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For immediate release

Contact Glenn Petry (212) 625 2038
gpetry@21cmediagroup.com

On July 3, Donald Runnicles – Music Director designate of Deutsche Oper Berlin and BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra – opens his third season as Music Director of the Grand Teton Music Festival, leading the GTMF Orchestra with a salute to the 90th birthday of Leonard Bernstein.

On the program – in addition to Bernstein’s Symphony No. 2, “The Age of Anxiety” – are the two works Bernstein conducted at Tanglewood at what turned out to be his final public appearance, August 19, 1990: Benjamin Britten’s “Four Sea Interludes” from Peter Grimes and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7.

Concerts by the Festival Orchestra are given every weekend, and members of this astonishing ensemble, whose members come from the front ranks of the finest symphony orchestras in North America, assemble in smaller groups for chamber music concerts throughout the seven-week festival. Guest artists flock to the gorgeous locale, which is just below the Teton Range and Yellowstone National Park. The GTMF concert venue, Walk Festival Hall, is famed for its acoustic beauty.

Runnicles conducts three other pairs of weekend concerts. His guest soloists on August 8 and 9 will be violinist Janine Jansen and violist Maxim Rysanov in Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante, and a trio of opera stars for highlights from Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier. He’ll conduct Vaughan Williams’s Fantasia on a theme of Thomas Tallis and Mahler’s Symphony No. 9 on July 11 and 12, and a “heavenly” program comprising Messiaen’s Trois petites liturgies with Holst’s Planets, and Colin Matthews’s Pluto, the Renewer, on July 25 and 26.

The Grand Teton Music Festival’s location is among the most beautiful for music on the planet. Nestled below the Grand Teton range in Teton Village, surrounded by glorious scenery and thousands of miles of wilderness, the Festival provides an ambiance unparalleled anywhere. There are countless daytime activities – even in bad weather there are galleries and shops to visit – and wining and dining are of top quality.

Guest conductors leap at the chance to visit the Grand Teton Music Festival and conduct the world-renowned orchestra. Englishmen Roy Goodman and Mark Elder and young American James Gaffigan grab the baton this year – Goodman on July 18 and 19 with Vaughan Williams, Barber, and Schumann; Gaffigan on August 1 and 2 with Strauss, Vaughan Williams, and Mendelssohn; and Elder with Debussy, Ravel, and Rachmaninoff on August 15 and 16.

Chamber music concerts performed by Festival Orchestra members will be given on July 8, 9, 15, 16, 22, 23, and 30; and on August 5, 6, 7, 12, 13, and 14.

Since its inception in 1962, the Grand Teton Music Festival’s reputation as one of the most vibrant summer music festivals in the country has grown exponentially. GTMF’s first seasons included dance, film, and visual arts in addition to music. With performances in the old High School gymnasium, the Jackson Lake Lodge, and on the lawn of St. John’s Church, the Festival made a mark on the summer cultural life of Jackson Hole.

About The Grand Teton Music Festival
The Festival moved to Teton Village in 1967 when the Jackson Hole Ski Corporation gave the Festival a rent-free site for a concert tent. Since the appointment of the first Music Director in 1968, the Festival took a giant leap forward. He and his business manager Margaretha Walk envisioned the Festival as a summer retreat for an esteemed group of professional musicians, and since then, musicians from America’s great orchestras and music school faculties gather annually to form a resident orchestra that performs weekly concerts of symphonic music, as well as chamber music, in this collegial setting.

In 1974, after seven years of orchestral performances in Teton Village under a carnival tent, and chamber concerts in the Mangy Moose Saloon, the Festival celebrated its growing national prominence by opening Walk Festival Hall at the base of the ski slopes in Teton Village. Thanks to architect Bob Corbett, acoustic engineer Christopher Jaffe, construction tycoon John Bancroft, and Job Captain George Sutherland, Walk Festival Hall has won acclaim for its unrivaled acoustics.

Musicians from such esteemed ensembles as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Houston Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Seattle Symphony, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, and the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra assemble each summer, and can be heard in more than five concerts per week in performances of orchestral, chamber, and specially themed concerts.

Details of the 2008 summer symphonic concerts follow, and further details of the chamber music repertoire will be announced later. Visit the festival website at www.gtmf.org for ticket and subscription details.

2008 Grand Teton Music Festival Summer Season July 3 – August 16

Festival Orchestra Concerts:
Thursday, July 3; Saturday, July 5
Donald Runnicles, conductor
Norman Krieger, piano*
BRITTEN “Four Sea Interludes” from Peter Grimes
BERNSTEIN Symphony No. 2, “The Age of Anxiety”*
BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 7

Friday, July 11; Saturday, July 12
Donald Runnicles, conductor
VAUGHAN WILLIAMS Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis
MAHLER Symphony No. 9

Friday, July 18; Saturday, July 19
Roy Goodman, conductor
James Ehnes, violin
VAUGHAN WILLIAMS The Wasps Overture
VAUGHAN WILLIAMS Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus
BARBER Violin Concerto
SCHUMANN Symphony No. 1, “Spring”

Friday, July 25; Saturday, July 26
Donald Runnicles, conductor
San Francisco Festival Chorale (women's chorus)
MESSIAEN Trois petites liturgies de la présence divine
HOLST The Planets
C. MATTHEWS Pluto, the Renewer

Friday, August 1; Saturday, August 2
James Gaffigan, conductor
Robert Atherholt, oboe
STRAUSS Don Juan
VAUGHAN WILLIAMS Oboe Concerto
MENDELSSOHN Symphony No. 3, “Scottish”

Friday, August 8; Saturday, August 9
Donald Runnicles, conductor
Janine Jansen, violin
Jane Archibald, soprano
Twyla Robinson, soprano
Elizabeth Bishop, mezzo-soprano
MOZART Sinfonia Concertante
STRAUSS Highlights from Der Rosenkavalier

Friday, August 15; Saturday, August 16
Mark Elder, conductor
Louis Lortie, piano
DEBUSSY/Matthews Preludes
RAVEL Piano Concerto in G major
RACHMANINOFF Symphony No. 2

Chamber Music Concerts
Tuesdays, July 8, 15, 22; August 5, 12
Wednesdays, July 9, 16, 23, 30; August 6, 13

Spotlight Concerts
Thursdays, July 10, 17, 24, 31; August 7, 14

All concerts take place at 8 pm in Walk Festival Hall.
Grand Teton Music Festival, 4015 West Lake Creek Drive, Wilson, Wyoming 83014
All programs, artists and dates are subject to change.