September 21, 2026 • 8:42 am 0
My report for The Seattle Times on Seattle Symphony’s opening night:
Seattle Symphony’s opening-night concert Saturday included an unusual extra audition: Benaroya Hall’s newly renovated public spaces met their first concert audience. A $20 million overhaul — the hall’s first major renovation since it opened in 1998 — has given the lobbies serving both auditoriums a striking makeover.
Filed under: music news, Prokofiev, Rachmaninoff, Seattle Symphony, Seattle Times, Xian Zhang
September 20, 2026 • 7:10 am 0
Evergreen Ensemble impressed me when I heard them last spring in the premiere of Connor Koppin’s To Look West for choir, string quartet, and piano, and I’m looking forward to their participation in the Seattle Bach Festival’s upcoming performances of Bach’s Mass in B minor.
This afternoon, the Edmonds-based choir, led by David Hendrix, is presenting English composer Joby Talbot’s Path of Miracles, an cappella work inspired by the ancient pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela and evoking its spiritual and emotional dimensions.
Written for Tenebrae and premiered in 2005, Path traces the journey in four movements, setting a libretto by poet Robert Dickinson reflecting on the pilgrimage, with mediaeval texts interspersed.
Sunday, September 20, at 3 pm
Holy Rosary Catholic Church (West Seattle) 4210 SW Genesee St Seattle, WA 98116
Students and children under 18 free.
Details and tickets here
Filed under: choral music, new music
September 19, 2026 • 11:48 am 0
It was such a pleasure meeting and hearing the Banff-winning, innovative Poiesis Quartet at Lucerne Festival, where they played in the prestigious Debut series. Here’s my interview with violinist Sarah Ying Ma and cellist Drew Dansby for The Strad:
On the eve of their Lucerne Festival debut, Sarah Ying Ma and Drew Dansby of the Banff-winning American Poiesis Quartet talk about a changing line-up, an expanding repertoire and the ideas shaping the ensemble’s next chapter….
Filed under: Lucerne Festival, string quartet, The Strad
September 9, 2026 • 4:05 am 0
Augustin Hadelich is of course a familiar and well-loved figure in Seattle, where I last heard him in March in a memorable, thoughtfully programmed recital with Francesco Piemontesi at Meany Center for the Performing Arts. What a pleasure to encounter him in varied contexts at this summer’s Lucerne Festival as ‘artiste étoile.’
The first concert of my visit here brought the Beethoven Violin Concerto with the Berliner Philharmoniker and Kirill Petrenko – a kind of anti-concerto in its resistance to conventional virtuoso display that, paradoxically, became one of the great models for the Romantic violin concerto and that is also extraordinarily difficult to play convincingly.
I was blown away by Hadelich’s signature blend of warmth and poetry, and also by the natural give-and-take between him and this collective of world-class musicians, each with such a strong musical personality. As an encore, he offered his own touching arrangement of Schumann’s Träumerei.
Over the weekend, Hadelich joined with Mark O’Connor and Maggie O’Connor (all pictured here together) for ‘Fiddle Night’ in the smaller venue that is used for many of the Lucerne Festival Academy concerts. The program opened with a set by the O’Connors, charmingly introduced from the stage and including ‘Wildflowers’ as a tribute to Dolly Parton. (Mark O’Connor also played on the original 1987 recording with Parton, Linda Ronstadt, and Emmylou Harris.)
Hadelich then took the stage alone for his arrangement of Howdy Forrester’s ‘Wild Fiddler’s Rag’ – also included on his American Road Trip album – and O’Connor’s ‘Menuhin Caprice,’ written for the Menuhin Competition, a witty take on virtuosity that fuses American fiddling with the classical caprice tradition.
The high point was O’Connor’s calling-card tune, ‘Appalachia Waltz’ – played by all three violinists together as an unhurried, shared meditation that seemed to reflect on Lucerne Festival’s ‘American Dreams’ theme with a certain ache – looking back at what the American dream once promised, and asking whether it still has a future.
Filed under: American music, Beethoven, Lucerne Festival, violinists, art, classical-music, history, music, writing
September 2, 2026 • 6:14 am 0
I ecently paid a visit to Port Angeles for the opening of Music on the Strait‘s 2026 Festival. My report for The Strad:
Music on the Strait (MOTS) has always been a festival shaped by string players. Founded in 2018 by violinist James Garlick and Takács Quartet violist Richard O’Neill – longtime friends both raised on Washington State’s Olympic Peninsula – MOTS brings chamber musicians from the international circuit to the Peninsula’s largest population centre, overlooking the Strait of Juan de Fuca towards Vancouver Island….
Filed under: Music on the Strait, review, Strad, violinists
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