Sun Valley Music Festival Announces 2025 Winter Season, March 6–8

Seventh edition spotlights Grammy-nominated pianist Joyce Yang, in concert with Festival musicians

(To download Joyce Yang’s full bio and photos, Winter Festival flyer, and full program, click HERE.)

Sun Valley, Idaho, Dec. 11, 2024 – The Sun Valley Music Festival, praised by BBC Music Magazine as one of the best classical music festivals in the United States, announced today that its seventh Winter Season will take place March 6–8 at the Argyros Performing Arts Center in Ketchum. The 2025 Winter Season features special guest curator and pianist Joyce Yang, an internationally renowned soloist and chamber musician who first rose to fame in 2005 as the youngest contestant and silver medalist at the 12th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition.

A Sun Valley Music Festival favorite, Yang has performed several times with Music Director Alasdair Neale and the Festival Orchestra in past Summer Seasons. In March 2025, she joins forces with musicians from the Festival Orchestra for a chamber program that features music by Poulenc, Dohnányi, and Schumann; she will also perform solo piano works by Rachmaninoff. The program will be presented three times, on March 6, 7 and 8, at 7 p.m. (doors open at 6:30 p.m.) The concerts are about two hours long, including an intermission. As always, admission is free, but space is limited and reservations are required. Please see below for details and the full program.

“It’s a privilege to welcome Joyce back to Sun Valley, this time in the winter and on the intimate stage of the Argyros,” said Neale. “She has assembled an eclectic and intriguing program that she feels a special connection to. I’m particularly looking forward to her chamber music collaborations with our musicians, since her intensely sensitive and communicative style of music-making lends itself exceptionally well to that genre.”

To kick off the Winter Festival, on March 5, at 5:30 p.m., the Music Festival will present “Upbeat with Alasdair,” featuring Neale and Yang in conversation, at the Community Library in Ketchum. The event will also be livestreamed from the Music Festival’s website. Reservations to attend will open to the public on Feb. 19, at 9 a.m.

During the week, Yang and Winter Festival musicians will interact with students in local schools, offering demonstrations, coaching, and master classes.

Yang has previously appeared at the Festival’s Summer Seasons in 2021 (performing Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2), 2016 (Gershwin’s Piano Concerto in F Major), and 2013 (Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1).

Reservations

• Concert reservations are limited to two per household to one of the concerts.
• Public reservations begin Wednesday, Feb. 5, 2025, at 9 a.m. MT online at svmusicfestival.org.
• Festival donors at the Patron ($6,000) level and up may make reservations early, beginning Wednesday, Jan. 29, 2025, at 9 a.m. MT, by calling the Festival office at 208.622.5607.

For the latest news and information on the Sun Valley Music Festival and Winter Season, including reservations and details on attending, visit the Festival website at svmusicfestival.org or sign up for e-news at svmusicfestival.org/subscribe.

To download Joyce Yang’s full bio and photos, Winter Festival flyer, and full program, click HERE.

Joyce Yang in Concert with Festival Musicians
Sun Valley Music Festival
Alasdair Neale, Music Director

Thursday, March 6, 2025, at 7 p.m.
Friday, March 7, 2025, at 7 p.m.
Saturday, Marcy 8, 2025, at 7 p.m.

Argyros Performing Arts Center
Joyce Yang, Piano and Curator

SERGEI RACHMANINOFF
Preludes

• Op. 32, No. 12 in G-sharp Minor: Allegro
• Op. 32, No. 10 in B Minor: Lento
• Op. 23, No. 4 in D Major: Andante cantabile
• Op. 32, No. 13 in D-flat Major: Grave

Joyce Yang, Piano

FRANCIS POULENC
Sextet for Flute, Oboe, Clarinet, Horn, Bassoon, and Piano

Joyce Yang, Piano
Andrea Kaplan, Flute
Erik Behr, Oboe
Jason Shafer, Clarinet
Andrew Cuneo, Bassoon
Catherine Turner, Horn

~ Intermission ~

ERNST VON DOHNÁNYI
Serenade in C Major for Violin, Viola, and Cello, Op. 10

Shawn Weil, Violin
Adam Smyla, Viola
Emileigh Vandiver, Cello

ROBERT SCHUMANN
Quartet in E-flat Major for Piano, Violin, Viola, and Cello, Op. 47

Joyce Yang, Piano
Jeremy Constant, Violin
Marylène Gingras-Roy, Viola
Amos Yang, Cello

About the Sun Valley Music Festival
The Sun Valley Music Festival’s mission is to enrich, inspire, and instill in our community a lifelong love of classical music through extraordinary free concerts and education programs. Festival programs provide opportunities for people from all walks of life to listen, learn, and play. Now in its 41st year, it is the largest privately supported, free-admission orchestra in the United States.  

Over 100 world-class musicians from North America’s most distinguished orchestras, including the San Francisco Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, and Houston Symphony, comprise the Festival Orchestra. Summer Season concerts are held in July and August at the spectacular R.E. Holding Sun Valley Pavilion, in the mountain resort town of Sun Valley, Idaho. Winter Season concerts are held in February or March at the Argyros Performing Arts Center in nearby Ketchum, Idaho, which is adjacent to Bald Mountain, Sun Valley Resort's primary ski area. Internationally-renowned guest artists such as Yo-Yo Ma, Gautier Capuçon, Midori, Emanuel Ax, Audra McDonald, Joshua Bell, Yefim Bronfman, Kristin Chenoweth, and Jean-Yves Thibaudet have performed with the Festival.  

The Festival strives to introduce every Wood River Valley student to the joys of classical music, to inspire the next generation of music lovers. Its year-round and summer Music Institute programs provide tuition-free instruction for string, piano, and voice students of all skill levels — from elementary through high school — that goes beyond the fundamentals and embraces the entire musician.

About Joyce Yang
Blessed with “poetic and sensitive pianism” (Washington Post) and a “wondrous sense of color” (San Francisco Classical Voice), Grammy-nominated pianist Joyce Yang captivates audiences with her virtuosity, lyricism, and interpretive sensitivity. She first came to international attention in 2005 when she won the silver medal at the 12th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. The youngest contestant at 19 years old, she took home two additional awards: Best Performance of Chamber Music (with the Takàcs Quartet), and Best Performance of a New Work. In 2006 Yang made her acclaimed New York Philharmonic debut alongside Lorin Maazel at Avery Fisher Hall.

Over the last two decades, Yang has blossomed into an “astonishing artist” (Neue Zürcher Zeitung), showcasing her colorful musical personality in solo recitals and collaborations with the world’s top orchestras and chamber musicians through more than 1,000 debuts and re-engagements.

In solo recitals, Yang’s innovative program has been praised as “extraordinary” and “kaleidoscopic” (Los Angeles Times). As an avid chamber musician, Yang has collaborated with the Takács Quartet and has fostered an enduring partnership with the Alexander String Quartet that resulted in three celebrated recordings under Foghorn Classics. She is a Steinway artist.

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Media contact:
Matt Herman, Managing Director
8VA Music Consultancy
matt@8vamusicconsultancy.com