STORY AND PHOTO BY KAREN BOSSICK
The Sun Valley Music Festival shifts into its most ambitious week of the 2026 summer season beginning tonight—Sunday, Aug. 9.
Members of the 175 -singer American Festival Chorus from Logan, Utah, will join the full orchestra on stage, along with guest singers Christina Pier, and Banjamin Appl, for Brahms’s “A German Requiem.”
Although Brahms wrote the Requiem Mass following the death of his mother, he wrote it for the living, not the dead, said Music Director Alasdair Neale: “Its humanity exudes from every pore.”
MONDAY, Aug. 10:
While the chorus, under the direction of Craig Jessop heads back to Utah State University, Pier and Appl will linger another day to join St. Louis Symphony Orchestra pianist Peter Henderson in pieces by Franz Schubert and Robert Schumann.
Robert Schumann’s “Dicterliebe” is an outpouring of love for his beloved wife Clara. Henderson will also perform Clara’s “Drei Lieder,” an expressive piece that transforms the accompaniment from the storm and rain of F minor to a springtime breeze in major key by the end.
THURSDAY, Aug. 13:
The Music Festival orchestra will perform Sergei Prokofiev’s Suite No. 1 from “Romeo and Juliet”—it includes the famous Balcony Scene.
The symphony will also honor the memory of Michael Tilson Thomas, a visionary conductor and composer who passed away in April 2026 by performing Part II from his Street Song for symphonic brass.
Tilson, the longest-serving music director of the San Francisco Symphony, was known for his innovative programming, which included a series of benefit concerts for UNICEF. His pieces included “From the Diary of Anne Frank” and “Showa/Shoah” commemorating the 50th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima.
FRIDAY, Aug. 14
Cleveland Orchestra Percussionist Marc Damoulakis will be featured in Chinese American composer Tan Dun’s “Water Concerto for Water Percussion and Orchestra.” The piece was inspired by Tan Dun’s life growing up in rural Hunan where his family washed laundry at the river.
Damoulakis will play a water tube and water gong, which he will dip into water basins at varying depths while striking them with varying degrees of force.
The Sun Valley Music Festival orchestra also will perform Maurice Ravel’s “Rapsodie Espagnole.” Inspired by Ravel’s Basque mother and memories of growing up in the Basque region of southern France, it includes “Malaguena” rhythms and the colorful “Habanera.”
P.S. Don’t come Saturday night expecting your customary Saturday night Pops Night. Pops Night will be on Sunday, Aug. 16 this year and will feature the music of Frank Sinatra.
All concerts start at 6:30 p.m. Attendees may avail themselves of seats in the Sun Valley Pavilion or pack a picnic and enjoy the experience on the Pavilion Lawn via the Jumbotron and state-of-the-art sound system.
Look for Pre-Concert Lectures at 5:45 p.m. at the Pavilion Paver Bar.