By Oregon Coast TODAY
With 11 concerts at five venues in Lincoln City and Newport, this summer’s Siletz Bay Music Festival will offer an adventurous program of chamber, jazz and orchestral music performed by 52 artists who travel to the central Oregon coast from around the world.
The festival, which begins Aug. 14 and runs through Aug. 24, features a mix of seldom-performed masterworks and audience-pleasing favorites.
Tickets are now on sale for the performances at the Lincoln City Cultural Center, the Lincoln City Congregational Church, Newport’s Pacific Maritime Heritage Center, Lincoln City’s Regatta Park Bandshell and Chinook Winds Casino Resort.
This year’s festival will feature new faces alongside many of the more familiar artists who have helped the series evolve over 13 seasons into the central Oregon coast’s premier cultural event. Under the leadership of artistic director Mei-Ting Sun, the festival has engaged the internationally acclaimed conductor Johann Stuckenbruck to lead the orchestra.
Among the festival’s highlights will be new work by Portland-based composer and cellist Nancy Ives, a musical tribute to Indigenous jazz legend Jim Pepper and performances of three all-time favorites from the repertoire of the mid-20th Century: Copland’s “Appalachian Spring,” Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” featuring Sun on piano and Joaquin Rodrigo’s “Concierto de Aranjuez” featuring the festival debut of Bulgarian-born guitar virtuoso Georgi Dimitrov-JoJo.
The chamber music series will include several nods to the 150th anniversary of the birth of French composer Maurice Ravel, and in addition to familiar pieces from the classical canon, will include compositions by Hungary’s Ernest Von Dohanyi, Italy’s Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Austria’s Alban Berg and American composer William Kroll.
Returning audience favorites performing in the festival’s chamber music concerts will include cellists Katherine Schultz and Isaac Ward, pianist Michelle Chow, violist Miriam English Ward, violinists James Stern and concert master Mimi Jung, clarinetist Ricky Smith and pianist/violinist Michelle Bushkova. They’ll be joined this year by horn player Daniel Partridge, who regularly performs with the Northwest’s most prestigious ensembles.
Two of the concerts will be offered free of charge, including a family concert offering a performance of Prokofiev’s iconic “Peter and the Wolf,” performed by a woodwind quintet consisting of Amelia Lukas on flute, Sam Rockwood on oboe, Ricky Smith on clarinet, Ben Greanya on bassoon and Mike Hettwer on horn.
The annual “Welcome to the Club” jazz performance will feature veteran Portland pianist Gordon Lee and a six-piece ensemble paying tribute to the legacy of the late Jim Pepper, whose ground-breaking music straddled the worlds of jazz and Indigenous tradition.
The Siletz Bay Music Festival offers incentives to encourage people to buy tickets early. Discount packages for multiple events will be available as well as student ticket pricing for all concerts except “Musical Tapas” and the benefit gala.
For tickets and more information, go to www.siletzbaymusic.org.
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