STORY AND PHOTO BY KAREN BOSSICK

It’s been a week of praise for the Sun Valley Music Festival…for the spectacle of Brahm’s “A German Requiem,” the masterful performance of 25-year-old Russian pianist Alexander Malofeevon on “Piano Concerto No. 3” and for a daring venture into Tan Dun’s “Water concerto” with percussionists making music by splashing water, dripping water, and playing a variety of bowls and tubes in water.

And now, we’ve come to the last week.

Tonight’s concert needs no marching horn players out front leading the way to the Sun Valley Pavilion—after all it’s Pops Night. And the Sun Valley Music Festival orchestra is inviting you to “Come Swing With Me!”

Grammy Award winning Pops Conductor Jeff Tyzik, who has collaborated with such artists as Chris Botti, Art Garfunkel, Doc Severinsen and The Chieftains, will lead the orchestra in  a long list of Frank Sinatra hits, including “Beyond the Sea” and “Fly Me to the Moon.”

Crooner Paul Loren, who has opened for such artist as The Temptations, will stand in for Ol’ Blue Eyes, and drummer Eric Metzgar will beat out the rhythms of the night.

MONDAY, Aug. 17

Multiple Grammy Award winning Violinist Gil Shaham and his 1719 Antonio Stradivari violin will perform Samuel Barber’s Concerto for violin, Op 14., with its gorgeous oboe solo.

And the festival’s Associate Conductor Euan Shields, a Japanese native who has endeared himself to the concert crowd with his graceful flourishes, will conduct Thomas Ades’ contemporary “Inferno,” inspired by Dante’s 14th century epic poem “The Divine Comedy.”

Composed for the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s centenary, the concert version of the full ballet received a 2024 Grammy. Ades himself called it a tribute to Franz Liszt—“the composer of “hell and demonic music.”

TUESDAY, Aug. 18

Gil Shaham will join Festival musicians in performing Maurice Ravel’s “Introduction and Allegro” and Ludwig Van Beethoven’s “String Quintet in A Major,” aka the “Kreutzer.”

Beethoven’s “Kreutzer” Sonata is his best known, famed for its length, emotional power and its demands on the violinist. It includes a fiery Presto and ends with a joyous tarantella-like finale.

THURSDAY, AUG. 20

The summer season, which began way back on July 23 with the fun little Concert Truck, will end with Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 in D Major. Known as “Titan,” it includes a slow funeral march based on the children’s round “Frere Jacques”  before ending in a fiery finale.

Mahler wrote it when he was in his late 20s, daring to break traditional symphony rules by blending nature sounds and folk tunes into the mix.

All concerts begin at 6:30 p.m. and all are free.  There are seats available in the Pavilion. or, bring low-back chairs, a picnic and a bottle of wine and enjoy the experience on the big screen with state-of-the-art lawn sound.