Jenkins returns for third Patriotic Pops spectacle – JH News&Guide

The Grand Teton Music Festival has hosted the free community Fourth of July concert since 1997, back when Eiji Oue was music director and Al Hilde Jr. was the recently named president of the organization’s board. Called “Music in the Hole” back then, it attracted crowds of 10,000 or more to the athletic fields behind Jackson Hole Elementary School for programs that for several years concluded with Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture,” complete with howitzers played by the Wyoming National Guard.

The costs of such a huge event eventually caught up with festival planners, and the spectacle was trimmed down and moved to Walk Festival Hall, where it was performed for sold-out houses and also broadcast throughout Teton Village and over Wyoming Public Radio. After the pandemic scuttled the festival’s 2020 season, 2021 opened triumphantly with the concert’s return to the outdoors, set up on the lawn of the Center for the Arts.

Capathia Jenkins was guest soloist on that program in 2022, and is back again for her third Patriotic Pops. “I’m really looking forward to it,” she said last week from her home in Georgia. “For anyone to get invited anywhere, that’s such an honor, but the sweet spot is to get invited back.”