And thus ends what Seattle Chamber Music Society bills as “the world’s largest chamber music party” – some thoughts for Bachtrack on the final concert of the 2026 Summer Festival:
The final concert of Seattle Chamber Music Society’s 2026 Summer Festival capped an unusually eventful stretch. Owing to summer renovations at Benaroya Hall, its usual venue, the organisation found a number of alternate spaces to perform in, while also expanding its reach through free events in parks and other public spaces across the region…
Jessie Montgomery and Abel Selaocoe at the North American premiere with the Toronto Symphony; photo: Allan Cabral, courtesy of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra
I had a chance to do a Strad interview Jessie Montgomery about her new cello concerto These Righteous Paths – a work shaped by Abel Selaocoe’s multifaceted artistry and rooted in the poetry of her late mother, Robbie McCauley.
American composer Jessie Montgomery’s These Righteous Paths enters the world with the momentum of a major international concerto. Written for the South African cellist Abel Selaocoe and created in close collaboration with him, the work has had an unusually broad launch… continue
Pop star and classically trained flutist Lizzo teamed in an arrangement of the “Flower Duet” from Delibes’ ‘Lakmé‘ with flutist Kaylee Johnson, a six-year member of Sistema Ravinia.
My report for Classical Voice North America on opening weekend of Ravinia Festival 2026, as Marin Alsop and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra put the rebuilt Hunter Pavilion through its first major test:
HIGHLAND PARK, Ill. – The birds made themselves at home during the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s opening concert of its 90th summer season at the Ravinia Festival on July 11. Led by chief conductor Marin Alsop, the performance also officially inaugurated the festival’s renovated pavilion…
Seattle Chamber Music Society’s month-long summer ritual began in the familiar place – the intimate, 536-seat Nordstrom Recital Hall inside downtown Seattle’s Benaroya Hall. Also familiar was the air of anticipation in the packed room, filled with listeners eager for the kind of high-level chamber music-making that violinist and artistic director James Ehnes continues to assemble in Seattle.
The phenomenon known as Stuart Dempster – trail-blazing composer, trombonist, didjeriduist, Sound Gatherer, and mentor, a.k.a. Fusei (Voice of the Wind) – turned 90 on 7 July. To mark the occasion, the Wayward Music Series is hosting a celebration on 11 July at 4pm at the Chapel Performance Space (4649 Sunnyside Ave. N. in Seattle).
From WMS:
Coming together to listen deeply; to move and to sound playfully, and to attend to a performance in tribute to beloved master musician and teacher, Stuart Dempster. (Please note that the celebration takes place over the course of several hours. No food or drink will be offered at the event, so please plan accordingly. Stuart requests that you bring no presents, just your presence!)
LISTENING TOGETHER (4 – 4:30 PM) Chapel Performance Space at Good Shepherd Center (4th floor)
PLAYING TOGETHER (5 – 6 PM) Picnic shelter in Meridian Park, directly behind/west of Good Shepherd Center (weather permitting; if not, we’ll meet in the Chapel) Please note, no amplified sound permitted in the Meridian Park area.
MERIDIAN EVENT for Stuart Dempster on his ninetieth birthday Chapel Performance Space at Good Shepherd Center (4th floor) (for best results, join us for Deep Listening in the Chapel before MERIDIAN EVENT!)
To celebrate Stu, YOU ARE INVITED To come together To sing To play To dance To listen Spontaneously, improvisingly,
Or
Premeditatedly, composedly, choreographedly, YOU ARE INVITED In whatever mode you choose, to remember what he taught us: YOU ARE INVITED To always listen To enjoy the silence To play the silence To leave space To let your doing be transparent to what everyone else is doing To direct your energy To play with love To listen deeply To direct your energy and play with love towards a specific person or specific persons To listen for the ending
TRANSITION (6:00 – 6:30 PM) Chapel Performance Space at Good Shepherd Center (4th floor)
Video installation by Robert Campbell and ROOM. Please enter and exit as you wish, move about the space comfortably.
ATTENDING TOGETHER (6:30 – 7 PM) Chapel Performance Space at Good Shepherd Center (4th floor)
The extraordinary violinist Vijay Gupta has built a career around asking where classical music can matter – and to whom – from the LA Phil to Street Symphony’s work in shelters, clinics, and prisons.
I had the privilege of interviewing Gupta for The Strad about his inspiring new memoir, Restrung, and why, as he puts it, “classical music needs a new why.”
Vijay Gupta had played Carnegie Hall as a child, studied at Juilliard and Yale, and joined the Los Angeles Philharmonic when he was only 19, making him one of the youngest violinists to enter the ranks of a major American orchestra. At an early age, he seemed already to have reached the destination so many young string players are trained to imagine as success…
Xian Zhang, Seattle Symphony, and soloists; photo (c) James Holt
My Musical America review of Xian Zhang/Seattle Symphony and James Gaffigan/San Francisco Symphony in two very different West Coast encounters with the choral symphony:
SEATTLE AND SAN FRANCISCO—Call it the Ninth, times two. Last week, two major West Coast orchestras ended their seasons with Beethoven’s choral symphony, reminding us that this familiar ritual need not be merely routine.
In the Pacific Northwest, it marked the close of Xian Zhang’s inaugural season as music director of the Seattle Symphony, preceded by onstage tributes to three longtime orchestra members whose retirements were announced. At the San Francisco Symphony, the season-ending program unexpectedly acquired a memorial charge following Michael Tilson Thomas’s recent death, with musicians wearing blue ribbons—MTT’s favorite color—as a token of remembrance….
Caroline Shaw and Andrew Yee; photo: Photo: Anja Schüts
I had the pleasure of speaking with cellist and composer Andrew Yee at the recent Ojai Music Festival for The Strad. We talked about her new album with Caroline Shaw, or, The Whale:
Nathalie Stutzmann’s reading of Mahler’s Second Symphony was charged above all by a layered sense of anticipation. (Photos by Adam Hagy, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra)
Along with Atlanta Opera, my evening at the Woodruff Arts Center provided another memorable experience during last weekend’s annual Music Critics Association of North America conference. Here’s my review of the season-closing ATLANTA — Even before the funeral drama had been established, the opening violin-viola tremolos in Nathalie Stutzmann’s account of Mahler’s Second Symphony seethed with a fearsome intensity, as if the music were running for its life. The echo of Die Walküre’s Prelude, with its life-and-death urgency, was unmistakable: a crisis already in motion. Mahler Second performed by Nathalie Stutzmann and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus….
MEMETERIA 