La Jolla Music Society Announces SummerFest 2019

The La Jolla Music Society, which celebrates its 50th anniversary season this year, has announced the complete programming for its 34th SummerFest under the new musical direction of globally-renowned pianist Inon Barnatan. With its enormously varied concert offerings ranging from interdisciplinary collaborations to chamber arrangements of the orchestral canon and newly commissioned works to French Baroque, the La Jolla Music Society SummerFest carries on its tradition of world-class concert offerings, uniting a stellar roster of resident soloists, composers, ensembles, and artistic fellows in the San Diego area for the month of August.

This season will include festival debuts of many outstanding new artists including the Mark Morris Dance Group, violinists James Ehnes and Stefan Jackiw, bassist Timothy Cobb, pianists Timo Andres, Conrad Tao, and George Li, clarinetist and conductor Osmo V nsk , vocalists Tyler Duncan and Susanna Phillips, and the Brentano and Ehnes Quartets - who will join Barnatan in his forward evolution of La Jolla Music Society programming. The Opening Night concert on August 2, 2019, The Time Traveler's Suite, traverses excerpts of works by Bach, from the French Baroque, Late Romantics, and contemporaries as if they were movements of a single suite, and includes the world premiere of a new work for violin and piano by Conrad Tao. Additional highlights include the two-part Music from Music subseries featuring all new works in programs curated by this year's composer in residence, David Lang; three Synergy concerts, a new concept produced by Barnatan and Clara Wu Tsai which illustrates the connections between musical genres, art, and dance and includes the world premiere of a newly choreographed piece by the Mark Morris Dance Group; three all-Beethoven performances presented by a different string quartet as the first of a two-season series of the complete Beethoven string quartets; and Inventions which includes the West Coast premiere and La Jolla Music Society co-commission of Seven Signals by Brett Dean. Barnatan comments, SummerFest has been one of my very favorite festivals since the first time I attended, so it's a huge honor to come back this year as Music Director. I'm particularly excited about having the chance to explore a single theme over the course of the festival, and I've chosen the theme of transformation. He continues, Artistic transformation sometimes comes about suddenly, through violent revolutions that force artists to create radical new ideas from the ashes. But it can also come about more organically, through evolution. Here at La Jolla, surrounded by musical family and natural beauty, we are in the perfect position to celebrate the peaceful evolutionary process, by which new artistic ideas are achieved by building and expanding on older ones. I hope that each concert can be experienced as something of a journey, and that the festival as a whole can be experienced as a larger, overarching journey of transformation.

Following the very recent opening this month of The Conrad Prebys Performing Arts Center (The Conrad), La Jolla Music Society's new permanent home, SummerFest 2019 also ushers in a new creative era under the musical directorship of Barnaton, as well as a new President and CEO in Ted DeDee. Mr. DeDee remarks, SummerFest has attracted a vast and diverse audience from Southern California and beyond for more than three decades, and has distinguished itself as one of the finest summer music festivals of the classical community. It is my personal pleasure to enter into this new artistic era with my colleague, Inon Barnatan, to explore the ways we can engage new patrons, attract new artists, and further cement our status as a world-class performing arts organization equipped with a truly state-of-the-art facility.

The scope of each concert at La Jolla Music Society SummerFest 2019 encompasses meticulously designed programming, drawing from a vast range of centuries, artistic styles, and thematic ideas. This season examines the idea of transformation and the complexity of its various meanings. Delving into the multitude of settings in which artistic transformation occurs, Barnatan's programming explores this common thread through a variety of practical, historical, artistic, musical, and conceptual relationships. These transformations the development of a new hall and leadership, how composers transform what came before them, art forms transforming other art forms, ensembles transforming a work of music, and emerging new artists and compositions transforming the cultural landscape form the structure of each individual concert, as well as the entirety of the series, which is constructed to leave the audience with the transformative experience of a personal and intellectual sense of evolution through music.

La Jolla Music Society recently launched its greatly-anticipated, cutting edge new home, The Conrad Prebys Performing Arts Center, with three illustrious opening-weekend concerts. With ceremonies, performances, and receptions held April 5, 6, and 7, 2019, the celebration of its $82 million, 49,000-square-foot complex is a reflection of La Jolla Music Society's unique positioning in the landscape of the performing arts in California, and especially of its immeasurable significance to classical music programming on an international scale.

The opening of The Conrad serves as a testament to the previous decades of outstanding programming, as well as pointing to a new era of expanding musical innovation, creative leadership, and exemplary artistic collaboration. Director of Programming, Leah Rosenthal, states: La Jolla Music Society SummerFest continues to be one of the most notable summer music festivals in the nation, and for more than three decades has attracted artists of the finest caliber and audiences with a penchant for brilliant concert programming. It has been a great personal honor to work alongside Inon Barnatan as we cultivate and expand upon the legacy and incalculable value of SummerFest on the greater San Diego area, the diverse communities of southern California, and the performing arts world at large.

Subscriptions will be available beginning Friday, April 19, 2019 at 10:00 AM.

Single tickets will be available beginning Monday, June 3, 2019 at 10:00 AM.

Major funding for SummerFest is provided by Festival Founders, Steve Baum and Brenda Baker.

Programs subject to change.