2026 Festival Orchestra Series

2026 Festival Orchestra Series

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

Series packages available now; single tickets on sale April 7.

Rachmaninoff & Tchaikovsky’s Fifth
Friday, July 10 at 7 PM | Saturday, July 11 at 6 PM

Sir Donald Runnicles, conductor
Tanner Jorden, piano – 2021 Donald Runnicles Musical Arts Scholarship winner

Key: Star Spangled Banner
Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 2
Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 5

Opening night of the Festival Orchestra Series features not one but two popular monuments of the orchestral canon. Montana native and 2021 Donald Runnicles Musical Arts Scholarship Competition winner Tanner Jorden returns to the Grand Teton Music Festival to perform Rachmaninoff’s timeless and melodically rich Second Piano Concerto. Rounding out the program is Tchaikovsky’s dramatic symphonic reckoning with the immensities of fate.

Shostakovich & Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto
Friday, July 17 at 7 PM | Saturday, July 18 at 6 PM

Sir Donald Runnicles, conductor
José González Granero, clarinet

Barber: The School for Scandal Overture
Mozart: Clarinet Concerto
Shostakovich: Symphony No. 1

Beloved Festival Orchestra member José González Granero moves from the woodwind section to the front of the stage to perform Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto, one of the great composer’s last masterpieces. In contrast to Mozart’s meaningful late utterance are two more youthful works by important 20th century icons – a playful literary overture by American Samuel Barber, The School for Scandal Overture, and an incredibly precocious college graduation project by Dmitri Shostakovich, his Symphony No. 1.

Melodies of Britain
Friday, July 31 at 7 PM | Saturday, August 1 at 6 PM

Sir Donald Runnicles, conductor
Maria Ioudenitch, violin

James MacMillan: Britannia
Mendelssohn: Violin Concerto
Haydn: Symphony No. 104, “London”

Music Director Sir Donald Runnicles celebrates his home islands with two distinct visions of Great Britain. Haydn’s final symphony was written and premiered in London, a city that adored him like a native son, while James MacMillan’s orchestral fantasy on patriotic British themes, Britannia, creates a tapestry of “surprising scenarios in the mind of the listener.” Not to be missed, violinist Maria Ioudenitch makes her GTMF debut with Mendelssohn’s “jewel of the heart,” the moving Violin Concerto.

Beethoven & Korngold
Friday, August 7 at 7 PM | Saturday, August 8 at 6 PM

Sir Donald Runnicles, conductor
Madeline Adkins, violin

Barry: Suite from Out of Africa
Korngold: Violin Concerto
Beethoven: Symphony No. 6

What do a certain Austrian composer and his English counterpart have in common? Hollywood, of course! Both John Barry and Erich Wolfgang Korngold found their way to the big screens of America and their music blurred the lines between the concert hall and the movie theater. 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 Finale: Night at the Opera
Friday, August 14 at 7 PM | Saturday, August 15 at 6 PM

Sir Donald Runnicles, conductor
Eleni Calenos, soprano
Daniel Luis Espinal, tenor

Mendelssohn: Symphony No. 4, “Italian”
Puccini: Scenes, Interludes, Arias

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. These two world-class voices join Maestro Runnicles and the Festival Orchestra in this aural feast of melody and drama, but not before we see Italy through the eyes of Felix Mendelssohn, who visited the country in 1830 and set down his impressions in both musical notes and vibrant watercolors.

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