Jul 03 Thursday
June 20 - August 1, 2025 Summer Festival 2025 The World’s Largest Chamber Music Party returns!
This five-week celebration of extraordinary music and first-rate artists presents 12 mainstage concerts at Nordstrom Recital Hall at Benaroya Hall, each including a free pre-concert recital; two outdoor concerts in idyllic parks in Seattle and Bellevue; 18 concerts aboard The Concert Truck; the live music and cooking event Tasting Notes; an exciting variety of community and education programs, and for those who can’t attend in person, the return of our live streaming and on-demand, state-of-the-art Virtual Concert Hall.
Among the renowned artists participating this year are violinists James Ehnes, Elena Urioste and Noah Bendix-Balgley; pianists Yulianna Avdeeva and Inon Barnatan; and cellists Bion Tsang and Sterling Elliott. Highlights include masterpieces by Beethoven, Brahms, Fanny Mendelssohn, Mozart, Schubert, Schumann, and Tchaikovsky; music by important 20th-century composers, such as Mieczysław Weinberg, Rebecca Clarke and Amy Beach; and a selection of lesser-known works handpicked for the festival, including neglected pieces by Mel Bonis, Charlotte Sohy, and Moritz Moszkowski.
Blue Healers is a roots music duo who incorporate elements of folk and blues with aural landscapes. Voted Best Duo and Female Vocalist 2025 and 2024 along with Best New Band by The Washington Blues Society. They released the album Transmissions in 2023 and the EP Astro Blues in 2024.
Welcomed by KNKX. Frank Vignola is one of the most extraordinary guitarists performing before the public today. His stunning virtuosity has made him the guitarist of choice for many of the world’s top musicians, including Ringo Starr, Madonna, Donald Fagen, John Lewis, Tommy Emmanuel, Lionel Hampton, the Boston Pops, the New York Pops, and guitar legend Les Paul, who named Vignola to his “Five Most Admired Guitarists List:” for the Wall Street Journal.
His dynamic genre-spanning music has brought him to 21 countries on three continents – and still growing – performing in some of the world’s most illustrious venues, including the Sydney Opera House, Carnegie Hall, The Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco, New York’s Lincoln Center, The Blue Note, and the world’s oldest indoor concert hall, Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza, Italy.
Pasquale Grasso - It was the kind of endorsement most rising guitarists can only dream of, and then some. In his interview for Vintage Guitar magazine’s February 2016 cover story, Pat Metheny was asked to name some younger musicians who’d impressed him. “The best guitar player I’ve heard in maybe my entire life is floating around now, Pasquale Grasso,” said the jazz-guitar icon and NEA Jazz Master. “This guy is doing something so amazingly musical and so difficult. “Mostly what I hear now are guitar players who sound a little bit like me mixed with a little bit of [John Scofield] and a little bit of [Bill Frisell],” he continued. “What’s interesting about Pasquale is that he doesn’t sound anything like that at all. In a way, it is a little bit of a throwback, because his model—which is an incredible model to have—is Bud Powell. He has somehow captured the essence of that language from piano onto guitar in a way that almost nobody has ever addressed. He’s the most significant new guy I’ve heard in many, many years.”
A distant heir to a family fortune sets out to speed up the line of succession by using a great deal of charm…and a dash of murder. When the low-born Monty Navarro finds out that he’s eighth in line for an earldom in the lofty D’Ysquith family, he figures his chances of outliving his predecessors are slight and sets off down a far more ghoulish path. Can he knock off his unsuspecting relatives without being caught and become the ninth Earl of Highhurst? And what of love? Because murder isn’t the only thing on Monty’s mind.
Set in the East Village of New York City, during the previous pandemic, Rent is about falling in love, finding your voice and living for today. Based loosely on Puccini’s La Boheme, Jonathan Larson’s play follows a year in the life of a group of young artists and musicians struggling to survive and create in New York’s Lower East Side, under the shadow of HIV/AIDS. Winner of the Tony Award for Best Musical and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Rent has become a pop cultural phenomenon, with songs that rock and a story that shaped a generation of audiences and taught us all to measure our life in love.
DEAL is an electric quartet based out of Seattle, delivering high energy psychedelic renditions from the Grateful Dead catalog. True to the spirit of the Dead, DEAL mixes a reverential treatment of the music with a zest for exploring new territory.
Jul 04 Friday
For more than three decades, the triple Grammy-nominated Acoustic Alchemy have pushed the limits of the potential of the acoustic guitar by embracing a spectrum of musical styles ranging from straight-ahead jazz to folk to rock to world music and beyond. Since their earliest recordings – despite a tragic setback in the late 1990s and the inherent challenges of the 21st century music industry – the group has assembled and sustained a vast and loyal following that stretches well beyond their U.K. origins. Through it all, the overriding mission of Acoustic Alchemy has been to reach the broadest possible audience by pushing the potential of instrumental music to embrace a broad spectrum of styles without being limited to any specific genre.
Vivid paintings of local forests, trails and natural landmarks by Port Townsend artist Patricia Hagen beckon in this exhibit at Northwind Art's spacious gallery. For this one-woman show, Patty painted many of these en plein air, inspired by her surroundings in green, woodsy Port Townsend and Chimacum. Owls, deer, old-growth trees — and an observant human — share the space on her canvases. "Nature reveals itself as both nurturing and commanding, whether viewed from a mountain peak or an ancient forest path," says Patty. Her exhibit of more than 40 paintings and ceramic works is on view through July 7; the gallery is open 12 noon to 5 p.m. Thursdays through Mondays, and more information is found at Northwind Art's website, NorthwindArt.org. Art Walk on June 7 and July 5 means the gallery stays open till 8 p.m.; Patty will give a free artist talk open to everyone at 3 p.m. Sunday, June 8.
Northwind Art gallery shows are always free to the public.
Live Music Returns to the Waterfront This Summer!
Get ready for an unforgettable summer on the water—Oodalalee: Concerts at Pier 62 is here. Brought to you by your friends at The Crocodile, this brand-new summer series transforms the recently renovated Pier 62 into a beautiful open-air concert venue, right on the edge of Elliott Bay.
Kicking off June 1 with a performance from Hermanos Gutiérrez, the series brings a stacked lineup all summer long, including Silversun Pickups, Watchhouse, Deltron 3030, Cosmo Sheldrake, Blind Pilot & John Craigie, Fruit Bats, and Otoboke Beaver with even more to be announced.
Echoes of the Floating World features a striking collection of 18th, 19th and early 20th-century Japanese woodblock prints from the Tacoma Art Museum and others, displayed alongside works by contemporary Northwest artists. This exhibition honors the rich legacy of ukiyo-e while exploring its cultural impact on today’s artistic expressions.
Hours-
Monday CLOSEDTuesday CLOSEDWednesday 10 am – 5 pmThursday 10 am – 8 pmFriday 10 am – 5 pmSaturday 10 am – 5 pmSunday 10 am – 5 pm
