The Sun Valley Music Festival proudly announces its landmark 41st season, from July 28 to August 21, at the Sun Valley Pavilion. Curated by Music Director Alasdair Neale, the 2025 summer season will feature the all-star Festival Orchestra—the finest musicians from orchestras throughout North America—performing with world-renowned guest artists including pianist Gabriela Martinez, Time for Three, cellist Gautier Capuçon, and pianist Olga Kern.

In its 41st season, the Music Festival welcomes back the Grammy-winning and genre-defying group Time for Three. The trio will perform a new concerto written for them by composer Mason Bates and co-commissioned by the Music Festival. Bates describes the work, titled Silicon Hymnal, as “an electro-acoustic book of songs.”

Stephanie Childress returns for a third season as Associate Conductor, leading several performances including Haydn’s Symphony No. 80, Schumann’s Symphony No. 4, and Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé Suite No. 2. Major orchestral repertoire also includes Beethoven’s Symphony No. 4, Brahms’s Symphony No. 4, and a season finale featuring Richard Strauss’s suite from Der Rosenkavalier. 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.

This year the Festival welcomes acclaimed pianist Gabriela Martinez to open the season with Mozart’s popular Piano Concerto No. 20. Cellist Gautier Capuçon returns to Sun Valley for a pair of concerts, one featuring Elgar’s haunting Cello Concerto and the other offering Schubert’s Cello Quintet with Festival musicians. Olga Kern, the only woman to have won the Gold Medal in the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in more than thirty years, makes her Sun Valley debut performing Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2.

This summer, the Music Festival celebrates Ravel’s 150th birthday with a program offering two of his Miroirs, his Valses nobles et sentimentales, and his Suite No. 2 from Daphnis et Chloé. For the annual Pops Night, conductor Jacomo Bairos, Co-Founder and Artistic Director of Miami’s Nu Deco Ensemble, brings a program of Latin-inspired dance music to the Sun Valley Pavilion

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.

Concerts Details can be found at www.svmusicfestival.org/summer-season/

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.