Sun Valley Music Festival Featured on KMVT
Sun Valley is ready for the return of the biggest annual community gathering in the Wood River Valley: Sun Valley Music Festival, which kicks off its 42nd season today. KMVT, in Twin Falls, Idaho, reports.
Third Coast Review: Benjamin Beilman Amazes at Sun Valley Music Festival
Third Coast Review visited this year’s Sun Valley Music Festival Winter Season, curated by violinist Benjamin Beilman.
Postcard from Sun Valley: Sun Valley Music Festival Featured in "The Strad"
The Sun Valley Music Festival is a unique experience where visitors can hear free concerts performed by first-rate musicians in a beautiful setting. Emma Baker from "The Strad" reports on the festival's 41st season.
Classical Voice North America: In A Sunny Vale Where Hemingway Sheltered, Free Concerts Resound
SUN VALLEY, Idaho — A couple of golden eagles wheeling across the sky offered a dramatic welcome during my inaugural visit to the Sun Valley Music Festival. Viewed on the drive into town from nearby Friedman Memorial Airport, these fabled messengers of Zeus complemented the stark majesty of Bald Mountain with their agile flight. The area’s most-prominent Rocky Mountain peak towers 9,150 feet into the heavens and has been beckoning serious ski lovers since the area was first promoted as a winter sport destination — part of a pioneering campaign by Union Pacific Railroad in the late 1930s.
“Baldy” and its less-elevated, ski beginner-friendly sibling Dollar Mountain stand guard over Sun Valley, forming an iconic backdrop to the Pavilion and adjacent lawn where the Sun Valley Music Festival each summer presents nearly a month’s worth of events. The Pavilion is situated alongside another Sun Valley landmark with powerful cultural associations: the storied Sun Valley Lodge, a linchpin in the aforementioned campaign, which has long been an attraction for literary pilgrims.
The Washington Post: Classical music festivals feature Mother Nature as accompaniment
For nearly 40 years, this admission-free festival has been attracting persnickety listeners and unpicky picnickers to Sun Valley, Idaho. Music Director Alasdair Neale has lined up strong guest artists, including pianist Orli Shaham (July 30 and Aug. 3); mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke (Aug. 9 and 10); Stéphane Denève, the new director of the New World Symphony, conducting a concert of John Williams’s music (Aug. 12); pianist Yefim Bronfman (Aug. 14); and violinist Augustin Hadelich (Aug. 20 and 21).
Idaho Mountain Express: Sun Valley Music Festival gets down to 'brass' tacks
The odd, oft-misquoted adage, “Talking about music is like dancing about architecture” points out how useless it is to define music in words.
Sun Valley Music Festival (SVMF) Director Alasdair Neale disagrees. But, it takes someone as knowledgeable and eloquent as Neale to harness the transcendence of music through the English language. And, only a rare professional can explain complex theory to a gathering of curious ears.
That’s exactly what he does in his beloved “Upbeat with Alasdair” sessions at The Community Library. Anyone who has sat in the Sun Valley Pavilion during a bombastic SVMF concert on a summer night has likely wondered how the many parts make a coherent, often beautiful whole. What really goes on behind the curtain to bring all this magic together?
BBC Music Magazine: Musical Destination: Sun Valley, Idaho
This summer Charlotte Smith attended Sun Valley’s acclaimed Music Festival, where she discovered a region of unrivalled, rugged beauty.
Flying into Friedman Memorial Airport, the gateway to Sun Valley, is a truly dazzling experience. The Bald and Dollar Rockies slowly rise up to dominate the skyline – and if you’re lucky enough to be touching down during a summer sunset, the pink- and orange-hued sky above the sparsely populated pine-covered landscape is a wonder to behold.
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For classical music lovers, however, the biggest draw is the Sun Valley Music Festival – the largest privately funded admission-free classical music festival in the US, boasting Summer and Winter seasons, online broadcasts and a Music Institute catering for local school children and budding professionals with tuition-free initiatives and masterclasses.
Bachtrack: Bach and Mendelssohn: Jennifer Koh and Vijay Iyer in a wintry Sun Valley
A festival appearance in Sun Valley, Idaho, put violinist Jennifer Koh in a number of spotlights over the long weekend of 24th-26th February. She served as curator for the winter Sun Valley Music Festival, crafting a program that repeated (with slight variation) in each of the four concerts, spanning centuries and celebrating a return to coming together in a common space.
Strings Magazine: The Savannah and Sun Valley Music Festivals Ready the Stage for Live Concerts
As the largest admission-free classical music festival in the United States, Idaho’s Sun Valley Music Festival promises this year’s attendees a “massive orchestral repertoire as vast as Sun Valley’s mountainous setting.”
That’s a lofty promise but given the festival’s 37-year performance record, it’s a commitment that seems achievable over the three-week event. Kicking off in late July, the festival offers 14 concerts, a gala fundraising concert, and multiple educational events.