Music Director Donald Runnicles

As we embark on this 49th Festival season, we pose the question, “Where will the music take you?” In the last year, my conducting life has taken me to all the corners of the globe, and it is with that perspective that I relish the renewed thrill of returning to Jackson Hole with over 200 of the world’s best musicians.

I am just as eager to bring great artists who get to experience for the first time this inspiring and magical place. It is my enormous pleasure to bring to the Grand Teton Music Festival the renowned opera star and my friend, Susan Graham. Unsurpassed in the French repertoire, she will
sing the ravishingly beautiful Berlioz song cycle, “Summer Nights.” The brilliant piano virtuoso, Stephen Hough, makes his Festival debut in Brahms’ First Piano Concerto, and two guest conductors will also appear for the first time with the Festival Orchestra: Reinhard Goebel, who brings his enormous flair and expertise to a program featuring the timeless music of Bach; and Mei-Ann Chen, at the helm for the beloved Scheherazade of Rimsky-Korsakov.

2010 marks the return of a Festival favorite, violinist Sarah Chang, who made her Teton debut years ago at the age of ten. Maestro Mark Wigglesworth makes an eagerly anticipated return in works by Brahms and Rachmaninoff, and we are proud to feature our own Festival Musicians, Paolo Bordignon and Michael Rusinek, as they step in front of the orchestra as soloists.

We proudly welcome Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Jennifer Higdon to the Tetons to find inspiration from our orchestra and from our setting this summer for her new composition to premiere in 2011, our 50th anniversary season. Jennifer’s Grammy®Award-winning Percussion Concerto will be performed the final week of the 2010 season by my fellow Scotsman, Colin Currie.

In this busy and ever-changing world, I believe these bucolic weeks in July and August in this Wyoming paradise have a profound influence on the performers and audiences alike: The fellowship and concerts have come to represent an oasis in our rather frenetic lives. I do hope that the wide variety of repertoire featured in the 2010 season—the familiar and the not so familiar, the chamber and symphonic, the vocal and instrumental—will inspire you and take you on meaningful journeys. I thank you in advance for your support and patronage.

Sincerely,
                                                                     
Donald Runnicles, Music Director

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MUSIC DIRECTOR DONALD RUNNICLES' UPCOMING GRAND TETON MUSIC FESTIVAL PERFORMANCES INCLUDE: