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The 2026 Festival Orchestra Series, led by Sir Donald Runnicles, features five weeks of concerts on Fridays & Saturdays at the Jackson Hole High School Auditorium with soloists Maria Ioudenitch, Madeline Adkins, Eleni Calenos, Daniel Luis Espinal & Conrad Jones and works from Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Korngold & Puccini, culminating in a celebratory Night at the Opera.

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2026 Festival Orchestra Series

Jackson Hole High School Auditorium
Tickets $40-$75; children/students $5

The 2026 Festival Orchestra Series features gems across the classical repertoire and renowned soloists, including Maria Ioudenitch, Madeline Adkins, Eleni Calenos, Daniel Luis Espinal, and Conrad Jones, alongside GTMF’s own Festival Orchestra Musicians led by Sir Donald Runnicles. The Festival Orchestra Series is the heart of GTMF and includes Rachmaninoff & Tchaikovsky’s Fifth on July 10 and July 11, featuring pianist Tanner Jorden, a 2021 Donald Runnicles Musical Arts Scholarship winner; Shostakovich & Haydn’s Trumpet Concerto on July 17 and July 18, featuring trumpeter Conrad Jones; Melodies of Britain on July 31 and August 1, featuring violinist Maria Ioudenitch; Beethoven & Korngold on August 7 and August 8, featuring violinist Madeline Adkins; and the Festival Finale: Night at the Opera on August 14 and August 15, featuring soprano Eleni Calenos and tenor Daniel Luis Espinal.


  • Festival Orchestra Series
    Festival Orchestra: Rachmaninoff & Tchaikovsky’s Fifth
    Friday, July 10 at 7:00 PM
    Jackson Hole High School Auditorium

    Opening night of the Festival Orchestra Series highlights not one but two popular monuments of the orchestral canon, featuring pianist and 2021 Donald Runnicles Musical Arts Scholarship Competition winner Tanner Jorden.

    Festival Orchestra Series
    Festival Orchestra: Rachmaninoff & Tchaikovsky’s Fifth
    Saturday, July 11 at 6:00 PM
    Jackson Hole High School Auditorium

    Opening night of the Festival Orchestra Series highlights not one but two popular monuments of the orchestral canon, featuring pianist and 2021 Donald Runnicles Musical Arts Scholarship Competition winner Tanner Jorden.

    Festival Orchestra Series
    Festival Orchestra: Shostakovich & Haydn’s Trumpet Concerto
    Friday, July 17 at 7:00 PM
    Jackson Hole High School Auditorium

    Beloved Festival Orchestra member Conrad Jones moves from the brass section to the front of the stage to perform Haydn’s Trumpet Concerto, one of the finest concertos ever written for the instrument, and the only one Haydn ever wrote.

    Festival Orchestra Series
    Festival Orchestra: Shostakovich & Haydn’s Trumpet Concerto
    Saturday, July 18 at 6:00 PM
    Jackson Hole High School Auditorium

    Beloved Festival Orchestra member Conrad Jones moves from the brass section to the front of the stage to perform Haydn’s Trumpet Concerto, one of the finest concertos ever written for the instrument, and the only one Haydn ever wrote.

    Festival Orchestra Series
    Festival Orchestra: Melodies of Britain
    Friday, July 31 at 7:00 PM
    Jackson Hole High School Auditorium

    Music Director Sir Donald Runnicles celebrates his home islands with two distinct visions of Great Britain. Violinist Maria Ioudenitch makes her GTMF debut with Mendelssohn’s “jewel of the heart,” the moving Violin Concerto.

  • Festival Orchestra Series
    Festival Orchestra: Melodies of Britain
    Saturday, August 1 at 6:00 PM
    Jackson Hole High School Auditorium

    Music Director Sir Donald Runnicles celebrates his home islands with two distinct visions of Great Britain. Violinist Maria Ioudenitch makes her GTMF debut with Mendelssohn’s “jewel of the heart,” the moving Violin Concerto.

    Festival Orchestra Series
    Festival Orchestra: Beethoven & Korngold
    Friday, August 7 at 7:00 PM
    Jackson Hole High School Auditorium

    GTMF Concertmaster Madeline Adkins performs Korngold’s lush, film-inspired Violin Concerto before the Festival Orchestra concludes the program with Beethoven’s eternal and appropriately cinematic ode to nature, the “Pastoral” Symphony No. 6.

    Festival Orchestra Series
    Festival Orchestra: Beethoven & Korngold
    Saturday, August 8 at 6:00 PM
    Jackson Hole High School Auditorium

    GTMF Concertmaster Madeline Adkins performs Korngold’s lush, film-inspired Violin Concerto before the Festival Orchestra concludes the program with Beethoven’s eternal and appropriately cinematic ode to nature, the “Pastoral” Symphony No. 6.

    Festival Orchestra Series
    Festival Orchestra Finale: Night at the Opera
    Friday, August 14 at 7:00 PM
    Jackson Hole High School Auditorium

    The annual tradition of opera at the Grand Teton Music Festival continues with an evening of arias, duets and orchestral interludes from none other than Giacomo Puccini, featuring soprano Eleni Calenos and tenor Daniel Luis Espinal.

    Festival Orchestra Series
    Festival Orchestra Finale: Night at the Opera
    Saturday, August 15 at 6:00 PM
    Jackson Hole High School Auditorium

    The annual tradition of opera at the Grand Teton Music Festival continues with an evening of arias, duets and orchestral interludes from none other than Giacomo Puccini, featuring soprano Eleni Calenos and tenor Daniel Luis Espinal.


meet the artists

Learn more about the 250+ world-class artists who make Season 65 of the Grand Teton Music Festival possible.

music director Sir Donald Runnicles

Sir Donald Runnicles has been GTMF's Music Director since 2005 and has held chief artistic leadership positions at Deutsche Oper Berlin (2009-2026), San Francisco Opera (1992-2008), BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra (2009-16) and Orchestra of St. Luke’s (2001-07). He was appointed Chief Conductor of the Dresden Philharmonic, beginning with the 2025-26 season.

meet our Festival Orchestra

GTMF welcomes top talent from world-renowned orchestras to Jackson Hole each year. Under the baton of Music Director Sir Donald Runnicles, these 250+ musicians come together to gather inspiration from the mountain setting, to renew their artistic vows to music making and to provide exhilarating music for Festival patrons.

Violin
Madeline Adkins
Violin
Violinist Madeline Adkins was appointed Concertmaster of the Utah Symphony in 2016. Prior to this, she served as Associate Concertmaster of the Baltimore Symphony for 11 years.

Adkins performs on the "ex-Chardon" Guadagnini of 1782, graciously loaned by Gabrielle Israelievitch to perpetuate the legacy of her late husband, former Toronto Symphony concertmaster, Jacques Israelievitch (1948 - 2015).

Adkins has been a Concertmaster of the Grand Teton Music Festival Orchestra since 2018, and has served as Guest Concertmaster of the Pittsburgh Symphony, the Cincinnati Symphony, the São Paulo Symphony, the Houston Symphony, the Hong Kong Philharmonic and orchestras in Spain, Switzerland and Germany. Adkins has also been a guest artist at numerous festivals including the Stellenbosch International Chamber Music Festival in South Africa, the Sarasota Music Festival, Brevard, Jackson Hole Chamber Music, the Sewanee Music Festival and Music in the Mountains, as well as a clinician with the National Youth Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, the National Orchestral Institute and the Haitian Orchestra Institute. In addition, she has served as the Artistic Director of the NOVA Chamber Music Series in Salt Lake City.

A sought-after soloist, Adkins has appeared with orchestras in Europe, Asia, Africa and 27 US states, including 25 concertos with the Baltimore Symphony and 15 with the Utah Symphony. As a recitalist, she has performed worldwide, from Cape Town, South Africa to Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and the Romanian Embassy in Washington DC. Her recording of the complete works for violin and piano by Felix Mendelssohn with pianist Luis Magalhães was released to critical acclaim. American Record Guide notes that Adkins and Magalhães are “ardent and spontaneous” and “their fierce coordination is breathtaking.”

The daughter of noted musicologists, Adkins is the youngest of eight children, six of whom are professional musicians. A champion of early music, Adkins has been active in baroque performance on period instruments since the age of 11. She has been a member of the Handel and Haydn Society and Boston Baroque, among many others.

Adkins received her Bachelor’s degree summa cum laude from the University of North Texas and her Master’s degree from the New England Conservatory, where she studied with James Buswell.

When not on stage, Adkins enjoys travel photography, reading and exploring the West. She is also passionate about animal rescue and has fostered over 100 kittens!
Trumpet
Conrad Jones
Trumpet
Conrad Jones was appointed Associate Principal Trumpet of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra by Music Director Manfred Honeck in April 2024. He has performed as Guest Principal Trumpet with the Chicago Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, St. Louis Symphony, Toronto Symphony and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. During the summer season, he performs with the Grand Teton Music Festival and was Principal Trumpet of the Britt Festival Orchestra from 2014 to 2021.

Jones came to Pittsburgh from the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, where he served as Principal Trumpet for seven years and was Principal Trumpet of the Tucson Symphony for the two seasons prior. During the 2015/16 season, he was Acting Second Trumpet of the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra.

A native of Long Island, New York, Conrad attended the Cleveland Institute of Music, where he studied with Robert Sullivan, Michael Miller and Michael Sachs before continuing his studies with Jim Wilt at the Colburn School in Los Angeles, California. He joined the faculty at the Curtis Institute of Music in 2025 and is a Yamaha Performing Artist
Soprano
Eleni Calenos
Soprano
Internationally acclaimed Greek soprano Eleni Calenos is capturing critics’ and audiences’ admiration for the clarity and warmth of her voice and her dignified characterizations.

Her operatic repertoire includes more than 30 roles, among them: Mimì (La bohème), Cio-Cio-San (Madama Butterfly), Tosca, Suor Angelica, Santuzza (Cavalleria rusticana), Nedda (I Pagliacci), Giorgetta (Il tabarro), Liù (Turandot), Giulietta (Giulietta e Romeo by Zandonai), the Countess (Le nozze di Figaro), Donna Anna and Donna Elvira (Don Giovanni), Pamina (The Magic Flute), Fiordiligi (Così fan tutte), Rosalinde (Die Fledermaus), Hanna Glawari (The Merry Widow), Antonia (The Tales of Hoffmann), Desdemona (Otello), Medora (Il corsaro), Gilda (Rigoletto), L’Infante (Le Cid), Silvia (Zanetto), Micaëla (Carmen), Lia (L’Enfant prodigue), and Vee Talbot in Bruce Saylor’s contemporary opera Orpheus Descending. She also created the role of Saida in the world premiere of the opera Schönerland by S. N. Eichberg, on the topic of refugees.

Calenos is equally accomplished in the oratorio and concert repertoire, having sung Verdi’s Requiem, Brahms’s Ein Deutsches Requiem, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 and Missa Solemnis, Handel’s Theodora, Mendelssohn’s Paulus, Samuel Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915, Rachmaninoff’s The Bells, Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, Rutter’s Magnificat and Poulenc’s Gloria, among others.

She has collaborated with opera companies and symphony orchestras such as Glyndebourne, Wiesbaden Staatstheater, the Greek National Opera, Palm Beach Opera, Austin Opera, Tulsa Opera, Sarasota Opera, Opera Idaho, Opera Delaware, Opera Orlando, Shreveport Opera, Odyssey Opera, Mississippi Opera, Lancaster Symphony, MidAmerica Productions (Avery Fisher Hall/Lincoln Center), Opera Montana, Opera Santa Barbara, Orchestra Miami, Utah Festival Opera, Annapolis Opera, Madison Opera, Charlottesville Opera, Glimmerglass Festival, Phoenicia Festival, Opera Company of Middlebury (VT), Evansville Philharmonic, LOFT Opera, Zomeropera (Belgium), the Athens State Symphony Orchestra, the Thessaloniki State Symphony Orchestra, the Athens Philharmonia Orchestra and the Eptapyrgion Festival.

Calenos graduated with a Cello Diploma from the Municipal Conservatory of her native Thessaloniki and a Diploma in Voice from the National Conservatory of Greece. She obtained her Master’s degree in Vocal Performance from Queens College, City University of New York, and a Performance Certificate from the Opera Institute of Boston University.

Her recordings include Mascagni’s Zanetto with Odyssey Opera, two operettas by Greek composer S. Samaras (War in War and The Cretan Girl) with the Greek National Opera, as well as George Tsontakis’s Mirologhia, released on the KOCH International Classics label with the Albany Symphony Orchestra.
Tenor
Daniel Luis Espinal
Tenor
Daniel Luis Espinal is a Cuban-Dominican tenor from Sarasota, Florida. He is currently in his second season as a member of the Ryan Opera Center at Lyric Opera of Chicago, where he performed Third Jew (Salome) and Beppe (Pagliacci) in the 2025/26 season. He also appeared as Frederic in The Pirates of Penzance at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis. At Lyric Opera of Chicago, Espinal has previously appeared as Jaquino (Fidelio), and has covered Rodolfo (La bohème), Narraboth (Salome), and Borsa (Rigoletto). Additional operatic credits include Tom Rakewell (The Rake’s Progress), Rinuccio (Gianni Schicchi), Male Chorus (The Rape of Lucretia), and Tamino (Die Zauberflöte).

Espinal’s earliest musical experiences began singing in church choir, but it was through musical theater that he first discovered his artistic voice and love for performance. Those formative years continue to inform his communicative approach on stage, where vocal color, character and emotional immediacy are central to his work. He is recognized for the distinctive color of his voice and a natural charisma that belie his years.

A recent graduate of the Yale School of Music, Espinal is also an alumnus of the Manhattan School of Music. He was a winner of the 2024 Metropolitan Opera Laffont Competition, the Art Song Prize winner of the 2023 Duncan Williams Voice Competition, and a 2025 Sara Tucker Study Grant recipient. He is an alumnus of the prestigious Merola Opera Program and a participant in the Académie d’Aix-en-Provence.
Violin
Maria Ioudenitch
Violin
Violinist Maria Ioudenitch attracted the attention of music lovers worldwide when she won first prizes at three international violin competitions in 2021—the Ysaÿe, Tibor Varga and Joseph Joachim Competitions—as well as numerous special prizes at these competitions, including Joachim’s Chamber Music Prize, the prize for the best interpretation of a commissioned work, and the Henle Urtext Prize. In 2023, she won the Opus Klassik Award in the category “Chamber Music Recording of the Year” for her debut album, Songbird, on Warner Classics.

The young violinist’s innovative programming is reflected in her album Songbird. She performs violin concertos by Brahms, Barber, Dvořák and Glazunov, as well as Prokofiev’s First Concerto, while in recital programs she presents works by Lili Boulanger and Germaine Tailleferre alongside the wellknown violin repertoire.

Highlights of the 2025/26 season included debuts with the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra under Marin Alsop, the Royal Danish Opera Orchestra under Marie Jacquot, the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra under Jan Willem de Vriend, and the George Enescu Philharmonic Orchestra under Dennis Russell Davies. She toured Munich, Vienna and Ljubljana with the Basel Symphony Orchestra and Markus Poschner. Ioudenitch also performs extensively in the US and Canada, including appearances with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Vancouver Symphony Orchestra and the North Carolina Symphony.

She gives recitals with pianist Roman Borisov at the Brucknerhaus Linz, in Staufen and at London’s Wigmore Hall. She is a member of the chamber music collective ensemble132, with whom she will release an album of works by Stravinsky and Schumann in early 2026. Her chamber music partners include Inmo Yang, Stephen Waarts, Marie-Elisabeth Hecker, Julian Steckel and Pablo Barragán.

More recently, she has appeared as a guest soloist with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, the German Symphony Orchestra Berlin at the Berlin Philharmonie, the Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, the Dresden Philharmonic, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. She collaborates with conductors such as Andrey Boreyko, Sir Donald Runnicles, Alpesh Chauhan, Marta Gardolińska, Holly Hyun Choe, Jonathan Bloxham, Yi-Chen Lin, Ryan Bancroft, Kevin John Edusei, Stanislav Kochanovsky, Andrew Manze, Robin Ticciati and Ruth Reinhardt.

Ioudenitch grew up in Kansas City and began playing violin at the age of three with Gregory Sandomirsky. She studied with Ben Sayevich at the International Center for Music in Kansas City, with Pamela Frank and Shmuel Ashkenasi at the Curtis Institute of Music, and with Miriam Fried at the New England Conservatory, before completing the Professional Studies Program at the Kronberg Academy with Christian Tetzlaff.
Piano
Tanner Jorden
Piano
Shortly before leaving his home in Montana, Tanner Jorden received first prize at the Donald Runnicles Musical Arts Scholarship Competition. In 2023, Jorden won second prize at the Music Teacher National Association (MTNA) Young Artist National Piano Competition, being the youngest among finalists who were deep into their graduate studies. In 2024, he won first prize in the MTNA National Chamber Music Competition with the Aspen Grove Trio as well as second prize at the PianoArts North American Piano Competition.

Jorden is a frequent soloist with professional symphonies. Recent engagements include Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with Sir Donald Runnicles and the Montana Youth Symphony, Mozart’s Piano Concerto in C with Yaniv Danur and the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, and Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini with Anne Harrigan and the Billings Symphony.

Jorden is pursuing a Master’s degree at The Juilliard School in the studio of Yoheved Kaplinsky. He previously studied with Scott Holden and Stephen Beus while completing his Bachelor’s degree at Brigham Young University, as well as Dorothea Cromley during his high school years. An avid mountain biker and outdoorsman, Jorden believes that time away from the instrument is best spent finding oneself in nature.