Summer concert

After the traditional Pops Night salute to the Armed forces, guest conductor Andy Einhorn will lead the Festival Orchestra and two Broadway singers in an evening of The Best of Americana, featuring familiar and fun works from film, Broadway, and much-loved composers. Einhorn, whose recording and tour credits include Bullets Over Broadway, Evita, Sondheim on Sondheim, and Elton John’s The Lion King, is also familiar to local audiences as the pianist who accompanied Audra McDonald, Kelli O’Hara, and Brian Stokes Mitchell for the Festival’s virtual Gala Concert in 2020. Following the concert, enjoy a lively performance on the Pavilion lawn for the Festival’s third Lawn Party. Bring your friends and your dancing shoes!

What happens when 16 of the finest horn players in North America get together and try to one-up each other in arrangements of songs ranging from classical to jazz to rock and roll? “It will be the Mother of All Horn Concerts,” says Bill VerMeulen, the Festival’s Principal Horn. Backed by a rhythm section, the masters of horn will deliver a rollicking good time in the Pavilion—don’t miss it!

Richard Strauss’ epic tone poem depicts a day spent hiking in the Alps, from daybreak until nightfall. Through 22 episodes, the audience will experience Strauss’ musical depictions of forests, brooks, a waterfall, meadows, pastures, a glacier, and this Summer Season’s second big storm—recall Beethoven’s “Pastoral.” To produce these sounds, in addition to 16 horns, the orchestra will include an organ, a wind machine, a heckelphone, and a thunder sheet. Where else can you hear this piece in the very setting it describes? Only in Sun Valley!

For opening night, “brilliant pianist” Orli Shaham (The New York Times) returns to Sun Valley to perform Ravel’s beautiful and jazz-influenced Piano Concerto in G Major. Continuing the jazzy theme, the program also includes Delights & Dances, a rhythmic and soulful composition by Academy Award-nominated American composer Michael Abels. The Season opens with The Star-Spangled Banner, of course, followed by Rossini’s Overture to The Barber of Seville.