US violinist Karisa Chiu, 27, has won the Gold Medal at the 12th International Violin Competition of Indianapolis.
Elli Choi, 25, also from the US, received the Silver Medal, while Aozhe Zhang, 18, from China, took Bronze. Xunyue Zhang, 22, from China, placed fourth; Yesong Sophie Lee, 22, from the US, fifth; and Lina Nakano, 21, from Japan, sixth.
Internationally renowned composer Huang Ruo will serve as the company’s first-ever composer-in-residence beginning in 2027. Lasting three years, the residency launches with the Seattle premiere of M. Butterfly and will culminate in the world premiere of The Wedding Banquet, a comic opera inspired by Ang Lee’s 1993 film as well as Andrew Ahn’s re-imagined version from 2025, with a libretto by screenwriter James Schamus.
“Huang Ruo is one of the foremost composers of opera in the United States, and I couldn’t be prouder to announce his residency with Seattle Opera,” said general director James Robinson, who has directed several of Huang Ruo’s operas, beginning with the North American premiere of Dr. Sun Yat-sen at Santa Fe Opera in 2014.
“Beyond his accomplished record as a composer, Huang Ruo is also a compelling advocate for opera who believes deeply in the art form’s power to bring people together. He’s one of the most engaging and enthusiastic people I know, and I think Seattle Opera audiences will be fascinated by his perspectives.”
“I’m deeply humbled and honored by this invitation to serve as Composer-in-Residence for Seattle Opera,” said Huang Ruo, who conducted his chamber opera Bound at Seattle Opera in 2023. “It is rare for opera companies to engage Composers-in-Residence, so I think this partnership demonstrates both Seattle Opera’s bold vision for the future of the art form and an exciting model for how opera companies can work with living creators to create, present, and engage the community around new opera. I am excited for this new adventure and I feel a sincere responsibility as an artist and educator to help people better understand both ourselves and our world through opera.”
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.
Music on the Strait, the Port Angeles-based chamber music festival that brings leading musicians from around the country to the Olympic Peninsula near the end of each summer, launches its 2026 season on Saturday, August 22, at the Field Arts & Events Hall in Port Angeles, located right on the waterfront.
The festival runs August 22–30, with a total of four concerts, two each at Field Arts & Events Hall and Maier Hall. This year’s roster includes mezzo-soprano Abigail Nims, flutist Demarre McGill, pianist Jeremy Denk, the Takács Quartet, and composer-in-residence Gabriela Lena Frank, alongside MOTS co-founder and artistic director and violinist James Garlick and other returning artists.
The opening night concert, “A Night at the Opera,” marks MOTS’s first venture into the operatic world. Nims joins violinists Kristin Lee and Garlick, violist Maiya Papach, cellist Silver Ainomäe, and pianist August Baik for an adventurous program featuring Respighi’s rarely performed Il Tramonto and the world premiere ofEl Mundo by Gabriela Lena Frank. Baik plays Frederic Rzewski’s Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues, from Four North American Ballads, and the musicians will join together at the conclusion for Ernő Dohnányi’s Piano Quintet No. 1 in C minor.
The concert begins at 7:00pm PT on Saturday, August 22. Those attending in person can arrive early for Olympic Strings students at 5:45pm and a pre-concert talk by Lisa Bergman at 6:15pm Music on the Strait is also offering pay-what-makes-you-happy tickets starting at $5.
Come early for food, drink, and pre-concert programming in the Sunset Lounge
5:45pm – Olympic Strings students
6:15pm – Lisa Bergman pre-concert talk
7:00pm concert:
Ottorino Respighi | Il Tramonto for mezzo soprano and string quartet (1914) Frederic Rzewski | Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues from Four North American Ballads for Piano (1979) Gabriela Lena Frank | El Mundo for mezzo soprano and string quartet (World Premiere) Erno Dohnanyi | Piano Quintet No 1 in C minor, Op 1 (1902)
Abigail Nims, mezzo-soprano Kristin Lee, violin James Garlick, violin Maiya Papach, viola Silver Ainomäe, cello August Baik, piano
Sunday afternoon, August 23, at 3:00pm, MOTS continues with a concert at Maier Hall featuring this progam:
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart | Flute Quartet in D Major, K 285 (1777) Ernest Bloch | Violin Sonata No.2, B.58 “Poeme Mystique” (1924) Antonin Dvořák | Viola Quintet in F major, Op 97 “American” (1893)
The Maier Hall performance is now sold out, but there is a wait list here.
The second weekend (August 29-30) features a sold-out special evening with the Takács Quartet at Maier Hall on Saturday August 29 at 7:00pm:
Ludwig Van Beethoven | String Quartet in B-flat, Op 18 No 6 (1801) Felix Mendelssohn | String Quartet in F minor, Op 80 (1847) Franz Schubert | String Quartet No. 14 in D Minor, D.810, “Death and the Maiden” (1824)
The festival finale takes place at Field Arts & Events Hall on Sunday August 30 at 3:00pm and features special guest Jeremy Denk joining the TakácsQuartet
Gabriela Lena Frank | Quijotadas (2007)* Ludwig Van Beethoven | Piano Sonata in D minor, Op 31 No 2 “The Tempest” (1802) César Franck | Piano Quintet in F minor (1879)
Details, tickets, and the free livestream are available through Music on the Strait.
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…
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…
Congratulations to Sarah Kirkland Snider, winner of the 2026 award for Best New Opera from the Music Critics Association of North America for Hildegard. The opera was co-commissioned by Beth Morrison Projects and the Aspen Music Festival and School and premiered last November in Los Angeles and then presented at this year’s Prototype Festival in New York.
The Awards Committee praised Hildegard as “a compelling work of historical fiction [that] explores the life and mind of the 12th-century Benedictine abbess, visionary, and composer Hildegard von Bingen. Snider’s well-crafted libretto sets the action at a biographical turning point in 1147, when Hildegard’s transcribed visions were submitted to the pope, who would declare her to be either a prophet or a heretic.
This complex heroine, who stands up to the power of the church and is disturbed by the nature of her feelings for a young novice, is captured in Snider’s distinctive, haunting music, which reaches its apogee in the brilliantly explosive visions. Remarkable timbral variety belies the small size of the accompanying ensemble, and throughout, the opera’s musical radiance illuminates Hildegard’s visceral connection with the divine.”
Hildegard will now travel to the co-commissioning Aspen Music Festival, where it will be presented on 31 July.
Speight Jenkins died on May 30, 2026, at the age of 89. His passing has triggered some stirring memories of the greatness he brought to Seattle. What an immense legacy he leaves behind. There was, of course, Seattle Opera’s era-defining Ring, which left a profound imprint on my book Decoding Wagner.
But Speight, who died on May 30, 2026, presided over a whole era of visionary opera-making that helped put Seattle on the international opera map. His long tenure as general director, from 1983 to 2014, transformed the company’s profile and helped make Seattle a destination for serious opera lovers. He brought with him not only administrative force, but the sensibility of someone who had spent years thinking, writing, speaking, and arguing about opera at the highest level.
Speight was not simply running an opera company; he was shaping an operatic culture. He cared about singers, repertory, production values, audience understanding, and the larger civic meaning of opera. His Seattle Opera was a place where Wagner could become a defining local obsession, but also where the art form’s wider possibilities were continually tested and renewed.
He was a monumental figure in Seattle culture and in contemporary opera production, nurturing the careers of so many great artists. Tenor Lawrence Brownlee, whom I first heard as a young artist at Seattle Opera, has written a beautiful tribute on his Facebook page: “What I loved about Speight was that he was never performative. He genuinely believed in me and went all in—betting on my future because he cared about me as a person, not just as a singer,” Brownlee writes. “This is a profound loss for me personally, and for the entire opera world. Speight was our greatest ambassador, and he was my biggest champion.”
That testimony says as much as any institutional tribute could. Speight’s legacy lives not only in Seattle Opera’s history, or in the memories of those great Ring cycles, but in the artists he believed in, the audiences he educated, and the seriousness of purpose he brought to the city’s cultural life. He made opera matter here — passionately, intelligently, and with an unsurpassed love of the art and of sharing it with everyone around him.
The sad news we knew was coming, reported on the FaceBook page of Michael Tilson Thomas:
“It is with deep sadness that we let you know of Michael Tilson Thomas’s passing on April 22, 2026. In 2021, Michael was diagnosed with Glioblastoma Multiforme, an aggressive type of brain cancer. Through his illness he continued to make music—a testament to his legacy as an artist and communicator. He was preceded in death by his husband Joshua Robison, and passed away at home surrounded by loved ones and family. Joshua and Michael are survived by their sisters, nieces and nephews.”
Joshua Kosman, whose tenure as chief critic of San Francisco Chronicle spanned the entire Michael Tilson Thomas era with SF Symphony, provides a beautiful tribute here, while Lisa Hirsch – another longtime observer of MTT’s Bay Area career – offers a thoughtful assessment for NPR here; Tim Page reflects on MTT’s legacy for the Washington Post; and Anthony Tomassini’s NY Times obituary can be found here.
