Bravo! Vail Music Festival Featured in Vail Valley Magazine

“The Bravo! Vail Music Festival is something of a logistical miracle,” writes Shauna Farnell in her “Orchestrating the Orchestras” feature for the summer 2026 issue of Vail Valley Magazine. She details the puzzle of putting together the Bravo! Vail Music Festival, which runs June 25-August 6 this year, bringing to Vail, Colorado, the New York Philharmonic, the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, various chamber music ensembles, and more.

“It takes a village,” says Elli Monroe, Bravo! Vail's artistic operations director, about the logistics for putting together this enormous classical music festival. “We have a wonderful team. Honestly, if you can meticulously pre-plan and communicate all of this in advance, 99% goes as planned and you can put out the fires as you need to.”

Planning for the summer begins about a year and a half in advance, with orchestras and soloists contracted out long before that. Monroe, who’s been with the festival since 2008, is tasked with taking the plan, or as she calls it, “the artistic vision,” and bringing it to fruition.

To find out more about Bravo! Vail, please visit bravovail.org.