It’s that time of year again… Spring has finally sprung, and along with the promised sunshine we welcome a brand-new season of glorious summer music. This year, festivals around the world have pulled out all the stops to offer a wonderful range of repertoire, from the crowd-pleasing to the obscure, featuring an even more dazzling line-up of artists. Elsewhere we run through the UK's best festivals for 2024, plus the major events in Europe, Australia and New Zealand, and the rest of the world. But below, we have the USA and Canada's very best classical music festivals for 2024. Happy reading!
Charlotte Smith Editor
Best US classical music festivals in 2024
Here are the best classical music festivals across the States for 2024, broken down month by month.
Best US classical music festivals: May 2024
Bang on a Can
Brooklyn, NYC, 3-5 May
bangonacan.org
Before August’s eclectic Long Weekend and July’s Summer Festival, there’s the small matter of a May prequel – Bang on a Can’s Brooklyn bonanza of some 60 concerts of new and newish music. Corralled into three exuberant days, premieres world, US and New York come thick and fast.
Included are the Soundwalk Collective with Patti Smith, Anna Meredith’s Nuc and, performed by Ensemble Klang, Peter Adriaansz’s Environments. But contemporary classics are not airbrushed. The Ligeti Quartet salutes its namesake; the music of Steve Reich re-echoes; and Ekmeles illuminates David Lang’s The Little Match Girl Passion.
May Festival
Cincinnati, OH, 17-25 May
mayfestival.com
It’s all change in Cincinnati. Last year’s 150th-birthday celebrations concluded, the choralfest steps out with a new festival director at the helm. Pulitzer-Prize-winning co-founder of Bang on a Can, Julia Wolfe curates a series bookended by Haydn’s The Creation and Fauré’s Requiem. In between, the world premiere of her own All that Breathes spearheads a mini-Wolfe retrospective including the oratorio Anthracite Fields and Her Story.
Spoleto Festival USA
Charleston, SC, 22 May-9 June
spoletousa.org
Composer Gian Carlo Menotti had an eye for old world charm – and looking to establish an American equivalent to his Italian Festival of Two Worlds, in Charleston he found it in spades. A man of the musical theatre to his fingertips, he’d applaud Spoleto 2024’s curtain-up: the world premiere of Layale Caker’s new opera Ruinous Gods. In part drawing on Greek mythology, it neatly complements another festival premiere reinterpreting Virgil’s Aeneid.
Theatre and dance weave around a core music programme that features Reena Esmail as composer-in-residence in an 11-concert chamber music series; the Festival Orchestra pairs Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 with a new Cello Concerto by Nathalie Joachim – and joins the Festival Chorus for Haydn’s The Creation. In conversation and music, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, meanwhile, ponders Bach, life and the universe.
Best US classical music festivals: June 2024
OSL Bach Festival
New York, 4-25 June
oslmusic.org
It may be more contained than Oregon’s tribute to the Thomaskantor, but Carnegie Hall’s minifest is all fired up as Jeannette Sorrell, director of Apollo’s Fire, makes her OSL debut. Bernard Labadie conducts Bach transcriptions, and Kristian Bezuidenhout multi-tasks as fortepianist and director in a Mozart-capped evening of JS, JC and CPE Bach.
Ravinia Festival
Highland Park, IL, 7 June-15 September
ravinia.org
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra first took up official residence in Highland Park in 1936 and, heralded by James Taylor, Norah Jones and The Gypsy Kings, it returns under festival chief conductor Marin Alsop. Returning, too, is her Breaking Barriers festival-within-a-festival, which this year celebrates women leaders in music and space. Mozart’s opera Idomeneo is conducted by James Conlon and under Gustavo Dudamel, the National Youth Orchestra of Venezuela makes its Ravinia debut.
Ojai Festival
Ojai, CA, 6-9 June
ojaifestival.org
It might be nearing its 80th birthday, but Ojai remains forever young: in part because of its trademark inquisitiveness, but also because of its unparalleled roster of artistic directors that in the past have included Copland, Boulez and John Adams.
Pianist Mitsuko Uchida assumes the mantle this year, and acknowledging his anniversary, includes the music of one of her predecessors: Arnold Schoenberg. The Mahler Chamber Orchestra support her in three Mozart piano concertos; the late Kaija Saariaho is remembered; and away from Libbey Bowl, Kurtág’s deftly concentrated Kafka Fragments haunt.
Caramoor Festival
Katonah, NY, 9 June-16 August
caramoor.org
A tribute to a passion for collecting, the erstwhile Rosen’s family home is an artistic jewel box that, thanks to a lively year-long programme, fills the Music Room, Venetian Theater, Spanish Courtyard and rolling acres with head-turning performances and installations. Pianist Jeremy Denk, the Mark Morris Dance Group and The Knights are Katonah-bound this summer – joining William Christie and Les Arts Florissants, who bring Mourad Merzouki’s new production of Purcell’s fantastical The Fairy Queen.
Bravo! Vail
Vail, CO, 20 June-1 August
bravovail.org
With Classical Uncorked’s cabaret-style performance of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring on four guitars, and two ‘Immersive Experiences’ charting Schubert’s last year, Bravo! Vail isn’t just an orchestral extravaganza. It started out, indeed, as a chamberfest.
But with the Philadelphia Orchestra, New York Philharmonic and the Dallas Symphony Orchestra joined by festival first-timers the Mexican Sinfónica De Minería, Colorado’s Rockies are alive with the sound of music grandiose and intimate. Conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin leads two performances of Puccini’s La Bohème; pianist Jeremy Denk is the soloist in Anna Clyne’s ATLAS; and the Texans swing by Nashville and Broadway.
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Bard Summerscape and Music Festival
Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, 20 June-18 August
fishercenter.bard.edu
Year-round, Bard’s home is the eye-catching Frank Gehry-designed Fisher Center for the Performing Arts. But come summer’s eight-week revels featuring theatre, dance, opera and multi-faceted composer portraits, the signature Spiegeltent lends extra glitter.
Putting the grand into grand opera is Meyerbeer’s Le Prophète directed by Christian Räth; Elevator Repair Service dramatises James Joyce’s Ulysses; and ‘Berlioz and his World’ is unwrapped in 11 thought-provoking episodes.
Kronos Festival
San Francisco, CA, 22-24 June
kronosquartet.org
Back in 2015, the San Francisco-based Kronos Quartet launched an ambitious project: ‘50 for the future’, a set of commissions subsequently available to all free of charge. After a hectic bout of concert-giving celebrating its half-century, the quartet is on home ground for the annual festival which this year showcases some of those commissioned works. Special guests include the Attacca and Friction quartets; and the finale culminates in a multi-ensemble performance of Philip Glass’s Quartet Satz.
Aspen Music Festival and School
Aspen, CO, 26 June-18 August
aspenmusicfestival.com
Aspen turns 75 this year and over the summer is throwing a party, cheered on by returning distinguished alumni. And it’s not afraid to try on the quirky for size – an ensemble of banjo, bass, tabla and bansuri anyone?
‘Becoming Who You Are’ is the appropriate watchword of music director Robert Spano’s celebratory edition. Two operatic evergreens – Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro and Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel – are complemented by Matthew Aucoin’s Music for New Bodies directed by Peter Sellars, and Renée Fleming premieres an orchestral song cycle by Alan Fletcher.
Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra, meanwhile, keeps company with an all-star line-up of violinist Joshua Bell, cellist Steven Isserlis and pianist Jeremy Denk for Beethoven’s irrepressible Triple Concerto.
Grand Teton Music Festival
Jackson Hole, WY, 27 June-17 August
gtmf.org
Every summer, over 200 musicians from some 70 orchestras converge on Walk Festival Hall for a two-month jamboree currently under the direction of Donald Runnicles. This year, the hall itself is taking (and giving!) centre stage as Yo-Yo Ma helps celebrate its half-century.
Nestling among well-loved classics are a new work by Detlev Glanert, Missy Mazzoli’s 2022 Violin Concerto and the premiere of a new piece for percussion and orchestra by Clarice Assad. Supplying an ‘enlightening’ finale are two semi-staged performances of Mozart’s The Magic Flute.
Santa Fe Opera
Santa Fe, NM, 28 June-24 August
santafeopera.org
Sante Fe opened its very first season with a brand-new opera, and nearly 70 years on is about to stage its 19th: Gregory Spears’s The Righteous – the tale of a man’s conflicted journey from preacher to governor. Kevin Newbury’s new production is one of four in a season that includes Strauss’s sumptuous Der Rosenkavalier directed by Bruno Ravello and conducted by Karina Canellakis. Verdi’s La traviata raises the curtain, updated to 1939 Paris.
Oregon Bach Festival
Eugene, OR, 28 June-14 July
oregonbachfestival.org
Things are looking up, as distinguished Bachian John Butt conducts two performances of the Ascension Oratorio to launch Oregon Bach ’24. And he’s also on hand to explore the music of the Dresden Court. But Bach is by no means ubiquitous. Ken-David Masur conducts a closing Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony; Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms is paired with Holst’s The Planets – An HD Odyssey; and Sarah Kirkland Snider’s Mass for the Endangered sounds a requiem for the ‘not yet gone’.
Maverick Concerts
Hurley, Woodstock, NY, 29 June-14 September
maverickconcerts.org
Maverick by name; maverick by nature! It’s not just the timber-framed concert hall in the woods that lends quirky distinctiveness to America’s longest continually running festival. Alexander Platt’s inquisitive programming is enticingly distinctive too.
East Asian-American creatives and the Fauré centenary inform a 2024 line-up that includes The Four Nations Ensemble ensconced in 18th-century Paris; a composer portrait of Viet Cuong; the Maverick debut of pianist Angela Hewitt; and a day celebrating the life and legacy of Herr PDQ Bach: Woodstock’s very own Peter Schickele.
Best US classical music festivals: July 2024
Newport Classical Music Festival
Newport, RI, 4-21 July
newportclassical.org
Chamber music in elegant chambers could be the 55-year-old festival’s motto as it commandeers Rhode Island mansions as well as spilling over into the al fresco delights of Norman Bird Sanctuary and King Park. In store across 27 concerts and community events are a new work by Clarice Assad; Corelli, Handel and Bach from Boston’s Handel and Haydn Society; vocal orchestra Chanticleer; and, directed by Tara Barnham, Peter Brook’s reworking of Bizet: La tragédie de Carmen.
Tanglewood
Lenox, MA, 5 July-31 August
tanglewood.org
Prefaced by a string quartet marathon, James Taylor and a prelude concert, Tanglewood officially opens with Beethoven from Andris Nelsons – who later enlists Boston Ballet for Stravinsky’s Apollon Musagète and conducts Act III of Wagner’s Götterdämmerung.
In the hall named after the late Seiji Ozawa, the Danish String Quartet, violinist Leonidas Kavakos and pianist Daniil Trifonov dispense elevated chamber music. 2024, however, also marks the 150th birthday of Tanglewood mover-and-shaker Serge Koussevitzky. Major celebrations are afoot!
Colorado Music Festival
Boulder, CO, 5 July-4 August
coloradomusicfestival.org
When Colorado proposes bite-sized rock concerts, it’s not quite what you might think. Ten-minute pop-up concerts against the backdrop of the mountainous Flatirons showcase musicians from a festival orchestra that unites members across several countries. Anna Clyne’s Masquerade awaits them on first night, Mahler’s Fourth Symphony on the last.
And roughly midway between, music director Peter Oundjian conducts the premiere of a new orchestral piece by Gabriela Lena Frank featuring the Takács Quartet as ensemble soloists. It is flanked by Florence Price plus Joan Tower’s 1991 Concerto for Orchestra.
Festival Napa Valley
Napa Valley, CA, 6-21 July
festivalnapavalley.org
The vineyards of Napa Valley are not just famous for the bouquet of their wines – as summer intensifies, there are musical bouquets to be savoured too. The 2024 vintage is eclectic, and with more than a touch of ‘La dolce vita’ as Sophia Loren is celebrated and tribute paid to Henry Mancini at 100. Carlo Montanaro conducts Mozart’s ‘Turkish’ opera Die Entführung aus dem Serail, while BODYTRAFFIC, pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet, violinist Ray Chen and soprano Pretty Yende are California dreamin’.
Manchester Music Festival
Manchester, VT, 11 July-8 August
mmfvt.org
More than 30 concerts and events help the verdant Vermont chamberfest to celebrate its half-century in style. Its new artistic director is the Emerson Quartet’s founding violinist Philip Setzer, and under the banner of ‘The Romantic Journey’ he’s programmed a timeline stretching from Beethoven and Schubert to a specially commissioned work by Sarah Kirkland Snider. Visitors include pianist Vassily Primakov and soprano Christine Goerke.
Music@Menlo
Menlo, CA, 19 July-10 August
musicatmenlo.org
La belle France is preoccupying this year’s Silicon Valley rendezvous with concerts, café conversations, encounters, masterclasses and a Carte Blanche series that includes Jean-Efflam Bavouzet playing Ravel’s complete piano music. Setting the scene is a contest between the French and German Baroque, while the finale prefaces Messiaen and Crumb with valedictory Bach. Bon appétit!
Glimmerglass Festival
Cooperstown, NY, 22 July-20 August
glimmerglass.org
Lakeside Glimmerglass hoists the Jolly Roger over a season that opens with Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance. ‘Identity and Illusion’ is the theme for 2024, and Italian verismo and frolicsome buffoonery go head-to-head as Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci and Cavalli’s La Calisto take centre stage, alongside Kevin Puts’s Elizabeth Cree. An opera plumbing a troubled slice of 1880s London life, the latter is directed by Alison Moritz and features artist-in-residence, Irish mezzo Tara Erraught, in the title role.
Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music
Santa Cruz, CA, 29 July-11 August
cabrillomusic.org
Cabrillo doesn’t just pay lip service to the new. It lives it! And hats off, too, to a festival orchestra never able to fall back on the tried and tested. Under the direction of conductor Cristian Mãcelaru, 14 prospective composers-in-residence will be descending on Santa Cruz for a season that includes world premieres of works by Ivan Enrique Rodriguez, Karim Al-Zand and the first recipient of the Emerging Black Composers Prize, Nathaniel Heyder. In the Creative Lab, meanwhile, sound artist/composer Bora Yoon puts technology through its interactive paces.
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Sun Valley Music Festival
Sun Valley, ID, 29 July-22 August
svmusicfestival.org
What with guest artists including violinist Leonidas Kavakos, and pianists Stephen Hough and Garrick Ohlsson, the 40th-edition Sun Valley is walking on sunshine – and dancing, too, to the catchy rhythms of Gabriela Ortiz’s Antropólis. There’s a new cello concerto by Andy Akiho; Mahler’s Sixth Symphony wrestles with fate; and, joining music director Alasdair Neale, cellist Yo-Yo Ma heads up a special anniversary gala.
Best Canadian classical music festivals in 2024
Toronto Summer Music
Toronto, ON, 11 July-3 August
torontosummermusic.com
Chamber music and art song are the twin pillars on which the festival’s Academy is built. And with an impressive array of mentors, summer’s accompanying concert season has stars in its eyes.
Following Les Arts Florissants’ new production of Purcell’s The Fairy Queen, mainstage concerts include Mahler and Berg from mezzo Sarah Connolly, Schmaltz & Pepper’s foray into Klezmer, and a pairing of sextet Chausson with septet Beethoven. Eight Regeneration concerts feature Academy Fellows and mentors performing side-by-side.
Stratford Summer Music
Stratford, ON, 18 July-11 August
stratfordsummermusic.ca
For nigh-on a quarter-century, the second incarnation of Stratford’s musical summer has flourished in a city that likes to brush up on its Shakespeare. Sitting on the banks of the Avon, it even boasts its own Shakespearean Gardens.
Benjamin Britten and Johnny Cash shake hands in an opening night Gala, and pianist Angela Hewitt indulges the three ‘B’s with a side order of Scarlatti. And in the Perth Museum the Vesuvius Ensemble promises an eruption of southern Italian song.
Ottawa Chamberfest
Ottawa, ON, 25 July-8 August
chamberfest.com
From Midday Matinées to Chamber Chats – not forgetting the prestigious Signature Series – the festival has a penchant for alliteration as well as adventurous city-wide programming. This even includes contemplative sessions in the historic Beechwood Cemetery. Among the 30th-anniversary cohort of performers are pianist and 2024 BBC Music Magazine Awards nominee Marc-André Hamelin, Art of Time Ensemble and the Danish String Quartet.