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.

The Sun Valley Music Festival always draws an enthusiastic crowd.

“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