The 14th annual season of the Lakes Area Music Festival will feature 180 artists from the top orchestras and opera companies nationwide. For three weeks this exceptional roster will make the Lakes Area of central Minnesota their musical home, performing three weeks of chamber music, orchestra, and opera– as well as various community outreach activities extending their impact throughout the local community.
Nearly all activities are offered for free or with name-your-price ticketing in order to ensure access to anyone interested in attending, regardless of financial means. Ticket reservations will open in early June.
Join us this summer in Brainerd!
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The timeless story of enraged rivals and forbidden love comes to life at our exclusive West Side Story gala! Broadway’s Andrea Ross and Ryan Vona join the Lakes Area Music Festival Symphony in a celebration of favorites from Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim’s masterpiece, including Maria, Somewhere, and Tonight. Our largest fundraiser of the year, this …
The “Pago a la Tierra” (tribute to the earth) is an ancient Andean ritual of thanksgiving for nature’s bounty. We open our 14th annual season with a tribute to earth, water, and spirit featuring a world premiere by Peruvian-American composer Jimmy López Bellido followed by Jean Sibelius’ masterful Second Symphony, inspired by the Apennine mountains …
Indian-American composer Reena Esmail works between the worlds of Indian and Western classical music. Her work, Teen Murti (Three Statues), takes inspiration from Hindustani singing traditions and sits aside chamber works by French composers Maurice Ravel and Francis Poulenc. COVID Protocols: COVID safety protocols for the summer season will be adjusted accordingly as the season approaches and …
A ‘concerto grosso’ pits a group of soloists against a larger ensemble, moving between cooperation and contrast. Artistic advisor and baroque violinist Chloe Fedor leads a baroque ensemble in early examples of these concertos, partnered with modern takes on the genre by Errollyn Wallen and Samuel Carl Adams. Featured Artists COVID Protocols: COVID safety protocols for the summer …
For many of us, the land of our ancestors holds a special power. For the Afro-British composer, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, that fascination drew him to the music and culture of Black America, where his forebears had been enslaved. We present his luscious Clarinet Quintet alongside two of his fundamental influences: the European tradition of composers like …
Hilarity and misadventure ensue when two productions—one a grand opera and the other a comedic farce—are forced to perform their shows simultaneously. For our annual opera production we present an enchanting masterpiece by Richard Strauss which satirizes showbusiness as it explores the widest range of musical and theatrical possibility, from monumental Greek Tragedy to irreverent …
The LAMF Composer Fellowship offers early-career composers the chance to present their work to our orchestra and audience. Following a new work by our inaugural composer fellow, Isaac Santos, we hear another example of a composer’s early work in Dmitri Shostakovich’s First Piano Concerto. These pieces are followed by Franz Joseph Haydn’s 104th and final …
Our inaugural composer-in-residence, Elizabeth Ogonek, opens this finale celebration with a grand fanfare, co-commissioned with the Boston Symphony for the Tanglewood Festival. Then, Gustav Mahler’s titanic Fifth Symphony brings the season to a triumphant close. “A symphony must be like the world, it must embrace the world,” Mahler once said, and this closing concert embraces …