “one of the most insightful violinists of his generation” by The Boston Globe, and the program opens with Shostakovich’s Festive Overture (June 26). The Rady Shell season also includes performances with St. Vincent (Aug 1) and Jeff Goldblum & The Mildred Snitzer Orchestra (Aug 23); live performances to film including How To Train Your Dragon 2 (July 18), Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone™ (Aug 21 & 22), and Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (Aug 28); and performances themed to Blockbuster Broadway hits (July 3), “America the Beautiful” at 250 (July 4), the Music of ’69 (July 10), the Music of John Williams (July 31), The Gershwins in Hollywood (Aug 14), and old-school Disney hits (Aug 7). The summer season closes with a Tchaikovsky spectacular with his First Piano Concerto performed by Joyce Yang and more, conducted by Simón Bolívar Chamber Orchestra associate conductor Enluis Montes Olivar. (Aug 30) [June 26–Aug 30: San Diego]
* * *
Inbal Segev
Aug 30: Cellist Inbal Segev – who combines “thrillingly projected, vibrato-rich playing” (The Washington Post) with “complete dedication and high intelligence” (San Francisco Classical Voice) – performs Brahms piano quartets at the Maverick Chamber Music Festival in Woodstock, NY along with pianist Daredjan “Baya” Kakouberi, violinist Gary Levinson, and violist Michael Klotz. [Woodstock, NY]
* * *
Daniil Trifonov
July 19: Grammy and Gramophone “Artist of the Year” Award-winning pianist Daniil Trifonov opens the summer with two U.S. festival engagements. At Tanglewood, he joins trumpeter Thomas Rolfs, Music Director Andris Nelsons, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra for the First Piano Concerto by Shostakovich, in whose music “one could hardly imagine a more sublime pianist” (Seen and Heard International). [Lenox, MA]
July 22, 26: Next, Trifonov gives two performances at the Aspen Music Festival. Before playing Glazunov’s Second Piano Concerto with Dima Slobodeniouk and the Aspen Festival Orchestra (July 26), he gives a solo recital pairing Robert Schumann’s First Piano Sonata with three Russian rarities: Taneyev’s Prelude and Fugue, Myaskovsky’s Second Piano Sonata, and the evocative miniatures of Prokofiev’s Mimoletnosti (“Visions Fugitives”). This same program previously impressed the New York Classical Review with his “jaw-dropping technical prowess placed at the service of musical communication” (July 22). [Aspen, CO]
Aug 22, 24: At Austria’s Grafenegg Festival (Aug 22) and Switzerland’s Menuhin Festival Gstaad (Aug 24), Trifonov joins violinist Sergei Dogadin – gold medalist at both the Tchaikovsky and Joachim International Competitions – for duo recitals of Prokofiev and Shostakovich. At Grafenegg, their account of Shostakovich’s 24 Preludes, in Dmitri Tsyganov and Lera Auerbach’s transcription for violin and piano, marks the arrangement’s Austrian premiere. [Aug 22: Grafenegg, Austria; Aug 24: Gstaad, Switzerland]
Aug 29, 30: To close out the summer, Trifonov reunites with Andris Nelsons for performances of Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto with the Vienna Philharmonic at Austria’s Salzburg Festival. The concerto is one of those heard on Destination Rachmaninov, the Deutsche Grammophon series that earned the pianist two of his six Grammy nominations and BBC Music Magazine’s “Concerto Recording of the Year.” [Salzburg]
* * *
Alisa Weilerstein
June 7, 9: MacArthur award-winning cellist Alisa Weilerstein joins her longtime friend and frequent collaborator Inon Barnatan for duo recitals at both the Ravinia Festival and the Aspen Music Festival and School. At Ravinia, their program comprises cello sonatas by Chopin and Rachmaninoff, Falla’s Suite populaire espagnole, and Lera Auerbach’s transcriptions for cello and piano of selections from Shostakovich’s 24 Preludes. Two days later in Aspen, they showcase transcriptions throughout their program. Besides reprising Auerbach’s Shostakovich transcriptions, Weilerstein and Barnatan also perform a selection of songs by Brahms; their own transcription of Brahms’s First Violin Sonata in G, also known as the “Regensonate” because it shares thematic material with the composer’s Opus 59 songs “Regenlied” and “Nachklang”; and Daniil Shafran’s transcription for cello and piano of Shostakovich’s final work, the Sonata for Viola and Piano, some early drafts of which suggest it might originally have been conceived for cello. [June 7: Highland Park, IL; June 9: Aspen]
July 13–Aug 24: For several seasons, Weilerstein has been introducing audiences around the world to her acclaimed multisensory solo cello project, “FRAGMENTS,” which weaves together the 36 movements of Bach’s solo cello suites with 27 new commissions to make six unique hour-long programs. This summer, she turns to Bach’s Cello Suites by themselves for performances on both sides of the Atlantic. At the Bravo! Vail festival, she performs the six suites over two programs on consecutive nights. Later in the summer she gives a marathon performance of all six suites at the Edinburgh International Festival, before reprising the first three at Italy’s Tivoli Festival. [July 13, 14: Vail, CO; Aug 22: Edinburgh; Aug 24: Tivoli, Italy]
Aug 20–28: Weilerstein joins her husband, Rafael Payare, along with his Orchestre symphonique de Montréal (Montreal Symphony Orchestra/OSM), on the orchestra’s 60th international tour for performances of Gabriela Ortiz’s recent Dzonot cello concerto, which was written for Weilerstein and inspired by the “cenotes,” limestone sinkholes in Mexico which are like underground worlds, with their own rivers, lakes, and plant and animal life. The cellist performs the concerto with OSM at the Edinburgh International Festival; in Aarhus, Denmark, for the orchestra’s first performance in that country, and in Hamburg. [Aug 20: Edinburgh; Aug 26: Aarhus, Denmark; Aug 28: Hamburg]