The Sun Valley Music Festival proudly announces its 42nd season, from July 27 to August 20, at the Sun Valley Pavilion, in the beautiful, natural surroundings of Sun Valley—the country’s original destination ski resort. Curated by Music Director Alasdair Neale, the 2026 summer season will feature the all-star Festival Orchestra—the finest musicians from orchestras throughout North America—performing with world-renowned guest artists including pianists Alexander Malofeev and Orion Weiss, violinist Gil Shaham, baritone Benjamin Appl, soprano Christina Pier, and the American Festival Chorus directed by Craig Jessup.

In its 42nd season, the Music Festival welcomes back acclaimed pianist Orion Weiss for a pair of concerts. Widely regarded as a “brilliant pianist” (The New York Times) with a “powerful technique and exceptional insight” (The Washington Post), Weiss will open the Music Festival’s Summer Season with Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1.

Grammy-award winning violinist Gil Shaham also returns for two programs—in the first he’ll offer Barber’s Violin Concerto; in the second, he’ll collaborate with Festival Orchestra musicians to perform Beethoven’s String Quintet in A Major, “Kreutzer.” Acclaimed pianist Alexander Malofeev—who “manifests the piano mastery of the new millennium in itself” (Il Giornale)—makes his Sun Valley debut playing Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3.

Conductor Stephanie Childress returns for a fourth season to lead two programs, including Elgar’s Enigma Variations and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1, and Euan Shields joins the Festival as Associate Conductor, conducting Ravel’s Rapsodie espagnole and Thomas Adès’s “Inferno” from Dante.

Major orchestra repertoire includes Brahms’s A German Requiem featuring soprano Christina Pier, baritone Benjamin Appl, and the American Festival Chorus, as well as Mahler’s titanic Symphony No. 1 in the season finale. All concerts are offered free of charge, with ample seating inside the Sun Valley Pavilion and on the lawn, featuring a state-of-the-art big screen and sound system.

Summer Season Schedule

All concerts begin at 6:30pm unless otherwise noted below.

July 27: Opening Night with Orion Weiss

July 28: Childress Conducts Beethoven

July 30: Orion Weiss and Festival Musicians Play Tchaikovsky and Dohnányi

July 31: Strauss and Mozart

August 1: 
11am – 12pm | Upbeat with Alasdair
4pm | Advanced Chamber Music Interim Recital

August 3: Stravinsky’s Firebird and Anna Clyne’s Woman of the Mountain

August 4: Childress Conducts Elgar

August 5: Soloist Recital | 4pm

August 6: 
4pm – 5pm | Small Ensemble Recital
6:30pm – 8pm | 2026 Gala Concert: An Evening With Sutton Foster

August 7: 
11am – 12pm | Upbeat with Alasdair– Brahms’s A German Requiem
3pm – 5pm | Afternoon Pavilion Concert
6:30pm | Evening Pavilion Concert

August 8: Opera Workshop Performance | 2pm

August 9: Brahms’s A German Requiem

August 10: Christina Pier and Benjamin Appl Sing Lieder

August 13: Alexander Malofeev Plays Prokofiev

August 14: Tan Dun’s Water Concerto

August 16: Festival Orchestra Pops Night: The American Songbook

August 17: Gil Shaham plays Barber

August 18: Gil Shaham and Festival Musicians Play Beethoven

August 20: Season Finale: Mahler’s Symphony No. 1

Click here for a printable PDF version of the Summer Season Calendar.

Additional concert details available at www.svmusicfestival.org/summer-season

Attending the Concerts

• All concerts begin at 6:30 PM, last about 1 hour, and are located at the Sun Valley Pavilion (300 Dollar Rd., Sun Valley).
• Admission is Free. Tickets are not required. Donors of $3,000 or more may reserve seats, but Pavilion and lawn seating are always available to the public on a first-come, first serve basis.
• Free Pavilion seats are available to the public, beginning one hour before the concert. Line up for these (in the shade, by the bar, with chairs to ease the wait) on the East Terrace. If the line looks long, don’t give up! Unclaimed, reserved seats are released by 6:15 PM.
• If seating in the lawn low-back chairs are a great idea.

Pre-Concert Chats

Located on the lawn next to the Paver Bar, these 30-minute chats offer insightful, entertaining introductions to the concerts 45 minutes before most performances at the Pavilion.

About Sun Valley Music Festival

The Sun Valley Music Festival’s mission is to enrich, inspire, and instill in our community a lifelong love of classical music through extraordinary, free concerts and education programs. Festival programs provide opportunities for people from all walks of life to listen, learn, and play. Now in its 37^th year, it is the largest privately supported, free-admission orchestra in the United States.

Over 100 world-class musicians from North America’s most distinguished orchestras, including the San Francisco Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, and Houston Symphony, comprise the Festival Orchestra. Summer Season concerts are held in July and August at the spectacular R.E. Holding Sun Valley Pavilion, in the mountain-resort town of Sun Valley, Idaho. Internationally renowned guest artists such as Gautier Capuçon, Emanuel Ax, Joshua Bell, Yefim Bronfman, Kristin Chenoweth, Seraphic Fire, and Jean-Yves Thibaudet have performed with the Festival.

The Festival strives to introduce every Wood River Valley student to the joys of classical music, to inspire the next generation of music lovers. Its year-round and summer Music Institute programs provide tuition-free instruction for string, piano, and voice students of all skill levels — from elementary through high school — that goes beyond the fundamentals and embraces the entire musician.