Opening Night with Meechot Marrero

Sun Valley Pavilion 300 Dollar Rd, Sun Valley, Idaho, United States

The Festivalā€™s 40th Season opens with a fanfare written by the composer Timothy Higgins especially for this occasion! Then soprano Meechot Marrero returns to Sun Valley to sing a few of her favorite ariasā€“fans may remember her passionate performance in the Festivalā€™s gala concert, Carmina Burana, in 2022. The concert closes with Prokofievā€™s Classical Symphony. Prokofiev himself gave it the nickname, as he intended to write a symphony in the classical style, while ā€œabsorbing things from what was new in music.ā€ Itā€™s a delightful, sunny piece, and one of the most-performed works of the 20th century.

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Piazzola’s Four Seasons and Mozart’s Linz Symphony

Sun Valley Pavilion 300 Dollar Rd, Sun Valley, Idaho, United States

The Argentinian composer Astor Piazzolla, most famous for his tangos, composed The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires in the late 1960s. Festival Assistant Concertmaster Juliana Athayde will take the lead on these four lovely pieces that quote and improvise on Vivaldiā€™s masterpiece. Following, Associate Conductor Stephanie Childress returns to the podium to lead Mozartā€™s ā€œLinzā€ symphony. On the way from Vienna to Salzburg, Austria, Mozart stopped to visit a friend in Linz, only to learn that said friend had committed him to performing a symphony there in four days. The only problem was that he didnā€™t have a symphony with him. So, being Mozart, he wrote one. Itā€™s brilliant, of course!

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Meechot Marrero and Festival Musicians play Schubert

Sun Valley Pavilion 300 Dollar Rd, Sun Valley, Idaho, United States

Schubert wrote ā€œThe Shepherd on the Rockā€ as a favor for a friendā€“a sopranoā€“who asked for a piece that would allow her to express a wide range of emotions. Meechot Marrero will sing the vocal part, accompanied by piano and clarinet, with the latter sometimes imitating and other times enhancing her voice. Schubertā€™s Trout Quintet is one of his most beloved chamber works, and for good reasonā€“itā€™s full of cheerful, beautiful, and catchy melodies.

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Andy Akiho’s Cello Concerto

Sun Valley Pavilion 300 Dollar Rd, Sun Valley, Idaho, United States

Itā€™s not often one gets to hear the world premiere of a new concerto, so mark your calendars for this concert helping celebrate the Music Festivalā€™s 40th Anniversary! Back in 2021, the Festival commissioned ā€œtrailblazingā€ (Los Angeles Times) and Grammy-nominated composer Andy Akiho to write a cello concerto for Jeffrey Zeigler, the former cellist of the famed Kronos Quartet. Following the concerto, the celebration will continue with Handelā€™s Music for the Royal Fireworks, composed in 1749 to celebrate the end of the War of the Austrian Succession.

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