For their chamber music concert this year, the Festival’s resident string quartet takes on Brahms’s earnest, yet lovely, String Quartet No. 2. The piece is full of canons, or imitative melodies (a nod to Bach), and Hungarian themes (perhaps a nod to violinist Joseph Joachim, who played the premiere). Following, the Quartet will play Haydn’s Quartet Op. 76 No. 2, another formally serious but lively and gracious work, also with nods to Bach (note the canon in the 3rd movement) and Hungarian flourishes in the finale.

Sun Valley favorites Time for Three return to the Pavilion stage for the first time since August 2017. They’ll perform a new work titled Contact, which was co-commissioned by the Festival and written for them by the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Kevin Puts. Puts wrote Hymn to the Sun for the Sun Valley Pavilion’s opening concert. The program begins with Three Latin American Dances for Orchestra, by Gabriela Lena Frank. Frank is a Grammy-nominated composer and pianist, who was named one of the top 35 female composers in classical music by The Washington Post.

After the traditional Pops Night salute to the Armed forces, guest conductor Andy Einhorn will lead the Festival Orchestra and two Broadway singers in an evening of The Best of Americana, featuring familiar and fun works from film, Broadway, and much-loved composers. Einhorn, whose recording and tour credits include Bullets Over Broadway, Evita, Sondheim on Sondheim, and Elton John’s The Lion King, is also familiar to local audiences as the pianist who accompanied Audra McDonald, Kelli O’Hara, and Brian Stokes Mitchell for the Festival’s virtual Gala Concert in 2020. Following the concert, enjoy a lively performance on the Pavilion lawn for the Festival’s third Lawn Party. Bring your friends and your dancing shoes!