STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK
The American Festival Chorus directed by Craig Jessup will be among the headliners of the Sun Valley Music Festival’s 42nd Summer Season.
Other headliners include Grammy award winning violinist Gil Shaham; American classical pianist Orion Weiss, who has an affinity for chamber music, and 24-year-old Russian pianist Alexander Malofeev, who won the International Tchaikovsky Competition for Young Musicians at 13.
Singers include Christina Pier, who has been praised for her “big gleaming soprano and impressive coloratura” and baritone Benjamin Appl, a German-British lyric baritone who started in his musical career singing in a boys’ choir at the Regensburg Cathedral in Bavaria, West Germany.
“I’m so excited about the lineup of works and artists for the season ahead,” commented Music Director Alasdair Neale. “From a brand-new commissioned work by Anna Clyne to a Pops Night celebration of the Great American Songbook, there truly is something for everyone.”
The orchestra will show its mettle in such symphonic classics as Mahler’s First Symphony and Elgar’s “Enigma Variations,” Neale added: “And, last but not least, there’s Brahms’s ‘A German Requiem,’ sure to be a moving highlight of the season.”
The largest privately funded, admission-free classical music festival in the United States will open Monday, July 27, with Orion Weiss and the Festival Orchestra performing Rossini’s “Overture to La Scala di seta” and Beethoven’s Piano concerto No. 1 in C Major. Weiss is regarded as a brilliant pianist with a powerful technique and exceptional insight, according to critics from the New York Times and Washington Post.
It will conclude nearly four weeks later on Thursday, Aug. 20, when the Festival Orchestra performs Mahler’s titanic symphony No. 1. Music lovers will find such treasures as Igor Stravinsky’s revolutionary “Firebird,” which embodies themes of beauty, hope and transformation in Slavic myth, in between.
Conductor Stephanie Childress will return for a fourth season to lead two programs, including Elgar’s “Enigma Variations” as well as Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1.
Jeff Tyzik, who recorded several solo jazz albums as a trumpeter and won a Grammy Award in 1987 for producing the 1986 album “The Tonight Show Band with Doc Severinsen,” will conduct Pops Night. That night has been titled “Come Swing with Me!”
And Euan Shields, who was born in Japan and raised in the United States where he attended Juilliard and performed with the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra during high school, will join the Festival as the new associate conductor. The co-founder of the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra, he will conduct Ravel’s “Rhapsodie Espagnole” and Thomas Adès’s Inferno from “Dante” (Part I).
Grammy-award winning violinist Gil Shaham will also be featured in two programs. In the first he’ll offer Barber’s Violin Concerto; in the second he'll collaborate with Festival Orchestra musicians to perform Beethoven’s String Quintet in A Major, “Kreutzer.”
Acclaimed pianist Alexander Malofeev—who “manifests the piano mastery of the new millennium in itself,” according to Il Giornale, makes his Sun Valley debut playing Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3.
Christina Pier will sing Brahms’s “A German Requiem,” alongside Benjamin Appl and the 65-voice American Festival Chorus, founded in 2008 by Dr. Craig Jessop.
The Festival Orchestra comprises over 100 world-class musicians from North America’s most distinguished orchestras, including the San Francisco Symphony, St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra and Toronto Symphony.
All performances will be held at the Sun Valley Pavilion with Pavilion seating under cover and lawn seating outside for picnickers who can watch the performances on a big screen with state-of-the-art sound system.
All concerts start at 6:30 p.m. And all are free, with the exception of the fundraising Gala, whose headliner will be announced in February. Some seats in the Pavilion may be reserved in advance by donors at certain levels.
Learn more at https://www.svmusicfestival.org/.
SUN VALLEY MUSIC FESTIVAL’S 2025 SUMMER SEASON
Opening Night with Orion Weiss
Monday, July 27
Alasdair Neale, Conductor
Orion Weiss, Piano
Rossini: Overture to “La Scala di seta”
Beethoven: Piano concerto No. 1 in C Major, Op. 15
Childress Conducts Beethoven
Festival Chamber Orchestra
Tuesday, July 28
Alasdair Neale, Conductor
Stephanie Childress, Conductor
Britten: Simple Symphony
Beethoven: Symphony No. 1
Orion Weiss and Festival Musicians Play Chamber Music
Chamber Concert
Thursday, July 30
Orion Weiss, Piano
Festival Chamber Orchestra Musicians to be announced
Program to be announced
Strauss and Mozart
Festival Chamber Orchestra
Friday, July 31
Alasdair Neale, Conductor
Richard Strauss: “Metamorphosen”
Mozart: Symphony No. 39
Stravinsky’s “Firebird” and Anna Clyne’s “Woman of the Mountain”
Festival Orchestra
Monday, Aug. 3
Alasdair Neale, Conductor
Clyne: “Woman of the Mountain”
Stravinsky: Suite from “The Firebird”
Festival Orchestra – Gala Benefit Concert
Tuesday, August 4
To be announced
Childress Conducts Elgar
Festival Orchestra
Thursday, Aug. 6
Stephanie Childress, Conductor
Benjamin Frolyak: “Let There Be Light”
Elgar: “Enigma Variations”
Brahms’s A German Requiem
Festival Orchestra
Sunday, Aug. 9
Alasdair Neale, Conductor
Christina Pier, Soprano
Benjamin Appl, Baritone
American Festival Chorus; Craig Jessop, Director
Brahms: “A German Requiem”
Christina Pier and Benjamin Appl with Festival Musicians
Chamber Concert
Monday, Aug. 10
Christina Pier, Soprano
Benjamin Appl, Baritone
Peter Henderson, Piano
First Half to be announced
Robert Schumann: “Dichterliebe”
Alexander Malofeev Plays Prokofiev
Festival Orchestra
Thursday, Aug. 13
Alasdair Neale, Conductor
Alexander Malofeev, Piano
Prokofiev: “Romeo and Juliet” excerpts
Prokofiev: Piano Concerto No. 3
Tan Dun’s Water Concerto
Chamber Concert
Friday, Aug. 14
Alasdair Neale, Conductor
Euan Shields, Conductor
Mark Damoulakis, Percussion
Tan Dun: Water Concerto
Ravel: “Rapsodie espagnole”
Festival Orchestra Pops Night: The American Songbook
Sunday, Aug. 16
Alasdair Neale, Conductor
Jeff Tyzik, Conductor
Join the Festival for “Come Swing With Me!” featuring music from the American Songbook
Gil Shaham plays Barber
Festival Orchestra
Monday, Aug. 17
Alasdair Neale, Conductor
Gil Shaham, Violin
Barber: Violin Concerto
Adés: Inferno from “Dante”
Gil Shaham and Festival Musicians play Beethoven
Chamber Concert
Tuesday, Aug. 18
Gil Shaham, Violin
Festival Orchestra Musicians TBA
Ravel: Introduction and Allegro
Beethoven: “Kreutzer” Quintet
Season Finale: Mahler’s Symphony No. 1
Festival Orchestra
Thursday, Aug. 20
Alasdair Neale, Conductor
Mahler: Symphony No. 1